The Lion’s Forbidden Mate

You can read The Lion’s Forbidden Mate free below.

Blurb:

A lion shifter, paranormal romance story. Lucy Summers is thrilled to find herself working for the Lion shifter band, “The Pride.” She gets close to the members, especially lead singer James, with whom she starts a fling that was supposed to be a no-strings-attached type of thing.

After all, James seemed to be way out of her league anyway. The catch? James is already set to mate a WereLioness and breaking that promise would result in nothing less than all-out war!

Yet, for James and Lucy, the danger seems worth it for the chance at a love they didn’t expect to find. But will their risky affair lead to a love story or a disaster waiting to happen? Discover now in this werelion romance novel by Lilly Pink.

Chapter 1

To Lucy, it felt like the entire world was about to change. Honestly, it was changing, but she was just sort of the vessel of change that was being used right now. She knew that everything that was going to happen from this day forward wasn’t necessarily from her will or by her design, but rather the fact that she was simply the best candidate for the job and there were a lot of people who were counting on her. In fact, there were almost a hundred people who were expecting her to find out whether or not she could do something for their pack.

You see Lucy was one of the many secretive individuals in the world who has kept the clandestine secret of animal shape shifting a secret for thousands of years. Her particular animal of transition is a wolf and like her parents before her, her cousins, and her siblings, she has kept this secret from the world, only divulging her secret to her pack and making sure that no human could ever hear about or know the truth of her abilities. For Shifters, secrecy was the basic tenant of all survival and all safety. If you wanted to live with other Shifters and you didn’t want to attract the attention of hunters, then you needed to know how to keep your abilities a secret.

This was never a problem for Lucy. In fact, the ability to turn into a wolf had actually come to her as a burden more than an exciting prospect. While her brother and her older sister were delighted by their ability to run through the snowy forests of Montana as apex predators, Lucy had always thought that it was dangerous and wrong. She had no desire to be a mythical creature, but she respected the traditions and kept the power to herself nonetheless.

But there was a lot that was to be expected of those in a pack. You contributed to the safety and the protection of your people, the moral support of those who were in your pack, and for most women, the inevitable use of drawing in other Shifters from other packs, clans, tribes, or prides. Marriages were often used as bait to form alliances or to expand the genetic pool of a pack so that they weren’t forced to water down their powers by marrying humans. There was nothing more shameful than marrying a human. It usually meant that you were seen as a useless and a forgotten member of the pack, tossed aside and forgotten.

Fresh out of college, Lucy was home for less than a week before the elders of her pack, her parents included, started to put their eyes on something that was a little more substantial for her. In fact, since the moment she was born, everyone seemed to have high hopes for Lucy. They had made their intentions known from an early age that pretty, little Lucy was going to be the one who went out and captured them the perfect Shifter.

And why wouldn’t they?

Beauty was a curse to Lucy and she had always been spiteful of the fact that she was born with her sunshine happy face and her beautiful wavy dark hair, her bright blue eyes, and her smile that radiated happiness and joy. She was a contagious laugher and that meant she always had a smile on her face and even for her dour prospects, she found herself smiling all the time and happy. But when she first learned about puberty, she hadn’t really cared about being a beautiful woman or even the hope of turning from the cute little girl into an elegant, stellar beauty that everyone was expecting from her.

Unfortunately for her, it happened regardless of whether she wanted it or not and she felt like not only was she cursed with turning into a wolf, but she was cursed with beauty. Her long, flawless legs drew the eyes of any man who looked at her. Her lithe and thin body was the envy of every girl who struggled to maintain their weight. Girls with small bre*sts envied that hers were large and flawless. The women whose butts were too big or too flat looked at Lucy and they felt a sort of anger boiling inside of them that she was so effortlessly beautiful. You would be hard pressed to find a single piece of clothing that wouldn’t look good on Lucy and it inevitably lead to the belief that Lucy was an angel and that she was destined for great things.

Sure, Lucy took care of her body and she believed in things like make up and fitness, but she also didn’t live religiously by them. Sure, she liked eating salads better than she liked eating greasy pizza, but she also had a weakness for cheeseburgers that couldn’t be denied. She was a girl of wonderful paradoxes and when she looked at herself in the mirror on the spring morning that she was set to leave, she saw a beautiful woman who had survived college only to find herself more beautiful and captivating than ever. She wasn’t sure if she liked it better this way or if she was just lucky. In the end, she wanted someone who liked Lucy, not her bloodline, not her body, and not the political offerings that her pack might offer them.

Was it too much for Lucy to want to be Lucy? Did the identity that she forged in philosophy classes and in the crucible of mathematics mean nothing? Did the opening of her mind in literature and science classes count as pitiful dabbling? Did her taste in music, wine, movies, and travel add up to a sum total of zero in the eyes of the world? She hoped not. She didn’t like to feel like she was just a piece of meat that was going to be bartered and sold for someone who didn’t think anything more of her other than the fact that she was an offering on a sizable plate.

Lucy smiled in the mirror and her eyes were full of wonderful, luminous life that spread to her warm cheeks and her radiant smile that was full of joy and hope. She wanted someone to fall in love with her smile and she wanted them to gaze into her eyes and feel lost forever. She wanted someone who was hopelessly smitten by her and who couldn’t care less about her bre*sts or her ass. She wanted someone who fell in love with her soul more than any other feature that she had. She hoped that this wasn’t too much to ask. She hoped there was hope for that in the world.