Gladiator bear, p.20
Gladiator Bear, page 20
part #1 of Gladiator Shifters Series
She paused for the laugh that rippled through the hall, then went on, smiling. "I have it on pretty good authority that I'm a fairly extraordinary person, but the life I'm sharing with you, Garius, is more extraordinary than I am by far. I genuinely have no idea what it will bring, from day to day. I have some pretty specific hopes for the year to years, though. I want to make the world a better place with you, Garius. I want to build a future that neither of us expected. I want to help our friends in whatever craziness they face. I want all of that, and I want it with you, so I promise to be there. Through the ups and downs, through the fights and the make-ups, through everything, I'll be there. And you already know you're lost without me, so don't argue about it, you hear?"
Garius laughed and almost kissed her right then and there, but Joash actually kicked him. Emotionally injured, Garius pouted at the tiger shifter, then turned his attention back to Anna, who was all that mattered. Joash said, "Garius Patrick Beren, do you have your vows?" but Garius was already speaking over him.
"I do know I'm lost without you. I know you're not just the better part of me. You're the part that makes me whole. And I know I lost a bet the night I met you. Joash bet I'd find the love of my life, that evening, and he was right. I've never been so glad to be wrong. I've already learned that I'm not at my best without you, so, Anna, I promise to stick with you through thick and through thin, through richer and—"
"And much, much richer," Anna said dryly, and not only Garius, but everyone else, laughed. Joash, to be fair, kicked her shin, too, and she said, "Hey!" before turning her laughing smile back up at Garius. "Sorry. You were saying?"
"That I love you," Garius said simply. "That I have since the moment I saw you, and that I always will. That's really my promise, Anna. I'm always going to be here for you, and I'm always going to love you."
"Do you have the rings?" Joash intoned. Aeo stepped up to offer Garius the boxes, and he opened them to show off rings that matched Anna's belt.
"With this ring," he murmured, sliding her ring on her finger.
"I thee wed," she whispered back, putting his ring on him.
"By the power vested in me by Juno, goddess of marriage and love, by Minerva, lady of wisdom, and by Fides, queen of faith and trust, I declare these two people married by the oldest and most sacred covenants of our kind," Joash murmured. "May love and laughter light your way for all your days. May your friends bring you joy, may your lives be long, and may blessings be heaped upon you, in the shadow of the arena." He took a breath, and, in a more conventional tone, said, "You may kiss the groom."
Anna shrieked in surprised pleasure. "Me? I get to?" She threw herself into Garius's arms to kiss him. He caught her, laughing, and spun her around as their lips met in a kiss that promised forever. Cheers rose up around them, their friends crowding close for hugs and congratulations, and Garius's bear rumbling so happily he couldn't help making near-purring sounds aloud himself. After a few minutes they were pulled apart by friends who wanted to dance.
They parted and came back together again and again over the course of the evening, so it was only much, much later that Garius discovered, to his delight, that Anna was wearing stockings under that wonderful dress.
~the end~
(or is it? Click here for a glimpse at Garius and Anna's future!)
and then please turn the page for an excerpt from Gladiator Cheetah!
EXCERPT: GLADIATOR CHEETAH
Shannon Kavanaugh's hip hurt, and probably always would.
That's what the doctors had told her, anyway, along with the news that she'd never be able to compete at international levels again. The bone had shattered when she fell. They'd pinned it all back together, but the strain of competition, the cold setting into the pins, yadda yadda yadda. That's what Shannon had been hearing, by the end. Yadda yadda yadda.
For one thing, she didn't completely believe them. She was young—they kept mentioning that—and the young healed well. Twenty-eight didn't heal as well as fourteen, maybe, but it healed well, and biathlons—skiing and shooting—weren't in themselves high-impact events, although the training for them sure was. And it still hurt, even though most of the healing was done, so she was willing to accept she shouldn't go out in the cold and the snow and strain the bone and muscle again for a while.
Which was why she'd answered the ad a friend had forwarded to her, from an animal reserve in South Africa. They were looking for people passionate enough to help guard the animals against poachers in hundred-degree-plus weather for what amounted to the emotional satisfaction of the job, since the pay was terrible.
Shannon had actually heard herself say, "What the hell," out loud as she sent in her application. She glanced at her phone now, reading what she'd written: 28 years old. Olympic-class biathlete with a hip injury. Better with snow than heat, honestly, but hell on wheels with a gun. Happy to plant a dart in a poacher's ass. Call me! XoX
In retrospect, responding to want ads while hopped up on painkillers maybe wasn't the best choice she'd ever made.
On the other hand…they'd said yes. They'd paid for the work visa. They'd paid for a business class plane ticket from New York to Johannesburg, in consideration of her injured hip. They'd even paid for the car service that brought her from O.R. Tambo International Airport to the little, out-of-the-way airport that served smaller communities and independent pilots.
And now she was on a tiny twin-propeller airplane with a grand total of five passenger seats, if you included the co-pilot's seat. Which Shannon did, because she was sitting in it. She was pretty sure the plane was older than she was, and hoped like hell the pilot didn't have a heart attack, because while she understood flying wasn't hard, landings were supposedly pretty tricky.
But man, she couldn't fault the view.
Low, scrubby forests and veldt spread out beneath her feet, dotted by lake-sized puddles that had clearly shrunk from their winter spread. The earth had a damp look to it, and she'd read that in this part of South Africa, nearish to the eastern border, it could rain torrentially in the summer. Which it was, even though she was coming from Colorado's 15°F winter. She'd spent her whole life in the northern hemisphere, and could hardly wrap her head around the idea that January was somebody's summer, even though intellectually she'd known it since she was about six. She still kept thinking it had to be winter, which made it even more confusing that the land below her was greener than Shannon had imagined.
Not, honestly, that she'd known what to imagine. She'd spent hours on the internet, trying to set her expectations, but nothing came anywhere near close to sitting in the bubble of a prop plane, skimming above the landscape. They were so close to the ground that she could see a herd of animals she randomly decided were wildebeests, although honestly she didn't know if they even lived in South Africa. At times she felt like she could lean out and touch the tops of low scrubby trees. The airplane wasn't even pressurized, that's how low they flew.
Shannon kept wanting to ask questions, but the engine and propellers were so loud that she would have to shout to be heard, so she ended up giving the pilot a lot of wild grins that he answered in kind. He finally shouted, "Just another minute now!" and banked sharply enough that she swallowed a shriek and felt the weight of the turn in her left hip.
What could be called an airport runway, if she was generous with the definition, opened up in front of them. It was different from a road in the sense that it was wider and a single lane through the low scrub, although an awful lot of the roads looked like that, too. Most of them, though, only had two wheel ruts, and this one had three. The little airplane zipped down into them like it had dug them itself, which, Shannon supposed, it probably had.
An open-topped Jeep came rushing toward them in a cloud of dust. Plane and vehicle—not that a plane wasn't a vehicle—stopped almost nose to nose, and a lanky man in a broad-brimmed hat swung out of the Jeep, shouting in a language Shannon didn't understand. She put 'learn the local language' high on her list of things to do while working for the reserve, and figured out how to open the door next to her so she could step out of the plane.
The man in the hat banged the nose of the plane a couple of times as he approached on the pilot's side. Shannon swore she wouldn't have been surprised if the pilot had rolled the window down, but he opened his door the same way Shannon had opened hers, and had a rapid-fire discussion with the man in the hat while Shannon dragged her duffel bag from behind her seat.
The movement caught the hat-man's attention and he looked straight at her, giving her a clear view of his face for the first time. A rush of relief sang through her. "Aeolis Savio?"
"Shannon Kavanaugh," he said with a smile. He'd been handsome in his photograph, but in real life his smile was devastating, and freckles that hadn't been visible in the photo stood out on his brown cheeks. His eyes were such a light brown they looked gold, even in the shadow of his hat, and he was taller than she'd imagined, with a runner's build that looked like it could go for miles. In any situation.
Shannon decided she would blame the sudden flush of heat that ran through her on the broiling afternoon sun. Aeolis wore his shirt open a couple of buttons, and rolled-up sleeves showed off strong forearms as he ducked under the airplane's nose to offer her his hand. "Good to meet you." His voice was wonderful, accented with notes she wasn't familiar with, and his grip was warm, strong, and confident. Shannon had a sharp, unreasonable wish that he'd been there to catch her when she fell. She felt like she wouldn't have fallen, if he'd been there to catch her. Which was ridiculous.
The feeling that she was absolutely safe with him still overwhelmed her, and she totally failed to hear him ask something as he looked at her duffel bag, then deeper into the plane. His accent was beautiful, though, at least to her American ears, and she wondered what language he'd spoken with the pilot. "I'm sorry, what?"
"Is that everything? I was just asking Melokuhle if he'd bring your stuff up to the site, but if that's all you've got, we can throw it into the back of the Jeep. I'm sorry. There's an emergency a few miles out." His accent was light, different from British English in subtle ways that she supposed must mark him as South African, to people who knew more about accents than she did.
Except since she was in South Africa, that meant she was the one with the accent. She would have to get used to that. "Oh. Oh! Oh no. I mean, yes, this is everything." Shannon strengthened her grip on the duffel as Aeolis made to take it from her. "No, I've got it, let's go, I don't want to slow you down."
His smile shone again. "Great. Thanks, Melokuhle. Will we see you at camp or are you heading out again?"
"No rest for the wicked," the pilot said, and waved them off.
Aeolis ducked back under the plane's nose, heading for the Jeep's driver's seat, and Shannon, heading for an American-side passenger seat, followed. His shirt was untucked and the tail fell past his hips, but not so far that she couldn't appreciate the way his light-colored woven trousers fit. "That," she said under her breath, "is South Africa's ass."
He glanced over his shoulder at her so sharply she was sure he'd heard her. She blushed violently, and he grinned. "Happens all the time. Americans always head for the wrong side of the car. You're over on that side." He pointed to the left-hand side of the Jeep, and Shannon, so hot she was sure she would combust, crawled into it.
Never. Ever. Ever. In her whole life. Had she ever gone straight from hello to carnal lust. Not like this, certainly, and definitely not since she'd broken her hip. She'd had a few high-octane affairs during college and training, but they'd come out of friendships, not out of the clear blue sky, and they'd been short-lived, because she was, in the end, more interested in her goals than in finding love.
"Here," Aeolis said easily. "You're going to need this, and enough sun screen to drown in." He offered her a hat like his own. She jammed it on her head as he started the Jeep, and twisted in her seat to dig her UV50 sunblock from the top of her duffel bag. Aeolis's light gaze followed her in the mirror and he smiled. "Had it handy, that's good."
"I probably should have had it on. I didn't know the plane would be so…window-y. And I have the rare skill of being able to sunburn through windows." This, to Shannon's dismay, was completely true. "I do tan, if you compare, like, my arms, after I've spent a summer outside, to some part of me that's been covered up. They're definitely a slightly different color. Reddish-brown. Or brownish-red, maybe. Mostly red, anyway, but different from fish-belly-white, which is what I usually am. I'll show you sometime." Her eyes bulged and she set about applying sunblock with more vigor than necessary, as she wasn't really in the habit of offering to display body parts that didn't see the sun often to strangers.
Aeolis Savio's grin, which was wonderful and wide to begin with, got bigger and broader. "Thank you for the offer, but I think maybe I should chalk it up to jet lag."
Shannon squeaked, "That would be very thoughtful of you. Maybe we can revisit it later." She had no idea why she'd said that. Jet lag, probably. Maybe.
Either way, Aeolis laughed. "So you weren't kidding about being better with snow than heat."
"And you hired me anyway," she said, relieved for anything vaguely resembling a change in topic.
"With your resume? I'd have hired an ice cream truck to drive you around in if necessary."
"Can we do that?" Shannon's voice rose hopefully, but before he could answer, a herd of elephants walked out onto the road, stopped, and stared curiously at their Jeep. Shannon's jaw dropped and she made a breathless sound of amazement, the sunscreen forgotten in her hands.
"Ah no no no no no no no!" Aeolis thumped the steering wheel—not, Shannon noticed, the horn, just the steering wheel—and stood in his seat to stick his head out the top of the Jeep. "Go on! Come on, I've got to—please! I need to get past!"
"Elephants." Shannon squeaked again. "That's a…herd of elephants." She'd seen them in zoos and even ridden one in a circus, back when she'd been very small and that was still a thing. But that was nothing like just driving up to a herd of them out wandering around like it was their territory. Which, of course, it was. But it wasn't the same at all, and they were far, far bigger than Shannon remembered them.
All except three who weren't even as big as the Jeep, and who were peering with interest toward them. One hid between its mother's legs, and another, braver, came several steps toward them. Shannon fumbled for her phone so she could take pictures, and got sun screen all over it as she got it out. Definitely worth it.
"Yes," Aeolis said in frustration. "And they're very nice, and they're not usually bothered by humans, but the babies want to look, so the whole herd will wait, and…I need to get past!" he called again, as if he genuinely expected the elephants to listen.
One of them sat down. Aeolis groaned. Shannon stood up, holding her hat in place as wind gusted past them, and took a picture. Two pictures. First one of the elephants, and then, like a proper tourist, turned, put the phone on selfie mode, and got a picture of herself in front of the curious herd.
Aeolis gave her a brief, rueful smile. "Sometimes I can forget how wonderful it is. I'm glad you're here to remind me." His smile faded, though. "I really do need to get past them, and they could stay all day."
"What's the emergency?"
"There's a mother cheetah about a mile farther out who's about to give birth. She'll be fine, but a pack of hyenas has been lurking around and I want to scare them off so they don't have a chance at the cubs."
"Oh." Shannon caught her breath. "Oh, okay. Okay, how do we deal with this?"
"Can you drive a stick?"
An absolutely, positively crude response sprang to Shannon's lips and she coughed it down with another blush. The question had been on the application form, so technically she imagined he knew the answer, but she responded with, "I haven't since I broke my hip, but as long as the clutch isn't too stiff, I should be fine," anyway.
"Okay. All right. And, ah, how are you at accepting the impossible and getting on with things?"
"Um." Shannon blinked at the earnest frown on Aeolis's face. "I don't know? I guess if it'll help save some cheetah cubs, I'm pretty good at it?"
"Okay. Good, because I'm going to need you to be. As soon as the herd clears, I'll need you to follow my tracks. I have to go ahead, or I'm not going to get there in time to protect the cubs."
"Right. Okay. I can do that." Shannon smiled hopefully, and Aeolis Savio climbed out of the Jeep, turned into a cheetah, and bolted away across the veldt.
Gladiator Cheetah is available now!
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writing paranormal romance as Murphy Lawless
The Gladiator Shifters
Gladiator Bear * Gladiator Cheetah * Gladiator Hawk * Gladiator Wolf * Gladiator Tiger
The Alaskan Totem Shifters
Raven Heart * Polar Heart
The Renaissance Shifters
OctoBEARfest * Partridge in a Bear Tree * Renaissance Bear (pre-order)
writing (more) paranormal romance as Zoe Chant
The Virtue Shifters
Timber Wolf * Librarian Bear * Sealed With A Kiss * Hold My Bear * A Christmas Like No Otter * Wear Wolf * A Very Meowy Christmas * Somebunny to Love * Buck the Halls * Koalafied For Love
Shamrock Safari Shifters
Lion on Loan * Peacock on Parade * Gorilla in the Groove (pre-order)
Writing (mostly fantasy) as C.E. Murphy
Stand-Alones
Redeemer
Through the Fire
Practical Boots
Stone's Throe
Magic & Manners
Bewitching Benedict
What Measure Ye Mete
