"Then be king," Micah said.
"Ma petite," he said, looking at me.
"When we raise the power again, touch us and see what happens. See if you can control it. See if you can control us."
"How could any man resist such a delicious challenge?"
"Don't resist," Dev said.
He gazed down at the man. "You must be very angry with Asher to suggest such revenge."
"Can't I just want to sleep with you?"
"Oui, but there is no one you could sleep with that would hurt Asher more than me."
The power was fading fast, but the flash of anger in Dev gave it one last boost, so that we were bathed in that invisible fire again. "You and Micah get more power than ever before, and Asher suffers the way he's made both of us suffer. It's a win-win."
"You cannot win such games with Asher, mon tigre, I know this for a sad fact. You can either be with him and tolerate him playing such games, or walk away; there is no middle ground with him."
"Besides, revenge sex is always a bad idea," I said.
Dev looked at me and put some of that heat into his eyes, so I got not just the power but a wave of his physical need. It made both Micah and me gasp. "I'll make it good for both of you, I promise."
He turned and looked at Jean-Claude. "For all three of you."
"You know, we might already have the power without needing to cement it with sex," I said.
Dev's hands gripped us so hard, it was just this side of hurting. "No, no, I won't be just tolerated on the edges of someone's life. We try, really try, and then if Micah can't deal with me that's one thing, but I won't be cast out without really trying first."
"You have tried very hard with Asher and it has not worked, mon ami."
"That's because it's Asher; he's like a rigged game, you can't really win it, can you?"
Jean-Claude reached out and touched his face, gently; the power curled over his skin and through all four of us, so that it suddenly blazed brighter again and left us all crying out with the rush of it. Jean-Claude drew back with a shaky laugh, his eyes ablaze with his own power, so that they looked like a midnight sky set with blue fire.
Dev swayed, even sitting down, and let us go. The moment we stopped touching, the power began to seep away. "I need food and rest, but after that I want a real chance at making this work."
"It will give us time to tell our other lovers that there may be a change of . . . menu," Jean-Claude said, voice still holding that edge of laughter he got when he was a little power drunk.
"If this works I won't just be food," Dev said.
"What are you saying?" I asked.
He held up his left hand and wiggled his fingers at me. "I want you to put a ring on it."
It was Micah who said, "If this works, you'll get your ring."
I looked at one of the loves of my life, who I knew wasn't comfortable around large athletic men, at all, and knew in that moment that the Coalition visits out of town had been dangerous. Dangerous enough that he was willing to tie himself to someone he could never love, someone that he would have to share me, Jean-Claude, and even Nathaniel with, and I knew he didn't want to do that. I hugged him hard, as if I couldn't press enough of him against me to be sure he was safe. He was startled, and didn't seem to know what to do as he hugged me back.
"Don't die on me; whatever it takes, don't die on me."
His arms tightened around me, holding me as tight as I held him. "Whatever it takes," he said.
"Whatever it takes," I whispered back.
"If there is anything this side of heaven and hell that I can do to come back safe, I will always come back home to you, Anita."
Suddenly having to tell Asher that we were borrowing his lover, or how it might mess up our domestic arrangements, didn't seem important; we'd deal, because the thought of how close I must have come to losing the man in my arms scared me more than anything else. Sex was not a fate worse than death, because with life there was always hope. Hope that the big breakup wasn't permanent. Hope that the issues that drove you apart might bring you back together again. Hope that you'd see their smile again, even if they were with someone else. Only death was final, and without hope; short of that, there were options. I buried my face in the sweet scent of Micah's neck, and I wanted those options more than anything else in the world.
25
ABOUT THAT TIME we got the text that dinner was ready; Micah and Dev went off to find fresh clothes. Jean-Claude went to explain why I needed a shower and clean clothes more than the men. I was never sure why the shapeshifter form that came out of the goopy stuff was always dry and clean, but it was, so both of the men just needed to wash off a few bits that I'd gotten on them, but they were pretty much clean. I, on the other hand, was covered in rapidly drying goop from nearly head to toe. Even my hair was stiff with it. It wasn't the first time I'd been slimed head to toe by having a wereanimal beside me, but every time was a new experience in needing to scrape it off in the shower.
In fact, the men in my life had requested that I not use any of the showers in the main bedrooms, because the stuff clogged up the plumbing. The group showers were large enough to satisfy any gym, and had mainly been created for the guards so they could clean up after hitting our specialized gym area that could accommodate the extra strength and speed of a lycanthrope. If I stopped up a drain in there, there were a dozen more showers that still worked in the line--though the people in charge of maintenance had given us little plastic signs to hang on any shower that had been used for tough cleanups; that way they knew where the potential problem might be and didn't get surprised.
Domino tried to follow me as a bodyguard, but I'd finally convinced everyone that if I needed guards down here in our inner sanctum we had other problems, so I got to walk to the showers alone. It was a relief in a way. I loved the men in my life, but sometimes a little quiet and solitude wasn't a bad thing.
There were two guards outside the locker room area leading to the showers. I recognized one of them, but not the other. "Hey, Benito."
"Hey, Anita."
Benito was tall, dark, and dangerous-looking. He dressed in nice, tailored suits most of the time, and the body underneath was in good shape, but he never managed to make me think handsome--sinister maybe, but not handsome. His dark brown eyes smiled at me, though, and softened his face. He'd moved up the ranks until he was the main bodyguard for Rafael the rat king.
"I'm assuming that Rafael is in the showers if you're here," I said.
"Yeah, he said he didn't want to be disturbed."
I sort of motioned at the mess of my clothes and hair. "Any way to get an exception?"
"You, Jean-Claude, Micah, and Richard are the exceptions. Rafael says that we can't keep the kings, or queen, out of their own stuff."
"Nathaniel isn't on the list?" I said.
Benito grinned, flashing white, nearly perfect teeth. My dad paid good money for my half-sister to have that kind of smile. Benito's face was pockmarked and rough; it always made me wonder if he was just one of those people who had a naturally perfect smile. I never asked, because I couldn't figure out how to ask about the nice smile without insulting the rest of him.
"He's a prince, not a king; no insult meant."
"None taken, so I can go clean up?"
He motioned me through the open doorway. The other guard just watched me with eyes so brown they were nearly black, but he said nothing. If Benito said it was okay, then it was.
There were small dressing areas with curtains if I'd wanted to undress in absolute privacy, but the locker room was empty and no one was getting in the door that I wasn't already sleeping with thanks to Rafael's men, so I stripped off in front of the lockers. I put my weapons in a locker, but the clothes had to go on the floor and stay there. Whoever did the laundry for us had complained that the clear junk could ruin certain fabrics, so please put it in with the other body-fluid wash. I grabbed a towel from the shelf, and the conditioners that Jean-Claude had made me keep d
own here for my hair, and went into the shower area.
I heard the water running and knew it had to be Rafael. If he'd just been one of the guards I'd have avoided him and showered around the corner, but he was a great deal more than that. What was protocol if you happened to know a king was in the showers? Did you avoid him, acknowledge him, say hi? He wasn't my king, anyway, but he was my friend, and occasionally my food. Since the way I fed on him was through sex, it meant we were a little closer than typical friends. He was probably the closest thing I had to a true fuck buddy. You know, you're in town, they're in town, and you hook up. I hated the phrase, but for Rafael and me, it wasn't inaccurate.
I stood there for a minute in the showers debating, and then I heard a small sound. It was a pain sound. I'd seen Rafael after bad guys had flayed the skin from his back. He didn't make sounds like that for nothing. My hands were full of hair stuff, so I kept the extra-long towel over one shoulder, where it nearly dragged on the ground. I was mostly covered, and that would have to be good enough for whatever was happening. The small, involuntary noises stopped as I looked around the open shower area. He wasn't in sight, but I could hear a shower still running, so it had to be one of the three private stalls that had shower curtains. I admit that I used them a lot when other people were showering after workouts. Shapeshifters don't have a problem with nudity, but I wasn't the only woman who didn't want to strip down completely with the guys in the shower, so we had the stalls.
I debated on whether to ask if he was all right, but if he was having a moment in the showers, he was entitled. The guy rule was that even if you were crying, the other men ignored it unless you said something to draw attention to it, but quiet crying, especially when you'd tried to get privacy for it, meant you left it alone. Women usually want you to seek them out and ask what's wrong; men don't, as a general rule. There are men who want you to ask, and women who don't, but the rule was true for most people I knew, so I left Rafael to fight his private battle and turned on one of the showers in the middle of the room. I could see if he opened the curtain and wanted to share, but otherwise he had his privacy.
I admit that it was a quick shower for more than one reason, just in case Rafael did come out and want to talk. The second round of conditioner that Jean-Claude had started making me let set in was irritating, but I admitted that my hair looked and felt better since I'd been doing it. I hate when the prissy stuff works so well. It makes me suspect that there's more practical use to all the pampering than I ever wanted to admit.
I was finally clean and dry and had put in the five, yes five, leave-in products that Jean-Claude had given me to use. I still wasn't as good as he was at working it through, but it was a start.
In the silence Rafael made a sharp sound, as if moving had hurt.
I couldn't stand it. "Rafael, it's Anita."
"I know your scent," he said, in a voice that was almost normal, and didn't match the sound he'd just made.
"Is there anything I can do to help?"
"You can't fight my battles for me, Anita."
I was outside the stall he was in, watching the water splash underneath the curtain. "I know that; the rats don't allow their king to substitute the way some of the other animal groups allow."
"We all appreciate that you study each of our cultures," he said.
I leaned my shoulder against the cool tile. "Is there anything I can do to help you right now? Just say it, tell me, and I'll leave you to it."
He was quiet for so long that I started to move away. He called out, "Pull back the curtain if you want to see the wound, but there is nothing you can do to save me from my own weakness."
I didn't know what he meant by that, but I set down the conditioners and shampoo and pushed the curtain open. He was kneeling on the floor of the shower, his hands spread on the wall as if to hold himself upright. His shoulders still looked strong, but they were bowed, the top of his short, black hair resting against the tile. The back of his body was the dark, smooth, muscled line that I remembered, except for the wound on his back. I stepped into the stall and knelt behind him.
"It's a puncture wound, but it's not like any blade I've ever seen."
"Nor I," he said in a voice that held the same edge of pain I'd heard in the small noises he'd been making.
"I thought you weren't allowed weapons when you were fighting for kingship of the wererats."
"We aren't."
"So he cheated," I said.
"Yes."
"He's dead, then," I said.
He ran one hand through his short hair, slicking it back, as he turned to look at me. His face was dark with high, square cheekbones. He was a handsome man. His Mexican heritage was printed on his face the same way some Irish bloodlines are, though Rafael was as many generations away from Mexico as most Irish Americans were from Ireland. Sometimes DNA just survives to remind us who we are.
"Cheating means his execution was a given, yes."
"What did he hope to gain?" I asked.
"My death."
I looked into solid brown eyes, so dark they were almost as black as his eyes in rat form. I touched his wet hair. "He can't be king if he's dead," I said.
"I suspect he was a sacrifice for someone else who would have stepped forward if I had died there."
"I thought you couldn't be king unless you killed the old one first?"
"Normally, no, but there are provisions in our laws for kings who die in battles that are outside leadership challenges." His shoulders convulsed, his head pressing against the tile again.
"Why haven't you changed form and tried to heal?"
"I did."
I reached out to the wound in his midback but didn't touch it. "It's as big as the palm of my hand still."
"I do not believe the wound size has changed."
"It should have, even if it was silver. You're too powerful to still be this hurt."
"I was too powerful, but even kings age and grow weak eventually, Anita. It is usually age, not lack of fighting skill, that slows us enough to lose the crown. The king I defeated was white of hair in human and rat form."
"You aren't old, Rafael." There was something wrong with the wound. It didn't look right.
"Older than I look," he said.
"What made this wound?"
"It was a four-sided blade, very wide as it went toward the hilt."
"Sounds more like a spearhead of some kind than a knife," I said.
"It was unique."
I got up and pushed the curtain back further so I could get more light directly on the wound. "He shoved it in and twisted it, or something."
"He broke off part of it into the wound. Their healer had to fish it out after I left the challenge circle."
I thought of having something that big shoved into my back, and then the wrenching strength used to twist and break off the blade inside the wound. The flesh inside the wound looked . . . burned. "You should be in that nice hospital area the wererats staff for the local lycanthropes."
"I cannot afford to let the others know I am weakening, Anita. I killed the one who did this, but if people realize I can no longer heal better than this, then there will be another challenger next week, or next month, but they will come like vultures to a wounded animal."
"So you came here so none of your people would figure it out."
"You and your kings are my allies. My being weak is a bad thing for all of us, so you will keep my secret until we can find a new king who would not be a disaster in my place."
"If you mean set you up to be killed by someone you want to be the next rat king, you can just forget that. I'm not a big believer in suicide."
He grabbed my wrist. "Anita, don't you understand? I am the king not of just the local rodere, but all the rats across the country. The group here, alone, is large enough to challenge almost every other shapeshifter group."
I looked into his almost desperate eyes and said the only thing I could. "I understand that, but I won't let you sacrifice yourse
lf until we've exhausted all the other options, Rafael."
He knelt straighter, rotating his back so he could look at me more straight on, and the movement made him double up in pain, almost taking us both to the floor with his grip on my wrist.
"I need more light. There's something wrong with this wound."
"Do what you must," he said. He'd let go of my wrist and was just on all fours, letting his head hang down like an exhausted horse. I got his arm across my shoulders, my other arm around his body, being careful not to touch the wound, and helped him to his feet. He usually stood so straight, so strong, but now he stumbled and I held most of his weight for a second; then he fought his feet back under him and helped me get him out into the better lighting of the main shower area.
I debated on whether to make him walk to the benches in the locker room or just let him slide to the floor here, because standing wasn't happening unaided, and he wanted as few people as possible to see how badly he was hurt. I finally put him near a wall so he could lean on it, but he was back on his knees where he started. He was kneeling in a bright pool of light, though, and that was what I needed.
I could see the initial thrust of the weapon in the outer part of the wound. The edges had started to heal, but it was silver and there was only so much even Rafael's body could do. That wasn't the part of the wound that looked odd to me. It was deeper into the meat of his body.
"As deep as this is, it should still be bleeding, but it's not."
"Have I healed it, then?"
"The outer edges of the wound, yes, I think so, or your body is trying to, but deeper in the wound track it's like the flesh is burned. I'm not even sure that's exactly the right word, but burned is the best I have to describe what I'm seeing. We need a doctor."
"No." His voice was very final as he said it. I'd been in enough meetings with the leaders of the lycanthrope community to know that when Rafael said no like that, it was a decision, not a suggestion.
"Fine, but can I bring Micah down here to give a second opinion?"
He leaned his forehead against the tile as if just staying on his knees was effort. "Yes, I trust him as I trust you."
I had to go to the locker room to get my phone and call Micah.
His greeting was, "Nathaniel says dinner is getting cold."
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