Before she could control it, a growl escaped her.
Silence fell at the table, but thankfully, the racket the packed restaurant was making hid her faux pas.
Leilani blanched, but not in fear—outrage.“Did you just growl at me?”
“Did you just scorn me?”she snarled.
Ryan tensed at her side, grabbed her arm to keep her from jerking to her feet.“Hush, baby.It’s okay.”
She pulled her arm from his.“No.It’s not okay.I’m tired of being disrespected by her.She’s your mother, and that gives her some leeway, but she has no right to treat me like shit.”
Leilani’s eyes widened.“Are you going to let her talk about me that way, Ryan?”
Her mate scowled at her.“Mother, youhavebeen treating her like shit.I’ve granted you leniency for a short while as you come to terms with the new situation, but El’s right, it has to stop now.If her Panther’s involved, then you know you’ve crossed a line.”
El deflated a little at hearing his immediate defense of her.She’d half-expected for him to argue on his mother’s side, but he hadn’t.
He’d had her back.Something she’d never forget or fail to appreciate.
Leilani was so stiff and rigid with fury that El knew, had the other woman been in her Lioness skin, she’d have been bristling like crazy.
El could almost see the huge fangs being bared at her, the drool dipping from her maw…
She blinked at the image as it came to life in her mind’s eye with such crystal clarity her beast responded to it.
El chained the Panther in before it was too late, but barely.
The image of the Lioness, so pure in her mind’s eye, triggered the change.
It was strange, without the fear and pain she’d come to associate with the shift.Her body’s acceptance of the transformation coming with ease now it happened more than once.
But this time, it had been different.
This time…
She wasn’t sure why.
The Panther hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind as Trip and Marc had been teaching her—they wanted her to learn to shift without their own transformations triggering hers.
No, this time, the Lioness had been there.
Scratching at her temple, she missed half the comments Leilani was spewing at Ryan until she heard, “…She’ll drag you down.She’s not strong enough to be your mate.”Her jaw gritted at that.
How many times had she heard that in her life?
That she wasn’t strong enough, clever enough to manage the family fortune?Wasn’t beautiful enough to do the Forsythe-Drews proud on the charity circuit?Wasn’t accomplished enough to hold the Forsythe-Drew name?
This time, the snarl that escaped her was different to the one she was slowly growing accustomed to.
Even if that snarl still had the ability of scaring the shit out of her whenever it rumbled from her throat, this one was deeper.
Raspier.
Different.
She swallowed it almost as soon as she could, but the damage was done.The entire table; her four mates, Ryan’s parents, his brother Adam, and a sister who was only ten and had barely looked up from her cellphone since she’d arrived were all staring at her.
She covered her mouth with her hand, scraped the chair back and ran away from the table.
