The Lioness

Chapter: 9

"Leon?" a male voice said from the other side. "Can you come out? I need to talk to you."

Leon didn't respond for a moment as he was staring at Leona intently. She shrunk back a little, not used to being stared at with this much focus and intensity, as if he were trying to see inside her very soul. She wished him luck. She had long ago put up walls around herself to protect her from getting hurt. Z was one of the very few people that had managed to get passed them, only because she was there before she actually put them up.

"Yeah, hold on I'm coming." Leon sighed, shaking his head. He stood up and went over to the door opening it an inch.

He and whoever it was outside spoke in hushed voices that Leona didn't pay attention to. Instead she inspected the room for another way out.

"...What if it's her?" that broke Leona out of her search and her gaze zeroed in on the back of Leon's head.

"Look-" Leon must have felt her gaze because he glanced back at her briefly before stepping out of the door and closing it behind him.

She took this as her chance.

Throwing back the covers she saw that she was now in a dark blue t-shirt that reached mid-thigh and nothing else apart from her underwear of course. She really hoped that it wasn't Leon that changed her. No matter how strangely comfortable she was around him she wasn't about to let him see him in her underwear until she knew the reason why.

Not taking off the shirt, Leona searched around the room for where she had spotted her clothes earlier. Gathering them up in her arms she went back to the bed and slipped out of the shirt and back into her original clothes.

Stuffing her feet into her shoes she stood up and sauntered over to the door. She stopped and pressed her ear against the wood, listening intenly.

"...probably dead." the man's voice from earlier said.

"We don't know that for sure." Leon snapped.

"Leon, she dissapeared without a trace years ago there are a whole range of possibilities. You don't know-" Leon cut in before he could finish.

"All I know is that that girl looks exactly like her. Like you said, no one knows what happened to her. She could still be alive and possibly sitting not even ten metres from me."

"Look, I know how you feel but the search parties have-"

"NO!" Leon roared. "You have no idea what it feels like like! The search parties may have given up but I haven't and I never will." he paused and Leona could hear him take a deep breath. "Look, if there is even a slight chance that that is her in there there is absolutely no way in hell that I am ever going to let her go again. Do you hear me?!"

The other man didn't say a word and Leona took that as her que to open the door. Her plan was to sprint past them and find a way out of here. What she didn't plan on was both guys turning in surprise.

The older man sucked in a large breath, his eyes going wides amd his eyebrow almost reaching his hairline.

"By god!" the man gasped. "It is her. All these years." he reached a hand out as if to touch her.

Leona flinched back before he could make contact with her skin. She didn't like to be touched, especially by strangers. The man pulled his hand back quickly as if just realizing what he had been doing. His green eyes flickered between Leon and Leona repeatedly.

"You both look so much alike." he said quietly. "Even now."

Leona and Leona both looked at eachother. Yes, she thought, there were deffinately similarities between the two of them. The luminous green of their eyes, the same shade of hair and skin, the same features, even the way they held themselves was the same. They could've been twins if it were not for one huge detail.

Leona was a shifter. While she knew that she was not the only one out there, she had no way of telling if these people were shifters as well or not. She didn't intend to stay and find out.

"Er, hi there um." Leona shifted awkwardly from foot to foot, hoping to make herself appear nervous. It seemed to work and she smiled on the inside, her plan was working. She turned to Leon. "Well er, thanks for looking after me and all that but I gotta go and, um, do some stuff."

As she was talking she was slowly inching towards the stairs she could see at the end of the hallway. Neither of the guys seemed to notice until she was at least two metres away from them.

"Hey where you going?" Leon's question stated that he obviously had figured out what she was trying to do and apparantly he didn't like it. She smirked.

"Away from here." she muttered. Leona turned and sprinted away from them and raced towards the stairs.

It was one of those staircases like she had at home. One wide staircase that branched off into two. Dimly, she noticed that one: Leon was catching up to her fast and two: if she wanted to evade him, which she did, she would have to leap over the banister.

Unfortunately for her that would cause too much unwanted attention. Instead Leona settled for jumping straight over the first set of stairs and landed on the platform. She heard a slight gasp eminate from above her but ignored it and proceeded to jump over the second set of stairs and on to the polished wooden floorboards of the ground floor.

Leona heard the thump of a body landing on the platform that she had just left and knew that Leon was closer than she had thought.

Someone was just coming through the what she guessed was the front door and Leona took that as her chance. She sprinted, using some of her shifter speed, straight past the woman coming in, making her squeak in fright and jump back. Leona was now almost to the tree line. If she could just make it inside she could shift and- A large body covered hers and pulled her to the ground with an 'oomph'.

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