Page 6 of Hunting Isla

Axel strode out of the bathroom looking like the confident, proud man I used to know, now fully dressed. God, I’d missed him. I’d missed them all.

He looked at Bohdie, then back at me. “Is this why you left?”

I hesitated. “Yes.”

“You could have told us. We would have helped. We would have taken care of you both,” Wyatt said softly, gentle reproach in his voice.

“She said I couldn’t.” They gave me nearly identical confused looks. They’d hate that they were so alike sometimes.

“Who said?” Archer asked, his head cocked to the side.

Now it was my turn to look confused. “Kara.”

“You were seeing someone from Kara’s Pride? That’s who got you pregnant?” Archer pushed.

I put Bohdie down on the ground. “What? Bohdie isn’t mine. He’s Kara’s. She gave him to me and told me to run when he was days old. Then she died.” My voice cracked, and every man in the room stilled.

“This is Kara’s baby? He called you Mama.”

I rolled my eyes. “Of course he did. He was scared. Normally, he calls me Lala.” I gave Wyatt a watery smile. “He knows his real mama died, and that’s why he’s now my big, beautiful baby.”

Bohdie grimaced. “I’m not a baby, Lala.”

I ruffled his downy-soft hair. “I know, Squirt. How about you go play some games on my phone? But no buying anything this time.” A $2500 phone bill back when he was three had ensured we both learned our lesson. Happy to get time with the elusive phone, he was gone in a flash.

I turned to Axel and gave into the urge I’d had since he first appeared like an apparition. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I buried my face in his chest. I leaned on his strength, knowing in my soul he’d catch me before I fell. I felt Wyatt crowd behind me, his face buried in my hair, his arms wrapped around my ribs. Pressed between them should have felt weird, but it felt right. It felt like home. With them, all those years ago, I’d had a family for the first time in my life, or at least something like it.

I felt more than heard the deep rumbling purr in Axel’s chest. “Have you guys always been… lions?”

Archer laughed. “Lion shifters. There’re a few differences between us and our Serengeti forebears. And yes, we are born shifters, like Bohdie.”

Axel sat down on the couch, pulling me down beside him. “I think you better start from the beginning.”

So I told them. I told them about Kara banging on my window. About the scary knock on my foster parents’ front door. About the running, the moving from place to place, never staying anywhere more than a week until Kara’s money ran out, then never more than a month. I told them about the crappy jobs, about Bohdie getting sick when he was three months old with croup and how I’d been convinced he was going to die. I told them about the loneliness. The shitty houses in the crappy areas. The reason I’d bought a gun, although I’d never bought bullets.

But I also told them about Bohdie’s first steps, his first Christmas. All the firsts Kara would never see. I loved Bohdie with all my heart. He was mine now. While I may have hated how we lived, I’d never regretted saying yes.

The arm of the couch creaked as Wyatt’s big hand squeezed the armrest. “Why didn’t she come to us? Why put all this on Isla?” He’d gotten huge, easily as tall as Axel now, and maybe as wide. I’d missed it all. For a moment, I mourned the normal teen years of boys and tears and prom dresses that I should have had.

Archer wrapped an arm around Wyatt’s shoulders. “You know why. And while I don’t think what she did was right, it was the only way. For the kid, I mean.”

I stood up and walked around the room, tugging at my new lustrous hair. “Well then, does someone wanna explain it to me? Because I’ve lived on the run for five years on the word of Kara, always looking over my shoulder, always jumping at dark shadows. I want to know why.”

Archer grabbed my hands, gently tugging them from my hair and twining his fingers in mine. The touch automatically soothed me. “It was a hostile takeover. A new Regent had been sniffing around. He came to town, wiped out the current rulers, and any offspring who might have taken their place. Including Kara.”

“Even the children?”

Archer nodded. “Our world isn’t always civil, or humane. We rule with might, and power, and sometimes with greed and ruthlessness. Some of the older shifters are no better than the animals we evolved from—the new leader included.”

I wanted to sit. Or run again. But I didn’t think I could outrun this truth. I was changed now. This was me.

I looked down the hall toward Bohdie’s room, then back to the guys. For the first time in my life, I saw them as a potential threat, not my saviors. As subtly as I could, I positioned myself between them and Bohdie, but I should have known that the action wouldn’t have been lost on them.

Especially not Axel. His fingers curled into his fist, but his face remained calm. “We are not your regular pack. We’re a bachelor Pride, and not one of us wants to rule one of the North American Prides. You and Bohdie are safe with us. I gave you my word.”

I sucked in a deep breath and calmed my nerves. I’d been Bohdie’s sole protector for so long, his mama, and it was hard to break five years of suspicion.

I pressed a hand to my chest. “I know that here. I don’t mean to insult you. It’s just habit.” Purposefully, I moved back toward the couch. I had to begin to trust someone, and on this planet, there were none I trusted more than these three. “He’s secure now, right? Can we stop running?” My heart leaped at the thought of putting down roots. Maybe I could go back to school, get a decent job where I wasn’t paid in cash and surviving on tips.