Snow slid from the low sloping roof of one of the houses as he passed, and the children playing beneath it squealed and burst into a fit of giggles as it landed on them.
Gods, he wished he was that age again, free of the worries of the world that rested on his shoulders.
He stopped at the edge of the village and did his best to keep his eyes on the three figures coming towards him now and off the end of the valley they crossed, away from the point where the two peaks met.
The urge to keep walking was strong, almost overpowering him as it filled him with a need to go to that point, and to not stop when he reached it, to keep walking until he was home.
He was home.
August looked over his shoulder at the village, at his pride. This was his home.
His heart whispered that it wasn’t, not anymore. He had found his home in a beautiful tigress.
The alpha reached him and he pushed her out of his thoughts and turned to the male.
The male pulled the burnt orange scarf that covered his mouth and nose down, revealing a face worn and lined and touched with warmth. That light reached the male’s dark gold eyes as he smiled and extended a hand.
“August?”
August took it, their thick gloves making it hard to do anything more than loosely grip each other’s hands as they shook. “Luis.”
The male beamed at him, his accent tinged with a French edge. “The very same. The journey was long, and a little cold for my liking. Sixty years in the mountains and I am still not used to the climate.”
“My home is warm, and you are welcome,” August said and glanced at the two who accompanied the old snow leopard alpha.
Females.
Both were young, probably hadn’t seen their one hundredth year.
He left their care to Dalton and swept his hand out to his left, pointing the way to his home and ushering Luis towards it.
“Your journey was good?” August said, trying to remember all the small talk Cavanaugh had taught him was part of the process of meeting with another pride and trying to shut out how thinking about Cavanaugh now made him think about Maya too.
Luis nodded. “As good as can be expected. The final leg was a little rough on me. I think I am finally getting too old for this.”
“I am sure that is not the case at all.” Although August had sent three males armed with climbing ropes and gear down to the sheer cliff that provided the only access to the pride village.
Rather than asking Luis to scale the cliff face, he had given the alpha a lift, the males pulling him and his entourage up on the ropes.
August was ashamed to admit he hadn’t even thought about doing such a thing before Cavanaugh had mentioned it.
Gods, he could just imagine the ageing alpha losing his footing during the climb and plummeting to his death.
Would have been just August’s fucking luck too.
The entire snow leopard community would have come down on his head.
He held the door to his home open.
As alpha, he had a little more space than the other houses. Rather than there only being a living space on the ground floor, and steep steps up to a single bedroom on the upper floor, he had a living space with a large open fire on the left as he entered, surrounded by two armchairs and a couch, and a small kitchen opposite the main door, and off to his right was another door that led into a bathroom. On the first floor, there were two bedrooms off a narrow corridor.
It was a mansion in snow leopard terms.
The alpha nodded his head in approval and stripped off his bright orange coat, hanging it by the door. He kicked off his boots, and his thermal waterproof trousers followed, revealing a loose pair of dark grey trekking trousers.
August followed suit, ditching his black trousers and red jacket, and his hat and scarf. He tossed his gloves on the coffee table as Luis sat down on the armchair facing the door. The male sighed and sagged into the soft chair.
“By the gods, this feels good.” Luis smiled at him. “Daughters.”
The two females removed their outdoor clothing at the door, leaving it on the pile with their father’s, and joined him, sitting on the couch close to him. The taller one, a brunette with silver-gold eyes, sat closest to Luis, her navy jeans and red roll neck sweater a contrast against his dark brown couch. Her sister, a younger female with sandy hair and gold eyes that matched her father’s, sat beside her, dressed in similar jeans but a blue sweater.
Dalton closed the door. “I’ll make some tea.”
“Make that something warm with a little heat.” Luis grinned. “If you catch my meaning.”
August did, and the smile that spread across Dalton’s face and lit up his pale golden eyes said he did too. He disappeared into the kitchen.
It was far too early in the day to be drinking, but Cavanaugh had warned him it might be the case. Quite often, trade negotiations were fuelled by their local brew, a sweet strong alcohol served hot to keep the chill off.
August was surprised any negotiating took place at all.
Apparently, sometimes it didn’t.
Sometimes alphas just ended up visiting each other to get drunk and speak with another alpha about everything that was on their mind, all the things they couldn’t really discuss with anyone at their own pride and only an alpha would understand.
August could see the appeal in that.
He looked over his left shoulder, seeing beyond the wall of his home to that enticing dip between the two peaks.
“Do you have somewhere you need to be?” Luis said.
August quickly turned to face him and shook his head, just as Dalton walked in. He caught the look on his friend’s face and frowned at him, warning him not to say a damn word. He was fine.
Dalton set a mug down in front of him, and one down in front of Luis, and went back to the kitchen, running his hand over his long silver-gold hair in a way that screamed of frustration.
It had been a mistake to tell Dalton about Maya.
His friend had tried to convince him to go after her, even when August had told him that it was impossible, and not only because she was promised to another. He had to do right by the pride, and picking a tigress over finding his fated one was the opposite of that.
As much as he hated the traditions of their kind, he had to abide by them. One day, he would change them and bring his kin into the modern age, freeing them of the shackles of society’s demands, allowing them to choose who they loved and who they wanted as their mate without fear of being condemned by others in their pride.
Most of the pride weren’t ready for such a bold move though, and were unlikely to tolerate it from an alpha who had only held the position for five months.
Gods, it wasn’t right though.
Cavanaugh was proof of that. Years ago, his cousin had taken a beating from Stellan on purpose, had let the male defeat him and snatch the pride from his hands because the position of alpha had stood between him and claiming the female he loved—his fated mate, Eloise.
It had plunged the pride into turmoil and into dark times. Stellan had been cruel, a tyrant, abusive and vicious, and his reign had been hard on the pride. It had shaken them all.
In the end, Cavanaugh had set them free of Stellan’s rule, and August had taken on the mantle of alpha to free his cousin, because even though he had saved them, even though they had witnessed what tradition had done and how it had forced Cavanaugh to place them all in danger just so he could be with Eloise in the way his heart needed him to be, the pride would still have demanded Cavanaugh mate with a highborn female and take Eloise as a mistress.
So as much as he wanted to tear down some traditions and build new ones in their place, he had to wait.
The pride were barely on their feet again, slowly recovering from Stellan’s rule. Trying to force such a dramatic change to their traditions on them would be too much.
But gods, he wanted to do it.
He wanted to stand out there on that plateau and roar that it
wasn’t right, that everyone should be free to choose who they loved without repercussions.
He wanted to roar that as of that moment, they were all free. The lowborn free to love the highborn.
A snow leopard free to love a tigress.
Dalton returned with tea for the females, stopping in the doorway to the kitchen, concern flickering across his face as he looked at August.
August lowered his head, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Gods, when had he started losing his grip on reality? When had a fantasy become more appealing than it?
He hung his head lower. When Maya had run off with his heart.
If it wouldn’t drag Cavanaugh back to the pride and jeopardise his relationship with Eloise, August would walk right out the door and abdicate his position as alpha right that moment.
He would break the shackles that bound him so he could be with Maya.
“August is tired from his trip to see his cousin in London.” Dalton’s deep voice rolled through the room, rich and warm, comforting him as much as his friend’s hand did as it came down on his right shoulder, gripping it gently. “I imagine you are just as tired from your long journey.”
“As deep as my bones… but the drink is taking care of warming those.” Luis lifted his cup as August raised his head and opened his eyes, looking across the table at the male.
He grabbed his own mug and lifted it too, saluting the male and dragging himself out of the mire of his thoughts. They were pointless. Maya didn’t want to be with him. She had made her choice.
“There is nothing good brew cannot fix.” He took a deep draught of the hot drink.
Luis grinned at him.
Fuck, those words had sounded hollow to him. His heart roared that there was something good brew couldn’t fix.
The gulf that lay between him and where he wanted to be.
Between him and Maya.
He did his best to listen as Dalton drew up a chair beside him and Luis talked to him of his pride. He made small talk like a fucking pro, using all of Cavanaugh’s pointers, discussing everything from the recent changes in land rights between mortals down in the valleys to the latest curriculum he was trying to implement in the small school at the centre of his pride village.
But all the while, part of his mind was thinking about that dip between the peaks and what lay beyond it.
Maya.
The day wore on, and three more mugs of brew came and went, and his head finally grew fuzzy enough at the edges that he stopped thinking about a certain tigress.
For at least five seconds.
“I suppose we should discuss one final matter… the offer of one of my daughters as a female for you.”
“I’m honoured, but no.” Those words had left August’s lips before he had even thought about answering Luis’s offer.
Luis’s sandy eyebrows rose, intrigued brightening his eyes. “You already have a mate?”
August thought hard about that, and started to get the feeling that maybe he did.
Maybe the reason he couldn’t get Maya out of his head, the reason he felt drawn to that place beyond the mountains, and the reason he had been overcome with new, raw and intense feelings when they had been together was because she was more than just another female.
She was something to him.
Something that was impossible.
He was starting to think that she had been lying to protect him, and to protect herself, when she had told him that he couldn’t be her fated one.
Something Talon had said when he had been leaving Underworld, something that had sounded flippant and unimportant at the time, slammed back into his head with a force that shook him.
Maya could be a little hellcat at times.
August had taken that to mean she had her wild moments, when she was out of control, like the gym and their time in the booth.
What if Talon had been trying to tell him something?
Shit, now that he was thinking about it, Cavanaugh had spoken about the female bartender, Sherry, as if she was mortal all the times he had talked to his cousin via the satellite phone.
August had met her during his stay at Underworld.
Sherry was a tiger shifter, mated to Talon.
If she had been mortal, then Talon had turned her. Impossible. Unless. There was one species of feline shifter that could turn mortals.
Hellcats.
He caught a flash of Maya looking at him in the booth.
A flare of blue around her pupils.
A shiver chased over his arms and down his thighs.
If Maya’s family had hellcat blood, it changed all the rules.
Hellcats could find their mate with any species.
Even the ones who could only find it within their own.
Ones like his.
Gods.
He shot to his feet, ripping a startled gasp from the two females to his right.
Maya was his fated one.
He was a fucking blind idiot.
He had been so convinced that she couldn’t be that he had ignored all the tell-tale signs that should have alerted him to the fact he had found his fated mate.
And he had let her slip through his hands.
Fuck having only a stolen moment with her.
Fuck traditions too.
The pride could damn well accept the change he was about to make, because he was done with seeing tradition bind people and stand between them and what they wanted—who they loved.
It ended now.
He was dragging his pride into the modern age whether they liked it or not. For his sake. For the sake of Dalton. For every male or female in his pride who loved someone different in status to them. He was doing this.
Cavanaugh was sure to have a few words to say about it, and the correct behaviour of an alpha, but August didn’t care. He wasn’t his cousin. He hadn’t been raised to obey outdated traditions and moulded into an alpha from birth, shaped into a male who would rather bend for the sake of the pride than break down whatever stood between him and what was right.
August had been raised to be a fighter, a warrior capable of defending the pride, a male who would rather break down the barriers.
His cousin was strong, but he had been weak where tradition was concerned, had let it come between him and Eloise, when he should have roared a massive ‘fuck you’ at it like August was going to do.
He was alpha now. He had the power to do this, to set everyone free, himself included.
He was going to do it.
Cavanaugh had been right about one thing though—he had fought for what he wanted.
August was going to take a leaf out of his book.
He was going to fight for Maya.
But to do that, he was going to need some help.
He had just the tiger for the job.
CHAPTER 12
The journey had been long, and far more than just physically tiring for Maya. She trudged the path through the dense forest, following on Grey’s heels, her heart still aching in her chest as fear slowly built inside her, fear that the male she was about to meet would be as bad as Talon had heard.
Gods, she felt awful for leaving Underworld without saying goodbye to her brother.
The need to run before she had a chance to change her mind had been at the helm, driving her away from him and away from August.
She missed them both.
She had only known August a short time, but he had carved out a part of her heart for himself, and that part ached fiercer than the rest, blazed with fire that wouldn’t abate. She feared it would burn forever, never giving her peace, always reminding her of what she had done.
Grey glanced back at her, concern and warmth in his blue eyes. The sunlight filtering through the trees played across his silver hair and over the shoulders of his black coat. He adjusted the bags on his shoulder, sighed and faced forwards again.
“It’s still not too late to turn back,” he said, quietly enough that she kn
ew he was warring with himself again, torn in two just as she was.
He didn’t want her here, didn’t want to hand her over to the Altay pride’s alpha, Pyotr, and definitely didn’t want to leave without her.
Doubt trickled into her heart and her steps slowed.
Grey turned to face her. “You don’t have to do this, Maya.”
She didn’t.
She glanced over her shoulder.
She could turn back right now and run far from this place, run to where her heart wanted to be.
She clenched her fists at her sides.
She couldn’t.
Pyotr was expecting her, and if she didn’t show up, he would send males to her pride to bring her to him. When they found she wasn’t there, those males would attack her kin, and they would hurt Byron.
Grey’s hand came down on her shoulder, a touch that took her back to the streets of London, before she had met August, before her heart had been thrown into turmoil, torn between two males.
Byron hurt her at times, but he was trying to do what was best for the pride.
She had to do her best too.
She lifted her gloved hand and placed it over Grey’s on her shoulder, and raised her eyes to meet his blue ones. Gods, she was going to miss him most out of all her brothers. He had been her best friend for decades, her shoulder to cry on and her staunch protector.
Who was going to be that for her now?
She looked beyond him, to the distance where the trees thinned and smoke curled lazily into the air above their branches.
She knew no one in that village, not even the male she was meant to wed.
She would be alone.
She was sure her parents hadn’t meant for things to happen this way, that they had planned for Pyotr to visit her with his family, and for her to visit his pride, before anything happened between them.
But both her parents and his were dead, gone, and whatever plans they’d had were gone with them.
She wished she had the courage to turn away, to treat this contract in the way Talon and Grey wanted her to, as if the deaths of their parents had made it null and void.
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