Also, if a young teen and older adult marry, then it’s legal. When I was ten, a fourteen-year-old friend had been forced into marriage with a forty-one-year-old man from another ambush. Their triplets were born without any birth defects, so the science worked. Two of the children had been returned to our ambush, and one child was kept by the parents. My friend had more healthy kids after, and had been allowed to keep more of them, but a portion always came back to the home ambush, usually raised by the grandparents, but sometimes an aunt or uncle.
I managed to get the women talking about who’d had babies, and how the babies were doing. The conversation should have been a happy one, but all I could think about was that I didn’t really want any of my children to be raised in the ambush. I’d forgotten how ignorant they kept their girls.
It was too late to renegotiate, though. I’d agreed to allow women within the ambush to adopt and then raise my children. Of course, I’d also agreed I could be a beloved aunt, and that I’d be in the children’s lives. Perhaps I could slowly change things inside the ambush. A few words here and few words there, so that in ten years, change had happened slow enough no one noticed.
I knew it wasn’t likely to work unless His Majesty was on board, but I had a feeling he’d help me. I’d seen him go to the children’s area, and I remembered him saying he wanted to get to know even the least of us.
Us? Where had that come from? I was part of the MC, now. They were my family.
And yet, the ambush was also my family. I didn’t belong here anymore, but that didn’t mean they weren’t my family.
My father started calling the dances — it isn’t square dancing because it’s a lot more complicated, but it’s similar, and I’ve always loved hearing his voice drop into the rhythm and cadence to call. Mrs. Ouro reached for my hand on her way to that part of the field and said, “I can be the man, if your Squatch doesn’t like to dance.”
Squatch stood me up from his lap and told her, “I’m here to watch over her tonight, and I can’t do that in this dance, since it looks like partners separate and then eventually make it back together. Thanks for offering, because I can tell she wants to join the fun.”
I leaned down, gave him a quick kiss, and let my old teacher lead me to the dancers. You can’t join in mid-dance, so we stood with the others who were preparing to go in when the caller invited us. Basically, once all of the partners are back together and there’s a pause, then new dancers can join. We waited several minutes, enjoying being this close to the action, and then slid into a formation when my father gave instructions.
And then there was no time to think about anything except what came next. In this dance, I was with my original partner around forty percent of the time, and with random other people the rest, and that was good because it gave me a chance to get a better handle on my welcome. Some of the men and women smiled, happy to see me. A few glared or wouldn’t make eye contact with me. It hurt, but I’d expected it. I’d turned my back on their way of life. In their eyes, I’d spit on our traditions and customs. Now, I’d come back on the arm of a wolf, and I understood why it didn’t sit right with them. I wouldn’t have changed a thing, but I still understood.
And then we all walked to our left, which means we ended up with the partner that had been two people away, and I found myself standing in front of Uncle Mikey. No, I didn’t have to call him that anymore. Mike.
But the dance moves so fast, you follow instructions without thinking about them, which means he grabbed me and swung me in a circle, put me down and let go with one hand but not the other so we could circle each other and then promenade with the rest of our circle until we ended up at the other side. Thankfully, the circle reformed in two lines, and the men’s line stepped forward while the women stood still, and I had another partner.
But I knew I’d see him again because that’s the way contra dancing works. My stomach turned over and threatened to make me sick despite the fact I hadn’t eaten anything in anticipation of the helicopter ride. I hadn’t wanted to get sick while in the air.
Usually, there’s a chance to go in and out of the dance every three to six minutes, but it felt like an eternity before the dance paused and my father was giving instructions. I’d been back in front of Mike three more times, and I’d refused to touch him the final two times. I’d stayed in formation, but I’d stepped away from him and hadn’t let him lay a hand on me. Squatch was waiting for me as soon as I walked away, and I went into his arms.
“I’m okay. He didn’t do anything inappropriate.” I gasped air in, grabbed his hand, and walked away from the dancing, away from the field, into the dark.
And everything would’ve been okay if Mike hadn’t decided to follow us.
“I’m sorry, Val.”
“No, you aren’t,” I told him. “You should leave.”
I couldn’t hit him first. Our safe passage went away if one of us attacked someone, and I knew the men of the ambush wanted nothing more than an excuse to rip my wolf to shreds. Not only were we vastly outnumbered, but if everyone changed then it would be a bunch of tigers against a tiger and a sole wolf. His Majesty may or may not step in, depending on what had started it. I’d yet to figure out for certain how his loyalties worked.
I squeezed Squatch’s hand, and he understood that I wanted to handle this. I have no idea how I knew, but I did. I let go of his hand, stepped in front of him, and felt his hands at my sides. He had my back. He’d always have my back.
“I didn’t understand what I felt, when I was a child, but I’m not a child anymore, and I understand so much more. I’m still not certain if you’re a pedophile, or if you just enjoy dominating helpless females, but either way, you’re a sick fuck and I can’t believe my father is defending you.”
“I was following orders, Valentina.”
He’d called me by my full name during training sessions, and by the short form of my name the rest of the time. Hearing all four syllables roll out of his mouth made me physically ill, and I squeezed my fists but didn’t go after him.
“You know you’re safe from me striking out at you tonight, or you wouldn’t be in my face taunting me. One day, we’ll meet face-to-face and my father won’t be able to protect you.”
And then Julian stepped close enough I could see him and smell him, and my heart broke a little. If I’d been allowed to choose a boyfriend, it would’ve been Julian. He was two years older than me, and I’d had more than a crush on him. As soon as my father figured it out, he gave him to one of my close friends. Well, matched them together, but in my mind, it was the same thing.
“Would you believe me if I told you most of the men had no idea what he was doing?” Julian asked me.
“Yeah, I would. We always had to change after a session with him. It was supposed to be a run to get rid of the sexual energy, so we wouldn’t contaminate anyone with it, but I now understand it was about getting his scent off of us.” I touched Squatch’s hand at my side. “Squatch, this is Julian. Julian, Squatch.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Julian,” Squatch said from behind me. “Thank you for being a friend to my kitten.”
I chuckled. “We had this talk earlier, Squatch. You can’t keep calling me your kitten around the other tigers.”
“I understood exactly what you said and meant, Kitten, just as Julian understands why I used it.”
“Yeah,” Julian said with a grin. “You’re his. I’m happy for you, Val. Really, really happy for you.”
Mike was standing off to the side now. Forgotten. Ignored. I’d turned to face Julian, but I could do that because I knew Squatch had my back — and my side.
“Everyone wants the stuck-up royal little cunt, don’t they?” Mike said from my side, and I could feel the anger vibrating off him. “The perfect little princess made from designer genes, and destined to make perfect little babies once her prince came of age. Too good for anyone else to stick their dick in, but I’ve had my dick in you more times than any of us can count, haven’t
I, Princess Valentina?”
Mike was so pissed, had held all of that back for so long, that he didn’t realize what Squatch had done. I have no idea how he managed it, but Mike’s words were coming out over the loudspeaker where my father’s voice and the dance music had been blasting only seconds before. Two hundred yards of trees masked it, but it was easy to hear if you were listening. Mike was too far into his own head to hear it, apparently.
I was certain Squatch had done it and not Julian because of the calm touch of the wolf’s hand on my hip. Or I was pretty sure, anyway. Plus, one of his hands had pulled away a split second before the music stopped and Mike’s voice replaced it.
“You didn’t answer my question earlier,” I told Mike. “Is it that you’re a pedophile, or that you get your rocks off sexually abusing helpless females, and it doesn’t matter their age?”
My voice, too, went out over the loudspeaker, but Mike didn’t seem to have picked up on it yet.
“Your young inexperienced throat was heaven,” he told me. “I loved making you choke and gag, and then having carte blanche to punish you for it, when I hadn’t been gentle enough to expect anything else. Heaven. But then I got to bury myself in your ass, and I knew your father wasn’t keeping an eye on me, so I didn’t have to be gentle there either, did I?”
Every tiny hair on my body lifted as a loud, angry roar echoed to us from the festival field. Mike recognized it, and he also realized the music had gone silent.
He froze, knowing something was wrong, but he didn’t understand what’d just happened.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Squatch
I’d known someone was going to try to take advantage of the fact I couldn’t hit them without risking our lives. I was outnumbered thirty strong men to my one, which I might have been able to handle in human form, but we all knew they’d shift to tiger once I made my way through the first half of them, and then they’d kill me.
But I’d walked into the compound and let them lock us in anyway, because Kitty needed the backup.
That didn’t mean I had to be stupid about it, though. Gears and Magnum had hacked into the ambush’s servers and then talked to me about my options. They’d been able to find out which sound system would be used, and they’d given me a gadget that would allow me to broadcast to it — along with a high-dollar microphone. I’d paid for the device out of my own funds, and it’d been worth every damned penny. I hadn’t understood why it had cost more than a thousand dollars, but I hadn’t argued, and now, I was thankful the microphone had picked up the asshole’s voice so well. Crystal clear.
I pulled Kitty back out of the way as her father made his way to us. Julian moved with us, and I aimed us so a large pine was close enough I could shove Kitty behind it if necessary.
Vincenzo attacked without slowing, but Mike had heard him coming and was ready. The two men fought as if it were a fight to the death, and it occurred to me it could easily be just that.
It would break something inside Kitty if her father died in this fight, but there was no way for me to intercede and still protect her.
But then everyone froze except for me and Kitty, and His Majesty walked up and stepped around the two fighters, motionless, fists raised, and Mike’s foot headed towards Vincenzo’s head, both faces already bloody.
“I’ve a good mind to let them fight it out,” he told Kitty, “but I don’t want you to blame Squatch for your father’s death.”
She shook her head. “Mike’s always been the one he sent to scare people. He should’ve known better than to take him on like this.” She rubbed her arms as if she were cold, never mind the heat. “They’ll shift to tiger and finish the fight soon. Daddy will have the advantage then. His tiger’s bigger and stronger.”
His Majesty sighed, looked around, walked to the fighters, and stared at them a few moments. I wondered if he was going into their heads like a vampire, looking through their memories. I didn’t think he could, but no one really knew what he could and couldn’t do with the cats.
Finally, he reached out, grabbed both by the upper arm, moved them apart, and started walking, dragging them. He took seven steps before everything went back into motion around us. The two men who’d been fighting stumbled and went to their knees, but managed to get to their feet so they could walk while being dragged by their King.
And I felt the power of the Amakhosi like never before. It crawled over my skin and made it hard to breathe. Based on the way the cats were acting, they were hit by his energy ten times harder than me. I wrapped my arms around Kitty and offered her my wolf energy. It seemed to help, and she sucked in air.
“Thank you.” It wasn’t even a whisper, just her mouth moving, but I caught it anyway, even from behind her.
I put her to my side with my arm still around her, and offered my hand to Julian. He accepted it, and he, too, breathed easier. He’d been a friend to my kitten, so it was the least I could do. The three of us followed His Majesty, but I kept us on the edge of the field when we approached it. His Highness climbed the steps to the stage and stood with the two men still beside him, his hands squeezing their biceps so hard, their hands were a deep red. Both men appeared to be in pain, and neither moved.
“For the most part,” the Amakhosi said, his voice ringing out without the need for the sound system, “I focus on my lions and allow the other cats to govern themselves. However, when a group proves it can’t do so responsibly, I step in.”
He looked around the field, then towards us. I’m certain he met Kitty’s gaze a second before he focused on the group as a whole again.
“I regret that I allowed Vincenzo to claim responsibility for what happened. If I’d questioned Mike, I’d have seen the truth of him, but I didn’t. If I’d seen the truth, I’d have meted out far different consequences. As it stands now, I no longer believe Vincenzo is the right leader for your ambush. His judgment has been questionable too many times. My first reaction would be to implement a ruling counsel, so no one person is in charge.”
He took a breath, looked around again, and made his pronouncement. “Michael Gowd is hereby sentenced to death by enema. A fitting death for one who raped the bottoms of young teens. Any women or girl he violated will be allowed to pour water into the bucket leading to his tubing, once it’s in place.”
Some in the crowd were pissed, but a whole lot seemed to be happy with this pronouncement. Mike had been Vincenzo’s enforcer as well as his pet rapist, and the man had made plenty of enemies, it seemed.
But His Majesty wasn’t finished.
“Vincenzo Aurelio is hereby stripped of any and all titles given to him by tiger society and the ambush. He is a common citizen with no power or assets, and will be outcast for a minimum of one year, with no guarantee of being welcomed back. A lion of my choosing will arrive within hours to keep the peace in the ambush until you can set up your own ruling body. If at the end of a year, you wish to go back to a dictatorship where a single person decrees everything, you’ll be able to vote that back in if you choose. However, for one year, you’ll exist under a counsel you’ve voted into being.”
He turned and looked to us. “Squatch. Have Kitty take you to her father’s house. She’ll know how to get in. Wait for me there, please.”
I was still holding Julian’s hand, and I still felt His Majesty’s power holding the crowd in thrall. However, Julian let go of my hand when I looked at him.
“Thank you for the help,” he told me, “but I should stay here.”
“Thank you for being a friend to my kitten.”
Kitty started walking, and I walked beside her, holding her hand, no idea which direction we were headed, but I knew she’d keep us away from the crowd.
Kitty
I walked us all the way around the festival grounds, a half-mile through the woods, and then down the wide pathway to my father’s house. When I left, the passcode to get into the front door was my oldest brother’s birthday, but backwards. I tried it and it didn’t work. I trie
d all of my brother’s birthdays, forwards and backwards, and then tried mine.
And the door opened.
“What was it?” Squatch asked.
“My birthday, backwards.” I said it with zero emotions, because if I let my feelings have even an inch then I’d be curled up in a ball somewhere, crying and sobbing and a complete mess.
“He loves you, Kitten. He’s made some horrible decisions, and he’s clearly a bad judge of character, but he does love you.”
“I always thought he knew what Mike was doing. I mean, clearly, he knew the bare-bones facts, but I assumed he knew all of it, and now I’m not so sure.”
“It’s going to take every bit of willpower I have to keep from killing him when he gets here, Kitten. No father should allow what he did, even if the person doing the training was gentle.”
“It’s done, and I’m good with His Majesty’s sentence for Mike. I don’t know if I’ll want to physically pour more water in myself, or whether I should just stay out of it. I need to consider that, before I decide.”
“Do you understand how death by enema works?”
I nodded. It’d been in a POW book I’d once read. The author had watched one of his fellow soldiers have to go through the aftermath, which was a slow, torturous death. They’d offered his buddy a quick death for information, but he’d never given it. Since that hadn’t worked, the enemy had used non-lethal torture on the man who wrote the book, and it’d gone on for months, but he hadn’t given the information they wanted, either. “So much water goes in, the bowels burst. Infection sets up in the abdominal cavity, and death doesn’t come quickly. It’s a horrible way to die.”
“Shapeshifters don’t die from infections, Kitten. To kill a shapeshifter, once the bowels burst, you put silver in the water and keep forcing it in, until the bowels burst and then until it breaks through the diaphragm, so the silver makes it to the heart. He’ll have to put a large butt plug in and then secure it, so the force of the water inside builds up enough pressure to burst through into the chest cavity.”
Squatch (Rolling Thunder MC Birmingham Book 4) Page 24