Page 56 of So I Won a Werelion

“We were having a girls’ night. Do you like them?”

“Love them.” That purr was back. “Wish you weren’t wearing anything underneath it.”

“Gabe.”

He swallowed hard and gave his head a shake, like he had to get that image out of his head. It took everything I had not to think about him sliding the robe off my shoulders, his rough fingertips dancing over my bare skin…

Maybe I could wear this robe when I gave him his lap dance.

Was I really going through with that?

Muscles low in my belly clenched.

Maybe I was.

“I came to tell you why I came home, before someone else does.” His chest rose with his breath. I could practically see the animal just below his skin.

“Why don’t you sit,” Bibi said. “Is it okay that we film it the first time, so you don’t have to tell your story twice?”

I hadn’t noticed Bjorn had arrived.

“Yeah,” Gabe said.

“Perfect. Just treat it like a conversation. Wendy, this isn’t the time to hold back. Ask whatever questions come to mind.”

Hannah scrambled out of her chair and joined Marissa on the couch. Bibi brought chairs from the dining room for Leo and Dylan. Once everyone was settled, Bibi nodded to me.

“I take it you didn’t come home for me.” That familiar sinking feeling was back, even if I wasn’t being fair to Gabe, or myself.

“I came back here for you, but you’re not the reason I left New Zealand.” He shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Remember me telling you about Jonathan Kyle?”

“The guy on your snowboarding team? He sounded like a total douchebag. You hated that guy.”

Bibi groaned. I’d obviously said something I shouldn’t have. But she’d told me not to hold back.

“I did. Still do.” Gabe growled. “Tolerated him for years. He’s younger than me, human, child prodigy. Probably born with a board on his feet. He was slowing down, not qualifying for championship rounds anymore. And he was pissed that I wasn’t showing the same signs of wear and tear. Shifters are different. He thought we needed to be scored differently, but that’s not how the league works. So he started making up stories that I’d paid off the judges. Then one of my drug tests came back positive for steroids.

“It was wrong—but I took another, and it came back the same way.”

“Impossible. You won because you trained harder than anyone else. And you take amazing care of yourself. You’d never put that junk in your body.”

“Exactly. I knew he had to be behind it.” Gabe steeled himself. “I would have either had to go on probation and miss the entire competitive season, or go before an advisory board and explain myself. If I took another test and it came back dirty, I would’ve been banned from the sport. No questions asked. I knew that fucker was behind it, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“Did you take another test?”

“No. I refused, which made me look worse. But I wouldn’t walk into the same trap again. So I went to confront him. Which my agent and my shifter teammates told me not to do. They knew what a pain in the ass this guy was, and how he always came out smelling like a rose. But I’d had it with him. Long story short, when I went to talk to him, I shifted, and attacked him as a lion.”

I gasped. Everyone in the room did. My hand flew to cover my mouth. I wished I could’ve taken that reaction back because Gabe deflated. He wasn’t a fighter. He was a fierce competitor, and there was a difference.

“What happened? Did you kill him?” I regretted that question too. But there was a reason Bibi wanted me to do this. She wanted this to be raw and ugly. If she handled it, it would’ve been too polished. Practiced. It would’ve given people a chance to think of Gabe as the enemy.

He shook his head. “Fucked him up pretty good. He’ll never board again. But he’s alive.”

“Is there anything you want to say to him?” Bibi asked. “This is your chance to do it.”

“No. He wanted me out of the sport, and he got what he wished for. I got expelled from professional snowboarding for life, but the board agreed to keep the circumstances under wraps because it was bad for the sport. They make a lot of money from having shifters compete. Someone broke their promise to me because the reporters know what happened. Pretty sure they’ve known for weeks, and they think this is time to blow the story open.”

“Do you think Jonathan is behind this?”

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