Tuesday Teaser 11/25/14 Daughter of the Wolf Clan

      Yikes!! I meant to get this out last night, but I was really on a roll with Sky and Rose. She has just put two girls who like to flirt with Sky firmly in their place, all with lots of possessive snarling. Now Sky is wearing an expression of insufferable smugness and Paint and Stone are calling her Lupa. It was a fun scene to write!

      Anyway, here is the next snip in Olivia’s story. Things are starting to get interesting now. 😉

All her caution didn’t keep Olivia from being surprised by the thing that dropped from the rock wall twenty feet above her.

At first she didn’t know what it was. A large sack? A man? A mountain lion? Instead of thudding to the ground in front of her, it landed lightly, perfectly balanced. Olivia was so startled that she stepped down incautiously on a rock and nearly lost her balance. She had just found what had spooked her horse into flight.

The thing was a man. Sort of. He wore brown pants and a tan shirt, but no boots and his feet were … paws. He crouched on his haunches in front of her, leaning his weight on one hand –paw, snarling, head down, his hair a wild mane of tawny gold spilling over his shoulders to hang almost to the ground. His face was strangely feline, with a flat nose, and a pointed chin, and eyes of icy green. They almost glowed. If he was a lion in the same way her brothers were wolves, he looked as if he had gotten stuck in mid-shift. But unlike her wolf brothers and cousins, he didn’t seem to hold women in high regard. No man from the Wolf Clan would ever show a woman disrespect. This … person lifted his lip in a snarl that showed frighteningly sharp teeth in a deadly threat.

Olivia tired to breathe normally, trying to decide if she were terrified or fascinated. The lion-man shifted a few inches closer to her, still snarling, and she settled on terrified. Her fingers shook as she slid them to the hilt of the knife sheathed at her waist. The lion-man roared with bone rattling rage. Olivia froze for a sickening moment before forcing herself to slowly back up. He roared again, and snarled until she stopped moving. Then he stared intensely at her, sniffing the air and making almost sub-vocal noises in his throat. Olivia reached behind her to feel how close the rock wall was to her back. The lion man slowly straightened out of his crouch and took a step toward her. One step was all it took for him to be only a few inches from her. He was tall. Taller than she was. Taller, maybe, than her brother Taylor, who was taller than their father. One of his hands lifted toward her face. Olivia didn’t want to take her eyes off his, but she flicked a lightning fast glance at the hand. It was hairy, with long, deadly claws instead of fingernails. She flinched away and he snarled some more, gripping her jaw in his big, claw-tipped hand.  A soft voice spoke from above her head.

“Lergokit,” the voice said quietly, but it held a hint of the same sort of command she’d heard Uncle Muddy Wolf use.  “Na owrs. Lehergo.”

The cat man roared. “Mahmayd.”

Who were these men? What language were they speaking? Olivia resisted the urge to tear his hand away. Those claws could lay her face open to the bone with no effort.

The man on the top of the rock wall spoke again, sounding almost shocked. “Sheezeeyoomahn. Lehergo.”

The hand clenched painfully on her jaw, squeezing a whimper out of her.  She felt tears well and spill, but wasn’t sure if it was because of pain or horror or simple shock. No one had ever caused her pain. Her father and brothers protected her. Everyone knew that she was one of the precious daughters of the Wolf Clan, which could call up almost three hundred wolf warriors to defend her if needed. No one dared trouble her. Except this creature.

The hand loosened and the rough thumb rubbed gently over the edge of her jaw. “Sahrie. Naherchu.”

Olivia saw that the eyes, looking almost tenderly at her, were unexpectedly beautiful, gold and green like the eyes of a mountain lion, but not even remotely sane. The lion man inched closer to her until she could feel his warm breath on her throat at the opening of her wool flannel shirt. His tongue, rough like a cat’s, touched her throat, lapping up a delicate taste of her skin there. A tiny heat flared between her legs, embarrassingly like what she’d felt with Rob in the stall. Fainting would be bad, she was sure. She braced her hands against his chest, trying to hold him off.  He snarled at her, tightening his grip on her jaw until a thin sound of pain came from her throat.

The voice above said something forceful in their language, and then a slight thud marked the arrival of another body. Olivia couldn’t see anything past the bulk of the lion man, but she guessed it was the man who had spoken from up above. Was he another lion man like the one who had trapped her? The lion man holding her screamed in rage as he whirled to face the newcomer. Olivia felt one of his claws slice her neck and thin trickle of blood roll hot over her throat. The same voice she’d heard from the top of the rock wall spoke quietly, this time from a couple feet away.

“Lehergo. Muzlergo,” he said quietly. “Kit, nahyorz. Cumear, kit.”

Her lion man backed up until his back was an inch from her front. “Mine!” he roared.

What do you think? Fun?