The cat staggered, and Justin seized his opportunity.
Knowing that this was his last chance before he grew too weak and dizzy from blood loss, he threw himself forward.
He landed squarely on top of Katzenberg's back and thrust the butcher knife into his opponent's neck, forcing the blade down through the thick mane and into the flesh beneath as deeply as he could.
As the huge cat twisted and snarled beneath him, trying to throw him off, Justin felt hot blood spurting over his hand and arm.
Did I do it?
He wasn't sure. It sure felt like a lot of blood, but Katzenberg seemed as powerful and angry as ever.
And Justin was dangerously tired, his injuries burning, his muscles feeling more and more like soggy spaghetti by the second and every joint screaming with the abuse of having been thrown around like a rag doll.
He clung to Katzenberg's thick mane and knew that it was only a matter of time before the cat managed to dislodge him.
And then Justin would be dead, torn open and left to bleed out on his own living room floor.
He was trying to resign himself to his failure when abruptly Katzenberg's roar of rage mutated into a strange gurgle. The cat coughed, his body shuddering, then he just…collapsed.
Justin released his hold on Katzenberg's mane, rose shakily to his feet, and staggered a few steps away.
There he waited, panting, not sure if it was a trick. He strained his ears and heard a long exhale, followed by Katzenberg's heart sputtering to a stop.
And then…nothing.
Except for the distant sound of a shrilling cicada outside, and the sound of Justin's rasping breaths, the house was silent.
Justin stood there for a few moments longer, unable to believe that it was really over. And that he had actually survived.
He limped over to the wall and flipped on the lights.
A scene of devastation greeted him. It looked like a tornado had touched down in his living room. Furniture and knickknacks lay overturned and scattered everywhere.
And then there was the blood. Justin's bloody footprints crisscrossed the carpet and the kitchen's pale gray floor tiles. There were innumerable drips and dribbles of blood on the formerly white carpet all around the Great Room, making it resemble a gory work of abstract art.
And in the middle of the room, a huge scarlet puddle of blood pooled on the saturated carpet underneath the corpse of a huge sabertooth cat.
Justin just stood there in the middle of his destroyed living room. It was hard to believe that he had actually beaten Katzenberg while in man-shape.
And now he was Pride First. He tried to summon a sense of triumph, but all he felt was fatigue.
After a while, he made his way over to his smartphone, which had miraculously survived the fight.
He called Jim's number and heard him answer the phone in a voice thick with sleep. "Justin, you had better be on death's door."
"Close to it," Justin managed find the strength for a chuckle. It was hard work even holding the phone up to his ear. "Katzenberg just tried to ambush me here at home. He's dead."
"What?" Jim suddenly sounded fully awake. "And good riddance to that son-of-a-bitch! I was wondering if he'd try some dirty trick." He paused as Natalie asked him what was going on. "How badly are you hurt?"
"I could use a house call," Justin admitted, collapsing onto one of the bar height chairs pulled up to the island. He glanced down at his leg, which was bleeding steadily onto the tile below and then at the shredded remains of his T-shirt. "I think I'm going to need a few stitches."
"I'll be right over with my kit," Jim assured him and ended the call.
Justin carefully put his phone down, then cradled his head in his hands. His brush with death just now had made several things clear to him.
I don't want to be Pride First, he thought. I want to go to Bearpaw Ridge and be with Elle.
But what about his duty to the New Braunfels Pride?
After all of this, he couldn't just abandon them to the next challenger who came along to claim Pride First. But he couldn't rule the pride long-distance, either.
Justin sighed, feeling a hundred years old.
He needed to find another way, something that would keep the people he cared about here safe, while still making it possible for him to claim Elle as his mate and to live with her in Bearpaw Ridge.
It seemed impossible. Or was it?
Chapter 12
The next afternoon, in his first official act as Pride First, a bandaged and sore Justin called a town hall meeting of the New Braunfels Pride at his restaurant.
After Jim had cleaned his wounds and stitched up the worst of them, Justin had sent out the meeting request via email, then fixed himself a huge meal of bacon, eggs, hash browns, and a grilled steak to aid in healing.
After he had eaten, he had wearily rolled into bed and finally managed to get a few hours of sleep before texting Elle that he'd survived. He managed to fix himself another meal before a steady stream of visitors began to arrive, most of them pride members pledging their support of him as Pride First.
Two shifter police officers had come by to interview Justin, take photos of his wrecked living room, and remove Katenzberg's corpse. One of the officers assured him that it was a clear-cut case of self-defense, since Katzenberg had invaded Justin's home with the intent to harm him.
Now, standing behind a portable lectern in the Wildcat Springs Tavern's large dining room, Justin looked around at the assembled crowd.
Nearly every one of the forty members of the New Braunfels Pride members had shown up. They were sitting at the restaurant's tables, eating the complimentary chips and salsa and enjoying free Cokes and iced tea.
Thanks to Jim and Natalie, word had spread fast about what had happened last night, and Justin could hear the murmurs of speculation and rumor rippling through the assembled shifters.
He stepped up to the lectern and turned the microphone on. The brief feedback squeal caught everyone's attention.
"I want to thank you all for coming here this afternoon," Justin began. "Some of you heard what happened last night. For those of you who don't know, Paul Katzenberg broke into my place around 2:00 a.m. this morning…"
Justin continued with a brief summary of what had happened. He didn't go into details, but he didn't have to. His bruises and the bandages peeking up from the collar of his shirt told the story.
"So, now that I'm the First," he concluded, "I think we're long past due for some changes about how we do things around here."
He looked around the dining room. "I think one of our biggest weaknesses as a lineage is our tradition of 'might makes right.' I know most of you have suffered under this system. Hell, you know I have. So I've been doin' a lot of thinking, and I've come to the conclusion that we can no longer afford to let our Pride Firsts be absolute rulers."
A babble of shocked questions and comments arose from the assembled pride. Justin let them vent for a few moments, then raised his hand for silence.
"Folks, we're not just sabertooth shifters…we're Americans. We know that there's a better, fairer way to govern ourselves without compromising the strength of our pride."
One of the older pride members stood. It was Jim's aunt, Katrina de León, who had been the town's doctor before she retired and let Jim take over her practice.
"But what about our traditions?" she asked loudly. "We've always had a Pride First!"
All around her, pride members applauded in agreement.
"Dr. Kat," Justin addressed her with the affectionate nickname that everyone used. "You're right. We've had strong rulers who cared about our pride's best interests. But unfortunately, we've also had too many like Ed Baldwin. How many of you miss him and want someone else just like him?"
He scanned the crowd and saw a lot of heads shaking.
"We're not the only pride to suffer from having a greedy strongman as our leader. Y'all heard about what happened to the Sandia Mountain Pride a few years back?"<
br />
Nods this time.
"Mr. Long, we know you'd be a good Pride First! Why can’t you just do the job the way it's always been done?" Jim called out.
There were shouts of agreement from the other pride members.
"Because I'm fixin' to sell my restaurant and move to a place called Bearpaw Ridge," Justin informed them and heard shocked gasps. He continued, "I've met a very special woman, and I intend to make her my mate. I can't do that if I'm stuck down here."
The sound of shouted questions, comments, and protests was deafening, and it went on for a long time, despite Justin's attempts to quiet his audience.
When the uproar finally died down, Justin continued with his prepared speech. "Y'all know what happened to my daughter Cassie a couple of years ago. I couldn't stop Baldwin and his enforcers from doing what they did to her…and to me, afterwards." He paused and looked around at the crowd, trying to make eye contact with as many pride members as he could.
"But I do know one thing," he continued. "If all the shifters sitting in this room right now had joined together to resist Baldwin, rather than following the old rules of one-on-one challenge duels, then we would have been able to stop him, no problem."
Justin stopped and took a deep breath, pushing down a surge of unpleasant memories.
"Challenge duels need to go, or we'll never stop having to obey and bow to thugs and criminals!"
He was greeted with dead silence. Shifters turned to look questioningly at their neighbors, but no one said anything, either in agreement or protest.
"So, Mr. Long, what are you proposin' we do instead?" Billie McCat asked, breaking the silence.
Justin looked at his restaurant manager. "We hold elections, like every other place in America. We form a pride council with limited terms of office. We can still have a Pride First, but that job should come with term limits and restricted powers."
Now he saw a few nods of agreement here and there.
"Basically, what I'm proposing is a shifter democracy. Make the First a president who works for the good of the pride and not a king or a dictator-for-life," Justin finished.
There was a long moment of silence, and Justin saw his fellow shifters look at each other and heard the murmur of low-voiced questions.
Then two or three of the female shifters stood and began applauding, and the rest of the pride followed their example, until nearly everyone was standing and clapping.
"Good," said Justin. "I'm glad you all agree."
He pointedly ignored the four ranchers seated together at a table in the back, who remained seated and sullen. They had made a lot of money during Baldwin's regime and clearly wanted to stick to the old ways. Luckily, they were outnumbered.
"As a next step, I'd like to nominate a steering committee to hammer out the details," Justin continued. "For example, y'all are goin' to need to decide how many council members we need and how long they should serve…"
* * *
Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho
This had been one of the longest mornings of Elle's life.
She rose at dawn after a sleepless night, then moved mechanically though her morning chores while her heart and her thoughts were somewhere in Texas. She felt frozen with fear for Justin.
His challenge duel had been scheduled for 8:00 a.m. Central Time. That was when her anxiety about his safety kicked into high gear.
Thanks to a sabertooth challenge duel she had witnessed a few years ago, she had a pretty good basis for imagining a vivid parade of gruesome possibilities.
By 9:00 a.m. CST, she was sure he was dead, torn to ribbons by another sabertooth shifter.
At 9:01 CST, her phone chimed with an incoming text. She grabbed her phone, looked at it, and almost fainted with relief when she saw it was from Justin.
Sorry about the delay. I'm fine. Just a little beat up. Will call you tonight with details.
She had just finished reading it when a second text arrived.
Miss you.
Elle grinned down at her phone in delight. The deep clouds of gloom that had been shrouding her since his departure parted, and she felt bathed in warm sunlight.
Justin was all right! And he had kept his promise to let her know what happened.
Miss you too, she texted in reply. So happy & relieved that you're okay. Can't wait to talk to you!
The hours crept by slowly after that, as she waited for his call.
Finally, at dinnertime, her phone rang, and it was him.
"Hey," she greeted him. "How's my favorite sabertooth cowboy doing?"
"Hey there yourself, Elle," he said in his warm Texas drawl. "I've had better days, I'll tell ya. But hearing your voice is a definite improvement."
"What happened with the duel?" she demanded.
Justin sighed. "The challenge duel was actually canceled, on account of that sneaky son-of-a-bitch deciding to jump the gun and ambush me in my own house in the middle of the night. Luckily for me, I was missin' you so bad that I couldn't sleep."
"I didn't get any sleep last night either," Elle confessed. "So then what happened?"
Justin told her in spare detail.
As the story unfolded, Elle felt her bear stir in distress.
"I knew I should have come with you!" she exploded when he had finished the story.
Justin, showing that age did occasionally bestow wisdom, didn't try to argue with her.
"Yes, ma'am. I do believe it would have been a much shorter story if you'd been there to smash ol' Katzenberg into the floor just like Thor did last week." He sighed and added dryly. "I probably wouldn't be replacin' my carpets again, either. I just did that eighteen months ago…should've gone with dark red that time instead of white."
She shuddered at the mental image that evoked, and decided she didn't want to know the details. "I'm glad you're okay, though. What now? Are you the Pride First?"
"Just temporarily," he assured her. "I'm currently puttin' a plan in place for the peaceful transition of power, and most everyone seems to be on board with it."
"Does 'temporarily' mean I might be seeing you soon?" she asked eagerly.
"I sure hope so," he said, his voice softening. "I just put my house and the Wildcat Springs Tavern up for sale. I intend to return to Bearpaw Ridge as soon as escrow closes."
Elle gasped with incredulous joy. He was coming back to Bearpaw Ridge! He was coming to stay!
"Oh, good," she breathed, and heard him chuckle.
"I figured that since you'd given me permission to court you, I'd do it right, Mrs. Swanson."
"I’m looking forward to it, Mr. Long." She laughed. "You can stay here at the house, of course, until you get yourself settled. In the meanwhile, is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?"
"I sure would appreciate it," Justin said, "if you could keep your eyes open for a restaurant location in the area that I could buy or rent."
Elle's heart began to pound.
"As a matter of fact, something's just come up that might interest you," she said. "I was talking to Manny Ornelas just before the wedding, and he mentioned that the owner of Black Bear Pizza and Pasta is planning to retire after tourist season ends."
Manny was the town's real estate agent, and a jaguar shifter. Elle had known his family for many years and both liked and trusted him.
"That sounds perfect," Justin said. "I was thinkin' of maybe opening a branch of my Wildcat Springs Tavern in Bearpaw Ridge and introducing y'all to some genuine Texas BBQ. I have some ideas about what I might do with elk meat, too…"
Epilogue
Bearpaw Ridge, Idaho
It was Thanksgiving, and Elle was in the kitchen, basting the two large turkeys intended for their dinner. She only hoped that Justin and the others would return from their emergency call before the birds mummified in the oven.
The holiday had started off so well, too.
Thor and Cassie had flown in from Denver, and the entire extended Swanson family had been gathered in the ranch house's big
Victorian living room, enjoying appetizers and drinks before dinner.
Then Elle had heard the alert tone from the first responder app issuing from half the smartphones in the room, and she knew that something bad must have happened.
All of the volunteer firefighters of the Bearpaw Ridge Fire Department had the app installed on their phone. The 911 dispatcher used it to send them details of emergency calls that came in, including incident information and driving directions to guide them to the scene of an accident, medical emergency, or fire.
"Multi-vehicle accident on Highway 93, near Dean Jacobsen's farm," Dane reported to the room at large.
Everyone groaned. It had snowed last night, leaving the roads icy. This was going to be bad.
There was a general exodus to the vehicles parked outside, including Steffi, who had recently completed training as an EMT, and the BPRFD's newest volunteer firefighter, Justin Long.
Hoping to find acceptance in his new community, he had joined the BPRFD shortly after moving to Bearpaw Ridge in September. He was currently in the process of completing the required training classes at a nearby community college.
In the three months since moving to the area, Justin had become well-liked by the town's residents and most of the shifters.
Justin's new Wildcat Springs Texas BBQ restaurant was set to open in the spring. He had hired local contractors to redo the restaurant's interior over the winter, including Elle's longtime friend and electrician Fred Barker. The work Justin had provided during a traditionally slow time of the year had won him a lot of new friends in town.
Now, as Elle pulled the turkeys out of the oven to rest before carving, she heard her front door open and her daughters-in-law happily greet the returning firefighters, accompanied by Royce's loud barking as Steffi entered the house.
Royce was Steffi's dog. He was a big friendly mutt, protective of the Swansons—especially the children—and a shameless swiper of unguarded goodies off tables and counters.
Elle emerged from the kitchen and found herself swept up in Justin's embrace.
"—one person airlifted to the hospital in Salmon, but we think she'll be okay after surgery," Dane was telling Annabeth.
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