Alpha Lion: BBW Lion Shifter Paranormal Romance (10 page)

“Dawn," he said.

Dawn jumped, and looked up at him. Her face made it clear that she already knew. “Dale," she said in a small voice.

Dale remembered Chapman sweet-talking Dawn, taking her to lunch one day. He’d seen Freddie hanging out at the desk while Chapman was nosing around in Dale and Lynn’s business. He knew Dawn didn’t like working at the studio much, and that she didn’t get along too well with the other younger lions.

If he’d been Chapman, and he’d been trying to get at studio records to figure out where Sam lived, Dawn would be the first person he’d go to.

Dale had guessed she’d know something, and now he knew he was right. He was also guessing she could, and
would
, do something to help. He could only hope he was right about that, too.

“Dawn," he said, keeping his voice as level as he could, “I know that you’ve had a hard time fitting in, and I know that the studio isn’t where you want to work all your life. But you’ve met Sam. She’s a good person, and she’s scared and hurt right now.”

Dawn’s chin jerked up. “She’s not hurt!” she protested.

“How do you know that?” Dale asked, keeping his voice low. He didn’t want to scare her into clamming up.

“She’s not going to get hurt," Dawn assured him. “He just wants you to realize that this isn’t the way to lead a pride.”

“What isn’t?” Dale asked carefully.

“Taking a mate who refuses to change!” Dawn said. “We can’t have an alpha lioness who isn’t a lioness.” She looked at him with big, pleading eyes. “I don’t know why you don’t understand that.”

“What do you mean?” Dale asked. “Sam didn’t refuse to change. I haven’t asked her to yet.” Okay,
yet
wasn’t quite the right word there, since he’d never suggest that Sam wasn’t good enough just as she was, but it still wasn’t technically a lie.

“Alan said you had, and she said no," Dawn said, blinking in surprise.

“And that makes it okay to kidnap her and hurt her?” Dale asked.

“No one’s going to hurt her!” Dawn said frantically.

Dale pulled out his phone and held it up. “I was just talking to Alan on this," he said. “Sam tried to talk to me, and Freddie hit her. Hard.” It had sounded hard.

Dale had to keep from thinking too much about it, or his vision started to turn red.

Dawn stared at his phone. “Freddie wouldn’t do that.” But she didn’t sound sure.

“Freddie would do that," said Dale. “Dawn. Freddie did do that.”

Dawn’s eyes were starting to well up. “Alan said he just needed to separate you until you weren’t surrounded by—um, by a cloud of pheromones," she said in a shaky voice. “That you’d understand once you were away from each other, and if you didn’t, maybe you should just take some time off to be together?” A tear slipped down her cheek.

“Alan lied," Dale said.

Dawn started to cry in earnest. “I’m sorry. I showed him her registration forms. He had her address because of me. I shouldn’t have done it, I should’ve talked to you.”

“Do you know where they took her, Dawn?” Dale asked, too urgent to be angry at her for the moment.

Dawn shook her head, more tears starting to fall. “No," she said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Are you sure you don’t know
anything
?” Dale asked. “Chapman’s on his way here. Sam’s alone with Freddie right now, Dawn. He could be doing anything to her.” God, it was making his lion rear up and snarl. He had to concentrate to keep from changing right here.

“Freddie and Sam are all alone?” Dawn asked, wiping furiously at the tears on her cheeks.

“That’s what I said." Dale rubbed his forehead. This had been his only idea, to try and persuade her to tell him.

He was relieved that Dawn wasn’t actually collaborating with Sam’s kidnapping, that she hadn’t realized how much of a soulless monster Alan Chapman really was. But if she didn’t know…

…well, she didn’t know
yet
. “Dawn, do you think you could get Freddie to tell you where he is right now?” Dale asked. “Try calling him up and offering to go hang out with him or bring him something.”

“I might…” Dawn started digging through her purse for her phone. She poked at it, then sniffed hard and
held it up to her ear. “Hey, Freddie," she said after a second. “How’s it going?”

Dale resisted the temptation to snatch the phone out of her hands and demand that Freddie let Sam go. He had to let her do this.

“Yeah, Dale just stopped in and told me to take the day off," she said. Dale was impressed by how steady her voice sounded, considering she’d been crying just a moment ago.

“So anyway, I don’t have anything to do," she said. “I thought maybe I could bring you something. Coffee and doughnuts?”

Dale watched her face, desperate for any clues that this was working.

“Alan’s not going to know," she said. “I just want to hang out.” She was frowning a little. Dale made himself breathe slowly. He could feel his lion ready to burst through his skin any second. He just needed a
target
.

“Is he really being that much of a hardass?” Dawn was somehow managing to sound bored. “Fine, that’s okay, but I’m almost at the doughnut place anyway, you want me to just grab something and drop it off for you? I don’t have to come inside if Alan’s going to get mad about it.”

Dale held his breath, waiting.

“Boston cream…” Dawn said, “...chocolate sprinkles, strawberry jelly. Got it. See you in a few—wait, where are you at?”

Dale watched as she picked up a pen and wrote down an address on a notepad.

“Great," said Dawn. “See you soon.” She hung up, and tore off the piece of paper and held it out to Dale. “Here you go," she said.

Dale grabbed it. It was about a ten-minute drive. He could be at Sam’s side in ten minutes. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m not surprised Freddie was convinced, that was amazing. You probably just saved Sam’s life.”

“I thought you believed in honesty in every situation," Dawn said, smiling tentatively.

“I believe in honesty in...most situations," Dale said. “In this situation—there are more important things than honesty, and you’re helping me save one of them. Thank you.”

“It was the least I could do, considering what I did to help them," Dawn said. “Good luck.”

“Don’t worry," said Dale. “I’ll bring her back.” He left without looking back, stuffing the paper in his pocket. He didn’t need to look at it again; the address was burned into his brain.

* * *

Sam was watching Freddie warily. After Chapman had left, he’d paced around impatiently, and Sam had just been waiting for him to hit her again.

The left side of her face was hot and starting to swell up from the first time, and she was pretty sure Freddie wanted nothing more than a repeat performance.

So she’d kept her mouth shut, not wanting to provoke him, and he’d gotten a phone call before he could work himself up to it. Sam hadn’t been able to tell who was on the other end, but apparently they were going to come by and bring doughnuts.

And Freddie had been reluctant to let them come over, so maybe it was someone who didn’t know about the plan. Maybe Sam could yell out and tell them what was happening. If they were a lion, too, maybe they could even get her out.

Maybe. But the odds were that they were in on it. Freddie had said, “Just stuck here with Dale’s stupid girlfriend," to whoever it was, so they at least knew Sam was here.

She’d try, though. She had to try
something
.

“Why are you helping him?” she asked Freddie, half out of morbid curiosity, and half because he was starting to look impatient again and she didn’t want him to get bored and take it out on her.

Freddie gave her a contemptuous look. “Who wouldn’t want to help him? He’s rich, he’s powerful, he can get whatever he wants, and he doesn’t have a stick up his ass like most of the pride. Your
boyfriend
especially.”

Sam could see how Dale’s strong values would discourage a certain type of person, but considering her current situation, she’d have been happy with a bit more discouragement.

“Whatever
he
wants?” she asked, instead of saying any of that out loud. “What about whatever
you
want? What does he give you?”

“He pays me," Freddie said. “I’m his assistant.”

“At his office?” Sam asked, fake-innocent.

Freddie hesitated. “No.”

“Oh," Sam said. “I was just wondering what the next rung of the ladder was. In offices, you get promotions.”

Not always, of course. Sometimes you stayed at a low-level dead-end forever...and sometimes you got laid off. But she had a sense that Freddie was a glass-half-full kind of a person.

“When he’s the alpha, that’ll be a promotion," Freddie said. “I’ll be the highest person in the pride, next to him.”

“What about Lynn?” Sam asked.

“Lynn won’t stay alpha lioness under Alan,” Freddie said confidently.

“Why not?” Sam asked. “Where will she go? Who will replace her?”

Freddie’s expression turned ugly. “You stop asking all those questions. Do you want to get hit again?”

“No," Sam said as calmly as she could. That had been dumb—she’d gotten caught up in attacking Freddie’s logic and pushed him too far. “I’m sorry. I—”

“I don’t think you are sorry,” Freddie said. “I think you’re trying to mess with my head. Do you want me to show you what I think about that?” He started toward her.

“No,” Sam said, fear rising in her. “No, no—please—”

The doorbell rang.

Freddie froze, and then relaxed so suddenly it was a little creepy. “That’s probably doughnuts. I’ll be right back.”

Sam got ready to scream, but on his way to the door Freddie stopped at the window to peek out at the front step. “What the
fuck
?” he snapped.

Sam jumped. “What?”

Freddie turned to stare back at her. “
What is he doing here?
How did he know where to come? If you told him, I swear to fucking God—”

Sam listened to the rant with a rising hope that only peaked when she heard. “
Let me in, Freddie
," in a deep, commanding voice from outside the door.

Dale was here.

* * *

Dale could hear Freddie’s angry voice as he came up the front walk to the little broken-down house, and as he approached the door, he heard Sam saying,
No, no, no—please—

His lion reared up and roared inside of him, but he knew he couldn’t just break the door down. He had no idea where Freddie was; he could easily be between Dale and Sam. If he rang the bell, Freddie would be right in front of him, thinking he was Dawn, instead of anywhere near Sam, ready to do something desperate.

But when he heard the high-pitched
What the fuck?
he knew the game was up, and then he saw Freddie’s little rabbity face jerking back from the window.

“Let me in, Freddie," he shouted through the door.

“I have your girlfriend!” Freddie shouted back, sounding panicked. “Don’t come in or I’ll hurt her!”

Dale tried the door, and it was locked, but that was fine, because it meant that he could do what he’d been craving since Alan Chapman had picked up Sam’s phone. He shifted.

The house was pretty broken-down, and the door was in no way up to withstanding the almost five hundred pounds of lion that hit it straight-on.

It splintered away from the frame, and Dale leapt over the broken pieces and charged into the kitchen...where Freddie was hiding, in human form, behind a handcuffed Sam. He had a knife held to Sam’s throat.

“I’ll kill her," he warned. “Don’t come any closer.”

Dale wanted nothing more than to pounce on him and savage his throat, but he couldn’t risk Sam getting hurt. She already had the beginnings of what was going to be a spectacular bruise on one side of her face, and her wrist was raw where the handcuff was digging into it. She looked furious and determined and beautiful.

He couldn’t pounce, he reminded himself, flexing his claws so that they dug into the linoleum. Freddie’s eyes skipped downward, and he swallowed.

Dale snarled at him, and he jumped, nervous and startled, the knife jerking in his hand.

Dale froze, afraid Freddie would accidentally cut Sam’s throat. But he didn’t.

In the split-second when the knife had jerked away from her throat, Sam
slammed
her big chunky heel down onto Freddie’s left red Converse. Freddie howled, and she twisted away.

She was bound by the handcuff, though—she couldn’t actually get away. Freddie shifted into lion form with a swirl of displaced air, and snapped at her just as Dale leaped.

He hit Freddie’s flank and bit down hard, and Freddie let out a high-pitched screech of pain and shifted back instantly, until Dale had his jaws just gently pressing against Freddie’s ribcage.

He pulled back, tasting blood, and shifted to human. “Get out," he said. “I don’t ever want to see you in this city again. I don’t ever want you contacting me, Sam, or Alan Chapman ever again. If I hear your name, even once, you’ll have every pride in America after your blood. Do you understand?”