Gladiator Cheetah, page 12
part #2 of Gladiator Shifters Series
"I probably wouldn't have been if you weren't touching me, but I didn't think to put my hands in the air so I wouldn't get caught on yours."
Shannon giggled and lifted her hands like she was doing a hands-in-the-air dance move before wincing and lowering them again. "I'd really like to be able to shift and heal the way you do, right now."
"I wish I could lend it to you. I'm sorry, Shannon. This should never have happened to you. It's my fault."
"Yes," she said, straight-face. "You pushed me into the arena and said 'Go! Fight!' That's definitely what happened."
"That's not what I meant."
"I know it's not, but this isn't your fault. None of it is. It's the fault of some bastard wolves who want a base of operations and some asshole humans who think shooting big game is a way to prove their dick size. If you want to make it better, heal up so we can plan our counter-attack."
A flash of clarity ran through him. "You said something about the other alpha wolf last night. About talking to Henri?"
"Marco must be too strong for him to challenge on his own, or Henri would have been the one I fought last night, right? Shift," Shannon told him. "You can understand me when you're a cheetah, right?" At his nod, she repeated, "Shift, then. Heal up," and went on with, "So either Marco is going to make sure Henri meets an accident or Henri's going to be looking for an opportunity. And on the phone, sorry, the vone, yesterday you said there's another pack leader? Conri? Who's gonna have to step up? What happens when he does?"
Aeolis shifted twice while she spoke, ending in human form so he could say, "His claim to power is stronger than any of the other pack leaders'. If he's got the guts for it, he'll win and be the alpha for the whole wolf shifter bloodline."
"So if Henri's smart, getting in good with Conri would be his shot at greatness, right?"
Aeolis cast her a bemused look. "You should have been a politician."
"There's a lot of politics in sports. Maneuvering to get the best coach, the best practice window…it's all the same kind of thing. So we have to convince Henri that we're his best route to power."
"And how do we do that?"
"There's something to be said for 'do it or this cheetah will rip your throat out', isn't there?"
Aeolis laughed, startled. "I take it back. You should have been a despot. But that is the language shifters respond to," he admitted. "It could work."
"Not," Ulwazi said, entering the ambulance, "if you do not eat so you can heal fully so you can fight well. You look better," she admitted critically to Aeolis, and said, "You do not," to Shannon, who chuckled painfully.
"No, I know. Thank you for taking care of me last night. I think I passed out before I could say that."
A trace of satisfaction crossed Ulwazi's face. "You did, but you are welcome, regardless. Ndleleni has made breakfast over a fire outside. Come. You need to eat, and tell me how you intend to lure wolves away from their leader to make bargains with them."
"They'll take advantage of easy prey, right?" Shannon asked, following them out of the medical vehicle. "And they're in the village with the rangers? So they'd overhear if we radioed in with an emergency somewhere?" She made air quotes around emergency. "That could draw them out. Although I don't know how we get Henri in particular."
"None of the wolves speak Zulu," Nido said, offering up plates of a cold porridge he must have brought with him from the village the day before. "Phutu with amasi," he said to Shannon.
"I understood 'with', out of those words," Shannon announced with a grimace of embarrassment.
"Corn porridge with yogurt," Aeolis said with a brief smile. "It's like yogurt, at least. Or cottage cheese."
"Ooh!" Shannon took a plate and tried a bite, her eyebrows crinkling. "Oh, that's good. Thank you, Ndleleni."
The ranger-turned-cook nodded, then sat down with his own plate. "We can ask the other rangers to make sure Henri goes with the wolves to the emergency, and if they cannot, there will be fewer of the pack to protect him. They can herd wildebeests. Singling out a lone wolf will not be hard."
"We could use the cheetah queen as bait," Shannon suggested cautiously. "You said she'd have moved on by now, right, Ay? So pretending something's gone wrong out there shouldn't even endanger her. And I know how to get there, which is useful."
"You're not going alone," Aeolis warned Shannon, and to his relief, she smiled.
"I wouldn't dream of it."
CHAPTER 19
To be fair, Shannon thought as they approached the thicket where the queen cheetah had given birth, she wouldn't have dreamed of any of this, a week earlier. She wouldn't have dreamed she would meet a guy who turned her world inside-out, she wouldn't have dreamed she would stand in hand-to-hand combat with a shapeshifter, and even if she had, she definitely wouldn't have dreamed of going off to lure silver-wielding hunters into an ambush all by herself.
She wouldn't have dreamed of any of that. But now that she was in it…honestly, she could imagine herself doing the last of those things, at least. Shannon was certain Aeolis Savio wanted nothing more than to keep her and the Imvelo Wildlife Reserve safe. The astonishing thing was, after only three days, she wanted the exact same thing for him. She wanted to keep him and the reserve safe.
And like Aeolis, she thought she would probably do anything necessary to succeed at that, even go off to complete a dangerous mission on her own, if she had to.
Fortunately, she didn't have to. Aeolis, in the driver's seat, kept casting her glances that were somewhere between worried and hopeful. He looked staggeringly handsome again, his color better and the brightness in his golden eyes back. She smiled every time she caught him stealing a glance at her, and didn't even care that it hurt her bruised mouth.
Although she wished very much that her mouth wasn't bruised, because she could think of far better things to be doing with it than smiling, right now. Or maybe not right now, since they were trying to set a trap, but definitely very, very soon. She'd caught enough glimpses of the smooth, hard planes of Aeolis's body to let her imagination run wild, and she very much wanted to let her hands and tongue run wild, too. He had the body of an Olympic athlete—she should know—and Shannon was really looking forward to exploring every inch of it.
But at the moment, he looked guilty every time he caught her eye, so she figured 'bruised and battered' wasn't a look he was into, especially when he thought it was his fault that she'd gotten beat up. She murmured, "I'm okay," as they reached the thicket, and Aeolis nodded before shifting to cheetah form. He slipped into the thorn bushes, then emerged a minute later, changing to human as he did.
"She's still here," he reported in a tone of pleased concern. "That means we've done a good job providing food close enough for her to get it but far enough away to not lead threats to her den, but…"
"But it also means if hunters come this way, she's in danger." Shannon hesitated. "I could tranq her and we could move her and the cubs to safety, but I don't know what the anesthesia would do to the cubs once it metabolized into her milk."
"She'd move on by tomorrow in any case," Aeolis said in frustration. "It doesn't matter how safe this den is, or how easy the food is to get to. Instinct will drive her to find another location."
"Well, can't we wait?"
Aeolis gave her a golden-eyed look of surprise. Shannon spread her hands, questioning. "You're at, what, eighty percent? Ninety? I'm at about…" She closed one eye at a time, testing the amount of pain, and screwed up her face. "Look, all I'm saying is I don't want to put my eye to a scope right now if I don't have to. Imvelo village emptied out when we headed to the caves, so everybody who's there now either works there or is a shifter, right? There's the baby wildebeest, but is there any other easy prey there right now? Anything they'd hunt, or shoot, for fun?"
"There are…" Aeolis exhaled. "No. The lions, the elephants…we haven't had any orphans for a while. But I don't want Marco to settle in with Imvelo as a base of operations, either. If word even starts to get out that Imvelo is good hunting grounds now, we will end up with a lot of orphans. It's hard to quash that kind of reputation, once it's established."
"Can't take the pee out of a pool," Shannon breathed. "Still, a day? To let her move on?"
"Ms. Kavanaugh, are you just trying to spend a night on the savannah with me?"
"Why, Mr. Savio, by my count, if we stay out here tonight, then I've spent three of the four nights I've been in Imvelo on the savannah with you, so don't go thinking it's anything special." A blush mounted her cheeks despite her teasing. She hadn't thought of it that way: several nights alone with Aeolis already, and nothing had happened. Not that it should have, under the circumstances, but it seemed like such a missed opportunity.
Aeolis clapped a hand over his heart and laughed. "You wound me!"
"You walked into it!"
"I did." He smiled, then glanced at the cheetah queen's thicket. "We're not that far from the village. They might come this way anyway, exploring their new territory."
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Shannon looked toward the sky, deep blue with the oncoming afternoon. "Is it going to rain again like it did yesterday afternoon?"
"Probably. It does most days, this time of year."
"Then should we set up a shelter now?"
"Ulwazi will skin me alive if I let you sleep on the ground again. Especially in the condition you're in now."
"Well, cats may be able to sleep anywhere, but the back of the Jeep isn't big enough for me, so you may just have to say goodbye to your skin."
"No one told me my fated mate would be so heartless." Aeolis gave her a smile as gentle as a kiss, and went to set up shelter nearby. Shannon, protected by the Jeep's canvas roof and more wrung out from her injuries than she'd expected, fell asleep in the back seat, and then again in the shelter as the afternoon rain poured down.
Around sunset, her eyelids drooping again, she mumbled, "This is ridiculous," to Aeolis, who had been prowling the perimeter in his cheetah form. He came to sit beside her, smelling faintly of damp cat, and purred loudly enough to rattle her brain. Shannon looped her arms around his sleek shoulders and leaned against him, murmuring, "Stop that, it'll put me to sleep again."
He shifted, leaving her clinging to his neck and squeaking with surprise. His smile, a few inches away from her face, was as gentle as it had been earlier. "You've been beaten up after a series of high-adrenaline situations containing life-altering information, in unaccustomed heat on top of an eight-hour time difference and jet lag. With all due respect to your Olympic-class can-do attitude, I think you've earned a day of sleeping."
"Well, if you put it that way…." She turned her face against the crook of his neck, eyes closed as his arms went around her, holding her carefully, but closely. She felt so safe there. So warm, so content. The world around her could go away entirely, and as long as she stayed nestled in Aeolis's arms, Shannon didn't think she'd mind. "How are you?" she asked, trying to stay awake.
He murmured, "Fine. I'm fine," against her hair, and she didn't remember anything else until he said, "She's moved on," the next morning.
For a moment Shannon didn't know what he meant, and for another moment she held on to that half-awake sensation, enjoying not quite understanding the world around her. She half opened her eyes, letting all the unfamiliar details seep into her senses. The morning light shone at a different angle, and with different intensity, than it ever did at home, and the shadows cast by leaves interrupting a rising sun were unfamiliar shapes against the canvas and polyester of their shelter. The humid air was thicker than her Colorado mountain hometown, and carried the scent of plants and animals she couldn't identify.
It smelled different early in the morning than it did after the mid-day downpours she'd experienced, too. A smile cracked the cut in her lip as she realized she could tell the difference between the after-rain scent and the morning air; three days ago, she wouldn't have been able to. She was a long, long way from being a permanent part of Imvelo, but that little piece of knowledge made her feel like she'd begun the journey.
Aeolis's announcement finally trickled through enough to make sense and she mumbled, "Oh," as she sat up, pushing hair out of her face. "When did she leave? Are the cubs okay?" To her relief, her hip didn't hurt, but then, she hadn't woken up with a cheetah lodged in her ribs. Maybe sleeping with a big cat hadn't been such a good idea, the first night, although Shannon wanted to do it again in a heartbeat.
Or more likely, she wanted to sleep with the man who could sometimes be a cheetah, not sleep with the cheetah itself. Aeolis had such gorgeous hands, with long slim fingers. She could imagine those fingers exploring her body, touching her, arousing her...and she was in no condition to let herself think much more along those lines, or she'd be impossibly frustrated all day. With an effort, she came up with a topic of conversation that seemed reasonably safe: "Did you get any sleep?"
"Cat naps." Aeolis grinned at the flat look she gave him, then lifted his chin in the direction of the cheetah queen's den. "She came out at dawn to look for a new den, and came back to get the cubs every twenty minutes or so after that. There are four of them. I followed her scent to the new den, so I can keep an eye on her over the next few days, too."
Shannon's eyebrows lifted. "You left me alone, asleep, on the savannah?"
Aeolis pursed his lips. "When you put it that way, it doesn't seem like such a good idea."
"Well, I didn't get eaten this time, so I'll forgive you, but…maybe not again? I'm glad the queen's safe, though. You radioed Ndleleni to tell him not to get things started in Imvelo until we'd seen her off?"
"Yesterday, while you were sleeping." Aeolis came to crouch in front of her, ghosting his fingers over her face. Shannon closed her eyes, wanting to lean in to the touch, but all too aware that it would probably hurt like hell to have pressure put on the bruises. "You're healing," he murmured. "By which I mean, you look genuinely dreadful today, but tomorrow will probably be better."
"I must be all purple and blue." Shannon prodded at her own face carefully, feeling the hard spots of swollen blood and the squishier bits where the bruising had gone down a little. "And to think I know people who have the wherewithal to get their hair and makeup done every morning before their partners see them, while I'm here waking up as one giant bruise."
"And beautiful despite it." Aeolis sounded absolutely sincere as he brushed his thumb across her lips without touching them. Usually Shannon would be crushingly disappointed by that, but for the moment she was just glad he had the sense not to accidentally hurt her. She was really looking forward to being able to kiss him without her face exploding into pain, though. "You're healing," Aeolis said again, gently, and then, as if he'd heard her thoughts, added, "We have time."
"Yes, but I'm greedy." Shannon leaned forward, eyes closing as Aeolis caught her carefully in his arms. "I want everything now," she said against his shoulder, then eeped and moved back. "How's your chest?"
"All healed."
"Good. So we can radio in and get the plan set in motion now." She flashed a bright, if somewhat painful, smile. "And Imvelo will be yours again in a few days."
"Americans," Aeolis said with a sudden grin. "So positive."
Shannon rolled her eyes. "I think they put the 'can do, pull yourself up by your bootstraps' attitude in the tap water."
"It's the propaganda you're fed from birth," Aeolis disagreed as he stood, stretching, to begin taking down their shelter. Shannon, distracted by the lines of his lower belly as his shirt rose, made an agreeable noise without really hearing what he was saying, then shook herself as she, too, got up.
"I guess you're right, and I've been lucky. Privileged. So it's easy to buy into the 'work hard, achieve your goals' mindset, because I've been able to, but I've had an awful lot of help along the way, and not everybody gets that. Speaking of which, how can I help?"
"Pull up the pegs over there?" Aeolis nodded at where the canvas was pinned down, and Shannon went to do as she'd been asked. After a few minutes, their campsite was disassembled, and Shannon studied it with a critical eye, trying to remember what Ndleleni had told her about tracking. The grass was flattened where she'd slept, and Aeolis's paw prints were visible here and there. She kicked a couple of dislodged lumps of earth back into place, hiding where the pegs had gone, and decided that, since no one was likely to be tracking them, it was probably good enough.
The radio crackled as Aeolis lifted the last of the camping gear into the back of the Jeep, and Nido's voice came over the airwaves. "Aeolis? Marco has invited the poachers back. They're on your trail now, and they know what they're hunting for."
CHAPTER 20
Aeolis's cheetah said, Run, with the uncomprehending instinct of a frightened animal. He felt its confusion when he refused the sharp impulse to shift.
Shannon can't run with us, he pointed out.
The cheetah snarled, suddenly understanding, and Aeolis again had to resist the impulse to shift, this time because a lashing tail would express the cheetah's frustration. I know, he told the beast with some sympathy. We'll figure it out.
Shannon joined him, pale beneath her bruises, as Nido went on. "Every shifter in the village was given a choice to be penned up and shot, or to take their chances on the savannah."
Aeolis lifted the radio, murmuring, "So they're all in the wild," more trying to wrap his head around the idea than questioning their decision. He offered a hand to Shannon, and felt an overwhelming sense of comfort when she stepped closer still and put her arms around his waist, instead. He curled his free hand around her shoulder, eyes closed as he listened to the radio.
"All of them," Nido agreed. "The rangers are under lockdown after Elton tried to stop the wolves. He's been bitten, but they didn't hamstring him, so he should recover."
"Hamstring?" Shannon asked in horror.
"Wolves do, if they can," Aeolis said to her, quietly. "It's how they hunt. And without Ulwazi in the village to tend to that kind of wound, Elton would probably be crippled. No one else is hurt?" he asked into the radio.
