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Olaf stopped short of the outer door Milligan and Custer were standing on one side of the room, arms a little out froive that first blow Olaf’s energy burned through the roo in the hot scent of him The scent of wolf and hyena spilled into the power-laden air, but it wasn’t the sareens and thick woods with deep leaves under cool trees This was desert, dry and parched This hyena had the same scent, like they were froan and Custer had been attacked by the same olf pack somewhere in the Middle East, a pack that had at least one werehyena of the striped variety as opposed to the spotted that was the usual type in the wereanimal community

“Now that you have saved his life, we can finally talk of other things,” Olaf said

I’d have liked to say I didn’t knohat he h for e, my lioness spilled upward She drew the scent of hiht very seriously at me that it was time to decide if he was a cub killer or if he was in line to try out to be our king I thought very hard at the lion insideat ho beside her in the dark It was huge, even standing next to her, with a thick dark mane The lioness knew exactly what she wanted, and what she neededby the door could be that

Olaf sniffed the air in the room “Where is the male lion? I can smell him”

I started to say it was h the door behind him

“Right behind you” It was Nicky

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“YOU ARE NOT the lion I a so that he could keep an eye on both Nicky and the two SEALs

It was Nicky’s turn to raise his face and take a deep hit of the air in the rooesture when Olaf did it, and it wasn’t any more human when Nicky did it It had bothered me when Olaf did it, but not when Nicky did it But then I loved him, and I was sort of afraid of Olaf, which coloredthat made me more patient with both of thery at the males in the room who could match the shadow male that she created insideher wish

Nicky gave a smile that was more snarl than happiness “I’ve smelled that lion before”

“Who is it?” Olaf said, voice gone even deeper with the nearness of his beast

“Follow the scent You’ll figure it out”

Olaf raised his face to the air again, but this time he parted his lips so that he could draw the scent in over the roof of his mouth like a flehmen response in a real lion: Males will try in this way to scent females in heat In human form Olaf didn’t have the parts either between his lips with their fras just didn’t dedicate enough of our brains to translating scent Even if we could s We’d sacrificed too ht

Hethe air in that not very hu back toward the cells I needed Leduc to put Bobby back in his cell so the rest of us could go somewhere more private to talk about my inner lion But thehand found a hand to hold Energy flowed down that hand to cal el

She drew ainst my face so that we stared into each other’s eyes It must have looked like a prelude to a kiss to the rest of the roo my inner beasts The male lion vanished first, because he wasn’t really there My lioness on the other hand snarled up at Angel’s caly She didn’t want to be soothed; she wanted the reality of the inner beast she’d created, and just feet away from us were two of the, because he was my Bride It meant he was metaphysically compromised and could never be my lion to call the way that Nathaniel was my leopard to call, which left only one lion in the room as far as my lioness was concerned