Free Her Lion Guard - The Complete Series Box Set (BBW Shifter Romance) by Amira Rain

“You knew I was coming?” she questioned, then added, “vampires are real?”
     
          The older man nodded, a bit of surprise showing on his face. “Of course I did. Everybody does.” He had glanced at her silent parents, a frown weighing his face. “What have you folks been telling this poor girl?”
     
         “Nothing, mostly,” Mary-Lou had muttered over a familiar rush in her ears. Vampires. Shape-shifters. What next – faeries? She paused.  That would actually be pretty cool. Except with her luck, they will probably turn out to be vicious, blood-thirsty little buggers. Mary-Lou shook her head, focusing back on the conversation at hand.
     
         “There is time yet to explain everything,” Irma insisted, and Jonathon added, “We did not want to overwhelm her.”
     
         “Don’t baby her too much,” Nicholas had warned darkly. “Better to be scared and ready than ignorant and dead. Now,” the man clapped wrinkled hands, “Where are my pancakes?”
     
         Mary-Lou vividly recalled wondering if enhanced emotions came with the Shifter package, right alongside extreme strength and super-hearing. Between Nicholas’ flickering moods, Irma and Jonathon’s domineering posturing, and Jonas’ increasingly protective behavior, Mary-Lou was steadily nearing the end of her mental calm. It had been but two days.
     
        Most unexpectedly, respite came in the form of another Shifter. Sasha drifted onto the Cabin’s land one misty morning, quiet and serene as he passed by a furiously swearing Mary-Lou and a grinning, shirtless Jonas.
     
         They were practicing punching, and Mary-Lou really, truly wished she could say that she was kidding. It was, sadly, the truth: Irma had enlisted Jonas’ help in what she called “desensitizing” training the very first time Mary-Lou had pulled a punch while sparring with the older woman. While Mary-Lou was perfectly comfortable knocking a deserving punk on their ass, she proved less-willing to inflict lasting damage.
         So, yes, it was not the best first meeting. Jonas was quick to prove to her that it was not the worst, either, for the worst happened a moment later when Jonas roared and jumped the other man, claws and eyes flashing.
     
         What followed was a confusing jumble of growls, punches, and Mary-Lou’s incensed screaming of things such as, “OH MY GOD, WHERE DO YOU PEOPLE KEEP COMING FROM,” and “CAN YOU PLEASE NOT KILL EACH OTHER BEFORE BREAKFAST?” She was mostly ignored, although Sasha later told her that he got a kick out of her flustered squawking. 
     
         It was not until Irma charged out of the Cabin, roar shaking the skies that the two men pulled apart. Jonas’s broad chest was covered in scratches and bites; a no-doubt expensive dress shirt hung in pieces about Sasha’s slender waist. Irma regarded the two young men with narrowed eyes, not unlike a mother scolding her errant children.
     
         “What,” she had thundered, “Do you two knuckleheads think you are doing?”
     
         Jonas’ eyes were mutinous, but he kept silent. Sasha’s gaze was placid and uncaring.
     
         Irma sighed, motioning Mary-Lou to her side. Mary-Lou went, keeping a wary eye on the two testosterone-driven idiots.
     
         “Sasha, this is my daughter, Mary-Lou,” Irma said, and Mary-Lou felt a flush of pleasure warm her cheeks at the acknowledgment Irma continued, “And that,” she nodded her head at Jonas, “is Jonas Edwards, of the House of the Lion.”
     
         “Pleasure to meet you,” Sasha offered to Mary-Lou and then Jonas, a bit too genuine for someone who had been attacked with extreme prejudice. “My name is Alexander Ivanov, of the House of the Snake.”
     
         “A worm,” Jonas had spit out; the other man promptly ignored him in favor of Mary-Lou. “You may call me Sasha,” he told her. Jonas let out a disgruntled snarl.
     
         “Come.”