Page 61 of Savage Mates

At that moment, it was as if all time stopped, the needs and wants, insatiable hunger and bone-dry thirst were destroying all sense of thought.

My anger was still raw, my lion barely contained. I’d succeeded in killing two humans before being chained and brought here. There was no reason to trust a single human, yet here we were considering this tiny female as our mate. How in the fuck was that even possible?

“Do we allow her to see our lions?”I asked without using my voice. From what I could tell, she was perceptive, yet could only gather fleeting glimpses of what we were thinking. There was no other explanation for her gifts other than she read everyone’s minds or…

She was our mate.

Goddamn, the idea continued to poke my lion. However, even he wanted a taste of her.

“We shift. She needs to understand,”Thor said while tipping his head toward me.

The wildcard was Zeus, his rage typically getting the better of him, but around her, I’d seen softness, enough to break through his stalworth defenses. He had even more reason to wish death for all humans. His face had been carved by a security guard who’d wanted nothing more than to frighten a lion. At least the guard learned a valuable lesson about just how dangerous lions could be when provoked.

“Agreed,”he gritted out.

Not only was there continued danger all around us, but if what we suspected was true, she was a weakness, someone we would need to protect.

With our lives.

“Please,” the little human asked in a hushed voice. “I need to see you. To feel you.” Perhaps for encouragement or maybe because of our connection, she swam closer.

“Stay where you are,” I told her.

“You won’t hurt me. Will you?”

I laughed. “If we’d wanted to hurt you, little mate, that would have occurred yesterday.” I took a step away, closing my eyes and opening my mind to my beast.

For all the anguish we’d endured, the electricity burning our skin and painful test run, shifting no longer bothered any of us. The first time had been the worst. Now, doing so was as easy as donning clothes when we felt it necessary.

Which wasn’t often.

Hunting was still our priority, even if Zeus often wanted no part of it.

Vibrations thrummed beneath our feet with enough force that there were ripples in the water.

The sound of my bones crackling bothered the birds and our little mate briefly looked at the sky. Her pulse was still very fast, but she wasn’t afraid. She was as excited as she’d been a few moments before when thinking about the possibilities.

As my snout broke through the skin and bones on my face, she pressed her hands on the rocks. There was no disgust as I would have expected. She was still fascinated.

I dropped onto all fours, cracking my neck from side to side as the rest of the transformation took place.

When the three of us had finished shifting, she lifted her head and placed her hand over her mouth.

“I just can’t… My God. You’re so beautiful. All three of you.” She climbed along the rocks until she was standing only a few feet away from us. Reaching out, she laughed nervously. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but if you can, shake your head.”

I lifted my head instead, eyeing her carefully. Her scent was even more powerful to me as a lion than when I was a man. There was another odor. Wait. Another lion.

Issuing a slow growl, I nodded so she understood our connection was real.

“Do you smell that?”I asked Thor and Zeus. “A strange scent from long ago.”

Thor lifted his head and padded closer to her. She didn’t run.

She didn’t scream.

She uncurled her fingers, gingerly pressing her hand on his face. “This is insane. You are real. A Cape lion. I’ve studied your species. I’ve written papers on them. When I was a little girl living in Africa, I had pictures of your kind on my wall. I always expected to see you one day in the wild. But it never happened. Now here you are.”

While Thor allowed her to stroke him, he studied her body as I’d done, also enjoying her provocative scent, the fragrance all but driving us into a frenzy.“Yes, another lion.”