Taken by the Lion Shifters

Chapter 2

2Soren heard the chirp of a notification on his phone and half-smiled to himself. The particular noise was one he knew well; he hears it a few times a day, ever since he had signed up as a paid subscriber for a matchmaking site. Soren slipped his phone out of his pocket, sat back in his chair and opened up the notification.

He was still somewhat amused at the fact that, in spite of being incredibly wealthy (he was relatively well-to-do as a music producer) but far from the top 10% of the sites paid users, he seemed to be generating a great deal of interest from the site’s creators. He had rejected more profiles than he had expressed an interest in, mainly because he was looking for a very specific type of woman.

Soren’s need was desperate. He chewed his bottom lip in thought as the new profile loaded. For him, it wasn’t a matter of finding a companion for business dinners, or even a convenient wife to show around the country club. He took a deep breath and exhaled, suppressing his impatience as the text populated. If he didn’t find someone soon, there would be a great deal of trouble for him and for the people who depended on him. Earlier in the day, one of the women who owed him allegiance had come to his office.

Anna had sat down carefully, assuming a properly humbled demeanor. “Soren,” she had said, “people are starting to talk.”

“Do any of them want to challenge me? Because I can handle anyone in the Pride, and they all know it.”

Anna had shrugged. “They’re worried. You need a mate. The Pride needs new genes and something has to be done about Aedan. They’re starting to whisper that you’re dragging your feet.”

“Aedan is my problem, not theirs.”

“That doesn’t stop them from worrying about him. A lone male in the Pride is a danger to us all.” Soren had let out a low, throaty warning growl.

Anna had hunched in on herself, her golden-hazel eyes looking up at him with beseeching fear.

“I am trying to find a mate,” Soren had told the woman firmly. “I’m doing everything I can but it’s not like I can just hit a singles bar.”

Anna had shrugged. “I’m just telling you what I heard.” Anna had something of a protected position in the Pride. She was one of the closest-related to him, being a double-cousin, and tended to not only protect him but also to alert him to the real opinions of the group who owed allegiance to him, feelings no one else would state baldly to his face.

Soren was more surprised than anyone when he had beaten the main contender, Jordan, and became Alpha of the pride. Jordan had left the group after his defeat by a man of 30, 15 years his junior, without a mate to speak of. The group of were-lions he had grown up among, that his father had led for his entire life, sometimes made Soren wish he had the ability to just walk away cleanly.

He had taken up the challenge to become the leader, the Alpha of the Pride, because his father had insisted on it but if it weren’t for the sense of responsibility Soren had developed, he would have become a lone male, just like Aedan. Some days, he desperately wished he had gone that route.

After generations of inter-breeding among various other Prides around the world, and among themselves, the lions of Soren’s Pride had started to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Under normal circumstances, it would be easy for Soren to find a mate. All he would have to do would be to contact one of the matchmakers for their kind and provide his specifications, and the matchmaker would scour the pedigrees of the various Prides, doing all of the searching it required for him to find a pool of eligible women to choose from.

But because of the extensive inter-breeding, Soren had been regretfully told by the matchmaker, who had brought his parents together, that there was no one who could safely be available to him. The woman, an old crone of a were-lion, had told him flat out that he would have to find a regular human woman to breed with in order to invigorate the genetics. And, that he would have to force some of the men in his Pride to do the same. But he would have to go first and choose carefully.

The text of the new free subscriber profile finally populated Soren’s phone screen. He scrolled down first to find the picture, knowing he was being shallow, but if he didn’t find her attractive in the first place, it would take much more of a psychological and personal match for her to be worth his while. Soren’s eyes widened as he opened the image and expanded it to fill the screen of his phone. She was short, but not so short that he would worry about her. Contrary to his usual inclination, the first thing that caught Soren’s eye was the sardonic half-smile that curved the woman’s slightly thin lips. Her hair was cut to her shoulders, falling in a pitch-black sheet around her oval face. She had something of mystery that lurked in her dark eyes, a joke he wasn’t privy to.

Scrolling down, Soren licked his lips unconsciously as he took in the lush curves of her body. So many of the other women on the site had been obviously surgically enhanced but the full breasts, neat waist and flared hips of the woman in the picture looked to Soren’s practiced eye to have been nothing more than a genetic gift. He whistled lowly, taking in her strong legs. Okay then, he thought, smiling faintly. First hurdle cleared. He closed the image and navigated back to the main profile. She was okay with hunting, as long as it was for survival or out of necessity. She had passed his set criteria for intelligence. He scrolled to the biography portion.

Unbidden, Soren laughed out loud as he read her responses. She was clearly on the site as more of a joke than a serious contender for a convenient spouse. The mystery match had answered the question prompts with frank sarcasm and a little contempt.

My deepest apologies to any sixty-plus men looking for a nubile, skinny twenty-something to show off to the boys at the country club…I fully expect that anyone who is on this site looking for a match probably really wants a mostly-brainless blonde or redhead to carry their umpty-million children for them…I guess you could say I’m a difficult woman.

Soren shook his head to himself, smiling more and more broadly as he read her flippant responses. He bit his bottom lip and set the phone down on his cluttered desk, considering. A difficult woman… Soren wondered to himself if this particular woman had any idea of just how perfectly that particular phrase would hit him. A difficult woman was exactly what he wanted.

He picked up his phone once more, exiting the app but not closing it. Soren opened up the messaging app and found the thread marked by the name Aedan. I may have found her. He sent the text message and shook his head again, re-opening the profile and tapping the icon that would mark it as one he was actually interested in. The notification that popped up somehow seemed to almost express shock that he had actually flagged a profile on the site.Congratulations! We’re glad you’ve found a match. The message cleared and then prompted him to send a text message through the app to his potential match. The guidelines outlined at the top of the page were clear: no contact information, just a proposition of where and when to meet. His potential match would be able to respond via text, but their phone numbers would be kept from each other.

If the situation worked out, Soren would pay the site another sum of money (a sort of finder’s fee that he had agreed to when subscribing). It wasn’t huge, certainly not enough to set off his scam alerts when he was agreeing to the terms and conditions, but it was definitely enough to make him wary of picking someone who might play him and then run away, leaving him to find another potential match by sorting through the dozens of profiles that came his way.

Soren’s phone buzzed, notifying him of a new text message. What’s she like? Soren licked his lips, smiling to himself. He pulled up the woman’s picture and grabbed a screen shot, and then another shot of one of her particularly flippant responses to the required questions in the biography section. He sent both images to Aedan. A moment later his phone buzzed again. Promising! Will you be meeting her first? Soren pressed his lips together. When he had embarked on this particular quest, he hadn’t even been sure he would find a single woman who could possibly be suitable for what he wanted. Therefore, he hadn’t sorted out just how the first meeting would come about.

He shrugged to himself, typing his answer quickly. Flip a coin for it.