Pregnant With His Liger Baby

Chapter 2

Sylvie hadn’t been bold enough to openly take a look at Micah while they’d been curled under his blanket earlier, and now she was regretting it as she tried to get to sleep in her bed. She’d managed to get away with her little outing, since her parents appeared not to have returned to check on her while she was gone. She couldn’t believe she was laying there thinking about a lion, of all things!

Most of the male lions never came to the Community Center. Their attitude tended to mirror the one her father had about it—it was making the young people soft, and dependent on the humans to keep them alive. He believed they would be better off back out in the real world, except the forest their people once called home wasn’t even there anymore. Now, it was a human housing project instead.

But, even though she hadn’t looked closely at Micah, there were still a few traits he’d share with his fellow lions that she could count on: golden-brown eyes, sandy-colored hair, high cheek bones. He seemed rather well put together as well. Lean, muscular, and tall. His arms draped around her had felt warm and comforting. Better than they should have been. She was finding it difficult to drift off to sleep as she continued to remember that feeling.

Lions and tigers who didn’t shift never became mates, and to Sylvie’s knowledge that remained the case among the shifters. But a rebellious part of her wondered if it had to. After all, they may shift into different animals, but they shared the trait of becoming human. And most of the time, their people remained in that human form. It was only during hunting that they bothered to transform—or for getting places in a hurry, like she and her mother had done earlier that day.

At the Community Center, the humans had even begun educating shifters, offering them hope that one day they may even be able to go out into the real world and become citizens among their human counterparts. But Sylvie didn’t think that was ever going to happen. Not when the shifters had become so valuable to the collectors, for whatever it was they wanted them for. What was to say they wouldn’t next want to collect an educated shifter and collect them right out of whatever job they’d managed to land? It was hardly worth taking the risk, in her opinion.

And another thing, how did she go from conceding to share her meal to suddenly owing him a favor? She knew she ought not to have told him who she really was. Now, she would have to sneak out again tomorrow night, and she had no idea how she was supposed to pull it off. She could always not go, but then she ran the risk that he would tell her father the whole story. And while she didn’t really think he would actually do it, she couldn’t really afford to take that risk.

When she finally managed to drift off to sleep, Sylvie had a s*x dream. She’d started having them about a month or two ago, and her mother had said it was normal for a female who was nearing her mating time. And that was just what she needed to worry about, she mused, as she awakened with a start, her org*sm still pulsing as she realized that she’d dreamed of human forms, and that the man in the dream had coloring like a lion’s.

That little realization troubled her for the greater part of the day. Most of the adult tigers had gone out to the northern plain to hunt buffalo, and of course she was not invited. She spent a great deal of the afternoon helping to process meat and hides, and she despaired of ever reaching a decision about meeting Micah later that night.

If she wasn’t so keen on keeping her little outing last night a secret, Sylvie never would have bothered to plot a plan of escape. She knew that no good could come of forming any sort of a friendship with the lion. But as luck would have it—or lack of luck, as the case might be—David had still not been found. Damon and Rose began to fear their son was no longer on the preserve, but they had decided they simply must go out and look for him again tonight, now that all the hunting frenzy had died down.

“So, how did your little hunt go last night?” asked her father as he and her mother were preparing to go. “You never told me.”

“I caught a deer,” Sylvie shrugged. “I’m so full, I probably won’t go out tonight at all.”

“Well, that’s good,” he grinned. “One missing offspring is about the limit of what I can currently endure.”

“Good luck in your search tonight, you two,” she replied. “I’m sure he’s probably just holed up in a hut with one of the local females. He’ll probably show up in the next couple of days.”

“Sylvie, you don’t need to be speculating on your brother’s amorous adventures,” Damon chastised her.

“Are we back to this again?” she sighed. “Father, I’m practically an adult now. Soon, I’ll be in need of a mating hut of my own.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he grumbled. “Why don’t you get some sleep? We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, see you,” Rose added, kissing her daughter on the cheek.

Then her parents were gone. Sylvie debated for a whole ten minutes, but in the end it didn’t take her very long to head for the door. Unfortunately, she realized with mounting concern that her body was thrumming in that particular way, just as it had in her dream.

She really was not heading to the northern field to meet that lion for such a reason. He was not the least bit attractive to her. She did not remember precisely how he smelled, or the way his arms had felt around her as they’d curled up under his blanket last night.

She couldn’t help but wonder exactly what he was going to ask her to do as a favor, however. How many things could a young female do for a lion in his prime out in the middle of an open field? Surely whatever he wanted must have to do with either food or fun, in some way or another. There could be no doubt of that.

When she reached to perimeter of the northern field, she saw a man standing there, arms folded over his chest as he looked at her. She was currently in tiger form, but she took a cue from Micah and transformed too. She was far enough away now that she could get a better look at him.