Badlands: The Lion’s Den(14)

“Jennifer. How can you say that?” Finn rasped. The hot, triumphant feeling that had roared through him just minutes ago vanished. Images of Marybeth flashed through his mind now, and his throat tightened in remembered sorrow.

“I just didn’t expect that you’d find a replacement for her so fast. No big deal.” She shoved the beers into his hand.

“Flora isn’t a replacement, and I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”

“With you moving on, it’s just…it’s just like letting her go for good.” Her mouth pursed in hurt and she blinked hard.

“I’m not moving on. I’m helping someone.” He struggled to keep the anger from his voice. “I will never forget Marybeth, and you know that.”

Jennifer glanced at Liam, who had been summoned to the bar because of the intrusion of Ruben’s men. “It’s different for you,” she said coldly. “You still have family. Marybeth was all I had.” Then she looked him right in the eyes, with a spark of fury. “You let her die,” she spat at him, and stomped off, leaving Finn reeling. Jennifer had never spoken to him like that before.

Finn felt the familiar roaring in his ears, and memories from his past rolled over him like a suffocating sandstorm.



Sergeant Marybeth Collins hunkered down beside him, wiping sweat from her face. Her hair was damp and her fatigues hung limp on her slender, wiry frame. “Any idea how we’re going to get out of this one, Rex?”

Finn’s rank was staff sergeant, but shifter habits and shifter hierarchy died hard. Marybeth was a lion shifter too, and she deferred to him as much as a pride leader as she did because of military discipline. He didn’t correct her. And he knew she thought of him as her Rex not just because they were both lions, but because she believed him to be her destined mate. They didn’t talk about it. Ever. And she didn’t let her feelings for him get in the way of her duties. She was a damn good soldier and had forged her four-man fire team into a tight, disciplined group with a strong sense of camaraderie.

Three men now. Rodgers had taken a shot to the belly the night before. He hadn’t made it. Usually the big wolf would have been able to heal the injury, even out here, running low on beans and bullets. But the insurgents had good intel and good funding. The round that had taken Rodgers out had been silver. There was no coming back from that. Gut-shot with silver. It was a hard, bloody, brutal way to go.

Finn glanced at Marybeth and shook his head. “It’s a clusterfuck,” he growled.

The second half of the squad, under the command of a fox shifter who made up for what he lacked in brawn with keen tactical intelligence, was under cover behind a building on the other side of the square but visible from Finn’s vantage point. Eight of them left altogether.

More than a dozen of the other guys to take down. All human, but well-armed and with a superior knowledge of the terrain…and Finn’s squad weren’t the shifters they’d been when they’d first been shipped overseas. The relentless heat, the injuries, the exhaustion and their dwindling supplies had worn down their strength and stamina. Worse still, the psychological strain of warfare was taking its toll. A couple of the men were spooked – nerves as taut as violin strings and jumping at shadows. Brown, the massive, good-natured bear shifter who had always been so ready with a joke, had become a sullen, snarling loner. Finn had heard him sobbing in the night. Marybeth had developed that burned-out vet’s thousand-yard stare, her eyes huge and glassy in her gaunt face. Still…

Finn rasped his palm over the stubble on his square jaw. “They have better kit and better intel. They know the terrain. But they’re human. We’re faster and stronger. Better reflexes. Our best chance to take them out is a full-frontal assault.”

Marybeth nodded. Though her wiry, muscular frame was bordering on the too-thin after weeks of reduced rations, she was the quickest of them all – sharp-eyed, intuitive and as fast as a rattlesnake. Both teams had some serious brawn as well – Finn was a Rex, and there was an Alpha wolf and a bear shifter among their number.

“Hit ’em hard, hit ’em fast,” Marybeth agreed. “Put ’em down.”



“Finn?” Flora’s voice rang in his ear, and he realized she was standing there, staring up at him with deep worry etched on her face. She was still pale and sweat-drenched from the scene they’d played out just minutes ago.

He should be the one asking her if she was all right. He was a fucking mess. What right did he have to claim a woman like Flora?

Then again, what choice did he have? He couldn’t deny it – something about Flora called out to his very soul in a way that no woman ever had before. He would die before he’d let the bears, or anyone else, take her away.