The Lion King's Reluctant Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Sun Stone

In front of the pride at the border stone, Jory asks what he is actually being asked, sets three rules for the lion, and comes home to find a ragged cub asleep on the king's meat.

Fifty lions had come to watch him say no.

They stood in the gold grass around the Sun Stone, men and women and a few children on shoulders.

Not one of them was talking.

The stone was taller than two men, flat on the face, and the last light had turned it the color of copper.

At its foot was a small hollow worn into the rock, empty, about the size of a cupped hand.

Lucan stood beside it with one palm on the stone.

Jory walked up the slope alone with his hands where everyone could see them.

He had come because he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

He had also come because a man who did not turn up to a thing like this would be hunted down for it.

The tall woman with the tawny braid stepped out of the crowd and stopped him with a hand on his chest.

"I'm Sabra," she said. "I hunt for him. Listen carefully, wolf, because he won't."

"All right."

"The king asks once, here, in front of everyone. You say yes or you say no. Either way nobody touches you."

"Then I say no," Jory said.

The crowd made a noise.

Lucan's hand tightened on the stone, and his stare settled on Jory and stayed.

"Say it to me," Lucan said.

"I'd like to know what I'm saying no to first."

Nobody moved.

Sabra turned her head very slowly and looked at the king.

Lucan's voice went flat and cold. "You are mocking me."

"I'm not."

"You know what you came here to say."

"I don't," Jory said.

"I took a hit in the challenge. I woke up in that cave three weeks ago."

He shrugged. "Most of what came before is gone."

It was the only lie he had that was close enough to the truth to hold.

A murmur went through the pride, and it was not hostile.

"The wolf has forgotten the Forty," Sabra murmured.

"The what?"

"Sit down," Lucan said roughly, and then, because Jory did not, "Please."

Jory sat on the grass.

Lucan did not sit.

He stood over him and said it in a low voice.

"When a lion answers a wolf, he lays a fresh kill at the wolf's door for forty nights. He does not miss one."

"Thirty-nine," Jory said.

"On the fortieth, the wolf eats in front of him. That is yes. Then he is mine and I am his."

"Yours how?"

Sabra said, very gently, "Mates, wolf."

Jory stared at her.

He thought about thirty-nine nights, and the hunters sitting on the slope, and the king's nose against his throat.

Then he put his face in his hands and started to laugh.

It came out of him helplessly, from somewhere that had been shut for years.

He had been courted by a lion king for a month, and the only thing he'd done about it was eat dinner.

"I'm sorry," he said, wheezing. "I'm sorry. I thought you were fattening me for winter."

Somebody in the crowd snorted.

Somebody else made a strangled noise and got an elbow in the ribs.

Lucan's ears had gone red under his hair.

Jory wiped his eyes and got to his feet.

He was still grinning, and he found he did not want to stop.

"I'm not saying no," he said. "And I'm not saying yes."

"I don't know you," he went on. "I know you leave good meat and you don't knock."

"You want time," Lucan said.

"I want rules."

"Rules," Lucan repeated.

"One, you scratch the doorpost before you come in," Jory said.

"Two, you don't touch me unless I say so."

"Three, the kills go on the flat rock outside, not on my bed."

The pride went silent.

Sabra said quietly, "The Forty cannot be stretched, wolf. It has never been stretched. Not once."

"Then it'll be a first," Jory said.

Lucan looked at the hollow in the stone for a long moment.

His face did something Jory could not read, a flinch that was gone as quick as it came.

When he looked back, he had himself in hand again.

"I will scratch the post," he said. "I will keep my hands to myself. I will lay the kills on your rock."

"Thank you."

"I will wait," Lucan said, "until you know what you are saying yes to."

A woman near the front sat down hard in the grass.

Sabra put two fingers to the bridge of her nose.

Jory nodded to the king, because it seemed the thing to do.

Then he walked back down the slope with fifty lions watching him leave.

He was still half laughing when he reached the cave.

Then he stopped at the mouth, because the fire pit was warm.

He had left it cold.

Inside, on his bed, a small boy was asleep with his knees tucked up and a fistful of Jory's smoked jerky in each hand.

The boy was all ribs.

His left ear had a piece cut out of it, and the cut was new.

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