Warrior Lion: Lion Shifter Romance by Ruby Knoxx

Author:Ruby Knoxx [Knoxx, Ruby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-11-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9 – Jax

It felt like I walked into an alternate reality, like I was coming home when I walked into that dark cabin and smelled food cooking. I knew that it wasn’t much by the scent of it, but the fact that she was thoughtful enough to prepare something warmed me more than that soup ever could.

Part of me wanted to pretend for just a little while that we were some kind of happy family, that we were on some get-away together and having a couple’s vacation out in the mountains. I wanted to forget that I might be dishonorably discharged from service. I wanted to forget that there was a mission, that she was a politician, that I would be removed from the ops if I found myself truly romantically involved with someone who might just be my mate.

Except I was determined that she wasn’t my mate. I couldn’t allow it. The ops meant far too much to me.

Can you even do that? I thought. Can you decide that you’re not going to have a mate in order to continue on with life?

I didn’t know. All I knew was that maybe it was worth a try. Maybe I could dodge how I felt and the inward pawing of my lion and continue on with what I knew was consistent and reliable: the ops.

And yet, despite trying to avoid what I thought might possibly be inevitable, I had risked everything to make her safe, even when I didn’t know for sure that there was danger. Perhaps she was my mate, and that was why I was acting so insane.

I was happy to forget all of that and just sit with Lori on the couch and eat terrible soup that was probably going to poison both of us before the guys arrived anyway, until she said that there was nothing between us.

“I mean, we live two different lives, don’t we?” she continued. “It doesn’t make sense for this to be more than what it was.”

I felt myself grow cold. I felt my body stiffen in places I didn’t even know I could flex. My lion inside of me let out a hurt, sorrowful yowl and shrank back. I felt like shrinking with him.

I was wrong. We weren’t mates. How could I have been so stupid as to think we were? What was wrong with me?

I didn’t know what to do other than to do whatever I did whenever a woman started talking about what was going to happen now that we had hooked up: I played silly. I ignored the topic altogether. It was never something I wanted to talk about with anyone else, because there never was an “after.” With Lori, though, I had wanted more than anything for there to be an “after.” So much so that I was willing to consider shrugging off my career and life for her.

I cleared my throat as I tried to slow my consumption of the soup, making it last so I had something to look at that wasn’t her.

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