Gunner, on the other hand, was enraged by his underling’s disloyalty. His ominous growl was nearly too quiet to hear above my own panting, but the alpha’s scent promised that Edward might not live to see the light of another day.
I wasn’t particularly thrilled with Edward either. But we’d all regret it if Gunner tore out Edward’s throat in a fit of rage without first understanding what had happened to the rest of the pack.
So my next parry involved diving between the two shifters, clunking the alpha’s chin with my knee as a mild hint that now might be a good time to take a calming breath. Gunner growled then whimpered, clearly getting the message. But Edward was the one who dropped his ax and stood dazed and blinking between us, his brow furrowed and mouth gaping as he strained to come up with words.
It was almost as if a kitsune had stolen his blood and used it to force him into the prior fighting...then had lost interest and left the male cold and confused. “What...?” Edward started, oblivious to the fact that yet another pack mate was rushing toward us with edged metal glinting. Or, rather, was rushing toward Edward, never mind that I was pretty sure the younger shifter was his sister’s son.
In reaction, my star ball shrunk, stretched, glistened into swordishness. Edward might be annoying, but he was an Atwood pack mate and I was bound to protect his life. So I pivoted, retreated, then lunged toward the new attacker. And now Edward was picking up his ax to join me...even as the blond werewolf fumbled and cut himself on his own blade.
Cut himself while trying for one of the easiest sword-fighting maneuvers imaginable. What was the male doing wielding a weapon if he didn’t know how to fight with one?
It was an easy matter to swipe my own sword sideways and send the younger male’s weapon skittering off into the dark. Harder was managing not to injure the shifter’s unshielded body as he came at me with bare hands.
Then someone shouted from behind me. The hairs on my neck prickled, and I whirled away from a werewolf who I suspected wouldn’t manage to do more than scratch me with human nails.
Because something had shifted. Something was different....
There. Not where the shout had come from, but in the opposite direction where the cluster of werewolves was more densely packed together. An arm rose above the crowd. A long dark shape arched back then flew directly toward us.
The tip glinted—a knife point affixed to a wooden handle creating a homemade javelin. And, unaware that he stood at the terminus of its trajectory, Gunner raised his muzzle in preparation for howling his pack back into line.
THERE WAS NO TIME FOR warning, for magic, for anything. I was too far away from Gunner, having become separated while preventing him from tearing out the throat of his own pack mate.
But Edward was close enough to save him. Edward, who hated me but whose gaze latched onto mine at just the perfect moment. Whose eyes flicked toward the falling javelin in an attempt to understand the horror on my face.
Edward didn’t hesitate before throwing himself between his alpha and the descending danger. The thunk of knife hitting flesh was sickening. The wheeze of air erupting from a lung, not through a trachea but out between ribcage and punctured skin, made my own breath seize up in response.
While I stood frozen, the blond nephew dropped to his knees beside Edward, already keening out his sorrow. “No! Uncle! No!”
Even dying, Edward somehow found the energy to pat his nephew’s hand consolingly. Meanwhile, his gaze once again latched onto mine. “Protect our pack,” he ordered, the words soundless yet the motion of his lips visible in the near darkness.
Then Gunner was shifting to replace the grief-stricken nephew, the battlefield growing silent as the pack leader’s hands pressed hard against the gaping wound on the older male’s chest. The javelin had gone straight through and out the other side cleanly—and who would have been able to do that from a hundred feet distant without practicing day and night?
Whoever had done it, however they’d done it, Edward wasn’t getting back up from this injury. And Gunner accepted that fact with the grace of a clan leader thinking of his larger responsibilities rather than about only one member of his pack.
“You have my gratitude,” the alpha started. Electricity from shifting werewolves filled the air even as an undulating howl rose up from dozens of shifters who had, one moment earlier, been battling against their family and friends. “Go in peace into the afterlife.”
“Promise.” Edward’s gaze met mine rather than responding to his alpha, his eyes already starting to glaze over with death. He wasn’t even looking at me, I realized. Was instead peering over my left shoulder, as if he’d lost track of his surroundings and was only hanging on long enough to hear my response.
Gunner glanced backwards in reaction, raising his eyebrows when he saw I was on the receiving end of Edward’s mouthed admonition. Then he scooted sideways, making room for me by the dying werewolf’s side.
“I promise,” I murmured to both of them, not certain what, exactly, I was agreeing to. I had no time to press Edward for further information however. Because, with one last wheeze from the hole in his chest cavity, my clearest enemy within the clan subsided into death.
Chapter 23
“I’ll take care of this,” Gunner told me, his voice curt as he strode away to trail his hands across the heads of panting shifters. They were clearly in need of a pack leader’s attention, so I didn’t complain about the tone of his voice. Not when I had a pressing problem of my own to attend to—Kira standing hand-in-hand with our grandmother, both fully surrounded by a ring of men wielding swords.
These were the humans our grandmother had treated like puppies yesterday, but they didn’t appear particularly gentle at the moment. Instead, they held their weapons in exactly the proper manner. Loosely en garde and ready to slice into anyone who looked at their charges with the wrong gleam in their eye.
Despite their clear training, however, I approached without hesitation, stopping just far enough away from the closest male so my sword could meet his advance should he decide to attack. But that was all the attention I gave to the humans. Instead, I peered over the guard’s shoulder at the old woman in their midst.
She was still small and still wrinkled. But—if I guessed right—she was also the impetus of the recent battle that had caused at least one werewolf’s death. And Sakurako made no effort to explain her actions. Instead, the elderly kitsune greeted me with a single word.
“Granddaughter.”
Well, if she wasn’t going to explain herself, then I’d deal with the only thing she held that I still cared about. “Kira, come here,” I demanded, knowing it wouldn’t be so easy to get my sister safely out from behind the ring of swords.
I expected the males to stop her from passing between them. Or, perhaps, for my grandmother to finally show her true colors and use kitsune magic to hold Kira in place. Instead, it was Kira herself who planted her feet and refused me. “Mai, chill,” she answered with yet another teenagerly roll of the eyes.
So I’d have to cut my way through the swordsmen to reach her. A matter made slightly more realistic when two wolves bumped their shoulders into my hips. Tank and Allen—I could smell them without looking downward. Unlike the rest of Gunner’s pack mates, I would trust these two with my—or rather, with my sister’s—life.
So I didn’t pause as I strode forward, ignoring the way five swords swung toward me in tandem as they prepared to hinder my approach. The bodyguards were almost too pretty to be fighters, their perfect faces so similar I couldn’t help thinking they’d been chosen not for skill but rather for looks.
I couldn’t count on that, however. Couldn’t count on anything except the star-ball sword that was now raised between me and danger, plus the two wolves standing firmly at my back. Three against five wasn’t terrible...but the battle would be dicey with Kira unprotected and open to enemy attack.
As if hearing those thoughts, my sister snorted, wrenched her hand free of our grandmother’s,
then slipped between the guards as easily as if they were trees planted in a grassy meadow. “Mai, I told you, they’re protecting me.”
She hadn’t actually said that, but I was the one failing to listen now. Because I held my breath as Kira padded forward, waiting for someone to restrain the departing child.
Except...all five guards plus my wily kitsune grandmother did nothing. No, that wasn’t quite true. One guard scooted sideways to give Kira space to pass unhindered. Another bowed ever so subtly while, behind them, our grandmother merely smiled as if this had been her intention all along.
“Thanks for the help, guys,” Kira called back over one shoulder. Then she was beside me while Allen shifted upwards to grab onto her before she could slip away from us.
“Ow!” Kira complained, attempting to shrug free of the protective grip of the werewolf. And this time the armed humans hardened, took a step forward...then halted at the subtlest clearing of my grandmother’s throat.
It really did appear that these swordsmen had been charged with protecting Kira rather than with menacing her. Still, “Take her home,” I murmured. And Tank and Allen obeyed me, drawing Kira away from the danger, the latter two-legged and the former still in the shape of his wolf.
As for myself, I firmed up my stance between the strangers and my retreating sister, fully expecting complaint from the swordsmen or from the woman who had told me to call her by a pet name the day before. Instead, the old woman cackled, pressing through her guard just as Kira had done moments earlier. She didn’t stop when she’d breached her guards, however. Instead Sakurako just kept coming until she could reach up and cup my face with crinkly fingers that felt unbearably cold against my over-heated skin.
“Now that you’ve called off your dogs, granddaughter,” she told me, “perhaps we can finally finish our little talk.”
“YOU WANT TO TALK?” I barely restrained myself from physically shaking sense back into the woman who swore she was my grandmother but acted like someone intent upon tearing everything I cared about apart. “We have nothing left to talk about. You asked if I was willing to give up Oyo and....”
“Stop.” Sakurako held a hand palm-out between us, and I wasn’t quite rude enough to talk over her. After all, she was old and was one of only two surviving relatives. So I obeyed the gesture and gave her space in which to speak.
Only the old woman didn’t. Instead, she nodded at her guards, sending all except one striding away from us into the darkness. Then, once her final lackey started folding the picnic blanket, she slipped her fingers around my elbow and led us away from the carnage of the battlefield.
“I misunderstood your affection for these werewolves,” she said after a moment, and I could tell she rarely admitted to having been wrong. “This is not my work, but I could have stopped it if I’d made an effort. Next time, I’ll think more deeply about what you might have wished.”
It wasn’t quite an apology and I definitely didn’t believe in her supposed lack of involvement. Still, I didn’t tear my arm out of her grasp and storm away into the night. “What do you want?” I asked instead, my tone not quite cordial but not so antagonistic that the male now trotting behind us dropped Sakurako’s picnic paraphernalia and drew his sword.
“I want a chance to explain to you about the larger world you are a part of,” my grandmother answered quickly. “Oyo—yes, I want Oyo also. But I was premature to set a deadline on that decision. I know you well enough by now to see that once you understand the repercussions, you will make the proper choice.”
She thought I was wrapped around her little finger just like her guards and—apparently—Kira were. She assumed that acting like a doddering old woman would win my affection and garner my regard.
But I wasn’t stupid enough to be fooled a second time. So I merely shook my head. “My decision is made, Sakurako. I don’t trust you around my friends or around Kira. You know my answer. I want you out of clan central before...”
“What if I made a promise?” Once again, my grandmother had spoken over me. And, once again, I closed my mouth and allowed her to speak. “I swear to protect, not harm, everyone you care about for the next twenty-four hours. Is that good enough to buy one more day to change your mind?”
It wouldn’t have been if she’d been a werewolf or a human. But I could feel Sakurako’s kitsune oath binding us together and placing her in my debt as she spoke.
Plus, I remembered how carefully she’d guarded Kira. How easily she’d released my sister back into my care once I demanded the youngster be returned to me.
And yet.... “Now that you’ve called off your dogs, granddaughter.” The words rolled through my mind in belated warning. Sakurako was protecting my “dogs” only because she wanted something from me, not because she thought they deserved protection for their own sake.
Still, I trusted the kitsune oath to keep the pack together for twenty-four hours. And I was also getting the distinct impression that my familial stubbornness may have seen its source in Sakurako’s veins.
So I accepted defeat gracefully. Bowing my head, I caved to her offer. “Tomorrow we will speak again, Sobo. Tonight, I need to help my pack lick their wounds.”
Chapter 24
Only, the pack didn’t need me. Or so I gathered when I reached the far end of the Green and saw the way wolves encircled Gunner in a tight cluster. They were just standing there, over a hundred furry bodies all touching their neighbors with chins, necks, and noses. And, even though I couldn’t feel it, I could imagine the rebuilding of shattered bonds taking place before me, the magic of pack recreating what had recently been lost.
This was the sort of thing a fox shouldn’t stick her nose into. Just watching them made me feel small, cold, and sad. So I backtracked to the scene of the battle, intent upon doing at least a little good before falling into my bed and calling it a night.
Because if Sakurako was to be believed and the recent fight hadn’t been instigated by a kitsune, that meant a member of that cluster of shifters had murderously thrown a homemade javelin at his or her alpha. But who would do that to Gunner? Edward was the one who’d shared the most overt disapproval of the alpha’s governing processes...and yet Edward had also been the one who’d leapt to Gunner’s defense without regard for the safety of his own skin.
I winced, remembering the way the javelin had struck with so much force it slid all the way through the deceased male’s body. No wonder the weapon was now lying abandoned on the ground even though Edward had been carried away in preparation for some sort of werewolf farewell to the dead.
“Haven’t you done enough already?”
My hand skittered away from the bloody broomstick that made up the weapon’s handle, the ball of my hand nicking itself on the knife lashed to the end as haste flubbed my retreat. But, despite the pain, I remained crouched on the grass beside the weapon. After all, Elizabeth’s father had died less than an hour earlier. She deserved the courtesy of the upper hand.
Plus, Gunner was close enough that he could be here almost immediately if my awkward posture left me open to attack by this werewolf. So I let Elizabeth’s words hang between us for several seconds, then I answered the question she hadn’t asked.
“I’m trying to figure out who killed your father,” I told her, leaning down further until my nose nearly touched the spot where a hand would have clutched the broomstick while throwing it. Unfortunately, it was impossible to pick out identifying aromas through the coating of blood smeared across the handle, so I soon settled back on my heels in regret.
“You won’t find any scent there,” Elizabeth told me. And for half a second I thought she was admitting to having been involved in her own father’s murder. But then something long and heavy landed on the ground beside me. A throwing stick with a protrusion just big enough for the hollowed out end of the broomstick to fit over—no wonder the javelin had flown so forcefully. And when I leaned down to sniff this second item, I found no scent at all along its length.
A
plastic grocery bag half wrapped around the end answered the question of why Elizabeth’s odor hadn’t rubbed off on the wooden handle while she carried it across the field. But shouldn’t even gloved fingers have left some scent, whether leather or plastic? I was pretty sure they should have, which meant the killer had used a trick like the scent-reducing compound I’d sprayed on my own flesh two nights earlier to prevent Gunner from smelling the fact that I’d been manhandled by another wolf.
“You promised my father that you would protect the Atwoods,” Elizabeth continued. And for the first time I heard something other than anger in her voice. She’d lost a parent this evening. Of course she was traumatized. I wanted to stand up and hug her, but I knew she’d resist the embrace.
“I did,” I said simply.
“Then do what you promised.” For half a second, the young woman reeked of fur and electricity. She needed to shift, needed to accept the unity Gunner was offering the rest of the pack.
Instead, she kicked the throwing stick lightly with one blood-stained sneaker. “Find out who killed my father and prevent it from happening again. Or solve the problem the easy way and get out of our pack.”
I WAS HALFWAY BACK to my cottage, intent upon calling it a night, when a voice in the darkness stopped me. “Mai-san.” Whirling, my hand was on my sword hilt even before I made out the shape of one of the five human swordsmen who’d recently dogged my grandmother’s footsteps.
Just a few minutes earlier, this human had appeared ominous and forbidding as he trapped my sister within a ring of swords. Now, though, his body language was entirely the opposite as he deferred to me not only in posture but also with the honorific tacked onto the end of my name.
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