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Claiming Their Mate by Paige McKellan

Usually a pint of Cherry Garcia ice cream made all seem right and put her back in focus, back on track, giving her comfort the way saturated fat and refined sugar was supposed to. As she sat sulking in her bed amid more pillows than there was almost room for, Jules scraped the last remaining bite from the bottom of a second pint of Cherry Garcia and realized no amount of ice cream in the world was going to make things better. Disgusted, she tossed the empty container on her nightstand, adding it to the pile of candy wrappers, crumpled chip bags and an empty jar of olives.

Thank God she had a good metabolism.

Jules knew who was to blame for the late night binge that had her stomach pitching and rolling. She’d like to blame Martin and David Marshall. And Will and John Reynolds. Or Harlan and Mitch Payton. She’d really like to blame them. In fact she would love to place the blame on the entire male population of the White Sands Pride but she couldn’t. All the men who had been pursuing her the past three months, and driving her crazy in the process, were doing what came naturally as a matter of tradition and their DNA. No, the men at fault were her fathers and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

In three short months her life had gone from normal and pleasant to whacked out and shitty. When her fathers, Dane and Marcus Kingston, announced they were stepping down as Leos of the White Sands Pride, a call had gone out to all the unattached male Lions under their domain and Jules found her life turned upside down. The hounds of hell, or rather the Lions of her hell, had been hard on her paws, trying to persuade her to accept a mating she wasn’t ready for and didn’t want. However, what she wanted didn’t matter.

She belonged to a clan of WereLions, a fierce breed of shape shifters, and she was bound by the laws and customs her society had embraced since recorded time. Having no brothers and as the eldest of three daughters, it was her duty to mate with a pair of WereLions and continue the Kingston line by bearing sons who would lead the Pride into the future. A member of the Kingston family had led the Pride for over two hundred years, a right of succession her fathers refused to abandon.

She was twenty-three and had her life ahead of her. Every time she thought about the future and the responsibility of carrying on the family lineage, she had thought in terms of years, very many, very long years, before she had to step up, accept a mating pair and birth the cubs of the next generation of Leos. Her fathers’ announcement and resulting mate call had put a stop to her plans of leaving the Pride for a while and seeing the world.

For the hundredth time in the past three months she cursed herself for returning home right after college instead of taking time to explore the world and be on her own. She had come back after school for two reasons. The first was because she’d missed her family. Setting aside the fact she wasn’t speaking to any of them right now, they were a close family and their separation during her years in school had been difficult. She’d wanted to spend time in the comfort of her home surrounded by her parents and sisters.

Not so much anymore.

Jules wanted to be as far away from Logan, New Mexico as she could be, communicating only by postcard, and even that would be done begrudgingly.

The second reason she had come back was because of the Pride, and because the freedoms she had in Logan she wouldn’t have elsewhere. She was a WereLion who needed to shift and roam and prowl like her body demanded, giving over to the more elemental side of her being. There were some Non-Weres living in Logan and the surrounding area but not many. Of the full humans living alongside the Pride, only some knew their secret—those whose families had lived here for generations—the rest remained oblivious as most humans do to things they don’t believe are real or possible. Here she could shift and roam the ranch or other sanctioned ranges safely, something she had missed while away at school. Now, being home and around others of her kind was a pain-in-the-ass problem and not the blessing it was supposed to be.

Jules didn’t want one husband, much less two. Not now at least. Years ago she’d accepted her fate as the next Lioness of the Pride. Jules knew she would be mated to the next Leos. She had planned to leave the Pride for a while then return, maybe in ten years or so, and accept her role as future Lioness and select her mates. On her terms and in her own time. Not her fathers’. The Pride operated much in the same way those in the wild did; two male leaders mated to one female. Two Leos rather than one helped ensure the safety and continuity of the Pride and their lineage. The mating pair would be brothers or men of the same bloodline. Her friends from outside the Pride would be shocked to learn she would have two husbands. Knowing she would share her bed with more than one man should scare her.

Actually it was quite the opposite.

Thinking about taking two men to mate and to her bed made her hot and wet. Not that she wanted to deal with the attitudes of two Leos who would most likely try to keep her under their control; the amount of testosterone one male WereLion in his prime had was staggering. Having to put up with two Lions would drive her crazy. Jules envisioned many arguments in her future as she had no intention of letting any one man control her, much less two. But the tantalizing thought of having two strong men to pleasure her was another matter, something she knew she wouldn’t resist. Ever since her fathers had made their announcement, she’d been consumed with thoughts of lying in the dark, in her bed, between two men intent on staking a claim. The images running through her mind had her squirming under the covers until her panties were damp.

And it wasn’t just two nameless faces she saw on the men who would hold her and stroke her and claim her as their own for all time. When she closed her eyes and imagined being held between her future mates, she always saw the same two faces.

Gabriel and Lucas Beckett.

Two men she would never, ever, ever consider as mates.

No matter how much they got her juices flowing and made her want to purr.

Rachel’s Totem by Marie Harte

Rachel finished off her breakfast and slowly sipped her coffee. According to Gerald Winter, her aunt’s attorney, Charlotte had died peacefully in her sleep. She’d left her house and some property to Rachel, and a few other odds and ends that Gerald would read today in the will. Rachel, unfortunately or fortunately, depending upon her mood, had to be present to hear the legalities. She winced, recalling her last debacle with lawyers, the wounds still fresh.

Yet, it wasn’t as if she had any other place to go. Her parents were dead. She had no siblings and few friends outside the ones Jesse had managed to steal after the divorce. Hell. The greater the distance between herself and her pitiful old life, the better. She’d spent the past nine months fighting, and the past three months licking her wounds. Wasn’t it time to start over again? And with a clean slate this time.

Brooding over the optimistic idiot inside of her brewing with good tidings, Rachel gulped the last of her overly sweet coffee and glared at the packets in the center of the booth. Who ever heard of pink packets of sugar?

Grabbing her wallet out of her purse, she paid for her meal and left a tip for Sarah, then left the diner and its curious patrons behind. As she walked down the street toward her rental car, however, an altercation nearby forced her to stop.

Twenty feet down the alley to her right, Rachel saw the rude guy from the diner ducking punches from three overgrown bullies. Why she thought of the fight in those precise terms she didn’t know, but she had a definite sense that Bad Ass was the innocent party. The fact that the huge thugs crowding him looked like walking wolf-men made it easier to portray the rude guy as the good guy.

Good lord, but how hairy and huge did they grow them up here? Bad Ass was at least six-four, and the men trying to pin him to the wall between them were as big if not bigger. All three looked like linebackers for a pro team, and they sported long, thick hair, beards and mustaches like mountain men from hell. One of them turned to study her, and even in the daylight his eyes seemed to gleam with a preternatural shine.

Shit. That is too weird. And this is way beyond my ability to make right.

Before she could call for help, Bad Ass slugged two of the men with fists so fast they looked a blur, putting his assailants down for the count. The remaining thug lunged at him, only to find himself suddenly plastered against the brick wall. Somehow, Bad Ass had used the thug’s momentum against him, to his advantage. Throughout the fight, Rachel stood still, frozen by the animal-like grunts, brutal hits and sheer wildness frothing between the men. But when Bad Ass and then the other one started growling and_…hissing…_at each other, she took several steps back, thoroughly freaked out.

Had she not known better, she’d swear that thug was looking more and more wolf-like. And the cries coming from Bad Ass sounded feline, like a big cat howling a warning as his eyes narrowed, the color of his pupils reflecting an odd shine in the shadows of the alley.

A warm hand on her shoulder scared a mortifying squeak out of her, and Rachel spun around in a heartbeat. Seeing a badge, she breathed a sigh of relief.

“Easy, miss. I’ll take care of this.” The lawman tipped his hat at her and quietly spoke into his walkie-talkie, radioing for help. He walked toward the brawlers with an easy gait. Like the men in the alley, the sheriff had a feral quality about him. Something in the slant of his brows, the sharpness of his gaze and the readiness in his face. He sported denims and a work shirt, his hat worn from wear, but no gun belt that she could see.

Shorter than the men fighting by a few inches but no less muscular, the sheriff stopped a few feet in front of them. He said nothing, merely tapped his foot. When they continued to ignore him, spitting and knocking into one another, he crossed his arms and murmured something under his breath, and the two opponents sprang apart as if dashed with cold water.

“Burke, take Ms. Penny to see Gerald. He’s waiting on you two. And Hart, you come with me.”

The hairy brute grumbled but followed the sheriff without question, glaring over his shoulder at Bad Ass—at Burke. Four more men appeared at the mouth of the alley and dragged the two unconscious thugs from the scene. Deputies, maybe, though the four looked more like locals than lawmen. They spent an inordinate amount of time studying her, to her discomfort. And the strange, almost hungry looks on their faces had her taking a step back, only to bump into Burke.

Burke ignored her, however, and glared at the men moving the bodies. They hurried out of the alley, leaving Rachel and Burke alone. Together.

Not sure how she felt about being summarily dismissed by the sheriff, Rachel stared at Burke, her expression guarded as she wondered why she’d been left with such a dangerous man.

Burke scowled at her as he straightened his appearance. For a fight in which he’d been outnumbered three to one, he looked surprisingly none the worse for wear. Running his hands through his hair, he tugged the loose strands out of his eyes and tucked the denim shirt he wore back into his jeans.

Unable to stop herself, Rachel watched his long fingers inching under the waistband of his pants and couldn’t help wondering if his skin felt warm even through a layer of clothes. A burst of longing, of animal need, rippled through her body and left as suddenly as it had come. She shivered, confused, praying Burke assumed it was from the cooling temperature.

Seeing her distress, he shook his head and grumbled under his breath. But to her astonishment, he shrugged out of his shirt, leaving him clad in a thin white tee and denims.

“Before you shatter all your pretty white teeth from chattering, put this on.” He didn’t give her a chance to refuse and enfolded her in the large garment. Oh crap, it smelled like him. And her libido, which had gone dormant in the diner except for one brief flare just moments ago, rose again with a vicious slap.

Having helped her into his shirt, Burke began to take his arms from around her when he suddenly froze, then stepped even closer. This near to him, Rachel couldn’t miss the rising bulge pressing against her belly, or fail to note the quickening in his breath as she stared at his broad chest.

“Shit. I just knew you were going to be trouble,” he rumbled before swooping down on her.