ROMANCE: Mated To The Lion (Paranormal Lion Shapeshifter New Adult Contemporary Romance) (Shapeshifter Mystery Alpha Lion Romance)

Some of your favorite authors present 7 all-new stories told through the looking glass—including a new The Ghost novella!

*** Praise for MATED TO THE LION***
                 
"
The Author 
knows how to pull a reader into the minds of her well-crafted characters."
 
~Night Owls

"An absolute delight to read" ~Amazon Reviewer

"This writer never disappoints."
 
~Christine Arness

"The Author creates characters that seem to jump off the page."
 
~Amazon Reviewer

"With a captivating style, writes a compelling story..." ~Long and Short Reviews

"Amazingly good!"
 
~Romantic Times

MATED

TO

THE

LION

PoseidonPublishin
g
, California

An imprint of Joyce Random House LLC

373 Hudson Street

A POSEIDON Publishing Book / Published by arrangement with authors

Copyright 2016 by POSEIDON Publishing Random House LLC

POSEIDON Publishing supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing us to continue to publish books for every reader.

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Version_1

JR mass-market edition/2016

Cover Images: “Landscape” by Petra Rasmussen

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

Introduction

This collection includes over 6 best-seller Romance fiction novels from best seller authors. It’s been a long journey for us as a publisher to bring together the best authors in the industry to create the best collection currently available at Amazon. We have no doubt you will enjoy every single novel as much as we enjoyed the process of bringing this invaluable collection to life.

Table of Contents

ALIEN ROMANCE: CRUSHING ON THE ALIEN

MILITARY BILLIONAIRE: BACK FROM DEAD

MILITARY BILLIONAIRE: THE MATCHMAKER

MILITARY BILLIONAIRE: THE MERCHANT OF DEAD

GAY BILLIONAIRE ROMANCE: IN LOVE WITH A HACKER

SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: THE WRONG TURNSHIFTER

SHAPESHIFTER ROMANCE: THE WOLF AND HIS WITCH

Prologue

I’ve never been so scared in my life.

Sure, I’ve been through some frightening situations before. I was in a car wreck when I was in high school where the car actually rolled over four times and landed in a desolate desert ditch out in the middle of nowhere (Me and my friends were all incredibly luck, because where we crashed was literally the middle of nowhere. And while none of us were hurt except for a few bumps and bruises, we had a long walk back to civilization. Luckily a retired couple were camping in their travel trailer 800 yards from where we wrecked and called 911 when they saw us flip), I’ve been bullied by the biggest, meanest girl at my high school (Melanie Trapper, 6’2, 225 pounds of pissed off redneck, and for one reason or another she absolutely wanted to kick my ass the first quarter of my freshman year.  Once again, it was nothing but pure luck that she became distracted with tormenting one of her teachers and eventually got kicked out of school for beating her up). And, of course, I’ve gone through all the usual teenage girl scares like SAT’s, finals, the prom, etc. But I’ve never in a million years thought I would be actually in fear of my life, especially because I’m currently in the clutches of a monster.

Yeah, you heard me right, a monster.

Before you start in on me by telling me that things like monsters don’t exist, I’m hear to tell you that they do. By the way, so do aliens and flying saucers. So do multiverses and a whole bunch of other stuff that you’ve only read about in science fiction novels. I know because I’ve seen ALL of these things first hand, and couple of them up close and personal, including this 8 foot tall, fire breathing monster I’m currently hovering in front of like one of those junky remote control toy helicopters. The only difference between me and one of those things is that the monster is holding me in place with its mind and it about to turn me into atoms with its fiery breath.

What’s going to me even harder for you to believe is that this monster used to be my English teacher and that I was actually stupid enough to believe I could stop this creature single handedly and save planet Earth from complete destruction. Oh, and by the way, I’m doing this all because of a boy I’m crushing on … And the boy just so happens to be a nine-foot tall walking, talking stalagmite who can change himself into a human man.

No, you probably don’t believe any of this. But you know what, it doesn’t matter one bit what you think because you’re not the one who’s having to live through it. Or, you know, die. So just shut up and listen while I tell you how I ended up in this spot.

On February 9, 2015, the western half of the United States was treated to an intergalactic light show few human beings have ever witnessed. Astronomers the world over flocked to Southern California, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada for the unique chance to see the heavens rain down in a spectacular array of color that would last for as long as four hours. These traveling scientists were not disappointed. The meteor shower lasted an astonishing 6 hours and at its peak, the western sky was streaked with so many tails of brilliant light that the night seemed to turn to day before their eyes.

But what all of the scientific community missed was a single meteorite that trailed away from the massive shower and rocketed through Earth’s atmosphere, and finally came crashing to the ground 30 miles north of Phoenix, Arizona. The area where the meteorite landed had been decimated the previous summer by a massive wildfire which burned 15,000 acres of desert and dry brush. Normally the area would have been heavily occupied by hunters tracking both deer and elk, but the ghost of the fire had driven off humans and wildlife alike, so there was no one or nothing there to witness the meteorite strike the ground or what emerged from it.

If there was either man or beast in that lonely, blackened field, they most likely would have believed they were hallucinating, because the thing which emerged from the blast zone resembled a giant walking slab of rock more than it did a man, but yet moved on two legs. The thing stretched its long arms and legs and appeared to be sniffing at the air like a hunting dog would. It did this for five minutes until its massive head turned south, its blue gaze narrowing with something resembling contempt.

“It’s here,” It said with a voice like distant thunder, and it began walking.

                                                                                      #

When I was in high school, the one thing that kept me from going completely crazy was the thought that one day in the very near future, I wouldn’t be in high school anymore. I wouldn’t have to put up with all the shallow boys and their over-masculine preening. I wouldn’t have to put up with stuck up girls—most of whom I’d known since grade school, and at one time weren’t all that stuck up—who did nothing but obsess about make-up, expensive clothes, and their weight. I wouldn’t have to put up with all of their insecurities and the meanness those insecurities inspired.

Every morning in high school as I looked into the mirror either brushing my teeth or hair, I would say to myself: “Sara, one day soon, you won’t be in high school anymore. One day very soon, you’ll be in college, and none of this will matter. High school will be nothing but a distant memory and everything will be different.”

I gave myself this little speech every morning, and for the most part, it worked. Of course, I had no idea that college would be almost exactly the same as high school, but on steroids.

Okay, so it’s not exactly the same. I’m 100 miles away from home, living in the dorms of Arizona State University, so obviously mom and dad aren’t here—and yes, I love and miss them, but I’m glad they’re down in Tucson. Although dad keeps talking about buying a weekend house up here, which I hope to god doesn’t happen— and none of the crappy kids I went to high school with are here. But they’ve been replaced by kids who might as well be their clones. So now my new mantra is: “Sara, one day you won’t be in college. One day you’ll be in the real world working your dream job (Whatever that is? I imagine I’ll figure it out in the next couple of years.), and college will be nothing but a distant memory…”

Of course, with my luck, the real world will just be another long, exhausting facsimile of both high school and college, and then I’m probably going to have a real problem with coming up with a new mantra. Or it will be something like this: “Sara, one day you’ll be able to retire, and then you can go and live on a desert island out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean…”

So maybe it isn’t all as bad as that? I think it’s because I’m in an entirely new situation where I really don’t know anybody and I miss my friends. Both Tamara and Shelly had wanted to enroll at ASU, but their grades weren’t exactly stellar, plus their folks weren’t into the overall cost of them living in the dorms, so they’re making them go to community college until they get their grades up. We text all the time, but I still miss them. And I’ll admit it, I miss mom and dad. Yes, they can both be a bit overbearing and a little too overprotective, but they are great, and I miss talking to my dad when something’s bothering me. I didn’t think I would, but I do. I miss his goofy jokes and his arm around my shoulders, telling me that everything would be okay.

But maybe—just maybe—I’m being a bit overdramatic and I’m not giving college enough of a chance, but I feel just so invisible here. Not that I didn’t in high school, but at least in high school I was just a small fish in a small pond. But here, I’m a tiny fish in a massive ocean, and thankfully no one really notices me: Not predators, not bigger fish, not even other teeny-tiny fish like me, and I think that’s what bothers me more than anything else. Absolutely no one notices me, not the girls and not the boys. Especially not the boys.

And honestly, at this point in my life, I want the boys to notice me. I mean, I’m not a bad looking girl. I’m not one of these skinny waif girls who look like they would blow away if they ever got caught in a wind storm. My dad always described me as “Rubenesque”, which is kind of a polite way of saying that I’m fat. But I’m not fat, I’m curvy, kind of like Marylyn Monroe, but my boobs are much, much bigger. I worked my ass off over the summer and went to the gym every day, so I burned off most of what you would describe as my “baby fat”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll never be the societal definition of skinny, but my figure will turn the right heads if I just put myself out there.

And I think that’s my biggest problem at the moment, I’m just not putting myself out there. I’m waiting for people to introduce themselves to me. I waiting for all these other tiny little fish to ask me over to their dorm room for a beer. Instead, I should probably just “man-up” and introduce myself.

So, my new mantra is: “Hi, my name is Sara … “I might sound like an idiot at first, but I’ve got to try something.