Pride and Joey

Excerpt From: Pride and Joey

Loving the crisp, autumn smell of a distant leaf pile burning, Vance inhaled deeply, relishing the cool air carrying the scents of fall. His exhale turned into a sigh. Just another sign of how much he didn’t belong in his own family—his ‘freakish’ love of cooler weather. Most of his werelion Brethren were definite sun worshippers, but not him. Oh no. Give him sweater weather over swimsuit weather any day. He hated to be hot, and fall meant a respite from the burning sun.

Another plus to early autumn mornings? Knowing he would have the run of the sanctuary. Coupled with his preference for lower temperatures, he was also a lark in a pride of night owls. That hit his funny bone and he snickered at the disgust his macho brothers would display at being likened to birds. Oh, he was so Photoshopping their faces onto some cute, fuzzy owls when he got home.

Most of his Brothers—more a collection of brothers, half-brothers, and various degrees of cousins, in actuality—were considerably older than him. Only Brady was just a couple of years younger than Vance’s twenty-four human years, which made them the two adolescent lions in the group. The rest were mated with children, and Vance was sure a more ridiculously stodgy and boring pride couldn’t be found anywhere. He and Brady had only been able to come along to a large pride gathering once, and he’d been astounded to see the liberties granted to—and fun being had by—other males his age.

That was where he’d first—and last—acted upon his secret attraction to males. Oh sure, he and Brady had fooled around a few times, but he was more like a brother to Vance, and there was such a thing as being too close to someone. Kinda destroyed the romance when you’d been sharing a room since you were in diapers. And Garth would flip out if he caught them—the threat of bodily harm and banishment was a huge mood-kill as well. Their alpha, Garth—Vance’s uncle and Brady’s father—was virulently homophobic and ran their pride with an iron fist. Vance had no doubts he would be out on his ear—if he survived the punishment, that was—if Garth ever had reason to suspect his sexuality. Maybe not Brady. No, he thought sadly, Brady would just be retrained to ‘like’ women once the bad influence was gone.