Grayslake: Lion to Get Her (Alpha Lion Shifter Romance) (Kindle Worlds Novella) (The Jamesburg Shifters Book 8) Read online

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  This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Thrree Catts, LLC. All characters, *crane scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original Grayslake: More than Mated remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Three Cats, LLC, or their affiliates or licensors.

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  LION TO GET HER

  Alpha Lion Shifter Romance

  —A Grayslake World Story—

  The Jamesburg Shifters

  Thank you so much for taking the time to check out my new book! Click here to subscribe to my mailing list to keep up to date on all my new releases, giveaways, and free books!

  Also by Lynn Red

  Jamesburg Shifter Romance

  Bear Me Away

  Kendal Creek Bears

  Can’t Bear To Run

  Can’t Bear to Hide

  Mating Call Dating Agency

  Hare Today Bear Tomorrow

  The Fox and her Bear

  Bear the Heat

  Bear Arms

  Mating Call Dating Agency Box Set

  The Broken Pine Bears

  Two Bears are Better Than One

  Between a Bear and a Hard Place

  The Jamesburg Shifters

  Bearing It All

  Bear With Me

  Bearly Breathing

  Bearly Hanging On

  Bear Your Teeth

  The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 2

  The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 1

  To Catch a Wolf

  Standalone

  Lion In Wait

  Horns for the Harem Girl

  Lion To Get Her KINDLE WORLDS

  Watch for more at Lynn Red’s site.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Also By Lynn Red

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Special Excerpts and Previews | SHARED BY THE BEAR CLAN (Complete Series) – available on Kindle Unlimited!

  WERWOLF WEDDING – Available on Kindle Unlimited!

  Have fun with Erik and Izzy? Check out the rest of the JAMESBURG SHIFTERS series! | To Catch a Wolf (Book One) – Available FREE!

  Further Reading: Bearly Breathing

  Also By Lynn Red

  About the Author

  1

  “Wake up, Izzy, we gotta go,” Erik Danniken, alpha-cum-mayor of the shifter town of Jamesburg, nudged his long-suffering mate. “Come on!”

  “What time is it?” Izzy, his human mate, flopped over, checked the cub who was snoring beside their bed, louder than his father, somehow, in a pile of blankets. “Is something wrong with the baby?”

  Erik pushed himself up on his elbow and stuck his nose in the bend of his mate’s neck, inhaling her scent and nipping a kiss. He dragged his teeth along her jaw and sucked her earlobe for a second.

  Whap!

  Izzy’s hand flew widely and clapped Erik on the side of the face. He recoiled, but laughed at the same time. “I figured that’d get you going. I wasn’t sure how it would get you going, but waking up is fine. Unless now you want to…”

  That time when her hand flew toward his head, Erik caught Izzy’s slap and kissed the inside of her wrist. “I’m tired!” she said. “How the hell do you want to do it now? It’s…” she flopped onto her side, and blinked twice, hard, to clear the junk out of her eyes and the syrup from her brain. “Oh my God it’s half past three. Why’d you let me sleep so late?!”

  She jumped to her feet, starkly naked and visibly chilled, and ran to the dresser. “Damn it, Erik! This isn’t like going to a town meeting and taking me to the broom closet while the rest of the town council deals with Complainer’s Court!”

  Erik smiled again, his teeth visible in the quicksilver light of the moon that was pooled on their bed. “I wish it was. Complainer’s Court only takes about a half a day. Going down to Georgia? God, why do we have to go to Georgia? Why didn’t we make this deal for some place in Florida, maybe near Miami? I hear it’s fun to wear a thong and roller skate on South Beach,” he said. “Don’t you think I’d look good in a pink banana hammock?”

  He had just pulled on a pair of boxer-briefs, and bunched them up in his asscrack to show what he meant. “See?”

  Izzy slapped him smartly on the left cheek, hard enough to leave a slight red mark. “Yeah,” she said as she rolled her eyes. Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. Tell you what, we get this over with and then we can head to Miami. You can live out all your weird South Beach fantasies and I can have some Cuban food. How long is Jamie keeping Frank?”

  Their cub, Franklin Danniken, took his name from both Izzy and Erik’s grandfathers, who had luckily both been named Franklin. If it weren’t for that, they probably still wouldn’t have named him, six months after he was born. Jamie, both of their best friend, and the only bat-shifter in Jamesburg, had proven that she was just about the only person on earth who could control the cub for any length of time.

  It’s not like he’s a bad cub, he’s just… vigorous. By the time his six-month birthday hit, he’d broken four tables, pulled a tire off Erik’s Indian Classic motorcycle, and managed to literally eat Izzy’s only Vuitton, one that she’d gotten on sale for half off.

  “A week,” Erik said as he swiped back and forth on his phone. “What’s this town called? I swear I wrote it down somewhere. I swear I did.”

  “Seriously?” Izzy wrapped Franklin in his hippo-print blanket, and grunted with effort as she heaved him up out of the pile of blankets where he slept. She dropped him on the bed. He grunted, burped, laughed, and then went right back to sleep. “You carry him this time. Town’s called Redby. Or maybe it’s a county. I don’t remember. All I know is we’re supposed to be there in twelve hours, and that’s gonna be quite a stretch unless you get your ass moving, and quick.”

  “Me?” Erik asked, chuckling. “You’re the one who hit the snooze button fourteen times. I’ve been up since two.”

  “You mean you went out drinking with Jamie and Jenga until midnight, and were sitting around watching TV at two. And then you were planning on going to sleep and quote letting unquote me drive all the way to Georgia?”

  Erik froze mid-stride on his way to the bathroom. He turned his head slowly, and smiled a big, sheepish grin. “Well… maybe? You know you love me.”

  “For some reason,” Izzy said, “I do. Yeah, for some reason I do.” She hopped off the bed and onto her tip toes to kiss her ridiculously gorgeous, and just ridiculous, mate. “Hurry up.”

  Grumbling, Erik marched off to the shower and Izzy sat back down, heavily, on the mattress. After a moment of flirting with the possibility of going back to sleep and saying ‘screw it’ to the whole shifter-council business, she thought maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

  After all, it’s not like Erik would make it through an entire business meeting without her without insulting every single person present. And that’s just not something she was willing to have happen, even for another four hours of sleep.

  ***

  There’s no getting around the truth: Redby Township, Georgia, is a damned weird place. Run by a wolf pack, occupied by hu
mans and shifters both, nothing ever stays the same in Redby for long… well, except for how damned weird it is.

  The town’s had its share of drama, that’s for sure. What with the never ending back-and-forth with the pack and the boys from Grayslake, it nearly ended up torn to shreds more than once. And then, the weirdest thing of all happened.

  This place, this tiny town with hardly a Chinese buffet and a broken down movie theater to its name, became the focal point for a country-wide shifter council. For some reason, it all seemed like a good idea at the time. Being a small town, fairly peaceful, sorta neutral territory between Jamesburg and Grayslake, it was the perfect place to set up a more-or-less neutral council to oversee the continuing insertion of shifters into the human world. Or, as lots of the old-timer shifters saw it, humans invading a place they should never have seen.

  Mountains parted in front of Izzy’s CRV. “Wow,” she said tonelessly, as the little town of Redby unfolded in front of her. It wouldn’t be ten minutes before they were in town, and if everything worked out, they’d be just in time for the meeting with Reid Bennet, who had been named Jamesburg liaison for the ruling pack.

  Izzy looked over at Erik, who was currently snoring so hard, and with so much purpose, that it reminded her of the effort Freddie Mercury put into singing. Except, you know, the effort was going into drooling. She considered waking him gently, and then decided on a much more Izzy approach.

  With measured, careful movements, she flipped down her visor and selected the loudest, most horrifying album in her small CD collection. “Cannibal Corpse should do the trick just fine,” she said with a smile. She didn’t exactly like this music, although she didn’t hate it. She owned this one specifically for what she was about to do. She turned the volume on her car’s stereo all the way down and inserted the disc. After waiting a couple of long seconds, the first track started to tick past on the timer. She skipped to track eight. As soon as the timer hit four seconds, she cranked the volume dial as hard as she could.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!” blasted out of the stereo followed by machine gun double kick drums, and a crunchy, sickeningly fast guitar riff. The vocalist grunted again, and then let out another pealing scream that would have ripped the throat out of any normal mortal man. She couldn’t tell what he was saying, but it was something about hitting someone in the face with a hammer. Izzy bit her lip to keep from laughing, and looked over at Erik, who just began to stir.

  He flipped over to the other shoulder, leaned his head against the window, and fog surrounded his mouth as he continued to snore. “Reid Bennet, Reid Bennet, red bunnies, reading doughnuts,” Erik mumbled. “Dollars to doughnuts.” He then babbled something else about doughnuts, possibly ones with gummy bear filling, and then went back to repeating the name of their liaison in Redby.

  Izzy turned the radio up to the point where she was vaguely afraid the cones in her speakers would rupture.

  “Oh hey,” Erik said, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth and yawning. “I like that music, what is it? We almost there?”

  “You are immune to everything that should bother you,” she said. “Do you remember the guy’s name?”

  “Red doughnuts,” Erik reported proudly. “And he’s the Grayslake king.”

  Izzy pinched her forehead and then leaned back against the headrest as they sailed down the hill and into the town below. “We gotta work on this,” she said. “Reid Bennet, Reid Bennet, repeat after me.”

  “Reid Bennet!” Erik announced. “Yes! And he’s the Redby liaison that I’m meeting with to set up a nation-wide council on shifter decency and good manners behavior in the human world.”

  Izzy gave him a nasty side look. “Why do you always pretend to be braindead?”

  Erik shrugged. “It’s worked for so long that I hate abandoning my best strategy.”

  “I can trust you not to be a jackass? I hear this guy is kind of bonkers. At least that’s what Jamie told me about twenty minutes ago when I talked to her. Also Franklin ate two more copies of Goodnight Moon.”

  “I can deal with crazy,” Erik said. “Trust me, I just want to get in and out of here as fast as we can manage. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Izzy said. And then she turned the radio up, and the two of them coasted the rest of the way into Redby on a cloud of kick drums, grunting, screeching, and guitar explosions.

  ***

  “Is this where we’re supposed to be? I expected more of a reception.” Erik pushed open the unlocked, and almost unhinged door of the Redby town hall, and stepped into a dust-filled room. There were no carpets on the floor, and the patchy hardwood was in desperate need of repair. Izzy sneezed.

  “I expected someone to be here,” she said a moment later, wiping her nose. “I mean, we’re supposed to have a meeting, which would usually necessitate at least another person.”

  Erik found a pile of folding chairs heaped in the corner of the room, and then found a light switch. Flipping it on, a single overhead florescent light spluttered to life. He unfolded the chairs, and sat one down for Izzy before resuming his nervous pacing. Suddenly, an immense crash heralded the front door flying open and slamming backward against the wall. In walked a slightly hunched over man who stood a head taller than Izzy, but about six inches shorter than Erik.

  Izzy and Erik exchanged a glance.

  “Um, hello?” Izzy chanced. “Are you Reid?”

  Reid Bennet stalked across the room, grabbed a chair and plunked it down on the floor before sitting down in it backwards, about six feet from where Izzy was seated. Erik immediately joined them and extended a hand. “Hey, Erik Danniken,” he said, “good to meet you. Let’s get this show on the road because once we sign this thing and work out a few bylaws, we’re gonna head down to Miami and I’m gonna roller skate.”

  Reid stared wordlessly, his eyes and nostrils flaring.

  “Do you, er, want a coffee?” Erik relaxed his hand and plucked a paper cup off the floor beside his chair. “We picked them upon the way in, and…”

  Reid was silent, and still as a dead tree. “No,” he said flatly.

  “Okay then,” Izzy said. “Is there a better light around here? And is anyone else coming?”

  “I make the rules,” Reid said. “People agree with what I say.”

  “Well, that’s good,” Erik said. “Strong leaders make strong societies. Like, you know, Stalin.”

  When the glaring wolf remained stolid, Erik laughed. “It was a joke. I’m not saying you’re like Stalin. I mean, I don’t know you. I don’t know if you have a Redby gulag. Anyway, uh, you seem busy, so—”

  “Shut up,” Reid said. “You’re babbling. I’m already sick of this.”

  Izzy put her hand on Erik’s leg when she sensed him tense up. “Not now, Erik,” she said under her breath. “Not the time.”

  Erik took a deep breath. “Fine,” he said, his voice a low growl.

  The two wolves had leaned in closer to each other. Reid still silent, Erik breathing harder. “We have a deal to do,” Erik said. “If you’re too busy being as intense and aggressive as possible, we can come back later. If not, we can deal with this and get out of here.”

  As the overhead flickered sickeningly, Reid sneered. “Do we really need to do this bullshit?”

  Erik cocked his head to the side. “The world’s changing. We can’t keep doing the same things we’ve been doing for our whole lives and expect nothing bad to happen. We have to, you know, keep up with changing times. Humans know about us, and not just the ones we live with. The lid’s off and we have to make the best of it.”

  “I don’t want to,” Reid said. “Old ways treat me just fine.”

  “I’m sure they do.” Erik stood up and stuck his fists in his back. “Look, we’ve had four hundred humans move into Jamesburg in the past six months. I know you’ve got, what, a half a half population here?”

  Izzy stared at her mate, astonished that he had such a good grasp on the numbers, though she s
hould have gotten used to it by then. She pulled a pen out of her shirt pocket and a manila envelope from the folder she’d brought. Reid looked down at her briefly. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “The agreement. Or at least the idea for one we drew up.”

  She handed over the short stack of papers titled Shifter Decency in the New Age of Human Interaction. Reid grunted. “I hate this shit.”

  “And yet we have to deal with it,” Erik said. “I appreciate your gruff demeanor and all that, but you have to admit that things are getting uncomfortable. Shifters and humans are starting to interact in places they never have before, and we need some sort of guidelines to keep both of us safe.”

  Reid grunted. “I guess. But it still pisses me off.”

  He flipped through the pages. “Having clothes to put on after you shift? Not being allowed to maul anyone if they disrespect you?” He shook his head. “What the hell do we get in return?”

  “First of all,” Erik said, “the clothes thing is optional, and only necessary in places where people are likely to be surprised or shocked or terrified by the size of one of us.” A grin spread across his face. For a brief moment, Reid allowed himself a smile before he wiped it off again. “And what we get is the thing both of us want.”

  “Which is?”

  “To be left alone. If we avoid problems before they start, we don’t have to worry about armies sweeping into our town to eradicate us. This thing my beautiful mate just handed you was gone over by a handful of super-secret US Government operatives. They agreed.”

  Reid kept flipping through. “Humans who kill shifters are to be held in shifter town courts? That’s positive. Can we kill them?”

  “Er, no,” Erik said. “We do live in a country with things like jurisprudence and fair trials. Basically we become independent operators loosely linked to the federal government.”

  “They’re gonna build goddamn roads, aren’t they? I swear if an interstate gets built through Redby, I’ll—”

  Erik tisked his tongue. “Check page fourteen, subsection C. Guarantees our right to privacy. No government roads, no government police. We have to agree to the roads, and as long as we keep our side of the deal, we can police ourselves.”