Kitten Me Twice: Paranormal SEAL Surprise Baby Romance (Shifter Squad Nine Book 2) Read online

  Kitten Me Twice

  Shifter Squad Nine

  Anya Nowlan

  Contents

  A Little Taste…

  Copyright

  Prologue

  1. Kayla

  2. Rio

  3. Kayla

  4. Ryker

  5. Kayla

  6. Rio

  7. Rio

  8. Kayla

  9. Ryker

  10. Ryker

  11. Kayla

  12. Kayla

  13. Ryker

  14. Rio

  15. Ryker

  16. Kayla

  17. Rio

  18. Ryker

  19. Rio

  20. Kayla

  21. Ryker

  22. Rio

  23. Kayla

  24. Kayla

  25. Ryker

  26. Rio

  27. Kayla

  Epilogue

  Chasing for Cubs Excerpt

  Want More?

  About the Author

  Thank you for reading!

  A Little Taste…

  “Rio, Ryker,” she muttered, dumbstruck as she stood perfectly still, a lamb fit for slaughter.

  “Kayla,” Rio said, pushing past Ryker and crossing the distance between them with long, purposeful strides.

  A second later, she found herself in the tight, comforting and completely safe embrace of Rio Tyren, one of the two men she’d ever loved. The tears brimmed in her eyes before she could think of another thought.

  “I thought you were dead,” she whispered, answering Rio’s hug with one of her own, while her eyes couldn’t stop staring at Ryker.

  He was rooted to the spot, looking pale in the face as if he’d just seen a ghost. She might as well have been one to them as well, Kayla suddenly realized.

  Choking her tears back, she was released from Rio’s arms in time for more men to appear at the doorway, men she’d never seen before. They all looked battleworn and now she noticed that not only they, but Rio and Ryker as well were splattered with blood and mud and they stank of fire and gunpowder and something that she couldn’t quite place.

  Her head spun.

  “So who’s this?” one of the men she didn’t know questioned, cocking a curious brow and grinning at her like she was some sort of a prize for a job well done. “Is Spade finally taking into consideration my suggestion box entry and giving us hookers for a job well done?”

  Ryker snapped so fast that no one could have seen it coming. It was only the lightning-fast reflexes of the loudmouthed guy, a man with particularly unnerving, pale green eyes, and everyone else around him that saved him from a broken jaw. Ryker’s fist wound up and he spun around, ready to strike. Another large, wide-shouldered man with an air of command about him caught the fist and the target of Ryker’s aggravation dodged back and away like he’d been bit by a snake.

  They moved so fast that Kayla’s eyes could barely track them. She found herself leaning on Rio slightly, not even noticing the way she was already reveling in his warmth and presence like she used to all those years ago.

  I should have never left.

  Copyright © 2016 Anya Nowlan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Kitten Me Twice

  Shifter Squad Nine

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover © Jack of Covers

  Prologue

  Ryker

  Fifteen years ago…

  “Mom, no!” Rio screamed, banging his fists against the cellar door. “Let us out!”

  There were tears streaming down his cheeks and his voice was becoming hoarse with the screaming. Their mother’s footsteps retreated quickly and she didn’t say a word.

  But there was no silence around them.

  When Rio quieted, Ryker could hear the full extent of the horror around them. Screams seemed to fill the air as if they were oxygen, monopolizing every nook and cranny and turning the world into an echo chamber of pain. Ryker’s breathing was slow, calm. His face was pale and he could feel his hands shaking violently, though the rest of him seemed perfectly still.

  “Mom!” Rio yelled again, scratching at the door of the dark underground cellar they’d been shoved into.

  The door was thick and even if they shifted, it would take maybe a day to fight their way out. For twelve-year-old lions, feats of physical strength didn’t come as easily as they would have to Ryker and Rio’s father or older brothers.

  They might hear us.

  The thought forced Ryker into action. As if moving in a dream, he walked to Rio and clapped one of his shaking hands over his mouth, pulling him close to his chest and away from the door. Rio thrashed against him, as big and strong as Ryker was, but made weaker by his frenzied hysteria.

  “Shh,” Ryker whispered in his ear, his voice hiccupping on every syllable. “They might hear us.”

  “I fucking want them to hear us!” Rio spat back, shoving himself away from Ryker violently.

  He turned around, his pale hazel eyes with orange sunbursts puffy and the whites now red from the tears. It was maybe at that moment that the lion twins looked the least alike that they would all their lives.

  Rio crouched slightly, his hands balled into fists, his lips pulled back in a snarl as if he was getting ready to pounce Ryker. Ryker didn’t move, standing impassively as the distant screams permeated through the walls that were supposed to protect them. There was just one tiny window above them, barely a slit that peeked into the courtyard. Occasionally, someone’s footsteps would pass by it and shade out the bright noon sunlight that Ryker knew was glimmering over the homestead.

  They’d been playing outside only fifteen minutes ago. After that, everything had changed and it would never change back again.

  “You’re afraid, is that what it is!? We can’t let them… we can’t!”

  “We can’t let them what, Rio?” Ryker asked, his voice sounding almost impassive as he glanced up, seeing the thick leather boots of a man who definitely did not belong to the Meadow Valley lion pride. “Can’t let them be murdered?”

  “Yes!” Rio snarled, his fists shaking and more tears streaking down his cheeks.

  “We can’t stop them.”

  “We cou-”

  “No,” Ryker said, stepping up to his twin – younger by only a few minutes – so quickly that Rio backed against the wall “We can’t. We don’t have the strength. If we were up there, we’d be a liability. To mom, dad, Rylen… Everyone. That’s why we’re here. That’s why mom put us here. So we wouldn’t be in the way.”

  He seemed to tower above Rio for a moment and the standoff felt almost as tense as those first few moments when their mother had run to them in the yard, grabbing both of them by the arm and dragging them inside, kicking and screaming as they were.

  “They’re coming,” was the only thing she’d said, and while it had taken a moment for Rio to understand what it meant, Ryker knew immediately.

  The hyenas.

  Some things ne
ver changed. Whether it was with the animals in the plains of Africa, or the shifters in the great South West, some stereotypes could not be broken. Lions still hated hyenas and hyenas were still the gutless, ruthless beasts they’d always been, no matter the fact that some of them occasionally wore suits or gave money to charities. Deep down inside, they were what they’d always been.

  Scavengers. Ready to strike whenever the kill looked easy.

  And the Meadow Valley pride was an easy target that day, outnumbered three to one.

  “Do you understand?” Ryker asked, forcing the shudder out of his words and calming his breathing, a semblance of control coming back to him. “Tell me you understand.”

  “I do,” Rio said finally, though the defiance in his face wasn’t gone.

  It would never change, Ryker knew that already then. Rio would go into every fight, chomping at the bit to wreak havoc in the most direct way, and Ryker would always be the one stitching the remains back together. But it was the two sides of the one whole that made an Alpha twin pair complete and as powerful as they were and Ryker would learn the hard way that sometimes, Alphas didn’t get to choose their own destinies.

  “We need to be quiet,” Ryker said, taking a step back and dropping his voice to a whisper.

  The screams were becoming fainter now, less intense. His juvenile mind was hard at work, tricking him into thinking that maybe, just maybe, all those sounds had not been the dying breaths of his friends and loved ones, his family both close and extended.

  Rio nodded and his gaze flicked up to the window just as Ryker’s did. They understood one another without a word once more, as they always had when emotions didn’t get in the way. Ryker walked to the shelves underneath the window, too high to reach easily and loaded heavily with jars and cans and various sundries. He dropped to one knee and offered Rio a boost, who took it and clung to one of the shelves above, hoisting himself up on the precarious ledge.

  A skinny hand reached down, the distraught eyes of his younger brother peeking down at him as Ryker took the extended hand and climbed up as well. They both took one side of the window, staying out of direct sight and pressing themselves against the cool stone wall as they looked outside, witnessing the destruction of everything they’d known and loved.

  It was the deafening roar of his dying father that struck Ryker maybe the hardest. He didn’t see the large lion fall, his mane so long that it almost touched the ground when he’d walk, but he could hear the pain and the anger in his father’s dying roar before the echo of it was the only thing that remained.

  In the courtyard, one by one, Ryker watched as his family was hunted down and slain by hyenas. Some in human form, most in lion, all of them fought to their last breath. The sand and gravel outside, glinting in the sunlight, was colored red from blood splatter and soon, little rivers would form that trickled along the low grooves made from footsteps.

  Each of the hyenas had black paint smattered over their faces and neck, tribal paintings made by crude hand. It made them look all the more demonic.

  Rio’s hand was clapped over his mouth and Ryker could see the tears coming endlessly from his eyes, but he wouldn’t look away. Neither of them would.

  I owe them this, he kept repeating in his head, feeling how his eyes were becoming dry and painful from willing them not to blink, because if he closed his eyes once, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever open them again. I have to see this.

  His younger sister, just a cub at five years of age, was dragged out by her long, gloriously golden hair by a skinny, wiry looking man with burn scars on his arms. He was laughing as Ryker’s mom was brought out after by two other men, held by her wrists and with a metal collar shoved around her neck.

  “We told you time and time again, lionbitch. You would leave or we would make you leave. Now it is time to pay the consequences of your insolence,” the man said, his voice almost sing-songy.

  “Don’t hurt her, Sawyer!” Ria screamed, her expression a mask of rage and horror at what she was witnessing.

  Rala, their younger sister, was crying, being held up by her long plaited hair, and the hyena shifter occasionally tugged on it painfully just to make her scream. Ryker’s hands balled into fists again and he almost stopped breathing, because the will to roar, to yell, to do something was so strong.

  “You should have thought of that before, my dear,” Sawyer said with a chuckle, as he produced a long, curved blade from his hip, jerked Rala’s head back and then slit her throat with one clean motion.

  “No!” Ria screamed as Ryker watched in soundless disbelief how the life flooded out of the eyes of his little sister and her body slumped easily, her sunflower-yellow dress marred with the thick stream of blood from her neck.

  The hyena shifter let her go and she dropped onto the sand, lifeless, her hazel eyes, matching Rio’s and Ryker’s, staring at Ryker glassily. Their mother let out a terrifying roar and her strong, battleworn body twisted as she lunged forward, letting the shift take her. It was then that the collar they’d snapped around her neck, with thick metal chains attached to it, revealed its purpose.

  Ria shifted, becoming the proud lioness she was inside and out, but the hyena shifters tugged her back violently, making her fall on her side before scrambling up again. It was just enough time for Sawyer to shift as well and let out a cackling, bone-chilling howl that sounded more like the laughter of a madman, calling others to his cause.

  Ria ripped herself free from her binds and dove for Sawyer, who danced past her on light feet, snarling. She roared but there was no one to come and join her anymore, the once proud lions of Meadow Valley all dead or dying of their wounds.

  Ryker heard Rio sobbing quietly next to him and he reached out a hand, taking one of his brother’s hands in his as they watched the inevitable unfold before them from the stark safety of the hidden cellar. Their mother charged and this time, her aim was too steady for the hyena. Her powerful jaws snapped around his face and neck and he gurgled out a scream before the rest of his pack was on Ria, hacking and slashing with their merciless teeth and claws.

  She fought back but there were too many of the hyenas and when Sawyer managed to get away from her, Ryker could see that he had lost his left ear and wore deep wounds on his neck and the left side of his face, flesh hanging from his cheek. Sawyer watched with a frenzied growl on his maw as Ria was brought down, the matriarch of the pride ripped to pieces by countless scavengers.

  She killed three before there was no strength left in her and the last thing Ryker knew she saw was her two twin boys, sitting in the cellar, watching her die. When the hyenas finally drew away from her dead body and that of Rala’s, the stream of their blood met and snaked across the sand before dripping as a narrow, steady stream into the cellar, right between the two boys who had watched their world come crumbling apart.

  It ran over their intertwined hands but they wouldn’t let go, both of the young lions watching until the bitter end. They watched until it was too dark outside to see anything but the twinkling stars above and the prone bodies of their family, the twins staying so still as if they’d died themselves on the sands that day.

  One

  Kayla

  “You fucking bitch!” one of the men roared, producing a fevered grin on Kayla Malone’s lips.

  “Your mother!” Kayla spat back, as undignified and incomprehensible in her word choice as she was in her current position.

  The man looked at her, his thick brows muddled together and forming more of a run over his eyebrows than anything else, before grabbing the table she was huddled under and flipping it over.

  “What did you say!?” he asked, his meaty hands balled into fists.

  “I said,” Kayla grunted, diving between his legs in the lowly lit bar that she found herself brawling in, kicking him in the nuts as she flipped over and ran her steel-tipped boot right into his privates. “Your mother!” she exclaimed victoriously, hopping up just as the guy tipped over onto the worn wooden floor.

&n
bsp; “You fucking bitch,” he wheezed, but Kayla didn’t have time to exchange any more pleasantries with him. When he whispered “Mommy,” under his breath though, Kayla couldn’t escape the little smug grin that twitched over her lips.

  Called it!

  It was obvious that the rest of the gang – yes, a motorcycle gang, with all of the leather and chains and the what-not that came with having small dicks and a penchant for chrome – had been casually observing this ridiculous fight and were now more than ready to join in. Apparently it only took one well-directed hit in a man’s genitalia to get his friends all riled up and ready to defend what was left of his honor.

  It was ridiculous, really. Kayla was 5’7’’ on a good day, curvy and with a sweet face befitting more of a kindergarten teacher – save for maybe the dot she still wore in her nose, a sign of crazier times way back when – than someone who snuck into a biker bar to steal classified information. She definitely didn’t look like someone who should be able to make a 6’2’’, two-hundred and fifty pound man called Bo topple to his knees and whine for his mother, but that was exactly what she was doing.

  So maybe the sweet face helped her get in the door a little.

  “Oh shit,” she mumbled under her breath, counting at least seven rather aggravated gentlemen with brass knuckles and knives, while all she had was some moxie on her side.

  So maybe I didn’t exactly think this through.

  Kayla patted the pocket on her jacket where she’d shoved the thumb drive in, assuring herself that it was still there, tucked away safely before she did anything else stupid. The bar was small and rundown, exactly the kind of place where she should never be at and yet she kept finding herself in over the last few years.

  “Come on, mutts. Is no one man enough to come fight a little girl?” she asked, taunting them while motioning for any of them to come closer.