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  TAMED FOR THE LION

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

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  BY ANNABELLE WINTERS

  THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (USA)

  Curves for the Sheikh

  Flames for the Sheikh

  Hostage for the Sheikh

  Single for the Sheikh

  Stockings for the Sheikh

  Untouched for the Sheikh

  Surrogate for the Sheikh

  Stars for the Sheikh

  Shelter for the Sheikh

  Shared for the Sheikh

  Assassin for the Sheikh

  Privilege for the Sheikh

  Ransomed for the Sheikh

  Uncorked for the Sheikh

  Haunted for the Sheikh

  Grateful for the Sheikh

  Mistletoe for the Sheikh

  Fake for the Sheikh

  THE CURVES FOR SHIFTERS SERIES (USA)

  Curves for the Dragon

  Born for the Bear

  Witch for the Wolf

  Tamed for the Lion

  Taken for the Tiger

  THE CURVES FOR SHEIKHS SERIES (UK)

  Curves for the Sheikh (UK)

  Flames for the Sheikh (UK)

  Hostage for the Sheikh (UK)

  Single for the Sheikh (UK)

  Stockings for the Sheikh (UK)

  Untouched for the Sheikh (UK)

  Surrogate for the Sheikh (UK)

  Stars for the Sheikh (UK)

  Shelter for the Sheikh (UK)

  Shared for the Sheikh (UK)

  Assassin for the Sheikh (UK)

  Privilege for the Sheikh (UK)

  Ransomed for the Sheikh (UK)

  Uncorked for the Sheikh (UK)

  Haunted for the Sheikh (UK)

  Grateful for the Sheikh (UK)

  Mistletoe for the Sheikh (UK)

  Fake for the Sheikh (UK)

  THE CURVES FOR SHIFTERS SERIES (UK)

  Curves for the Dragon

  Born for the Bear

  Witch for the Wolf

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  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  Copyright © 2019 by Annabelle Winters

  All Rights Reserved by Author

  www.annabellewinters.com

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  Cover Design by S. Lee

  TAMED FOR THE LION

  ANNABELLE WINTERS

  PROLOGUE

  ADAM’S LAIR

  THE CASPIAN SEA

  “Finding Darius the Lion isn’t gonna be that hard,” said Caleb the Wolf, staring at the massive computer screen projected up on the wall of Adam’s study in the bowels of the white castle. “There aren’t that many circuses these days—especially circuses with performing animals.”

  “There shouldn’t be any circuses with animals in them,” said Bis the Leopard Shifter. She folded her arms beneath her breasts as her mate Bart the Bear glanced down shamelessly at her chest and grinned. “We aren’t performing monkeys, you know.”

  “That’s disrespectful to monkeys, babe,” said Bart the Bear, his grin widening as he casually placed his big paw on Bis’s large ass.

  “Stop monkeying around, you two,” scolded Ash, Bart’s younger sister, a bear Shifter herself. “Caleb’s right. We haven’t thought this through. If we want to help Shifters get together with their mates, we need to figure out how to find both mates.”

  “Sounds like that’s a problem for the girls in this crew,” said Bart with a grunt. “We find the guy. You chicks find the girl.”

  Adam the Alpha Dragon smiled at the smug, overgrown bear. “I should remind you that you haven’t done shit yet besides defend the rights of monkeys to not be insulted. What is it with you and the great apes, anyway? All that time in the South American rainforest hanging with the monkeys, I suppose. Did you tell them you were an ape like them? Or did they just assume you were because of the funny faces you make when you break things?”

  “Can we show some respect for our ape brethren, please?” said Bart, placing his sledgehammer-sized fists on his hips and sticking out his chest. He glanced at Caleb. “I’m pretty sure there were a couple of silverback gorilla Shifters in Murad’s army. Those apes don’t monkey around.”

  “Here we go,” said Caleb, his voice low, a seriousness breaking through the playful atmosphere in the room. He leaned back on his chair as he zoomed in on an image from the Internet. “Here he is. Darius the Lion Shifter. Anyone feel like this is still a joke?”

  The room went silent as all six Shifters stared up at the screen. On it was a bare-chested man with a thick mane of deep-gold hair, sand-colored eyes that were looking directly into the camera, thick red lips twisted into a casual sneer of pure superiority. His arms were stretched out wide, his massive, tanned pectorals looking like slabs of bronze armor, the contours of his ab muscles casting shadows on his body. In his right hand was a whip made of old leather, its ends frayed and battered like it had been used to its full capabilities.

  “When was this taken?” said Magda the Witch, a fox Shifter who was Caleb’s fated mate—and the mother of seven pups. She narrowed her eyes as she went close to the screen. “And where?”

  Caleb zoomed in on the image’s caption. “Three days ago. Istanbul, Turkey. But the circus has moved on. They’re probably on the road now. The next stop is Morocco.”

  “Northern Africa?” said Adam with a frown. He leaned over Caleb’s shoulder and punched a few keys, bringing up the circus’s schedule. “That’s interesting. They’ve got a lot of dates scheduled all over Africa. Very puzzling.”

  “Why is it puzzling? Don’t Africans like circuses?” said Ash.

  Adam smiled at his mate, but his expression betrayed his racing mind. “I’m sure they like circuses just fine. But so do the Europeans, who have much more money to spend. Why would the circus travel all the way from Turkey down to Africa without making some money in Europe along the way? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Unless Darius is running the show now,” said Caleb softly, flipping back to a picture of the lion shifter with his circus animals. It was a magnificent photograph, in vivid color, with Darius bare-chested in the center of the ring, surrounded by fourteen massive lions, all of them staring at him with their gold eyes like they were in a trance. He was clearly in control of those animals, and Caleb grunted as he leaned back in his chair. “Lions aren’t like dragons. They don’t care about money so much. What they crave is . . . power. Power, dominion, ownership and obedience,” he said slowly, rubbing his buzzed head and grunting again. “It just occurred to me: Almost all the world’s lion population is found in the jungles of Africa, isn’t that right?”

  Bis the Leopard nodded. “Tigers are found in Asia. Lions in Africa. There are some lions in India, but you’re right—most of the world’s lions are in the African continent. What of it?”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said. “But there’s a connection. Darius is planning something. And if he’s still under Murad’s control, it’s probably not good.”

  Bart stepped forward, his meaty paw slamming against the keyboard and making the screen go blank. “Here’s a suggestion, boys. Instead of sitting here drinking tea and staring at a half-naked dude on a computer screen
, how about we just get our asses to Africa and straight-up ask this big pussycat what he’s got planned! Any of you geniuses thought of that?”

  Caleb grinned as he looked up at Bart the Bear. “Have you ever tried to interrogate a Lion Shifter, Butterball?”

  “Well, no,” said Bart with a shrug. “But how hard can it be? I hold him upside down by his ankles, and you punch him in the face until he tells us everything!”

  Everyone laughed except Magda the Witch, who had stepped back from the group and was muttering something under her breath. Suddenly her face went blank, a thick vein on her forehead pulsing as her eyes rolled up in her head.

  “Magda!” Caleb said, leaping up from his chair and rushing over to his mate. “What’s happening? What do you see?”

  Magda let out a slow, trembling breath, her eyelids fluttering as she muttered those silent words under her breath. Finally she blinked herself back to reality, glancing around the room like she’d lost track of where she was.

  “Two women,” she said, her lips tightening into a strange smile as if she was only just realizing what she’d seen. “I saw them like they were in the room. Two women. Two Shifters. One of them is Darius’s mate. I can sense it.”

  “Give us more!” Ash said excitedly, stepping forward but keeping her distance from the witch, who’d been learning to balance her natural magic with dark magic that came through her sly, trickster fox. “Names. Descriptions. Locations. Anything we can use to track them down!”

  Magda was silent, her eyes still rolled up in her head like she was having a mild seizure. She raised her hand as if to say, “Hold on. I’m trying!” and finally Bis spoke up, her voice soft but firm.

  “If Darius does have a fated mate, then the universe will bring them together,” said Bis, reaching for Bart’s big arm. “That’s what happened with all of us, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Caleb, still staring at his mate Magda with some concern. “But we don’t know what Darius’s state of mind is right now. We don’t know what his animal’s state of mind is. Darius the Lion, Everett the Tiger . . . they were both under Murad’s control, under the control of the Black Dragon, under the control of the Darkness that lives in every Shifter’s animal. Their mission is to kill Shifters, not mate with them.”

  “Caleb’s right,” said Ash. “We might have to help the universe on this one. Fate is going to have to operate through us. We can’t just sit back and wait.”

  Suddenly Magda was back, her curvy natural body hunching over as she took a heaving breath like she’d been holding it all this while. Caleb grabbed on to her as she staggered from the effort of trying to probe her vision for more details, and when she regained her senses, she looked around the room and sighed.

  “No, we can’t just wait,” she said. She looked into the eyes of each of the other two women in the room. “It was different for us. For all three of us women, our animals were dormant, buried, in hiding. Once they woke up—once we woke up—the universe guided us to our mates. But for these two women it’s different.”

  “Different from us? How?” said Bis.

  “Different in that their animals are alive and awake,” said Magda, a tight smile emerging on her face. “These women already know that they’re Shifters!”

  “So shouldn’t their animals be feeling drawn to their fated mates, pulled towards their destiny, just like we were?” said Ash.

  “You would think. But it’s not happening with these women. There’s something stopping them from following their paths,” said Magda, her smile turning to a frown. “I sensed a deep bond between the two of them—a bond built on heartache, pain, upheaval. These are strong, determined, powerful women who at some point decided they didn’t need a man, didn’t need a mate, were just fine on their own.”

  Adam frowned as he slowly paced the room. “So these women know each other?”

  “Yes,” said Magda. “They’re family. Sisters.”

  “And you know how to find them?” said Adam.

  “I think so. Yes,” said Magda.

  “Great,” said Bart, grinning as he glanced at Adam. “When do we leave?”

  Magda shook her head. “It’s not that simple. We can’t just show up on their doorstep and tell them hey, one of you is Darius’s mate. We have to let nature take its course. Put them in the same room as Darius somehow. Let their animals feel that primal pull towards each other. Throwing ourselves into the mix too early might just create chaos. Darius’s Lion might try to kill us if we’re in the area.”

  “Well, it might try to kill those two women too,” said Bart, his square jaw tightening. “Putting them in the room with a Lion Shifter is like leading lambs to the slaughter.”

  “Except they aren’t lambs,” said Magda quietly, her eyes shining dark for a moment as if she was revisiting the image of the two sisters. “They’re bobcats. Strong, stubborn, and relentless. Viciously protective of each other. Together they can hold their own against any Shifter.”

  Ash took a slow breath as she began to pace the room, her bare feet making no sound on the white stone floors. “But if these sisters are so close, connecting one of them with her mate might bring on another kind of resistance, another kind of chaos.”

  “Not if we manage to connect both of them with their mates,” said Magda, glancing up at Caleb the Wolf. “There were two big cats in Murad’s army, weren’t there?”

  Caleb nodded, his deep blue eyes narrowing. “Darius the Lion. Everett the Tiger. You think . . .”

  “Yes, I do think that,” said Magda, finally relaxing into a smile. “We start with the lion, and the Tiger will drop into place.”

  “A lion and a tiger,” said Bis with a smile. “Mated with two bobcat sisters. Sounds like we’ve got a big-cat duet in the works, gang!”

  “Meeee-owww!” roared Bart the Bear in the highest pitch he could muster. Everyone laughed as the tension was broken momentarily. But the moment didn’t last, because the big screen flickered back to life, that image of Darius surrounded by fourteen lions casting the dark room in a golden glow.

  “So how do we do this?” said Bis softly, blinking at the screen and then looking away. “How do we get the bobcat sisters in the same room as Darius the Lion without things getting out of hand? After all, the Black Dragon’s army has been tasked with killing Shifters, right?”

  “Well,” said Caleb, rubbing his tight jaw as he glanced at Magda. “Big cats hunt differently from wolves or bears. They don’t just barrel straight ahead, jaws open, teeth bared. They track their prey for days. Toy with them. They wait for the right moment before striking. So if their first meeting is in a crowded room, chances are Darius isn’t going to Change into his Lion and just go for the throat. He’ll catch their scent, pick up the scent of his mate, and then—”

  “And then the game of cat and mouse begins!” said Bis, rubbing her hands together and smiling wide, her brown face beaming with excitement. “Oh, this is so much fun! So what’s the plan?”

  “Just get them tickets to the circus,” said Bart with a grunt. “The circus tent counts as a crowded room, right? Boom. Done. Matchmaking accomplished!”

  “Yes!” Bis shrieked, clapping her hands once and jumping up and down, her breasts and butt bouncing as her mate glanced at her with a hungry, naughty look in his eyes. “Mamma Mia! We’ll Mamma Mia them!”

  “What?” said Adam, frowning as he looked at Bis and then over at Ash, his mate. “What does that mean?”

  “Mamma Mia,” said Ash, her face lighting up with the same excitement. “The musical, silly! We send the bobcat sisters an all-inclusive trip to Morocco to see the circus! Tell them they won a contest or something!”

  “All inclusive?” said Adam, his face darkening as his dragon tightened up inside. “You mean plane tickets, hotel rooms, VIP seats? Who the hell is going to pay for all of that!”

  “I am!” shouted Bart,
and in an instant he’d Changed into bear form and crashed out of the room, thundering down the stairs to the hidden underground levels of the castle.

  “My vaults!” Adam roared, racing after the bear, and once again almost getting trampled as Bart came bounding back up the stairs, his paws overflowing with bundles of hundred-dollar bills. “My money!”

  “Simmer down, you miserly piece of birdmeat,” growled Bart, holding the money in a bear-hug so tight that Adam the man couldn’t even pull a single bundle away from him. “This is for a good cause.”

  Wisps of smoke rose up from Adam’s nostrils and ears, but finally he calmed down and brought his dragon’s hoarding instincts under control. Slowly a smile emerged on his tanned face, and he stepped back and slid his arms around his mate Ash.

  “You’re going to pay for suggesting this idea,” he whispered to Ash, his hand patting her round butt as she turned red in the face.

  Everyone laughed as Ash turned a brighter hue of red, burying her face in her hands as her mate lightly spanked her bottom once more. Then Bart Changed back to the man and glanced at his own mate, winking at her. “Speaking of ass,” he said, his hungry gaze taking in Bis’s strong curves. “Shall we . . .”

  “We were not speaking of ass!” shrieked a mortified Bismeeta, her brown eyes going wide as Bart turned to her and began to take big, lumbering steps in her direction. “Ohmygod, do you ever think about anything else?”

  Caleb cleared his throat, his own gaze resting briefly on Magda’s natural hourglass shape before he smiled and blinked. “I think my boneheaded bear-friend is talking about the SSA—the Shifting Sands Agency. ASS in reverse.”

  “ASS backwards,” said Bart, nodding very seriously. “See, honey? I’m talking business, not pleasure.” He frowned and looked down at himself. “But speaking of boners . . .”

  “OK, enough!” said Adam the Alpha, doing his best to keep a straight face. “I think we have a plan. And yes, I’ll pay for the damned circus tickets. Now fade to black, please. Our role in this story is done for now.”