A sigh escaped her as she reached the buffet.There was plenty of food, plenty of it she’d enjoy, but she wasn’t hungry.The trouble was, she realized that hunger and appetite were two different matters.The beasts were always starved but she didn’t ever really want to eat.
She stared at the platters of meat, bread, cheese, and fruit.
Of course, it was far swankier than that.Huge displays involving dressed turkeys and chickens, whole, as well as slabs of beef that belonged in a Texan steakhouse had the buffet table groaning under the combined weight of protein.
In the short time they’d been separated from the Pride, where her Lion mates had comforted her after the ceremony, over half of the food had been consumed.The table looked like their beastly hearts had been at the feast, but she shrugged that aside and picked up the makings of a roast beef sandwich.She didn’t want it, but the carbs and protein would do her good.
The only good thing about her new life was that she didn’t have to diet.Whatever she ate, she ran through it like she hadn’t eaten at all.She hadn’t lost weight exactly.But she wasn’t as soft as she’d once been, and she found that she missed the ripeness of her curves.She guessed that was her being perverse.But, in a way, she embraced that perversity.How very human of her, she thought, to think that the grass was greener on the other side.
Her lips twitched as she made a sandwich on her plate and managed to take a dainty bite.
With her back to the buffet table, as well as the rest of the crowd, she tried to remain incognito.That was hard going considering she was the only one wearing white as ranking within the Pride was represented in the different colors everyone wore, with white and black belonging only to the leadership.
Still, she thought people didn’t want to talk to her as much as she didn’t want to talk to them—the circle they cut around her was more than ample.
As she ate, the crowd milled around her.Not aggressively, and it didn’t make her feel like she was being segregated, it was more the natural ebb and flow of a group at a soirée.But the mass of people hit her within the group, and very shortly she was privy to conversations she would never otherwise have heard.
Such bitchiness wasn’t new to her, but a few short months ago, the woman’s words would have had the ability to sting, to cut, and to make her cry.Now, she listened, intent on hearing the bile spilled from the stranger’s lips, using each nasty word as ammunition that she’d shore up for a later event.
The difference between the El of now and the El of the past was astonishing.Never more so did she realize how her cats’ presence in her life had changed her.For the first time she was grateful to be a stronger El because it was the first time she really noticed the difference in her character.
“How Ryan thinks were going to accept a Panther for a Luna, is beyond me,” came a snotty remark from some snooty-sounding woman.But hell, El had been raised as Annabel Forsythe-Drew’s daughter.If anybody knew how to be snooty, it was Annabel.
Snooty couldn’t hurt her, the words on the other hand could.Not for herself, but for Ryan.He didn’t want to be leader, but he had no choice in the matter.
It was either be leader or be dead.
What kind of choice was that?But if he had to be the leader, then she felt it was her duty to do her best by him.But if the rest of them wouldn’t accept her, what options were open to her?
Knowing the rest of the night’s events could take place without her now, especially as she’d eaten and shown her face at the feast, she decided to slip out of Pride house.It was far too formal, far too… Everything.
The truth was, it reminded her of her grandfather’s home, and though she’d loved him and loved being with him, she’d hated his palatial estate.She was certain the actual White House was more informal than her grandfather’s old home.Even her grandmother agreed, because though it had been her husband’s favorite home, within months of his passing, it had been up for sale.
Pride House with its murals and fancy furniture that belonged in some kind of museum was not her style at all.She was relieved Pride Lodge was where she lay her head, that was for damn sure.
It wasn’t too hard to slip through the crowd and to escape into the yard.Discomfortingly, however, she knew she wasn’t alone.
There was so much to learn, so much to discover about these new parts of herself, and she knew if she’d been able to call upon that knowledge, she would be able to help herself.She didn’t know, she hadn’t been taught, how to scent.It wasn’t her mates’ fault.They were at a loss as to how to help the Panther.And the Lioness?She’d yet to raise her head.Even the Panther rarely revealed itself.Only doing so if her mates helped her shift, and even then, the transformation had been hard.
When shehadmanaged to shift, she’d gone on runs, learning how to run literally with four legs, as well as scent the beasts that roamed the artificial savannah the Pride had created for themselves here.She knew how deer scented, a rabbit, prey like that.She knew the scent of a Lion, but she didn’t know how to discern who that belonged to when the person was in its human form.
It was only as she headed down the stone path towards the lodge that she realized how crucial a lesson that actually was.Especially when they had an enemy in their midst.
The sensation of being hunted made her feel itchy.And the revelation astonished her.She didn’t feel threatened, she didn’t feel in danger even.It just agitated her.Her beasts were not happy that they were in somebody else’s crosshairs.They made that distaste known by making her skin feel extraordinarily tight.She felt the same way in those milliseconds before the shift, but this was a little different as the transformation most certainly wasn’t upon her.
She called upon her cats however.Used the senses she was gradually learning to trust, in a lesson that nobody could teach, and tried to discern who was tracking her.The full moon lit her path, but it also created many shadows along the way.Shadows in which the creature preying upon her could take advantage of.
Never had the journey between Pride House and Pride Lodge taken so long, but she did admit to dawdling as she traversed the pebbled path.
Not only did she sense that running would induce the creature to attack, but it went deeper than that.So deep in fact that she realized her beasts weren’t backing down from this fight.Considering El had never been a fighter, the notion was astonishing.Bewildering even.But there was no other way to describe it.There was no way her cats were letting her run off from this fight challenge to their authority.
Underfoot, she could feel the shifting pebbles, could hear even in the breeze the fronds of grass whispering against one another.She was hyper-alert, hyper-aware of everything in her immediate vicinity.The beasts scent was so strong in her nose, every breath made her drunk upon its unique smell.
Twenty or so feet away from the pool which decorated the front of the Lodge’s yard, she recognized that it was a female.
Instinct told her that this threat was not the same one which had felled the men whose lives they had celebrated tonight.
She had not been targeted in that bomb blast.It was more likely that a male dissatisfied with the leadership had been behind that.
