The Return: Pride Law, #2

By Loribelle Hunt

Jaz Nolan has problems and she knows it. After escaping captivity and torture, she spent weeks suspicious. Skittish. Nervous. Those feelings are fading with the help of a good therapist and she's ready to move on.

The first item on her list is to claim her mates, Asa and Fisher. Then she intends to find the monster who kidnapped her and make him pay. And hopefully at the end of the day, she, Asa, and Fisher will all be standing and ready to go on to a future together, unfettered by the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Loribelle Hunt
• Release date: Jun 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386852438

Loribelle Hunt

Loribelle is like the South she calls home. Hot and sultry. Languid and sexy. Magnolias and gardenias scent her silk lined boudoir, and men and children alike bow to her magnificence... Okay, maybe it isn’t quite that glamorous. She does have two smart and lovely daughters who give her a run for her money and a son that will one day be someone’s model of a romance hero. (She promises.) Her husband is a real life hero, and Loribelle just tries to keep up with the demands of military life. In between, she writes a book or two. She’s had every job under the sun, but haven’t most writers? That Army military police, bookstore manager, waitress, wedding photographer, website designer experience has to come in useful sometimes. As they say in the South, it all washes out in the end. She loves hearing from her readers and can be found at http://www.loribellehunt.com.

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COPYRIGHT

The Return

Copyright © 2018 Loribelle Hunt

First E-book Published: January 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, organizations, events, or locations is coincidental.

Summary:

Published by Loribelle Hunt

www.loribellehunt.com

COPYRIGHT

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

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SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

MORE FROM LORIBELLE HUNT

THE ALLIANCE EXCERPT

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Welcome to Pride Law! Pride Law is a spin-off of the Lunar Mates series, but can be read alone.  If you'd like to be notified of the next release, The Alliance, please join my mailing list or my Facebook Reader Group for updates.

ONE

Jazmina Nolan watched from her second-story bedroom window as a big, black SUV pulled into the drive and parked. Dread and anticipation twisted her stomach into knots, and she stood frozen in place, breath held, as the driver exited. Asa. Tall and thickly muscled, with short-cropped black hair, he had piercing blue eyes she couldn’t see from this distance. He was a beautiful man, especially for his age.

Then again, he was a werewolf. And they did age well.

She was thrilled to see him but irritated about the circumstances. Her twin sister, Sunny, and Sunny’s mates, Carlos and Declan, refused to leave Jaz unguarded for even a moment. No amount of pointing out that a bodyguard was overkill made a difference. For crissakes, she was in the middle of a werelion pride. No one would listen to her protests, however. At least she’d been asked—before Asa was approached about babysitting duty—if she could handle a week alone with him in the house. She’d taken the proposal seriously. It was the only fair thing to do, and she’d thought long and hard before saying yes.

He already knew her secret, knew what she was. One of the handful of known female shape-shifters in the world, and he’d seen her at her worst. Cowed. Beaten. Without hope.

It was dangerous, his knowing what she was. But exhilarating, too. He didn’t want to control her. Didn’t want to breed her to serve his own sick quest for power. He wanted her for the simple yet complicated reason that she was his mate. To be wanted just for herself, with no other ulterior motives... Well, it was a heady thing.

She watched as the others exited the house to welcome him. It should have been her job, but here she was, lurking out of sight. Carlos and Sunny loaded their vehicle while Declan, another werewolf and Sunny’s second mate, stopped to talk with Asa. They chatted a bit, two old friends catching up, and Asa glanced up at her window. Once. Briefly. He nodded a response to her slight wave, just a lifted hand really, and she knew she couldn’t remain in hiding forever.

When he turned away, so did she. She left her room, hurried down the steps before she could chicken out, and then went out the front door. She’d known he would hear when she stepped outside, and he slowly swiveled around to face her. He wasn’t hiding anything from her. She saw his frustration, his lust, his gentleness, and his worry. One couldn’t ask for a better mate, and she knew it.

He wasn’t her only mate, however. For some reason, not every werelion had a specific, destined mate, so those that did were expected to share—a key component of Pride Law, a tradition that grew out of a time when female shifters were believed nonexistent. Things were changing fast, though, and some females were evolving differently. Unlike the average werelion, she did have a mate. Two of them. She’d known as soon as she’d met them, with a stunning, forceful instinct that had grown into a painful craving over the last six months.

She caught Fisher’s scent on the faint breeze and knew he was somewhere close-by. Watching them. He was just as much hers as Asa was, but she avoided him. She wasn’t ready to accept him yet. But she knew he was in love with Asa. Knew they’d been together and that Fisher’d not only broken it off, but had fucked up badly enough that Asa might never take him back no matter how much he begged. It saddened her on Asa’s behalf and pissed her off. Why would anyone let such an incredible man go?

If she could scent Fisher close, so could Asa. So she marched down the steps to go stand by the man’s side and lend her unspoken support. Solidarity, right? After all, they’d both have to find a way to deal with Fisher. His shortcomings. His betrayals. And hell, maybe she was being too harsh. Who knew? She sure as hell didn’t. It was all still too fresh in her mind.

She’d been kidnapped by the Society, a group of rogue werewolves and feral werefelines. Much of her captivity in their Miami compound was a fog, but she’d caught Fisher’s scent from the underground prison cells in the compound, faint yet oddly seductive, for weeks before he’d come down to see the prisoners. One look and she’d known he was her mate, and his eyes had reflected the same knowledge. When he’d left the basement, she’d curled into a ball and cried, the only time she’d done so in almost eight weeks of captivity. She’d always wondered if she would be one of the lucky ones who had a mate, but to find out he was one of the bad guys? Discovering he was part of a group of shifters who looked down on humans and hunted them like prey was too much to bear. Two days later, he’d helped her escape.

She knew now he’d been there undercover, knew there was no way he could have rescued her and the other prisoners alone, that he’d had to wait for backup. But knowing that didn’t stop the pain in her chest, the feeling of abandonment, when she thought of it, when she saw him. She was working on accepting that he hadn’t been a member of the Society, that he hadn’t wanted to hurt her, but she was still a work in progress.

Then there was his relationship with her sister. She cut the thought off before it could fully form, before the sting of an entirely different kind of betrayal set in. His brief time with Sunny was something Jaz was working hard to let go. She knew it had only been one time. Declan was a werewolf and new to the pride, and it had been necessary for his acceptance.

The true hell of it was no matter how much her mind protested, and those protests were dwindling by the day as she grew stronger and her self-confidence returned, Fisher tempted her. He was a beautiful man, tall, his lean build deceptively powerful, with the same reddish-blond hair of most werelions. His was a little long and had a way of falling into his eyes that made her fingers itch to brush it away.

She couldn’t see a way out of their predicament, but she knew things couldn’t