Marked By Fire

by Meg Ripley

  “It looks pretty bad,” he said, reading her shock accurately. “You should see the other guy.”

  “What happened?” Keira quickly set the plates down on the table, moving closer to Raul with fast, silent steps, her animal instincts beginning to take over. Anger kindled in the pit of her stomach at the thought of anyone harming the man who had taken her out of her imprisonment, and Keira checked at the reaction. Slow down, girl. He is not your mate.

  “Two things,” Raul said, grimacing as he sat down on the couch and began to peel his bloodstained shirt off. “First is that there is a shake-up in the Pack. The second is that your people have already commenced fighting back against Reginald’s execution of panthers.” Keira stared at Raul in shock, shaking her head slowly. Raul’s chest and arms were scored with gashes and slashes, and she could tell that he wasn’t the victim of some random wolf attack—at least not of that alone. There were unmistakable marks of panther on him as well.

  “You were attacked by one of my clan members,” Keira said, pointing to one of the marks on his arm. Raul shrugged.

  “They smelled you on me,” he said.

  “Your own Pack hasn’t yet?” Raul chuckled.

  “I’ve been keeping away from them, you big dummy. Everything so far has been by phone, with the excuse that I was recuperating from the fight with you and the wolf’s bane that your people threw at me to get you out of Reginald’s shed. Nobody wants to be around someone reeking of wolf’s bane.”

  “We don’t mind it,” Keira said with a shrug. “I don’t smell anyone else on you though.”

  “I showered before I came here,” Raul said simply. “But I’m not healing as fast as usual.” He frowned down at his injured, scratched, bitten torso and shook his head. “Probably from that wolf’s bane I rolled around in before I went to meet with Reginald.” He looked around and his gaze fell on the plate of bones that Keira had brought out with her own food. “Bones?”

  “Fido,” Keira said, smiling wryly in spite of the fear, anger, and sadness she felt. “Not really that great of a joke at the moment, but it would have been hilarious if you’d come in uninjured.”

  ****

  Raul winced as Keira scrubbed at one of the wounds across his chest with a washcloth, clenching his teeth to suppress the growl that rose in his throat in reaction. He knew—he understood, in the part of his mind that was human—that she had to get his wounds as clean as possible. He even understood that the saline she was using was the best possible cleanser, even if the salt stung and burned. He had to get the wolf’s bane out of his skin, out of his system, as quickly as possible.

  “You wolves act all tough,” Keira said, her voice light, “but you’re all a bunch of softies.”

  “Excuse me?” Raul raised an eyebrow, turning his head to look at her. Keira smiled, and he could smell the fear undercutting her normal pheromones. “I’ll have you know that I held up pretty damn well against the panthers your clan sent to ambush us.”

  “I wish I knew who you were up against,” Keira said, leaning in closer to sniff at his neck, his shoulder, and his chest. “They must not have been in close enough to get their scent on you very strongly if you were able to get rid of it with a shower.”

  “Or you’re just too attuned to my pheromones,” Raul countered. He turned to face her more fully, watching her intently. “You realize that this is going to make everything a million times more complicated, don’t you?” Keira met his gaze for a long moment and then shrugged.

  “I’d say my clan attacking your pack probably complicated things on its own,” she said. She took a deep breath and sighed, and Raul saw the flicker of uncertainty, of worry, on her face. “This went down too fast.” Raul nodded his agreement.

  “I thought we’d have another day or two before we heard from your people,” he said. He shook his head, remembering the incredible chaos of the ambush. It was bad enough that the Pack was divided—that there had been a battle between its members—but the addition of the panthers in their midst, coming out of nowhere, on Pack lands at the outskirts of the town, was too much. Raul sighed and turned away from Keira again, giving her his back to treat. He needed to think.

  Reginald suspected something; of that Raul was certain. The Alpha had called Raul in for a meeting, saying that he didn’t care if the enforcer was injured or recovering from wolf’s bane poisoning; if he did not show up on Reginald’s doorstep in thirty minutes, he would be challenged the next time the Pack met. Raul closed his eyes as Keira went to work on the scratches, gashes, and bites on his back, remembering the whole incredible mess.

  Raul had taken a shower before he’d left his house, doing everything he could to remove whatever scent marks Keira might have left on him; he was grateful for the fact that the panther had a naturally-evanescent pheromone, the trait that had made her and her friends difficult to track in the first place. It would be much more difficult for Keira to rid herself of Raul’s scent if and when she tried to return to the panthers than it was for Raul to scrub himself clean of her smell.

  When he had arrived at the meeting place that Reginald had chosen—Pack lands in the woods—Raul had already known that there was trouble afoot. Reginald had said nothing at all about a Pack meeting, and yet, Raul had been able to smell more than half of the members of the Pack, present, hidden, when he stepped out of his car. But there was no sense in forcing a confrontation; Raul decided that Reginald was a fool indeed if he thought his enforcer didn’t realize that more than half of the members of their group were present.

  “It’s good to see you, Raul,” Reginald had said, reaching out to clap Raul on the shoulder.

  “Glad I could make it out here,” Raul had replied. “What’s going on?”

  “We have some intelligence from the foxes that the panthers are planning to come after us for executing their kin,” Reginald had told him. “I want to hear what you think we should do about it.”

  “Why would you want just my opinion? Why not call a Pack meeting and discuss it?”

  “I know you were against executing them,” Reginald had replied. “But it was the right thing to do.”

  “It went against Pack laws,” Raul had pointed out. He could smell the fear, the apprehension and brittle anger radiating off of Reginald. “But I’m your enforcer. I work under you. If you make an executive decision, that’s between the whole Pack and you.”

  “You’re not alone in your distaste for my decision,” Reginald had said. “I need to know that I’m not going to get a challenge at a time when we need to be more together than ever.”

  “Is that why you called me here? If I was going to challenge you, it would have been the night that it happened,” Raul had said.

  “You might wait until you had the supporters to take the Alpha and hold it,” Reginald had countered. “Or you might have just made the decision to be less than vigilant about your duties. The fact that you haven’t been around the past couple of days…”

  “You can still smell the wolf’s bane on me,” Raul had told the Alpha. “Do you think I’m enjoying this?”

  “I think one of the panthers got away and I didn’t smell as many on my property as it should have taken to bust her out,” Reginald had said firmly. “And that makes me worried about the strength of our Pack.”

  “If our Pack is divided, the cause is more complicated than a hostage getting away.”

  “She wasn’t a hostage,” Reginald had said tightly. “She was a captive, a good-for-nothing cat on death row.”

  “The other two didn’t get away,” Raul had pointed out, shrugging. “You were able to show your strength by putting them to death just fine.”

  “Which makes me wonder how one escaped,” Reginald had insisted.

  Members of the Pack began to ooze out of the woods then, and Raul had felt his heart beating faster in his chest, the adrenaline coursing through his system beginning to trigger the animal consciousness that always hovered in the back of his mind. The wolf in him rose to
the fore, scenting to attempt to sort out which of the members of the Pack were with him—and which were against him. Cam wasn’t among the wolves that came out of the woods, and Raul wondered if that meant that his second was unaware, if Cam had decided to avoid the confrontation, or if he had decided to abandon Raul.

  “I thought this was supposed to be between you and me, Reginald,” Raul had said, gesturing to the members of the Pack.

  “I thought it would be a good idea to have a few witnesses, just in case I have to bring you to tribunal,” Reginald had told him. “So, you tell me right now: do you know anything about the panther disappearing from our custody?”

  “I know she escaped,” Raul had said, meeting the Alpha’s gaze without flinching. “I know she was busted out, and that her own people were involved. That’s all I know. If you had given me time to recover before throwing these accusations in my face, maybe I’d have a chance to investigate it more thoroughly.” He had been able to feel the mood in the group that had assembled around himself and Reginald: doubt, distrust, anger, fear, and malice marked their scents and their body language. The part of the Pack that had come to witness the confrontation was like a perfectly dry powder keg on a hot day—anything would set them off.

  Trudy, one of the women and a member of the Pack whose business had been targeted in the panther raids, slipped forward. “I want to discuss the execution,” she said, looking from Reginald to Raul. “I don’t think it was right.”

  That had been all it took. Those few words had triggered the two factions of the Pack to spring into action. Raul had watched as the human bodies and faces had melted away, clothes tearing or flying through the air as people transformed into their animal shapes. Reginald had succumbed to the atmosphere, the thick pheromones in the air that goaded the animal part of his brain.

  In moments, members of the Pack were attacking each other, growling and biting and leaping, and Raul lost Reginald in the melee, focused only on defending himself from the attacks that came from all sides. He felt the wrenching contact in his mind as members—family, friends—fought each other, injuring but not killing each other. Pain blossomed inside him as well as all over his pelt, and after a few moments that felt like hours, it was impossible to tell which was which.

  The fight might have come to nothing—or next to nothing—but as Raul had crouched, preparing to spring at a member of the Pack that had attacked one of those who was against the execution, he caught the scent: panthers. It had all devolved into pure, unbridled chaos and fury at that point; the members of the Pack, previously at each other’s throats, turned their anger towards the mutual enemy. Already tired from fighting his own people, Raul had barely managed to stay in the fight against the panthers long enough to help drive them away, watching to make sure that the cowardly ambushers had all slinked off before he changed back into his human form and climbed into his car.

  “We need to get the elementals involved in this,” Raul told Keira as he felt her hands come to a stop against his body.

  “Those assholes? They’ll drag it out for ages,” Keira protested.

  “They’re the only ones who can assert a judgment over both groups,” Raul pointed out. “I need you to help me get in touch with your Alpha, and then we both need to go to the rulers of Fire and Earth and get them to wade into this pile of bullshit. Otherwise…” Raul turned and looked at Keira. “All either of our clans are going to do is pick each other off.”

  ****

  Keira watched from the passenger seat as Raul pulled into the driveway of Harold’s house. The animal part of her consciousness, coiled through the human pathways of her brain, insisted that this was a bad idea; that it could cause nothing but trouble. But she agreed with Raul that there wasn’t a better option on the table. The situation between the Pack and the panther clan had already erupted into one battle—if they didn’t do something about it, if nobody called a truce, then the two groups would go on fighting each other until the elementals got involved.

  “You gave him notice we were coming, right?” Raul glanced at her as he shifted the car into park, and Keira nodded. As soon as they’d gotten into range, she had reached out mentally, telling Harold that she was safe, that she was coming to his house to brief him about the situation with the wolves—and that she was bringing a wolf with her.

  “You better get any Alpha thoughts about taking charge of this conversation out of your head right now, Fido,” Keira said, knowing that she sounded more nervous than tough, and that Raul would hear it. “If you try and pretend like you’re doing Harold a favor bringing me back, then he’s going to stonewall you. Let me take the lead on this.”

  “I’ll let you pretend you knocked me out and drove yourself here if you want,” Raul suggested, the playful tone of his voice belying the gunpowder scent of his apprehension. “But I don’t think even Harold would believe it.” Keira smiled slightly, her heart already beating faster in her chest, the animal consciousness in her mind gearing up to handle the situation. Harold was the Alpha of her clan; he was the only person she could truly trust to talk to about the situation. But she knew that she could only trust Harold so far. He might spare her because she was a mating-age female, but if he thought that she had violated the rules of the clan—and realistically, she had—then he could repudiate her, capture Raul, and kill them both.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Keira said, taking a deep breath and closing her eyes to push down the fear and apprehension she felt. She opened the passenger side door of the car and climbed out, immediately sniffing the air to catch any traces of scent-marks from members of the clan. She could smell familiar panther-marks, but none of them were fresh enough to suggest that they were still present, other than Harold’s own scent mark, leading from his truck in the driveway and towards the front door, a well-worn, often-refreshed marking. Keira glanced at Raul and saw that he was doing the same, sorting through the different, evanescent scents. “Hard to catch our smells, isn’t it?” Raul gave her a wry grin.

  “Some of you are more obvious than others,” he said. “You must not be here all that often.”

  “What makes you say that?” Keira frowned, looking around the property.

  “If you were here often, even as faint as your trace is, I’d know it.” Keira felt her stomach lurch at the admission; if Raul knew her scent-mark that well, then he was starting to connect with her more seriously. Never should have given into the urge to blood him, she thought bitterly. At least Raul had had enough self-control to avoid blooding her; there would be hell to pay if she had the mark of a wolf’s love-bite on her neck, or if Harold could have scented her blood on Raul.

  Keira dismissed the thought and started towards the front door of the Alpha’s house, telling herself that Harold was not nearly as hotheaded as Reginald had proven himself to be. “Remember,” she said sharply to Raul as they both stepped up onto the front porch.

  “You’re in charge,” Raul said, assuming an appropriate subordinate position, just a step behind her. He smiled slightly and then wiped his face clean of the expression. Keira took another quick, deep breath and lifted her hand, willing the change to flow through her arm, transforming the fingers, the palm, into a paw. She scratched at the door, in the pattern that had been drilled into her mind ever since she had first begun transforming with the clan; it was the identifying “knock” of one member of the clan to another, something they all knew and recognized. If she hadn’t trusted Raul with her life, Keira would have simply knocked; she felt briefly nervous at what she was implying to her clan leader with the secret gesture, but he would scent Raul on her skin the moment he answered the door. There could be no hiding the attachment between them, tenuous as it was.

  A moment later, Keira’s sharp ears picked up the sound of the lock’s tumblers turning over in the door, and then Harold appeared, looking from her to Raul distrustfully. “Come inside,” he said brusquely, his gaze settling once more on Raul, almost a scowl. “And you—wolf. Don’t think that just
because I’m letting you into my home, you’re welcome to do as you please. I’ll enforce my right to rule my own property if I have to.”

  “I understand,” Raul said, inclining his head ever so slightly in Harold’s direction. “I’m here to discuss issues between our groups—and Keira told me that the person to come to was you. I am a guest in your home.”

  “You’re not a guest,” Harold said sharply. “You’re an associate.” Harold’s heavy gaze fell on Keira. “Why one of my own people would bring a damned wolf into my home is beyond me.”

  “Let us in before someone sees,” Keira told the older man firmly. She kept her body language neutral, not quite submissive, and let her gaze fall away, telling him that she was not there to threaten. “We need to talk.”

  ****

  The Alpha’s house reeked of panther as Raul stood in the living room, carefully maintaining his subordinate position. Even without Keira’s warning, Harold’s greeting would have given him enough notice to behave himself properly. Raul looked around, trying not to appear to be noticing details; the last thing he wanted was to come across as a spy.

  “Raul was the one who helped me escape,” Keira told the Alpha, sitting down on the leather couch that hugged the wall. Raul remained standing, a few feet away from her, hands in front of him, in a sort of modified “parade rest” position. The old man looks like ex-military, Raul thought, feeling an almost unwilling sympathy with Harold. He didn’t want to like the man; the Alpha panther was everything that Raul had ever been taught to distrust. But he had already begun to question the dogma that living as a werewolf had bequeathed to him; Keira was unlike anything he had been taught to expect of a panther female.

  “Lachlan and Gary are dead,” Harold said. “You got away. Explain that to me.”