Page 7 of A Lion's Heart
CHAPTER 2
Decan slammed on the brakes. Exactly what she would have done, Nisa thought as she quickly undid her seat belt and popped open the ready box to retrieve her weapon. She was certain she could take the two cheetahs that had just slid off the hood of the Tracer and were now growling and hissing from the ground. But tactical teams were now trained to avoid hand-to-hand contact whenever possible. Lead Enforcer and trainer Eli Preston, lectured the trainees relentlessly on the Assembly Leader’s new directives. They were not to shift during an altercation. Nothing was to be done to confirm the human’s belief that the Shadows were nothing more than animals.
These opponents, however, were Shadows and they were underground, aggressive and in their cat forms. Nobody would blame her if she shifted and let her jaguar beat the crap out of them. Nobody but the Senior Officer who she’d been forced to travel with.
Nisa jumped out of the vehicle, gun set on stun.
“Stand down!” she yelled.
The first cheetah came for her, stopped just about two feet away and then bobbed its small head and hissed.
“We’re on official business and you’re out of order,” Nisa repeated. “Now stand down, or be shipped back to headquarters to face the Assembly Leader.”
The second cheetah once again jumped on the hood of the Tracer, just as cheetah number one lunged at her. Without a second thought, Nisa fired, distributing a million volts through cheetah number one, and sending his wiry ass down to the ground instantly. At the same time, Decan grabbed cheetah number two by the neck, yanking him down and throwing him to the ground.
“Get back in the vehicle!” Decan yelled at her. “Now!”
Nisa ignored him, taking a step toward the cheetah she’d downed watching as he attempted to fight the stun but ended up shifting back into his human form.
“I gave you an order!”
That’s what Nisa heard next before her arm was yanked and she turned to see that Decan had moved very quickly to appear right beside her in just seconds.
“I don’t take orders from you,” she told him and then noticed the other guards that were traveling in the vehicle behind them had stepped out with their weapons drawn as well.
Nisa snapped her lips shut tightly. She would not make a scene. Nothing could happen on this trip that she did not want reported to her father. Standing here arguing with the mean ‘ole lion was definitely not going to show her father that she could lead an entire zone of shifters.
“And anyway, they’re down now, so we can get back into the vehicle and keep driving,” she told him before snatching her arm away from him.
The cat inside was quick and vicious as it hissed and pressed against her bones in rebellion. She wanted out, now, which confused the hell out of Nisa. She held her cat on a loose leash, letting her out as much as she could, but usually only when they were alone. This new press to break free was unexpected and just a little disconcerting.
“Not so fast,” another female voice spoke.
As far as Nisa knew, she was the only female in this travel party. In the vehicle behind them were four guards, all dressed in the navy blue mission jacket, pants and a lighter blue button-down shirt, which completed the guard uniform. Senior enforcers, such as Decan, wore all navy blue—mission pants, shirt and a jacket with their tribe insignia on the front left side and white stripes around the wrist cuffs which signified their rank.
This female, Nisa noted when she turned quickly away from Decan, wore a skintight black bodysuit with a bright yellow jacket and steel-toe boots. Her black hair was pulled away from her face in a tight ponytail that hung long down her back.
“We were only bringing you information,” the newcomer stated before tilting her head.
She walked slowly, stepping around the cheetah that Decan had dispatched and the one who had shifted back to his human form, still writhing from the shock of Nisa’s gun. There was a twenty-foot ceiling in the tunnels, with a double lane capacity of seventy-five feet. Their vehicles were in the center of the tunnel and the female took her time coming around the vehicle until she was only a short distance away from Nisa. Decan, who had been still standing behind Nisa, moved forward until he stood between her and the newcomer.
“Oh,” she said. “There you are. I knew the Assembly Leader wouldn’t send his only offspring out alone. Quite a yummy bodyguard you’ve got here, Miss Nisa.”
“What’s the information and who sent you?” Decan asked before Nisa could reply.
Again, the female’s head tilted, this time causing her ponytail to shift and dangle over her shoulder. Her cheekbones were high, eyes a simmering amber hue. She looked exotic, even to another shifter. But Nisa wasn’t impressed. She moved around to stand beside Decan.
“Yes, tell us who sent you?” Nisa asked.
“Nobody sends me anywhere,” she said. “I come and go as I please. Which is how I came to be in the possession of knowledge about the recent murders above ground.”
Nisa paused. “Why should we care about that?”
To her knowledge, in the years since the shifters had been underground—which equated to all her life—their dealings with the human world had been slim. Her father and his team had only been concerned with building and maintaining a safe environment for the shifters.
“So naïve,” the woman quipped.
Her lips spread into a smile that Nisa could only describe as breathtaking.
