“Let’s get some sleep, mate,” he said, taking her hand. He guided her to the bed, and they got under the covers. They snuggled together as the firelight flickered. Soon they were both passed out asleep.
The blankets were thrown off them in the darkness, and an angry scream filled the cabin. “What have you done?” the angry voice yelled. Ashton heard a loud slap. As his eye adjusted to the darkness, he saw Domingo holding Isabella by the shirt, ready to her strike again. He grabbed the vampire’s hand and threw him backward.
“Don’t you dare,” he roared. Domingo backhanded Ashton, sending him reeling onto the bed.
“You mated our female, you disguising animal. I should kill you now.”
“Bring them both,” a voice said from the cabin door.
“Father, just leave me alone. I’m mated to the lion. I’m no use to you now.” Her voice was panicked.
“You’ve broken my law, Isabella. You’ve defied me. You and your lover will pay the price for your insolence.”
“No!” she yelled as the stronger vampires hauled them out of the cabin and shoved them on the back of ATVs. Santiago punched Ashton in the face repeatedly, the pain sharp and overpowering until Ashton finally passed out.
When he came to they were lumbering through the forest. Ashton had his hands tied behind his back and was slumped over the back of an ATV. He could make out Isabella’s scent. She was close.
He strained against the restraints, but it did no good. When they made it out of the woods, he and Isabella were dumped into the back of an SUV. The car drove fast through the night while Ashton lapsed in and out of consciousness.
Finally, they arrived at the mansion. His head throbbing, Ashton tried to sit up and look around, but he was forcefully pulled from the SUV and pushed through the house and into the basement.
Isabella was still unconscious. They deposited her on a metal-framed bed and tied him up to the wall. They were both cuffed to long chains bolted into heavy bricks. When the vampires left the room, Ashton tried to get to Isabella, but the chains only let him move so far.
He could tell she was still breathing, but she had a welt on her blackening eye. He growled. He would kill these men, just as soon as he figured out how. “Isabella?” he whispered, trying to get her to wake up and give him an indication that she was all right. “Please, Isabella. Wake up.”
She grumbled from the bed before she sat up slowly, groaning. “Oh my god, my head hurts,” she moaned.
“They beat you pretty badly,” Ashton said.
“I’m sorry you got in the middle of this, Ashton. You don’t deserve it,” she said.
“What are you talking about. You are my mate now. I love you. Whatever happens to you happens to me.”
She looked over at him, light in her eyes, her expression questioning. “You love me?” she asked. She looked confused, as if no one had ever said those words to her before.
“Of course I do. I love your spunk and your vigor. I love everything about you. You are my mate.”
“Ashton,” she whispered.
Chapter 15
He loved her. He’d said it. No one had told her that in a hundred years. Not since her mother had been alive. She was the last and only person who’d loved her. Vampires didn’t love. At least not the vampires she’d been exposed to. She doubted her father was capable of love even when he’d been human. A thousand of years of life had bled all tender emotion from his cold heart.
Isabella couldn’t keep her eyes off of Ashton, even after Domingo and her father stormed into the room.
“She’s been tainted by the shifter. She can’t be turned now. Not while he lives,” Santiago said with contempt. “This is a problem.”
“Why don’t we just kill him now, solve the problem.”
Her father sniffed the air. “Even now, the animal’s whelp buries itself in her womb. She is ruined. Isabella, you have always been a disappointment.”
“I know, Father. You made me, and you hate me for it. It makes me wonder how you feel about yourself.”
“Hold your tongue, you insolent girl,” he commanded as he turned out the door, his long robe swishing around his tall, slender frame.
“Should I do it now?” Domingo asked, still looking at them.
“We must prepare,” her father said. “Killing a vampire, even a halfling, takes preparation. Come!”
The door slammed closed, and Isabella was left alone with Ashton, the man who loved her. The words her father had spoken were slowly sinking into her mind. The shifter’s whelp? What did that mean? Was she pregnant?
“Isabella, we have to get out of here,” Ashton said again.
“Did you hear what he said, Ashton?” she asked breathlessly.
“I heard him. I heard him say he’s going to kill us both.”
“I’m pregnant,” she said. Her mind reeled. She’d had all kinds of sex with all kinds of men but had never been pregnant in all her hundred years. Getting a halfling pregnant wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t like with a human woman who was fertile every single month. She was barely ever fertile, maybe once a decade, for just a few days. Ashton’s seed had taken hold inside her womb, and she was now with child.
“I know, Isabella. But now we need to get the hell out of here, or we’re all dead.”
She pulled against the chains on the bed but it was useless. She didn’t have the strength to free herself that way. “Any ideas?” she asked Ashton, the sound of rattling chains filling the room.
“Look around. See if there is anything we can use to pry the handcuffs loose,” he suggested. He was against the wall, too far from anything else in the room to reach. Isabella stood from the bed and walked the foot or so that the chains allowed, trying to reach an empty bookshelf. She strained against the chains, but she couldn’t make it to the shelf.
Moonlight shined down through the slight window above them and touched the skin on Isabella’s outstretched hand. A spark ignited inside her as if the moonlight had started a fire.
It raged within, burning her entire body from the inside out. She felt herself contorting, growing, changing. At the edge of her awareness, she heard Ashton gasp with shock and call her name. Her clothing ripped as her limbs elongated.
Seconds later, she stood in the middle of the room, chains broken, a giant yellow cougar. She panted in the dim light, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Her senses sang with supernatural strength beyond anything she’d ever known. She went to Ashton and clawed at his chains, setting him free with two quick swipes.
Ashton threw his arms around her neck and kissed her furry muzzle with his full lips. “You’re beautiful, Isabella. I had no idea this would happen.”
Isabella could sense his feelings and words deep inside her mind. She could send him messages, even though she couldn’t physically speak. “Let’s go,” she said.
She bashed the window above them and shifted into her small human form. “Quickly,” she said, pointing at the window. Ashton helped her through and she turned to pull him up behind her. Outside, the full moon shone down on them both. She was about to shift back to her lion from when Ashton gave a low groan and collapsed on the ground.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he told her, his voice agonized.
“You’re changing!” Isabella said with surprised certainty. “We have to get out of here now, Ashton.”
“Go Isabella, go now.”
“I won’t leave you here to die Ashton. Get on my back,” she demanded. Isabella shifted and knelt so that Ashton could climb aboard her back. Strength and power coursed through her and she could feel herself a thousand times more formidable than she had been before.
Ashton clung weakly to her back as she charged through the woods. She didn’t even stop for the wall. In one quick jump, she was up and over. Ashton fell to the ground and screamed. He’d turned pale and cold, the color of his eyes going dim.
She knelt before him and clawed at her own wrist, draw
ing thick lion’s blood for him to drink. She pressed her wrist to his lips, and he choked on the hot liquid as it dripped into his mouth.
“Drink,” she told him through the psychic link. She’d never made a vampire before. She didn’t even know it was possible, let alone as a newly formed hybrid vampire shifter. The implications blew her mind.
Ashton moaned from the ground, and he stopped drinking. She removed her paw and licked his cheek, trying to comfort him. She laid beside him and purred in an effort to keep him warm as he changed or died.
There was nothing else she could do. No doctors, no supernatural ambulance to call. The paranormals of Mystic Harbor stayed separate, even though it was to their detriment. Trying to mix with the human population hadn’t done anyone any good. What was the point of living in a supernatural community if there were no resources?
Ashton began to convulse beside her. She put her foreleg over him but he turned to the side and threw up. Shifting onto all fours, he heaved into the grass. Isabella watched powerlessly as he cleared his stomach. The moments seemed like centuries. She knew that Domingo and her father were right behind them.
At any moment the two of them would descend and kill them both. “Are you all right?” she pleaded through their link. Ashton growled and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. Slowly he stood, seeming to grow an extra couple of inches. The light of his blue eyes flashed yellow as he came to his full height.
His muscles bulged and his fangs protruded from his upper lip. “This feels better,” he growled. Isabella’s lion roared with laughter.
“We should go,” she pleaded.
“No more running,” he growled.
Chapter 16
Power poured through Ashton’s blood. He and Isabella had turned each other. Now they were both hybrids. With that knowledge, Ashton began to understand why there had been a taboo against shifters and vampires mating. The mating bite would change them both, creating a creature more powerful than either had been before.
A slow smile spread on his lips. He was going to rip her father’s head off and then shove it up the other one’s ass. He shifted into animal form, ruining his clothes. He didn’t care. The thrill in his blood was worth more than all the clothes in the world.
His mate hurried behind him. They took the wall in a single bound and ran together through the gardens toward the mansion. In the moonlight, they could see three figures standing on the front steps, looking into the darkness. Ashton knew they could seen them coming.
Santiago hissed and flew forward, flanked by his two flunkies. Ashton and Isabella pounced as one, knocking the ancient vampire and hurling him toward the stairs behind him. He landed on his feet and hands, his eyes bright with rage and his fangs long and sharp in his growling mouth.
“You dare to challenge me!” he roared. His voice cracked in the cool night air. Ashton could feel Isabella’s panic and anger. He could smell her desperation as she focused on her father. The child within her still wanted to be loved by the man who had never loved her. Ashton knew what it felt like to never get what you needed from someone important to you. For an instant, he wondered what his brother Ronan would think of his transformation.
In unison, the two hybrids pounced again, their long fangs exposed in the pale moonlight. The other vampires charged them, but Ashton and Isabella were able to throw them back with a flick of their heads.
With the other men disposed of, they pounced at Santiago, but the patriarch was too fast for them even still. He leapt to the roof of the mansion and began to run. The lions jumped, landing on a balcony on the second floor and then bounded again to the high roof. The vampires were all together again, standing at the far end of the mansion.
Isabella shifted, and Ashton stopped. “What are you doing,” he bellowed through their link.
“Father,” she pleaded. “Let us end this.” She held out her arms in supplication her pale skin glowing in the moonlight.
“This will not end until you are dead, daughter. You’ve become an abomination.”
Isabella cried out in rage and agony. Still trying to be the good daughter, still disappointed. She looked at him with utter hatred in her eyes, her chest rising and falling in quick heaves. “Let’s end this,” she bit out before falling into her shift.
The glorious giant cat stood beside him, her lines sleek and beautiful, her smell intoxicating. He would go to the ends of the Earth for this beauty. He would defend her and their growing child with his life.
They roared as one and pounced at the vampires. Instead of attacking from the front, they landed on either side, bookending the group of vampires. In one swift motion, they swiped at the three men, knocking them down, under their powerful lion bodies.
Screeches of rage and pain erupted from the three men as the lions devoured their bodies, tearing, clawing, and destroying the men. But one of the bodies scurried away and scampered across the roof. Santiago jumped down to the ground, leaving the other men to be torn apart.
Looking up, Ashton nudged Isabella and they hurried after the escaping elder. A man that old was hard to kill or even catch. They send questioning messages to each other through their animal link. Neither really knew how to kill an ancient.
He jumped into a car and sped away just as they hopped down to the ground. They shifted, naked, bloody, and panting. “What do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. We’re evenly matched now. He can’t take us.”
“But we can’t take him either.”
“How do you kill a vampire that old?” Ashton asked her.
“A stake through the heart or fire,” she said definitively.
“Will he come back?”
“Perhaps. But I know one way to make sure he doesn’t.”
Isabella stormed into the house and Ashton followed her. She marched into the parlor and picked a fireplace lighter up off the mantle. Walking to the drapes, she flicked on the lighter and then held it to the long curtains. As they lit, she walked to the next and the next, until the room was alight with fire.
She stood, smiling gleefully at her handiwork. “Come darling, this isn’t safe,” Ashton said, pulling her out of the burning room. As they walked down the hall, flames licked behind them. “Hurry,” Ashton yelled, pulling her out of the mansion and down the front steps.
Outside, they could see the fire spreading quickly through the old house. Isabella’s eyes were alight with glee and remorse. Her childhood home and her prison burned before her.
“Let’s go, Isabella. You don’t have to watch.”
“Oh. But I do want to watch,” she whispered. A gas line caught inside the house, exploding in a loud burst of flames. She stepped backwards but didn’t take her eyes from the fire.
“We should go,” he warned again. “The fire department will be here soon.”
“No. I want it to burn to the ground.” Another loud explosion sounded from within and the entire building was alight with deep red flames.
“And it will. But I don’t want to be here when the authorities arrive.”
She sighed and turned to him, sorrow in her beautiful face. “Okay,” she finally whispered. They shifted together and ran through the gardens and jumped over the walls to disappear in the forest.
Chapter 17
They ran through the night under the dappled moonlight below the forest’s canopy. Isabella’s lion form bounded on deft feet through the underbrush. She’d never felt so alive. With her mate Ashton beside her, the entire world felt open and free for the first time in a long time, maybe ever. Knowing that a child grew even now in her womb filled her with a kind of gleeful joy she thought reserved for the few.
As they approached Ashton’s family home, they shifted in the shadows of the forest beyond the pavement. On quick feet, they hurried through the backyard and through a sliding door into the family room. They stood naked and smiling in the dim moonlight streaming through the glass.
“Who’s there?” a voice called from the doorway. The light c
ame on and Ashton pulled a throw blanket around their bodies. “Ashton? What are you doing here?” Ronan stood in the doorway in his black jersey pajama bottoms looking rugged and irritable.
“We came here to get some things,” Ashton growled showing his hybrid teeth. Isabella looked up at him half proud, but halfway thinking he was overdoing the power display a bit. She giggled and snuggled closer to his warm body.
“What happened?” Ronan asked, confusion clouding his features. Makayla walked in the room behind him, wearing a red silk robe, with perfectly manicured nails to match.
“What have you two been up to?” she asked in a teasing voice, her nose twitching. The newly formed lion shifter was as sassy as they came for someone who’d once been human. “Are you two…? No.”
“We’re hybrids,” Isabella offered, raising an eyebrow.
“Hybrids?” Ronan said from behind Makayla. “I didn’t know that was possible.”
“You should see what we can do,” Isabella said, happily feeling her power course through her veins. Perhaps now she could be free. Perhaps now she could be happy.
“I can smell the power coming off you in waves,” Makayla teased, holding her nose. “You need a shower.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Ashton said, holding Isabella tighter. Isabella purred in agreement, her caramel eyes flashing. “Come on, darling. Let’s get you into something more comfortable.”
Ashton led Isabella through the house and up the stairs. Ronan grumbled behind them, but Makayla settled him down in the living room.
In Ashton’s bathroom, they showered and changed before going back downstairs. They found Ronan and Makayla still sitting in the living room drinking tea, Makayla trying to talk sense into her growly husband.