Bite Harder

By Jenika Snow

Forget the foreplay. For the truly committed, it's all bite.

Willow has loved Devon and Case for as long as she can remember, but as lion shifters they will eventually find their mates. When she allows herself to be with her two lions after a drunken party, she fears she's ruined a lifelong friendship and flees before morning.

Devon and Case have been inseparable since they could walk, but they can't tell anyone that they are mates. The pride of shifters they belong to won't accept a same-sex mating. But it’s not just their lives they have to worry about. They’ve also just realized they’ve become a triad with Willow—three shifters mated.

When a shocking revelation brings Willow's world crashing down, she knows she can't hide behind her fears any longer. Being with Case and Devon is the only thing that makes sense, and she doesn’t care if it ends up ruining their friendship.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Evernight Publishing
• Release date: Feb 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781773391717

Book preview

Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

www.evernightpublishing.com

Copyright© 2017 Jenika Snow

ISBN: 978-1-77339-171-7

Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

Editor: Audrey Bobak

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

BITE HARDER

Jenika Snow

Copyright © 2017

Chapter One

Willow Black felt out of place at this party, felt like she was standing in the middle of a room, alone, no one noticing her when they passed by, and awkward as hell. She wouldn’t have come here unless she knew Devin and Case would be here as well. They weren’t supposed to show up until after their shifts ended at the lumber store, which, glancing at her cell phone for the time, meant any minute now. She knew everyone at the party, but she still felt out of place.

Being here, having no one even acknowledge her, was weird. Everyone was friends with Devin Hendrix and Case Braxton, and because those two guys were so popular and well-liked, and because she was friends with them, it was kind of default that others talked to her as well. But if the two guys weren’t with her, others ignored her. She wasn’t pretty, wasn’t thin and popular, or on the cheerleading squad. No one looked at her and thought she’d be someone they’d hang out with, well, no one except Devin and Case. Those two had always been by her side since they were all five years old. They’d never shunned her because she was a little on the chubby side, or that she’d just gotten contacts and her braces off. At eighteen years old and in her last year of high school, she had had this fantasy that things would have been different for her. She had envisioned that boys would be calling her, asking her out on dates, but not one guy ever showed her interest.

Rubbing her hand over her eyes, she looked around the room and saw Hilary and Frannie, the most popular girls in schools, eye her with distaste. They desired Devin and Case and made no secret about it. But Devin and Case never showed interest in them or any woman for that matter, and Willow felt a twinge of disappointment in that. The fact was they were shifters: lions trapped in human bodies. Because of that they really didn’t have a choice on who they ended up with permanently. Could they screw whomever they wanted? Yeah, and the guys normally did. But when they found their mate, that one person who was the other half of their animal, there were no others for them.

The mating instinct could happen as early as sixteen years old, which seemed very young, but for shifters it wasn’t. She had imagined herself mated to both Devon and Case on so many occasions, and although it was something she had lain in bed thinking about, fantasizing about, she knew something like that happening was not reality. But how would she feel when the guys actually found their mates? It would be devastating, heartbreaking, and she didn’t know how she’d fake the happiness she’d have to show to the guys.

The secret she harbored was the fact she wanted Devon and Case just as much as the next girl, just as much as a female could want two males who were so out of her league it was laughable. To say Willow had no self-confidence was an understatement. But she knew the guys never looked at her as more than just a friend, never even probably thought of her as anything more than one of the guys. Feeling disheartened by all of this shit, she tossed back the rest of her beer and went in search for another. She already felt buzzed, but she wanted to feel nothing, wanted to feel like she was floating and didn’t have to worry about any of this. School was officially over with. This was the last big gathering for the high school seniors, and why shouldn’t she enjoy it?

****

The music was loud, slightly obnoxious. Devon grabbed a beer from the cooler in the living room and walked around the living room. He had come here with Case, his lifelong friend, but also his mate. Yeah, he was mated to a male: hot as fuck and just as alpha as he was.

He had found out Case was his mate last year, and although he wanted to shout it to the fucking world, the fact remained that in their culture, the shifter community, mating a male was not something that others accepted freely. So, they had kept it quiet, loved each other the way shifters could love their mates, and maybe one day, they’d be able to come out to their pride and show them that being with the same sex didn’t mean there couldn’t be a connection, couldn’t be a mating.

But school was out. They’d be living together as roommates while they attended the local community college, and fuck anyone who ended up finding out. The truth was Devon and Case were alphas to the nth degree and shouldn’t have to care what anyone thought. But there were parts of both of them that wanted approval. They’d talked about this in detail, and at the end of the day, they decided keeping quiet was the best choice right now.

He threw back the rest of his beer and followed a group of people into the kitchen where the hard stuff was being served. He was trying to find