She hesitated, her breath coming in out a cloud. “You know too much about me already. I can tell by your eyes.”
Minutes drifted by with the falling of the snow, and after the tamer stood up, so did her lion. He followed next to her as though she were walking him on an imaginary leash.
“What’s his name?” I called out.
Was it even my voice? It sounded different, far off in the distance, yet it reverberated inside of my head.
She stopped. He stopped. Naomi turned her head a fraction, calling out over her shoulder, “Valerio.”
“Not your man,” I said, grinning. “Your lion.”
“Oba. It means king.”
“Oba,” I repeated, testing the name on my tongue. It suited him.
As silently as Oba had entered my life, he was gone, and I almost sunk into myself from sheer—something. It was hard to tell if it was relief or sadness that I felt. It was hard for me to pierce the veil between real and unreal. Then my eyes found the last warm-blooded creature that had connected with me before the King of Beasts appeared through the twirls of snow.
My own beast.
He was on his knees, eyes dilated, hair as messy as Oba’s mane. Somewhere in the midst of time, he had turned completely wild.
The wind kicked up, stealing most of the drifts, sending them in another direction, and from the direction I could smell the feral tang of a beast about to charge. It was either left behind from Oba or was coming from the beast still on his knees across from me.
On the ground before him, a knife had fallen, glinting silver in reflection to the sky above.
Men tried to come closer to me, but a growl emanated from deep in his throat. A warning.
My eyes connected with his as he crawled toward me. Close enough, he rested his head in my lap, his trembling arms coming around me so hard that the strength of the embrace stole my air.
Gazing up, I closed my eyes, opened my heart, and stroked his hair, my breath leaving me in a frosted cloud.
18
Brando
My wife could tame fucking wild animals.
The King of Beasts had given in to her charms and had lain down at her feet. She hadn’t even blinked or flinched. If anything, it was pure curiosity etched into her features. I knew that look too well. She had perfected it over the years.
Fear, or good sense, always played second fiddle to her inquisitiveness.
A fucking lion.
Running a hand over my heart, I asked for strength to survive this.
The memory alone made my heart constrict and then stutter. My head spun, and my stomach lodged in my throat.
What shocked me even more than his appearance, though, was the other side of the memory.
Him bowing down to her.
That one moment challenged the laws of nature—the moment the beast had surrendered to the woman in a frilly blue tutu.
In that moment, she had surrendered to him too, respecting who he was and what he could do.
The moment changed something. Changed her.
Ever since that day, my wife took an interest in protecting the species. She was almost obsessed with it.
