Read Online Formidable: Shifters Forever Worlds (Ever After Dark Book 1) by Elle Thorne - Free Book Online Page A

dancing. Softness over steel. Just the kind of woman who could put up with him. He knew he wasn’t an easy man. Being easy was never an option for the firstborn of the Tiero family. It never had been.
    His own father had told him that repeatedly, as had his grandfather before him. He needed her to stay. But more than anything, his tiger argued, he needed her to want to stay with him. His headstrong, possessive ways would push them apart if he wasn’t careful.
    In the darkness, her chest rose and fell with each of her sleeping breaths. He traced the beauty marks on her arms, reminding him of the patterns of the stars in the sky above. His superb shifter sight allowed him to pick out each one, speckles that he lingered over gently, enjoying the way she nuzzled backward, her body fitting perfectly against his.
    Mine.
    The thought resonated from his tiger, but was Gio’s sentiment as well.
    His. She was all his. He’d never allow another to have her. Gio’s tiger snarled in agreement.
    Gio wrapped his arms around her, leaned in, placed his lips against her temple, left them there while she rested.
    Isabel’s brow furrowed, her eyelids fluttered. It was as if she was in a dream.
    “I can’t,” she said with a low tone in her restless sleep.
    Can’t what , he wondered.
    Her hands clenched into fists. She shook her head, gently, then more fiercely. She growled, her tigress’s voice merging with hers. The sound was low in the night, barely audible in the near silent forest.
    Worried about her, Gio held her tightly and whispered to her, hoping to bring her out of her dream. “Isabel, it’s just a dream.”
    Her eyelids flew open. The blue coloring was gone and she was focusing on his face, clearly. “Giovanni.”
    “You can see?”
    She nodded.
    “It’s Gio, please. Not Giovanni. You were having a bad dream, it seemed. What was it about?”
    She paused, her eyes looking around, as if trying to jar her memory. “I don’t know.”
    “You were talking in your sleep. Said that you couldn’t. Couldn’t what?”
    A headshake. “No idea. I can’t remember.”

17
    L eaning against Gio , and feeling as if she belonged nowhere else on earth, Isabel’s sight had returned. She tossed a tiny prayer of appreciation up and thought of Desideria, thankful she’d been there to let Isabel know there was hope when there’d seemed to be none, easing her fears when she’d been certain the blindness was permanent.
    She turned and studied Giovanni’s face. Worry was etched in the lines and planes.
    Worry about me.
    There was something else there, and though she couldn’t put a finger on what she saw, her inner tigress was making low, pleased chuffing sounds at Giovanni’s tiger.
    Seemed as though her tigress was communicating with Giovanni’s tiger without consulting with her.
    Not this again.
    The time of her tigress’s non-communication with her had been difficult. Isabel thought they’d gotten past that, for the most part.
    Her tigress snarled at the lie Isabel had told, but didn’t betray her.
    Yes, Isabel acknowledged. She lied.
    She’d lied to Giovanni. He’d asked what the dream was about and she’d flat out lied. She’d had to. In her dream, Desideria and she had been sitting in the forest, talking. Desideria was just beginning to tell Isabel something, perhaps to warn her, when the elusive phantom white tigress had surged forward from the shadows in the trees.
    The tigress had snarled at Isabel and Desi. And then the tigress had told her she was to stay away from Gio. It was strange because Isabel was in her human form, but had been able to hear in the tigress’s sync.
    She couldn’t tell Giovanni—Gio, he’d asked her to call him Gio. She couldn’t tell Gio that Desi had talked to her. That would spawn questions and more lies. She couldn’t tell him about what the phantom tigress had said because of even more questions.
    So what could she do?
    Nothing, other than tell him that she couldn’t remember her