Page 4 of Hunting Isla

A voice that made my heart hammer and my throat swell with emotion. A voice that I’d missed so bad over the last five years.

I stepped around Axel, my hands placatingly in front of me. “Lala.” I whispered her name softly, and her eyes shot to me. My heart stopped as I took her in. She looked like death. Her skin was gray, her hair a stringy, brown mess, her clothes hanging from her bones.

“Wyatt?” She whispered my name back on barely a breath, her head shaking like she couldn’t believe it. She looked past me to Axel, letting the gun fall from her limp hand. “Axel.” The relief in her voice was palpable now.

Archer had made it through the back of the house, and he cleared his throat behind Isla’s back.

She let out a small smile. “Archie.” And then she collapsed face first toward the ground, only Archer’s quick reflexes saving her from serious injury.

He scooped her into his arms. “She’s burning up.”

“Mama?” A small voice had us all spinning around, and Axel sucked in an audible gasp. In front of us was a tiny blond-haired boy, his thumb stuck in his mouth.

“Oh, shit…” Archer whispered. I couldn’t have agreed more. We all stood there, frozen in the moment. The kid looked between Isla, passed out in Archer’s arms, then back to us, three intimidating strangers, and his face screwed up. Shit, he was gonna cry. I didn’t know what to do with a crying baby.

But then his nose twitched. And so did Axel’s. Now that I thought about it, I could smell something under Isla’s unique, heady scent.

The kid smelled like lion.

Like Pride.

Fuck.

Just as I thought it, the little boy morphed, the change painfully long, into a tiny lion cub. It bared its small teeth at Archer, growling until he laid Isla carefully down on the couch. The cub hopped up onto her chest, curling up on top of her and sending out warning sounds as if it was bigger than a housecat.

“She has a cub,” I said, kind of redundantly, but I felt like if I didn’t say it out loud, I might actually be hallucinating.

“So it would seem.” Axel’s voice was scary calm.

“Whose?” I looked between my brothers. Well, not really by blood, but they were my Pride all the same. Pride was stronger than blood. No one had ever said they’d pursued more than friendship with Isla. We’d had an unspoken agreement. If one of them had knocked her up and made her run, I was gonna knock their teeth out of their good-for-nothing heads.

“You can stop staring at me like that, kid, or shit is going to get messy,” Axel growled, and I instinctively dropped my eyes. He may be more dominant, but I’d still kick his ass if he’d hurt my Lala.

“Which one of you did this? I know for a fact she didn’t see any other lions outside our Pride.” Rage was churning in my gut at the thought. Or maybe it was jealousy. I looked down at Isla lying on the couch, her breathing shallow and the color leaching from her skin as if she were turning two-dimensional.

“We have a bigger problem right now than Archer’s inability to keep his dick in his pants,” Axel said, striding toward the cub who was now standing on his mother’s chest, hackles raised. Axel picked the cub up by the scruff of the neck, ignoring its adorable squeaks of warning, and let out a low rumbling growl, subduing the cub in his show of dominance.

When the kid stopped its growling, Axel rubbed his face against the softness of the cub’s furry head, showing his acceptance. Happy the kid was properly subdued, he turned back to Isla. “I’d bet my left testicle that Isla doesn’t have the flu,” he growled. He looked down at the lion cub. “Did you bite your mama, little one?”

The cub wiggled from Axel’s grip, dropping his head as he slunk over to Isla and tried to push beneath her arm.

“She’s dying,” I stated. When you got bitten by a shifter, you either died, or hoped to God they wanted to turn you. I couldn’t breathe at the thought of what might have happened if we’d been a couple of days later.

“We should wake her and ask what she wants,” Archer said quietly, and I whipped around to face him.

“You would seriously just let her die? Change her now, before it’s too late.”

“Archer’s right, kid. She needs to decide.” Axel’s tone brooked no argument. Even though I wanted to slam my fist into his face, I choked back my words. He reached forward, brushing the hair from her face. “Isla. You have to wake up,” he murmured, leaning close. He wanted to kiss her. I could see the painful longing on his face, felt it reflected inside myself.

She stirred, her eyelids fluttering. “Axel,” she whispered on a gasped breath. “You guys are actually here.”

“Yes. But you have to listen, okay? You’re dying. I can save you, but you’ll be changed. Different. You’ll turn into a lion, like this one.” He hefted the still shifted cub into the air, and I reached out, taking the little fluffball into my arms.

“Bohdie,” Isla gasped, clearly relieved. “You’ll take care of him, right? If I die?” She tried to sit up, reaching to grasp at the front of Axel’s shirt. “Promise me, Axel. Please.”

He wrapped a gentle arm around her back, pulling her close to his chest. I looked away from the raw emotion on his normally stoic face. “I promise, Isla. I will take care of you both until the end of my days. But you aren’t about to die. I’m going to change you, if you’ll let me.”

I pushed forward until I was in her line of sight, the cub still wiggling in my arms. “Say yes, Lala,” I begged. I wasn’t above pleading. We’d just gotten her back.