Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(16)

She half walked, half ran from the room. Immortals. She'd assumed that meant humans or humanlike. The woman was a bird.

And the others.

Her hand clutched, at the wall as she doubled over for one long, horrified moment. Lyon, Kougar, Foxx. Nicknames?

She pushed away and stumbled down the hall, fearing she was going to be sick..

Lyon. Where was Lyon?

The pounding of her pulse in her ears drove her forward. She had to find him. The sound of some kind of sports game on television caught her ear, and she ran toward it. She rounded the corner to find a large, dark-paneled rec room filled with leather furniture and the biggest television she'd ever seen.

Another of the huge warriors sat on the sofa, one arm across his knees, the other casually curling a metal dumbbell with weights the size of bowling balls.

The man saw her, set down the weight, and rose.

"I'm… looking for Lyon."

"Are you, now?" The man was dressed in army fatigues, his hair an unstyled shaggy brown, his lower face covered in a two-day growth of beard stubble. His eyes were hard as he came too close, crowding her.

Kara stepped back, knocking against the wall behind her.

"Are you our new Radiant, then?" he growled.

A desperate lump formed in her throat as she nodded jerkily. "I need to find Lyon."

The hint of curiosity in the man's eyes transformed to something unpleasant, and he pressed his fists against the wall on either side of her, towering over her.

"What do you want with Lyon?" He leaned forward, nearly touching her cheek with his nose, then made a low, animal sound in his throat. "I can smell him on you."

She couldn't move, caught between the wall at her back, the table at her side, and the man himself. "He's not on me. I haven't even seen him since I got up."

"He's marked you. Which was foolish of him since there's been no Pairing. But if he wants to play that game, so can I." He pushed his pelvis against her hip, pinning her to the wall as he rubbed himself hard.

Kara choked, slamming her hands against his chest. "Stop it! Get away from me!"

And suddenly he was gone, jerked backward by yet another stranger, a furious black-haired man with skin the color of a Native American and a scar across one eye that looked exactly like the marks on her breast. Cold fury filled his black eyes.

Her heart froze. The dread she'd been fighting since she woke leaped, sending her into a spiraling panic.

But the black-haired warrior turned that heated gaze on her attacker. "Jag, you go too far."

With a snarl, Jag swung at the other man, raking his fingernails across the man's face. No, not fingernails. Claws. Huge, razor-sharp cat's claws.

Kara shrieked, then clapped her hand against her mouth as ribbons of blood bloomed on her rescuer's face. A face that, even as she watched, transformed into something out of a horror flick. Black eyes shifting, the irises expanding until no white showed, changing to the golden eyes of a jungle cat. His teeth grew, both canines and incisors elongating, sharpening to daggers.

With a roar of fury, the two men attacked one another, tumbling onto the floor in a slash of claws and fangs, barely missing her feet. She stood frozen, staring at them, her mouth wide, chills racing down her spine in a continuous, icy flow. Tremors coursed through her limbs until her entire body was shaking.

They weren't human. She'd known they weren't human, but… but….

Panic raked at her mind as one word, a single desperate cry, screamed through her head and finally found its way out of her mouth.

"Ly-on!"

* * *

Chapter Five

At the sound of Kara's scream, Lyon leaped from his desk chair and started running, As he turned the corner to the media room, he saw Jag and Paenther in a full-out feral battle, or as much of one as they could manage when they couldn't fully shift. They were tearing one another to shreds at the very feet of their brand-new, very human-minded Radiant, A Radiant who he'd intentionally not told they were shape-shifters.

Dammit to hell.

Well, she had a pretty good clue now and appeared none too happy about it if the look of raw terror on her face was anything to go by.

"Cease!" At his roar, the combatants tore apart and sprang to their feet, their gazes locked on one another for a long, heated moment, before slowly turning his way.

Blood striped the carpet and drenched what was left of their shredded clothes.

Lyon's gaze swung to Kara, taking in the unnatural paleness of her skin. Her wild-eyed gaze locked on his, and she flew at him. He barely had time to open his arms before she pressed herself against him.

"Everything okay?" Tighe asked, rushing into the room, Hawke close behind.

"Yeah." Lyon closed his arms around the quaking woman slowly, awkwardly, feeling both stunned and awed by her sudden lack of fear of him. By her trust. He was a man used to wariness in others, and he'd certainly instilled that in her well enough last night. Yet now she clung to him as if he were all that stood between her and certain death.

Thanks to his two warriors, who only now were beginning to sheathe their beasts.

He slid his hand beneath Kara's soft hair, pressing his palm to her bare neck to ease some of the panic pouring out of her.

Tighe met his gaze with a grimace. "I guess she got an eyeful." He shook his head with regret. "She saw Pink. I should have warned the bird…"