Surrounded by Five Beast Lords novel Chapter 47

Chapter 47 Dignity

Chapter 47 Dignity

A wave of heat, impossible to name, shot from the pinched tip of Lioten’s ear straight through every nerve in his body. It was equal parts electric, tingling, and devastatingly mortifying, all tangled together in one searing current.

For beastfolk, the ears ranked among the most sensitive, most private parts one possessed. No one touched them. No one except an intimate partner would even dare.

Lioren’s amber cat–eyes flew wide open in the dark. The flush hit his face like a match striking, instant and total, spreading down his neck and across his bare chest in a wash of deep crimson.

He tried to pull free, but her grip, light as it was, had sent half his body numb. His muscles refused to cooperate, and all he could do was lie there, locked in place.

“So squishy. So cute,” Dora mumbled in a dreamy half–sleep, her fingertips kneading the velvet fur of his ear with absent-

minded contentment.

Then, as if that weren’t enough, her other hand drifted up through the haze of unconsciousness. It brushed his cheek, lingered there, and started wandering lower.

Lioren’s tail whipped around on pure instinct, trying to intercept her demon and before it could do more damage.

‘Whoa, fluffy tail.” Dora’s fingers closed around it without a second of hesitation.

Lioren’s eyes went perfectly round, brimming with shock, humiliation, and sheer helpless panic all at once. ‘What is this Female doing to me?‘ he thought, his mind short–circuiting.

Just as Dora’s drowsy hands seemed ready to continue their exploration, Lioren’s brain finally rebooted through the wall of shock. A faint shimmer of light pulsed through the dark.

The flushed, mortified young man who had been pinned inside Dora’s blankets vanished in an instant. In his place sat the familiar tabby cat, its fur sticking out at wild angles.

A shriek tore through the silent room, half scream and half yowl, the kind of sound a cat made when every last shred of its dignity had been violently stripped away.

Lioren launched out of Dora’s blankets like a furry cannonball. Every hair on his body stood on end, his tail shot straight up ike a bottle brush, and he hit the floor without so much as a backward glance.

His paws skidded wildly on the slick hardwood, nearly sending him sprawling, before he squeezed through the crack in the door at what had to be the top speed his little body had ever/achieved. He disappeared into the dark hallway as if his life depended on it.

The commotion finally dragged Dora all the way to consciousness.

She sat up, rubbed her eyes, and stared blankly at the empty room and the door still swaying gently on its hinges.

‘Kitty? Fuzzball?” she called, groggy and confused. No answer came.

She tried to piece together what had just happened. Some dream had been playing through her head, something about a boy with cat ears. She’d pinched those ears; she was pretty sure of it.

They felt so real,‘ she thought. And then there had been that godawful screech.

She shook her head and chalked the whole thing up to exhaustion. The day had wiped her out, and sleep had turned her brain to mush.

A glance at the clock told her it was still early, so she flopped back down and drifted off within minutes.

Though somewhere in her dreams, a pair of fuzzy cat ears kept twitching and bobbing stubbornly at the edges of her vision.

Dora woke the next morning feeling completely refreshed Only a faint, hazy impression lingered from the night before. something about a pretty cat–eared boy and a dream that had wandered into territory best not examined too closely.

She hummed a tuneless melody on her way downstairs, her mood unusually bright

Elmer was his usual ray of sunshine, already orbiting Dora the moment she appeared. He had laid out breakfast well ahead of time and had clearly been waiting for her to come down

Clive ate in silence. His gaze drifted toward Dora now and then, carrying a weight that was darker and harder to read than

usual.

The only one missing was Lioren.

Dora searched the whole first floor before finally spotting him upstairs, parked right outside his own room.

Chapter 47 Dignity

The little fur ball had curled himself into a tight, defiant knot with his back to the door, offering nothing but the cold slope

This skull and a spine so–rigid it could have been carved from stone.

Dora kept her voice soft and coaxing. “Fuzzball? Breakfast time. There’s fish this morning.”

Lioren did not move. Note muscle. Not even the tip of his tail.

Dora figured he was still asleep. She didn’t think much of it, left his breakfast by the door, and moved on with her morning. She had Mindy’s family coming over today, after all.

But Lioren stayed locked in his room the entire day and refused to come out.

He ate whatever food and water she brought in, but he wouldn’t show his face.

Even when Dora lingered outside his door on purpose or tried to lure him out with things that usually grabbed his attention, nothing stirred on the other side.

The whole day passed with Lioren in a state of semi–disappearance inside his own house.

He stopped trailing Dora, stopped showing up in common areas, and shut down all communication.

Dora was completely baffled. She had no idea what had gotten into that moody cat this time.

She replayed the last few days in her head. She hadn’t done anything to offend him. He had his own room in the new house The food had been perfectly fine.

Did I sleep too hard that night and not let him under the covers?‘ she thought.

She tried pressing Clive and Elmer for answers. Clive just gave the closed door upstairs a brief, unreadable glance and said nothing.

Elmer scratched his head. “The stinky cat? Yeah, he’s been acting weird all day. Wouldn’t even come when I called him for meals. Walking around like somebody owes him eight hundred pounds of dried fish.”

He squinted at Dora. “Did you secretly give him a bath or something?”

Dora sighed. Nothing to do but wait for the stubborn cat to get over whatever this was.

Jpstairs, behind that closed door, Lioren lay curled into a tight ball.

Every time the memory of Dora pinching his ears flashed through his mind, a wave of mortification hit so hard that he slapped both paws over his face while his tail thudded against the floor in agitation.

Total humiliation,‘ he thought. ‘That stupid female. How dare she? How could she grab them like that? And rub them. My dignity. My reputation. All of it, gone. No way am I facing anyone today. Especially not her.‘

After a while, the storm in his head settled enough for another thought to creep in. ‘Her fingers were really soft, though, he, caught himself thinking, and immediately shut it down. ‘Stop. Do not go there.‘

But the thought kept circling back. ‘She actually seemed to like my cat ears? Shallow.‘ He rolled onto his other side. How ong do I have to hide before I can see her again without it being weird?”

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