by Meg Ripley
“They were given the opportunity to leave, too,” Keira said, glancing at Raul. “He offered them assistance, but they wouldn’t take it.”
“Why did you?” Harold’s voice was tight, almost brittle with suppressed anger. Raul looked at the man more intently, taking in the details of his face; there were similarities to Lachlan, but that could simply be close breeding. He had more than a few cousins in the Pack himself.
“Lachlan and Gary insisted,” Keira said. “Because I am a female of mating age. They kept us in copper chains; I fought with this one to try and create enough of a diversion for all of us to get free, but the Alpha came in.” Harold looked at Raul sharply and Raul looked away, carefully keeping his gaze on the floor, expressing no dominance.
“The wolf Alpha overstepped his boundaries,” Harold said, his voice cut through with a throaty growl. “He has to be made to pay. I can smell that one’s mark all over you—why shouldn’t I call in the clan, have you both whipped and then put to your own deaths? You for a traitor, him for being part of the illegal execution?”
“If we don’t settle this,” Keira said firmly, “then our clan and their Pack are both just going to keep picking each other off bit by bit until either the elementals get involved or neither of us has enough members to survive.”
“The wolves have to pay for what they did,” Harold insisted. “I can’t let what they did slide.”
“What would you ask as a price?” Keira shot a scowl in his direction, but Raul disregarded it. “I will tell you now—the Pack itself is divided about the executions. Some of the members are glad it happened; the raids on our businesses were getting out of control. Some of the members are against Reginald now, because what he did isn’t our way.”
“It’s exactly your way, wolf,” Harold said, the growl in his voice intensifying. “It’s the coward’s way.”
“And raiding businesses in the dead of night is brave?” Raul head Keira’s warning hiss, saw the tension increase in Harold’s demeanor. “We didn’t even know your grievance with us—how is raiding our businesses, vandalizing our properties, without telling us what you want from us, a way to solve the situation?”
“You wolves know exactly what you’ve done,” Harold insisted. “I shouldn’t have to tell you.”
“I want to know what you think we’ve done,” Raul said, bringing his gaze up—briefly—to meet Harold’s. “We can’t broker a truce between our groups if nobody is willing to discuss their grievances. I’ve told you ours; you tell me yours.”
“Wolves have been poaching on our lands,” Harold said, scowling at him. “Some of your Pack have been stealing from our businesses in the middle of the day, pilfering things.”
“Young, or full Pack members?” Raul made a mental note of that—it was something he hadn’t known. Of course, if it were werewolf youths, their actions were likely to have been motivated by pure pettiness, or done as a way to “prove” their bravery to their friends.
“Full Pack members,” Harold said, almost spitting the words out. “And one of your asshole Pack buddies killed a panther of mating age last month.”
“What?” Keira was as shocked as Raul felt. “When did that happen?”
“I brought in a possible mate for Lachlan,” Harold said quietly. “Since Keira won’t mate him, I thought a panther from another place might be a better fit. She was here three days, and then I found her dead on the clan’s running territory, marked by the wolves.”
“I hadn’t heard about this,” Raul said. “Would you be able to identify who it was that killed the female, if they were brought before you?”
“Of course,” Harold said bitterly. “The only scents I know better than that pissy wolf smell are the scents of my own kin. I’ve locked it in my memory.”
“Why didn’t you go to Reginald for justice?” Raul could see on Keira’s face that she was appalled. “We started these petty raids on the wolves’ businesses because you wanted to stir up a war?”
“I wanted to force them to confront us,” Harold said. “All you wolves think you’re too good for the rest of the shifter community; the only way I’d get you to come talk to us was to get you good and mad.”
“Instead, you made us goad them into capturing us, and killing Lachlan and Gary!”
“That was Reginald’s decision,” Raul said firmly. “Our bylaws say that you three should have been put to trial, your Alpha contacted, some kind of agreement come to.”
“Excuse me if I’m not surprised that a wolf doesn’t even obey his own Pack’s bylaws when it stops being convenient,” Harold said bitterly.
“So how are we going to heal this breach?” Raul glanced at Keira. “You’ve lost kin, I’ve lost kin and friends, and Raul’s Pack is in chaos. Will you agree to meet with members of the Pack to bring the killers to justice?”
“I need revenge for Lachlan as well as for the female,” Harold said firmly. “And I know exactly who killed my boy. I want to see Reginald dead.” Raul pressed his lips together; he could understand the older man’s desire for vengeance, but he couldn’t think of how he could protect his own kin—the Pack—and also bring the peace that he and Keira desperately needed. Reginald had set him up; he had called members of the Pack, some of whom had attacked him in the melee.
“Let me see if I can help you track down the female’s killers,” Raul suggested. “And then we can talk about Reginald. The Pack itself might not give you the opportunity to kill him.” Harold laughed, the sound cut through with a throaty, purring growl.
“I’d accept whoever replaced him as Alpha,” Harold told him. “Provided he or she rose to the top spot by putting him to death.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Raul said wryly.
“Will you grant us safe passage to leave?” Keira’s voice was tight, but her pheromones were not as strongly marked with fear as they’d been when the two of them had arrived; Raul thought to himself that he might never plumb the depths of her personality—the way she interacted with her Alpha was different from the way she treated him, and he was sure that it was different from how she acted with outsiders. All of us here have different personalities, depending on who you talk to, Raul thought absently.
“I’m going to have to put the matter of you taking up with a damn wolf to the clan,” Harold said. “You can leave my house, I won’t detain you—but you’d best not show your face in any of our running lands.” Keira looked briefly shocked—shocked and hurt—but then she inclined her head, accepting the verdict.
“We’ll go,” she said, looking at him. She turned back to Harold. “If you send trackers after us when we’re staying away, though, I won’t hold back—not in protecting myself, and not in protecting him.”
“You’ve mated him?” Raul’s heart beat faster in his chest.
“No,” she said. “But if he’s willing, I fully intend to.”
****
“You intend to mate me?” Keira glanced at Raul, pressing her lips together.
“Shut up,” she said quietly. The words had come out of her almost without warning; she could sense Harold’s intentions to find a way to detain Raul, to keep him long enough for certain members of the panther clan to arrive at his home. “We’re not going to get much help from Harold,” Keira added. “He wants to spill wolf blood. Not that I can completely blame him.”
“We’re going to need to figure out what the story is on that female he imported,” Raul told her. “If he’s right…”
“Then we’ll have to figure out which wolves were behind it,” Keira said, nodding. “They’ll have to face justice.” She frowned. “I wasn’t aware of any panther female dying, though.” On the other hand, she hadn’t felt the telltale signs in the Alpha’s mind that he was lying. Of course, Harold had been so shielded mentally that it was difficult to get much more than the strongest impulses from his mind; certainly, she hadn’t been able to communicate with him the way she could have with another member of the clan.
“He may hav
e brought her in secretly, not introduced her to the rest of the clan yet,” Raul pointed out. “He might have been waiting to see how she and Lachlan got along.”
“He wanted me for Lachlan,” Keira said. She glanced at Raul in the driver’s seat of the car again. “He’s not going to be inclined to help you. We need to be careful with him.” Raul sighed.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “Neither of our Alphas are strictly speaking trustworthy at this point.” He glanced at her, smiling wryly. “Everyone seems to have ulterior motives.” Keira chuckled at the understatement. “So, you want to mate me. That’s news.”
“I told you, shut up about that,” Keira said, her cheeks burning as the blood rushed into her face. “I had to tell Harold that, because he would have grabbed you otherwise.”
“The day I can’t handle a panther…”
“You couldn’t handle me,” Keira countered.
“The day I can’t handle an old panther with a young panther at my side is the day I give up on being a wolf.” Keira rolled her eyes.
“I couldn’t have defended you without marking you as my mate, without coming out about it,” Keira said. “I’d be going against my own kind for a stranger.”
“So, you want to be my mate,” Raul said, his lips twitching with amusement.
“That’s not—ooh,” Keira took a slow breath, closing her eyes. “I don’t want you to end up being killed—or hurt more than you already are—because Harold’s out for revenge,” Keira said. “That’s all.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” Raul said, chuckling lowly. Keira heard the pleased, almost growling undertone in his voice. “I thought you wouldn’t ever mate someone who couldn’t best you in combat?”
“And I won’t,” Keira said tartly. “That’s why it was just a maneuver. I can’t believe you’re taking it seriously.”
“I could best you in combat,” Raul said. “Even now, as long as you fought fair, I could do it.” He pulled off of the surface street and onto the dirt road that led out to the safe house, and Keira opened the window a crack; she had the uncomfortable apprehension that Harold might have set someone to track them, that her Alpha might be more interested in getting what revenge he could for Lachlan than in waiting for full justice.
“You couldn’t best me in combat on your best day,” Keira told Raul tartly. She sniffed at the air coming in from outside of the car, sorting through the scents even as she reached out with her mind. There was no sign of panther—and more importantly, in Keira’s thoughts, no sign of wolves either.
“You want to test that theory?” Keira glanced at Raul. His hazel eyes glimmered with mischief.
“You’re injured,” she told him tartly. “It wouldn’t be a fair fight.”
“You aren’t challenging me, though,” Raul countered. “I’m challenging you. If I think I’m up to it, who are you to argue with me?” Keira stared at Raul and smiled slowly, shaking her head.
“You want me to mate you,” she said, amused.
“I just want to prove you can’t take me in a fair fight,” Raul said, shrugging.
“If you go through with the challenge I’m not going to hold back,” Keira told him, looking him up and down. Raul chuckled.
“If you did, I’d be disappointed in you as a shifter and a panther both,” he told her. He shut the car off and opened the driver’s side door, and Keira, tingling all over, unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of the passenger side seat as well.
“Are you seriously challenging me?” Keira looked at Raul doubtfully, able to picture each of the wounds on his body that she had cleaned and dressed only hours before. Shifters healed quickly, but it was difficult for her to credit the possibility that Raul was actually recovered enough to fight her. “Because I mean, the last time we battled, you weren’t even injured and I almost had you.” Her heart beat faster in her chest, and the animal part of her consciousness began to rise to the fore. Keira could feel the magic of the transformation crackling along her bones, through her veins.
“I think you’re worried I’ll show you up,” Raul said. He reached down and tugged the hem of his tee shirt up, hauling the fabric along his torso and over his head. “Then you’ll have to mate me, by your own rules.”
“I just don’t want to kill you,” Keira said.
“So then don’t kill me,” Raul told her. He smirked. “Make me submit, if you can.” He began unbuttoning the fly of his jeans, and Keira went to work on her own clothes, quickly discarding them. She could feel her nerves tingling, her body preparing itself for the transformation. She could still see where some of the injuries on Raul’s body were healing; they had mostly closed up, but Keira knew that he was almost certainly in at least a little pain.
“You’re an idiot,” she told him, sinking down into a crouch, ready to begin the transformation. “I’m going to pin you and then you’re going to make me feel bad about it because you’ll be all bloody and injured.” Raul snorted, sinking onto his knees.
“Just take it seriously,” he told her, his hazel eyes dancing with pride and mischief. “I don’t want to think that I only beat you because you were less than your usual strength out of pity.”
“Fine,” Keira said. She willed the change onto herself and shuddered as her bones began to shift and move inside of her body. She didn’t pay any attention to Raul for the moment, absorbed in the transformation working its way through her body; she felt the fur sliding through her skin, the way her skull flattened, stretched, moved inside of her, her teeth elongating. She felt her fingertips changing, her hands turning into paws, claws sliding out of her skin.
In moments, the transformation was complete, and Keira rolled on the ground, twisting and stretching. She looked around and saw the lupine shape of Raul a few feet away from her. In the part of her mind that was still human, Keira had to admit that Raul made an impressive—and impressively large—wolf, that by any standard he was formidable, even injured.
Keira let out a long, low growl, slinking and sidling. She could remember fighting Raul before; but there was a different feeling behind their confrontation now. In part, it was due to the fact that Keira knew that she didn’t actually want to harm Raul; their sparring was a power play, not a true life-or-death fight. Raul replied to her growl with a full-throated howl, throwing his head back, and then they both began circling each other. In spite of her competitive, proud words only moments before, Keira felt doubt swimming to the surface of her mind; she didn’t want to hurt Raul. The animal part of her consciousness recognized what they were doing—the ritual behind their circling, the sparring that they would engage in as soon as one of them was ready to make the first strike—and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go through with it.
Raul lunged first, turning sharply and launching himself at her, growling in a way that Keira immediately recognized as non-threatening. Keira feinted, slipping away from Raul’s range, twisting under his lunge. She pushed the human part of her mind back, and threw herself into the fight, acting and reacting, falling into Raul’s rhythm, following his movements.
The battle between them ebbed and flowed; Keira threw herself at Raul, targeting the parts of his body that weren’t already injured. She tried to trip him up, tried to knock him over, tried to get underneath him and send him sprawling. In return, Raul lunged and turned and twisted, ramming her with his shoulder, colliding with her. They tumbled to the ground together, first one on top and then the other, growling and purring and barking playfully. Keira’s whole body was awake and alive with a mixture of competitive fury and almost unwilling desire as the battle between them intensified.
Keira felt herself beginning to tire, and realized that Raul was starting to stumble and stagger. Panting, the human part of her mind smiled and she looked for her opening; when Raul staggered in the midst of a feint out of her range, she twisted, lunging for his hindquarters.
Keira felt her legs go out from under her and shrieked in surprise as momentum carried her to her side and t
hen her back. In an instant, Raul was on top of her, growling in a low, steady, playful tone, his mouth on her throat—but not bearing down even slightly. Keira struggled, but she was incapable of knocking Raul off of her body, or budging his weight from her center of gravity; she was inextricably pinned.
Keira struggled for a moment longer, but it was clear that Raul had tricked her, that he had managed to actually pin her. She growled and relaxed underneath him, signaling her submission.
****
Raul let Keira’s throat drop from his mouth and pulled back, willing the transformation to ripple through his body once more. He felt his bones shifting and changing inside of his skin, the muscles twisting and moving, colors coming up in his eyes that he hadn’t been able to see before. Underneath him, Keira trembled and shivered as her own change worked through her body, and fur disappeared, only to be replaced by beautiful, breathtaking naked skin.
As his mouth assumed human shape once more, Raul licked his lips. “I pinned you,” he said, his voice still rippling with a wolfish growl. “I won the contest.”
“You cheated,” Keira countered.
“I did not cheat,” Raul insisted. He stared down into her eyes intently, torn between amusement and annoyance. “I used strategy.” Raul buried his face against her neck, growling lowly. “Just like you did when you went for me at my weakest-seeming point.”
“You just…” Raul nipped sharply at Keira’s throat—a mixture of dominant threat and affection—and she moaned, her body heating up against his. “You just want to mate me.”
“Maybe I do,” Raul murmured against her skin. “Maybe I want to take you as my mate and mark you and tell everyone you’re all mine.” His cock was already rock-hard, his arousal white hot, flowing through his veins. From the moment that Keira had mentioned fighting for dominance, the challenge that she required from her mate, Raul’s lust for the shifter female had built up inside of him.
“Why?” Keira looked up at him in confusion, and Raul smiled slowly, pulling back to hold her gaze.