Chapter 3

Daniel

The guilt is back, and I wear it like an old shoe that's comfortable and familiar and conforms perfectly to me. Damn it all to hell! I expected awkwardness. I expected even a little anger. I was ready to deal with that. Makayla was never happy about us breaking up before she went to college. The truth is, of course, that the breakup was unfair to her. It was unfair to her, though, because the relationship itself was unfair to her. She deserved far better than that.

It's not the age gap.

I'm a lion shifter with royal blood in my veins. Those of us with royal blood live very extended life spans. I'll live to be almost two-hundred years old. I'll look like I'm forty for the next seventy years. The truth is that no lion royal is going to have a relationship that doesn't involve an age gap. It's not the age gap that's unfair to her. There's so much more than that.

Makayla is royalty, too.

She doesn't know that. She's purely human but her father is the king's cousin by marriage. The official title is Duke. The point is that she's royalty, too. She has shifter blood in her veins. However, she's purely human. When a shifter male mates with a human female, it's about a fifty-fifty chance the baby will be a shifter. A shifter female always has shifter babies regardless of the man involved.

She's lion shifter royalty though, and the child of a shifter. When a shifter child is purely human in nature, there are still certain qualities that give them strength and power. When she is royal, there are even more. If Makayla mates with a shifter, she will absolutely have a shifter child. She is royalty.

So am I.

My father is the king.

She's a blood relation to the queen, not my mother. My mother is one of a number of women in my father's harem. My father is back in Kenya. Culturally, the lions there are quite different than lion shifters elsewhere although all show allegiance to my father at least to an extent. The fact that my father has six children and only two come from his wife, the queen, isn't viewed poorly at all. I am the oldest, which means I am the heir apparent regardless of my mother's royal status. In the human world, in most cultures, this would be scandalous. In my world, it's just business as usual.

I suppose I bring up all of this to indicate that although Makayla is a close royal relative, there is no blood relation between the two of us. There's nothing disgusting happening here. We are not family.

But I am disgusted with myself, nonetheless.

My job is to protect her. If someone in my world wanted to threaten the entirety of Shifter safety and well-being, they could use her as a pawn. The fact that she's royal and that she's human but will most definitely produce shifter offspring means she is valuable to those that want to upset the current political situation.

"Are you going to stare off into fucking space or are you going to participate in this meeting?" Garrett asks, drawing me from my thoughts. I look around. The other seven firefighters in the room give me amused looks.

"I'm going to stare off into fucking space," I say, "because it's a hell of a lot more interesting than anything you have to say."

That earns me guffaws from the others. Garrett chuckles, too. "Looks like the king of the jungle got his dick wet last night.

"Why does he get to be king of the jungle?" Rod Haswell asks. He's a tiger shifter. "He's on the savannah. I'm in the jungle."

"Well," Garret says, "I could kick both your asses, so I'll just be the king of the world." He's a gorilla. He's wrong. Oh, I'd be injured but I'd be the one walking away.

"Prince of the savannah," I say. "I don't want to get too big for my britches." Everyone laughs again. They don't know, actually, that I'm royalty. I call myself a prince a lot. That way, when they inevitably find out, I can pretend I didn't hide it. Yeah, that's a stupid thing to say but I'm a shifter and I'm royalty. There are games played.

"So, who's the lucky girl?" Rod asks. I find it funny that everyone assumes Garrett is right about me getting my dick wet. Of course, he is, although I would never use that term or any other vulgar terms to describe time with Makayla.

I don't want to have this conversation although there's no way to avoid it in a firehouse. I get a brief reprieve, though, because Garrett says, "Nope. Not now. Right now, you all get your heads and assess aligned again and let me get through this crap. I suppose it you want to, you could even pay attention. The one thing you can't do is obviously ignore me. That includes you, Lion Romeo."

We spend the next two hours going over idiot things we shouldn't have to go over but are, nonetheless, required topics. They're all driven by lawsuits, really. Someone sues about slipping on a floor in a government building somewhere and the next thing you know, there are mandatory safety meetings about slips and falls. Someone sues because he misses the deadline for benefits enrollment and the next thing you know, another agenda item is added.

We call these meetings, which happen once a year for us if we're lucky but usually twice a year, signature meetings. That's because we all sign topic-related forms. It's all about managing liability. There are a few items that are actually helpful. We all know which items they are, and the mood changes entirely for the fifteen or twenty combined minutes of legitimate information.

When we're done, Garrett says, "It's enough to make me hand my fucking promotion back." He and two others are promoted to semi-administrative positions here at the 417. Since we're a shifter company (and that's known to only a few humans in the fire department and state fire authority), we have some more leeway with things. Basically, they get more money to handle this kind of bullshit.

And now the bullshit is done.

"You're off tonight, aren't you?" Garrett asks.

I nod. "I only took this shift because of the meeting." Ordinarily, I work four days on and four days off. I couldn't coordinate the damned signature meeting.

"Want to get a drink?"

"Something you need to talk about?"

"No. Not at all. My girl's out of town, though. Bored."

I shake my head. "You're right about last night," I say, "and I need to go wild." I just told him, basically, that the sex I enjoyed last night has me troubled enough that I have to shift and clear my mind.

He claps me on the shoulder and says, "Next time, though."

"Count on it, man," I say. A few minutes later, I'm in my truck and on my way to my favorite shifting spot. It's a large undeveloped patch north of the city. There's a lot of brush and also a number of rock formations. It's not exactly like the savannah but I feel comfortable in the place when I'm my lion. I sure as hell need to feel comfortable tonight, too.