Page 47 of A Lion's Heart
“It’s dangerous because we hide. We don’t know what’s up here because we’re stuck down there,” she said, her voice raising slightly as she finally turned to him.
Her eyes were glowing. The cat’s eyes. Her stance was confrontational, her scent…mesmerizing.
“It would be just as dangerous if you were above ground,” he told her because it was true. “My parents let me stay and continue my education. Then I decided to go into the military.”
“Why? You could have come to Oasis and begun your training there. But you wanted to stay above ground. You felt you were more needed here.”
Decan shook his head. “I felt it was beneficial for me to know everything I could, about both worlds. The shifters that stayed above ground had either been found and killed or knew how to hide in plain sight very well. I could hide better than anyone. It kept me alive.”
Until it almost killed him.
“How did you do it? Can you teach me?”
“Teaching you will not change your father’s mind.”
“Not teaching me will not stop me,” she countered.
And Decan knew she was right. He knew just as surely as thecompanheiro calorwas now lingering between them, that Nisa was going to go above ground more and more. She felt she had a place here. That she could do some good. Was it so different from what Decan was doing? Could he really stand with the others who would hold her back?
On the other hand, could he stand losing her if something happened?
It wasn’t a matter of love. No, Decan didn’t think he was capable of that. But she was hiscompanheiro.That was an unbreakable bond. Or so he’d heard.
“Let’s get some sleep,” he told her. “We’ll head back to Oasis in the morning and give Jace our report.”
“But you will not teach me? Once I’m back at Oasis, your job is done and you will walk away.”
She sounded so certain. Very irritated by her own words, but still sure that they were true.
Decan closed the space between them, lifting his hands to cup her face when he was close enough.
“I won’t be walking away from you, Nisa. Not tonight and definitely not tomorrow.”
Not forever.
Those two words lingered in his mind, but instead of speaking them Decan kissed her forehead. When she brought her hands up to circle his wrists, he kissed her temples. She tilted her face up to him and he kissed the tip of her nose.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered and she immediately did as he asked.
Her cat’s eyes were staring up at him. Decan blinked until his lion’s eyes could respond.
“I won’t walk away from you.”
She nodded slightly at the commitment he’d not only made to her as part man, but as the fierce beast that lived inside.
Coming up on her toes she kissed him this time. Touching her lips lightly to his and whispering, “Thank you,” before wrapping her arms around his waist and pressing her body into his.
Decan held her close as they stood in front of the window. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and breathed in their now shared scent. On a ragged exhale he kissed the top of her head and was just about to lead them back downstairs when he sensed something beyond the window.
Turning his head ever so slightly and being careful to only open his eyes a slit so that the brightness of the lion’s eyes did not alert anyone to their presence, he looked out. His training on restraint came in handy because what Decan saw would have definitely frightened Nisa. She would have reacted to that fear defensively and been ready to go out and fight. But Decan knew this was different. The eyes staring directly back at him were not eyes he’d ever seen before. They weren’t the eyes of any Shadow cat, and they did not resemble the eyes of the wolf he’d seen tonight.
This was different.
And it was scary.
It was meant to be scary, he decided, because its next step was to kill.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Rome yelled after Jace’s excuse.
