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  “Have a care, Burke. She’s not kidding. Be useful and clear the back halls from here to my apartments. I don’t want to fight my way there but I will,” he snarled darkly. “The soil of Leonor was once described as red with the blood of battle over the Mist Lioness. I don’t want to repeat history.”

  “Sure. Give me twenty minutes,” he agreed. “I’m looking forward to the family chat. You two have some explaining to do.”

  Chapter Five

  Tor strode through the door of his private apartment, kicking it shut behind him. Two steps later he turned, retraced his path and flicked the lock, not putting Sahara down to do it. The lock wasn’t much of a deterrent to a warrior, but it would function as an audible warning if someone was stupid enough to kick his door open.

  Tor was scowling and had been since he opened the door of the tower and picked Sahara up for the sprint to his rooms. On a Leonor male, scowling was an unusual display of emotion and warned anyone of violent intent should they not find a way out of his path.

  Striding through his personal lair, he headed directly to the shower. Standing her beside the large enclosure, Tor didn’t bother saving her simple dress this time. She wouldn’t need clothing for a while anyway. Hooking a claw in the neckline, he cut it off her with a single swipe down.

  “Hey. Watch it with the claws,” Sahara exclaimed in surprise.

  “I’m good with the claws and you love it,” he informed her smugly as he sat on the side of his tub to pull off boots and unlace the front of his pants. Shrugging out of the vest, he forgot the complications of having a Mist Lioness for a lover—the rewards were just too good as she seemed transfixed watching him strip.

  “Get in the shower before I forget I was going rinse us off before a soak in the tub,” he growled as little desert flower licked her lips. Her eyes were on the hard length of his cock, and if she asked, he’d not be able to say no to what was obviously on her mind.

  Her eyes shot up to his. “I’d step in there if I thought I could move without falling over.”

  Abruptly he realized she was leaning against the outside wall of the shower. Her legs trembled, bruises already showing up on her knees along with spots of blood where bits of dirt had dug into her soft skin.

  Tor swore under his breath as he gently picked her up and stepped into the enclosure, automatically activating numerous jets of water. Turning slowly to rinse the grime off, he made sure her knees were splashed but never in a direct stream of water. Sahara closed her eyes and relaxed in his hold.

  Her trust that he would take care of her shot pride through him. He was so damn proud of her courage as she strode into the future with him. The risk she took was huge. Probably bigger than either of them could grasp with the knowledge they had at present. Ignorance would provide a little peace, but not for long.

  If the legends were even partly true, Mist Lions had barely escaped Leonor alive in the far distant past. He didn’t want to dwell on that now. His arms were full of his naked female who needed tending, and doing exactly that gave him pleasure like no other.

  He was sorry about her scrapes and bruises but would not insult her by apologizing. He couldn’t regret anything they’d done. The marks were part of the fierce claiming he would remember for the rest of his life. He respected what they meant to both of them. Damn-well worshiped her for having them.

  Tor sat her on the ledge in the shower and quickly washed her soft, golden hair. He wondered briefly about that. Mist Lions were said to be gray or white. Her hair should have reflected that.

  Running the soap over his own body, making sure the layer of grime and sweat washed down the drain, he was done quickly. Lifting her again, he smiled at sleepy gray eyes. She’d been watching him bathe and was pretending she hadn’t. Her scent gave her away, even in the steam of the shower. Little desert flower liked to watch.

  “See something you want to touch?” he asked as he stepped into the tub.

  His private bath resembled a stone grotto. The tub appeared a natural spring with water running down the stone wall into a large pool. He sat on a ledge circling the reservoir several feet under the surface. Stretching long legs out before him, his torso angled back so only his shoulder blades rested on the wall behind him.

  He positioned her to lie down his body, chest to chest, her head on his shoulder just above the waterline. He wanted her to relax, sleep if it helped her. There were healing minerals in the water, and the longer he could keep her in it, the more good it would do. It would soothe the lacerations on her knees and ease the soreness between her legs.

  “I want to touch this,” she sighed, and reached behind him. Her hand followed the indentation of his spine to its base. Lightly she gripped the root of his tail and stroked down, petting him in one of the most intimate ways possible.

  Tor closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. Did tired little desert flower realize what she was doing? She’d been married to a mature Leonor warrior. She had to know what touching his tail meant, what it did to him, especially stroking its base. If she didn’t know before, the evidence of what it did for him was lengthening beneath her soft belly.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as calmly as he could.

  “Touching you,” she mumbled.

  “Sahara, you’re tired and bruised. Do you really want to start this?” he questioned in a low purr.

  “Then hold me with it. I love the feel of your tail around me. Makes me feel special,” she confessed softly. “You never touch anyone with it, only me.”

  He chuckled as the end of his long tail circled her ankle under the water. “I always thought you considered it a shackle, but I couldn’t resist.”

  “Mmm, better,” she approved. “I just pretended that so you’d keep doing it.”

  Tor kissed the top of her head. “You should know—it really is a shackle.”

  He felt her smile against his shoulder. “I knew.”

  Chapter Six

  Tor would rather have remained in his apartments and in his female. Whatever it was that had Burke at his door and willing to pound on it for an hour had better be worth the risk of injury.

  “Stop!” Tor roared in frustration. “I’m coming to remove your arms.”

  There was no break in the pounding. “This continues ‘til you walk out here.”

  Tor snarled as he pulled on boots. Burke’s methods were effective. Tor had ignored every electronic device that had been ringing, blinking or buzzing for three days, blithely turning them off and returning to Sahara. The fact they’d not been out of his apartments for three weeks prior to that had not bothered Tor one bit. Both Burke and Nearrid were on planet and could handle his responsibilities. What good was it to have brothers if they could not be useful?

  Jerking open the outer door, he glared at Burke. “Is the Alliance under attack?”

  “Leonor is under attack,” Burke informed him.

  That snapped Tor to attention. “It had better be every other planet in the galaxy.”

  “It’s our own planet,” Burke stated.

  “What?” Tor pulled his door shut behind him as he frowned darkly at his brother. “A tribal uprising?”

  “No. The planet itself. Come to the assembly and let them explain it.”

  “Them? Who them?” Tor demanded as he strode toward the assembly room with Burke by his side.

  “The scientists.”

  Tor’s scowl darkened but he continued across the palace. Two hours later Tor was still scowling as he gazed at the serious faces surrounding him. The explanation had taken a full forty-five minutes as global scans, satellite photos, long histories of global conditions and lists of norms and forecasts were presented. Then came the theories and possible outcomes, all of them bad.

  The best possible projection was that there were less than twelve months left in which to evacuate the general public before this tropical planet became a huge globe of ice.

  The short version was, exactly three weeks and three days ago, satellite images showed a
tower had erupted thirty miles off the coast in the Starling Ocean. A spike of unknown material that rose one hundred and sixty-nine meters above the water with no visible openings. Before anyone could get to it to investigate, a storm had broken over it. Since then, the storm had been steadily increasing in size and strength. The strange obelisk occupied the eye of the spiraling storm as temperatures dropped rapidly. Currently the center was a blizzard with winds over two hundred and fifty miles an hour.

  There were no known solutions for disrupting the weather event. Growth rate and power were increasing in a mathematical formula that the scientists seemed to think was fascinating and somehow perfect. A week ago the event became big enough to gather energy from the environment it was invading, much like a conqueror.

  With all the talking he’d been listening to, no one had mentioned the timing after stating the facts about when the problem had arisen. Three weeks and three days ago. It was the one thing that had not been repeated. Nor had anyone brought up the legends about what had once existed somewhere off the northern coast in what was now the Starling Ocean.

  Legend had it that the Mist Lion homeland had been a continent that disappeared sometime in the eighth century. There was only one account of a continent sinking into the ocean. It had been thought the fanciful imaginings of an unreliable source.

  Tor slowly stood and turned away from the table. There had been no requests to speak to Sahara. No mention of her whatsoever. Wise scientists. Yet unspoken suspicion thundered around the room.

  Turning to face them and speaking calmly, Tor addressed the unsaid questions. “Princess Sahara has been on this planet for nearly five years. There has been no hint of unusual consequences to her presence here in all that time.”

  “Yes,” the director of the Leonor Institute for Historical Studies responded. He’d been silent during the entire discussion. “She has masked her heritage completely. No one even scented Mist Lion on her—”

  “Like you’d know what Mist Lion scent is,” Tor interrupted. “Until she revealed herself, you believed Mist Lions were mythical creatures. You’ve written a book on the subject and called it The Definitive Study of Leonor Legend.”

  The director, a historian by trade, was still a Leonor male and not easily intimidated. “It is clear my base theory was wrong, my lord. Shifting what I know as truth does not change the fact I have studied everything we have on Mist Lions. It simply allows me to look at the body of knowledge in a different light.

  “There is no disrespect directed at the Princess Sahara. I do not believe she knows a thing about the obelisk. I do believe she initiated its appearance, however unknowingly. Leonor’s violent past is what created this situation. Mist Lions’ fear of our ancestors is being manifest.”

  “Explain,” Tor directed.

  The director nodded and glanced at his notes. “I’ll try to be brief. The only accounts we have of Mist Lions and their culture were written by our race, the Leonor Lions. Most of it from the ninth century, which by their own admission, was well after Mist Lions no longer inhabited this planet. We know Leonor warriors believed they had driven Mist Lions off the planet. History written by the victors is suspect, but we can be sure of the early Leonor Lions’ deadly intentions where Mist Lions are concerned.

  “The violence of early Leonor Lion societies is well documented. The few references we have of Mist Lions during the time the two species of lion coexisted here are harshly intolerant. An example of Leonor Lion attitudes is demonstrated in the fourth century’s Chieftain Maggor’s orders for his warriors to hunt immature Mist Lions. Obviously, they were stalking the children of a species they did not understand.

  “In the light of our own technological advances, magical abilities attributed to Mist Lions can now be explained. It appears they were an advanced society. I’m guessing, but I suspect they had the weapons to remove our ancestors from the face of Leonor. The fact no physical evidence of their species remains means they had full control of all aspects of their encounters with us, except our violent response to them.

  “The conclusion is that they did conceal their homeland, preventing us from digging up artifacts. I believe they chose to leave as opposed to exposing a developing, indigenous species to powerful weapons and technologies we were not yet capable of using responsibly. Much like we now impose the First Directive when making contact with a new life form.

  “What we see in the Starling Ocean is probably an automatic defense mechanism to discourage exploration. It might be malfunctioning. A society that leaves a planet as opposed to eradicating the primitives intent on hunting their children would not create a world-destroying weapon set to do the job twenty-seven centuries later.”

  There was silence for several minutes after the director finished. It was evident to Tor that all of them had discussed and agreed with the historian’s conclusions. There was no arguing about it now.

  “What do you suggest?” Tor asked.

  “We would like to speak with Princess Sahara. She might have knowledge of Mist Lion technology. If the obelisk was constructed by Mist Lions it’s logical that there must be a kill switch.” He was answered by the Tryon Demigoss, the director of science and research.

  It was a reasonable request. Tor glanced at Burke and Nearrid, both of them simply shrugged, indicating nothing further to add. Sahara was a member of their family and he was confident of his brothers’ protective instincts. Being unaware of her heritage would not change a Leonor warrior’s natural drive to protect any female in his family. If neither of them saw a danger to Sahara, Tor had only one concern.

  How would Leonor males react to close proximity with a Mist Lioness? She’d been among them for years, but everything was different now. The only way to know was to try.

  Tor met each male’s gaze at the conference table. “We meet here in an hour. If you don’t think you can handle being in the presence of a mature Mist Lioness, do not return to this room. I will kill any male who disrespects her. My brothers will finish the job in the unlikely event I can not. Understand that well.”

  Burke and Nearrid left the conference room with Tor. The three of them walked in silence as they crossed the palace to Tor’s private lair. At the door Tor stopped and glanced at his brothers.

  “Something you need to say?” Tor asked them pointedly.

  “Yeah,” Burke said calmly. “We’re here because this is family business. You might be high king but you’re still our brother and she is doubly our sister.”

  Tor raised a brow. “There will be no Corbeth.”

  Nearrid mirrored him, raising a brow. “Of course not. She nearly died. We’re not idiots.”

  “You knew?” Tor demanded.

  “Didn’t you?” Burke questioned.

  Tor’s muzzle lifted in a snarl. “No. How is it you knew?”

  Burke and Nearrid glanced at each other. “Signet,” they said in unison.

  “Did you know she was a Mist Lioness too?” Tor demanded.

  “No. Are you going to invite us in or not?” Nearrid inquired calmly.

  “He is,” Sahara answered smoothly as she swung the door open. “What’s going on?”

  Looking at her face drew up the usual reaction for Tor, but this time he could gather her into his arms and kiss her edible mouth. His brothers filed in behind him, each giving Sahara a loud greeting. Tor ignored them. The pleasure of walking into his lair to her was intense and he would enjoy it.

  A few minuets later Sahara was curled under Tor’s arm with her back to his chest as they lounged on one of the large couches. Nearrid had just finished giving a much shorter and less technological narration of the events in the Starling Ocean.

  “Everyone agrees that you did not intentionally trigger the storm device. The theory is, it was supposed to discourage exploration had Leonor scientists tried to investigate the area before we were advanced enough to understand Mist Lion technology. At the time Mist Lions left, we considered your species magical beings who could disappear at will,
turn into any creature and a lot of other superstitious garbage. The point is, the defensive weapon was built so long ago it’s probably malfunctioning.”

  Sahara was frowning at she stared at Nearrid, her attention totally captivated. Tor knew it was irrational to need to regain her attention. It was also childish. He’d get over it sometime, but not today.

  “The scientists want to speak with you,” Tor continued the explanation. “See if there is anything you know about Mist Lion technology. All our information about your species is from historical accounts mostly written after Mist Lions left the planet. Makes it obvious they are recounting verbal stories, not firsthand experience. I told them we’d meet with them in an hour.”

  Sahara was still in his arms a moment. Then she shifted slightly to lie facing him. Her eyes searched his for a moment. Tor was immediately uncomfortable as he looked into her face. There he saw caution, even a trace of fear. His hand, lazily caressing her midriff, stilled.