Tarian Alpha (New Tarian Pride #1)(6)

“Why are you doing this?” Emerald whispered, remembering the punishment Annamora had taken the last time she’d offered comfort.

“Because you got hit. And the way you acted…you ain’t never been hit before. But maybe seeing your dad will take some of the sadness out of your eyes.”

“And if you get caught?” Emerald asked.

Annamora sighed and shrugged. “I get in trouble all the time. At least this one will be worth it.”

And that was the mark of a good woman. Someone who knew the consequences of doing a good deed, but did it anyway.

The woods seemed to get darker by the second. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, and now Emerald could barely see where she was walking. She had good night vision, but the forest was thick and full of shadows. Annamora picked her way right through like a sure-footed billy goat, but Emerald tripped time and time again over the knotty roots and brush reaching for her ankles. It was like skeleton hands reaching up from a graveyard to pull her under, and here she went again with her imagination running wild. She didn’t much like the dark, and neither did her lioness.

A few minutes into their hike, and she couldn’t even see the lights from the rows of cabins behind them anymore. Her face hurt, so did her pride and, truth-be-told, her heart was breaking a little. Everything had been going wrong for a while. She just couldn’t believe she was here, in the Old Tarian Pride camp, bound by a contract to an awful man who would hurt her again the first chance he got.

The tears were warm on her cheeks, and they angered her. Weak. She always did this, had a chance to be strong and cried instead. All these stupid emotions that were always roiling around in her like little tornadoes. She didn’t really want to see Dad with tear stains on her cheeks and a swollen face and fat lip.

And just as she was about to ask how much farther, there was a commotion up ahead. Rustling. Loud rustling and a grunt. There was a light through the woods, appearing and disappearing as Emerald moved through the trees, but Annamora had started jogging toward the sound, high-kneeing it like she couldn’t wait to meet the scary sound.

No, no, no! A wise woman did not run toward danger!

“Annamora!” Emerald called but her new friend was gone.

Heart hammering out of her chest, Emerald tried to catch up to her, but tripped right on the edge of the clearing. There was a tiny cabin where a man was beating the everlovin’ shit out of another man on the ground. Just…pummeling him with a closed fist over and over. It was dark and the man was cast in deep shadows, but there was something familiar about him. Something about his face…

“We’re being attacked,” Annamora said under her breath, appearing suddenly behind Emerald. “That’s not one of ours. That’s the Alpha of the New Tarian Pride.”

“But…my dad…” Emerald said in a stunned voice, unable to take her eyes off the scuffle. That Alpha was going to kill the man with his bare hands. She’d never seen such raw violence before today.

Annamora yanked on her shirt, but Emerald just stood there on the edge of the porchlight, frozen in equal parts awe and horror.

The Alpha of the New Tarian Pride was a killer.

“Girl, you’re on your own. I have to warn everyone,” Annamora said on a shaking breath, and then she was off into the woods like a bullet.

Wait, what? Emerald turned and bolted for Annamora’s bouncing shadow, but the farther she got from the porch light of the little cabin, the worse the visibility became. She sniffed the air, but there had been a lot of shifters in these woods so everything was mixed up and confusing. This way. No…this way. Emerald skidded to a stop, huffing breath and looking left and right. “Annamora?” she whispered to no answer.

Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap! She was afraid of the dark, and now she was in these unfamiliar woods that belonged to monsters with a murderous rival Alpha, and probably his whole Pride was here to kill off everyone, and she was lost! She was the worst at survival ever.

Something rustled to her left, and she froze.

A lion roared suddenly in the distance, and with a squeak, Emerald ducked down and covered her ears. Woods. Dark woods. Woods with lions in them, just like the night Mom and Dad had fled the Tarian Pride. Just like then. Her face was throbbing with pain. Tears of anger and fear over those stupid memories were staining her cheeks and everything was wrong.

More rustling, closer, and she couldn’t hold it back anymore. All the horror of the last year hiding from the Tarian Pride, all the anger when she’d found her dad missing, all the anguish at leaving and signing her life away. the pain in her face and her heart…

She inhaled deeply and screamed.

A hand clamped over her mouth and yanked her back against a solid wall. No, not a solid wall. Nostrils flaring, she inhaled the scent of him. Cologne, man, blood. Something musky. Masculine shampoo? Or beard oil?

The blood was the biggest scent, though. It clung to the lining of her nose and made her want to gag.

“Shhhhh,” he murmured in a deep rumbling voice against her ear.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe! Her chest was going to explode as she panted for breath that didn’t feed her lungs. She was panicking. Trapped. And inside, her lioness sat frozen, just like she always did around dominants, and this man was the most dominant she’d ever felt.

She was going to die. Killer. He was a killer. Couldn’t breathe. She looked up to the stars, twinkling through the branches of the winter-bare trees above her.