Zola's Pride by Moira Rogers Read Free Book Online

“Are you all right?”
    He closed his fingers around
the gun and groaned as he rolled to his back. “Peachy.
You?”
    An uncertain pause, and she echoed
the word back to him in her accented English. “I am hoping that
means good.”
    “ It means I’ll make it.”
    The sound of flesh on flesh
followed, a muffled grunt and then silence. “She is alive.
Unconscious, but alive. I will call the Conclave. The Scions. Offer
her for your pardon. A life for a life, yes?”
    A life for a life. How could the Scions refuse, when the woman’s defeat rendered
her life forfeit? “I think that’ll work out just fine.”
Underneath him, the shattered boards shifted, and the spell caster
groaned. “Maybe even twice over.”
    Zola rose and crossed the yard, the
moonlight glinting off her features. “Are you injured?”
    “ Just a scratch.” Walker
rolled off the flattened porch and landed on his knees. “My
jacket’s ruined, though.”
    “ Fool.” Her fingers slid
into his hair and down, cupping his neck. Her words drifted to
French, low and intimate. “I love you too much to lose you to
stubborn pride. But if you walk into another trap without me at your
side, I will kill you myself.”
    “ I screwed up, but never
again.” Leaving her was, without a doubt, the most idiotic
thing he’d ever done. Zola didn’t need his protection.
She just needed him ,
and he knew the feeling. “We fight together?”
    “ As one. Always.” Her
lips seized his in a breathless, desperate kiss, over almost before
it began. “And now we call Alec Jacobson. He has a cage in his
basement for situations like this. I’m afraid you will find
they happen more often than not, if you stay here.”
    He couldn’t help but laugh. “I
grew up around here. I know the lay of the land.”
    “ Then you know it will never
be boring.”
    Living in a plastic bubble wouldn’t
be boring as long as Zola was with him. “Are you sure you can
forgive me for sneaking out on you?”
    A hint of laughter bubbled up as she
reached into her pocket for a phone. “This time. But only if
you take over my class full of adolescent male shifters. Perhaps a
weekly reminder of the crippling effects of male ego will teach you a
valuable lesson.”
    It was far more than he deserved,
but there was no way he’d squander a chance to make up for the
hurts he’d visited on her in the past—the distant and the
not so distant. “Make your call, Zola. The faster we get these
two out of here, the faster we can be alone.”
    The faster he could convince her
she’d made the right choice.

Epilogue

    “ ...so after the Scion
representatives struck their deal with you, the Alpha escorted the
whole mess of them back to New York on his jet. Got a call from him
last night to let me know they’d left the country.”
    Zola made a noncommittal noise, only
half of her attention on Alec’s voice as it spilled out of her
phone. There were only six students in her adolescent shifter
group—all males, because she refused to teach them in a mixed
class when their hormones would drive them to posture and preen for
their classmates’ feminine attention. Any urge they might have
had to fight for her attention had been knocked out of them within their first week,
leaving a moderately serious group of youths on the cusp of manhood.
    Manageable enough, until confronted
with a shapeshifter male in his prime. Zola hid a smile behind her
hand as Walker deftly handled another borderline challenge, patiently
but firmly, setting the boy in his place without damaging more than
his ego.
    Alec was still talking, and Zola
made a conscious effort to drag her attention back to the
conversation in time to hear, “...all taken care of, then.
Paperwork for the pride should be ready in a few days. If you need
help getting them across the border—”
    “ We will be fine.”
Considering all the trouble Alec Jacobson got himself into, owing him too many favors could prove to be an uncomfortable situation.