by Eva Chase
“You could have called me,” Kylie pointed out.
“I couldn’t see getting into it except face to face.” Except now here we were, face to face, and I felt even more awkward. I grabbed a wine red gown out of the pile. “I told you my mom died on the mountain... I saw it. Like a vision. It was a bunch of fae who killed her. Murdered her. They were trying to stop her from getting that power she wanted me to have.”
“The special fire that you can use to make people tell the truth,” Kylie filled in.
“Yeah.” At least I’d kept her up to speed that much.
“Why did the fae care about that?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Things have been tense between the shifters and the fae, but I’m still finding out the details there. Their attack wasn’t, like, officially sanctioned, but the fae monarch hadn’t discouraged it either. They must not have wanted any shifter to have that kind of power.”
And to be fair, the first person I’d used it on was their own monarch. To be fair to me, I wouldn’t have needed to use it on her if she’d been upfront with us in the first place.
Kylie rubbed her mouth. “Wow. So you have to worry about the fae coming after you too?”
“Not exactly. There’s a treaty—and we confronted the fae monarch, and she swore to follow it. But I guess it’s always possible they could decide to break their word.”
That was an awful thought. I’d rather not go there while we had the rogue threat right in front of us.
“Damn.” Kylie looked over at me, and her eyes lit up. Her smile looked a little stiff, but I’d take it. “And damn. Okay, forget all the other ones. That is The Dress.”
My lips twitched. I glanced down at myself, smoothing my hands over the gleaming fabric. “Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah. Anyone who messes with you in that get-up is just asking to become dragon barbeque.”
I laughed, and for a second, things between us felt almost okay. This was Kylie. My best friend, my one true friend. She’d always had my back. If I couldn’t even live up to her expectations, I didn’t have a hope in hell with the shifters.
* * *
“Holy cow,” Kylie said when we stepped into the ballroom-turned-banquet hall. “And I thought this place couldn’t get any fancier.”
Marco, who was between us holding my hand, chuckled. “My kin are known for being easily distracted by shiny objects. I’m no exception.”
“Well, you definitely went all out on the shiny,” I said. Silver plates glinted at every seat; crystal wine glasses sparkled. Gold embroidery shimmered in a looping pattern along the edge of the gleaming white table clothes. The crystal chandeliers overhead were all alight now, sending a sharp yellow glow over everything and everyone below.
I had a feeling it wasn’t just those lights that made the feline kin look a tad jaundiced. Tension hummed through the room beneath the clamor of voices. This wasn’t just a dinner. It wasn’t even just their first formal dinner with their new dragon shifter in attendance. It was the dinner before their alpha’s latest challenge. One that had even higher stakes than any of those before.
I nodded and smiled to the feline kin as Marco walked me up to the head table. The other alphas were already sitting in their spots around the two chairs reserved for us. I sat down with Marco at my left and Aaron at my right. Nate leaned past the eagle shifter to catch my eyes and offer a warm smile. But my pulse had already picked up again with a prickle of anxiety.
Kylie ended up at Nate’s right, which was probably the best I could have hoped for when she couldn’t sit right next to me. She grinned at the big bear shifter and immediately started gabbing away. I could only imagine how West would have reacted if he’d had to be her conversation partner through dinner instead of having stoic Alice on his other side. Kylie would have chattered my wolf shifter’s ear off just like anyone else.
Actually, that might have been fun to watch.
Several more feline kin from the prominent families joined us at the head table. I found myself facing a cheetah pair, the wife rubbing her cheek with the back of her hand like a house cat washing its face. Next to them was a pair of lions that included the woman who’d greeted me so skeptically when I’d first arrived. Coreen—that was her name. My head was getting awfully crowded with those.
Thankfully, Julius was sitting nowhere near us. I spotted his hulking form at the far end of the room, where I guessed Marco had asked his attendants to put him. And I wasn’t exactly disappointed to see Silvan stationed at a distant table too.
Marco’s kin eyed him with darting glances as they dug into their meals. They ate like cats too, with swift delicate bites. Coreen dabbed at her mouth with her napkin after every forkful.
“Is the challenge arena already prepared?” she asked after a few minutes of strained silence. It was weird how a question that ominous could be said as if it was a polite inquiry. Her tone was the same as if she were asking what we were having for dessert.
But then, Marco acted equally unfazed. “My attendants are setting everything in order right now. I suppose you’ll be there for the show.”
“The more witnesses, the more worthy,” Coreen’s husband put in with a rumble of a voice.
“Interesting philosophy,” West muttered.
Coreen shot him a hard look. Marco twitched under the table, and I suspected he’d just kicked the wolf shifter in the shin. His smile stayed pleasant.
“I’m glad the matter with the vampires up north was finally settled,” the cheetah man put in. “There haven’t been any more stirrings, have there?”
“Not of enough concern that my people up there have mentioned it to me,” Marco said. “You know what the bloodsuckers are like. No attention span for anything unless it’s actively bleeding.”
The cheetah shifter woman snickered at that. My stomach had clenched tighter. “Was there a lot of trouble because of our confrontation with the vampires when we went into the city?”
Mom had left me a trail of clues leading to the mountain in Sunridge, and we’d had to go exploring the New York City subway system to find the first one. Right into vampire territory. They hadn’t been real pleased about our intrusion.
Marco waved his hand. “Oh, just normal vamp mutterings. We sorted them out. They don’t really want to tango with the shifters.”
I wasn’t sure how much that comment was the truth and how much was necessary bravado for his kin. Right now he probably needed to look strong and in control even more so than usual.
Aaron set his hand on my thigh under the table and squeezed reassuringly. He leaned close. “Tonight will be fine. Marco’s been through this situation more than once. We all have. And we’re still here.”
I’d have felt more comforted if I hadn’t sensed the worry underlying his words. He wasn’t completely confident either. The rogue’s involvement was a wild card none of my alphas had faced during a challenge before.
The talk all along the table quieted at the scrape of chair legs. A guy at the far end of the table had just stood up. He raised his hands with a smile that looked weirdly giddy. His hair, mixed with patches of dark brown and pale gray, poked up in tufts from his rounded head. I didn’t remember being introduced to him earlier, but his appearance immediately made me think snow leopard.
“With all the commotion, I want to speak up and say how much I support our alpha,” he said in a jovial voice that carried through the room. “Marco has kept us in line and seen us through troubled times no other alpha has had to address. I know he’ll continue to do so.”
He focused his gaze on his alpha and dipped into a low bow. Marco chuckled, smiling back, but the guy’s demeanor made my skin tighten. He seemed too eager to speak. Praising Marco more to ingratiate himself than because he meant it.
Was this some kind of attempt to protect himself? Did he think Marco would punish people who seemed at all in favor of Julius after he won? That didn’t seem like the feline way of doing things.
Marco didn’t appe
ar bothered. “Thank you for your kind words, Phillipe,” he said, holding up his glass as if to toast the leopard shifter. “I know it too. And in an hour, this whole room will know it.”
Chapter 17
Ren
My heart started to thump harder the moment we reached the challenge area. It wasn’t really anything more than a glade in the tropical forestland, a stretch of open grass maybe twenty feet in diameter surrounded by thick foliage. But Marco’s people had clearly prepared it, as he’d said they would.
The grass was trampled flat as if the ground had been pounded as smooth as possible. A green smell like a fresh-mowed lawn hung in the air. A rope hung across the trees around the ring, separating the spectating area from the fighting turf. Lamps hung from a few of the branches, casting an eerie yellow glow over the space. The one near us emitted a soft electronic hum.
Marco walked ahead of me, right into the ring. Kylie and I drifted to the side, the other alphas and Alice surrounding us. Nate rested his hand on my shoulder. “If it’s too hard for you to watch,” he started.
I shook my head before he could continue. “I’m staying. I need to be here for Marco.”
More feline shifters gathered all around the glade. It looked like everyone who’d been at the dinner had come. Why not? The leadership over their kin group might change tonight.
“Where’s the tiger?” Kylie asked, craning her neck. “Maybe he chickened out at the last minute?”
Before I could even dare to hope, Julius came swaggering down the path. He sauntered into the ring across from Marco, flexing his bulky arms. Marco watched him calmly. With a casual ease, he pulled off his shirt, then his pants, folding his clothes one piece at a time on the ground at the edge of the glade. Julius bared his teeth and started undressing as well. Of course, they’d fight as animals.
I looked around the ring at all the faces I recognized. Coreen and her husband, the cheetah shifters from dinner, Silvan and the over-eager snow leopard Phillipe, others I’d met during the luncheon. None of them, not even Phillipe after his impassioned speech, looked all that concerned about what was going to happen. The vibe in the air now was swelling with anticipation.
Were they all sure Marco would win, or did they just not care that much either way who was ruling over them? From what I’d seen of the feline kin so far, I didn’t have any trouble believing it might be the latter.
Kylie must have been thinking along the same lines. “Imagine having that musclehead as an alpha,” she whispered to me. “I wouldn’t trust him not to spend all day chasing his own tail.”
My mouth twitched. I wasn’t so tense that my bestie couldn’t get a smile out of me. “No kidding. They’d be begging to have Marco back in no time.”
Except he wouldn’t be around for them to bring him back, would they? My pulse sped up even more.
I hadn’t asked Marco what happened to him if he lost. I hadn’t wanted to take the possibility that seriously. Would they banish him like they’d banish Julius? Or was the punishment of losing after you were already alpha more severe? The new alpha wouldn’t want to risk you coming back to reclaim your position.
A chill trickled through me. Suddenly I was sure of it. If Marco lost, Julius would kill him. Maybe that was the only way Julius could win.
“The guards are still watching the edges of the estate, aren’t they?” I said to my alphas.
Aaron nodded. “I was there when Marco gave the orders.”
Alice gave me a meaningful look. “If you want the extra security, I could fly around and watch for any groups on the move heading this way.”
A tiny bit of the tightness inside me released. “Yes,” I said. “Please. And come back the second you see anything concerning.”
She nodded and slipped away between the trees. Clothes rustled off, and her eagle form leapt up through the branches. I watched her disappear against the darkening sky.
“I don’t know what they might have planned,” West said. “But I haven’t seen or scented any rogue presence nearby.”
“Neither have I,” Nate put in. “Maybe this is their plan. They’re staking everything on Julius defeating Marco.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense to me. They’ve never played by the rules before. There’s got to be something more to it. But maybe the challenge is a separate part of the plan. Maybe Julius wanted to get that over with, to prove himself in front of his kin, before he has the rogues take on the rest of us.”
Whatever happened, I needed to be ready. And I’d need to protect Kylie too. I edged a little closer to her. “If things get crazy, you stay with me, all right?”
She saluted me. “Got it, dragon queen.”
The smile tugged at my lips again. Then I looked into the ring, and any humor I’d been capable of feeling died.
One of the estate attendants had stepped into the middle of the glade between Marco and Julius. “A challenge for alpha has been called,” she said in a ringing voice. “When my arm drops, the fight may begin.”
She held her hand up as she backed up to the ring of rope. When her back hit it, her hand clenched. She jerked it down to her hip in one sharp movement.
Julius sprang with a growl that was half human, half animal. His body shifted into tiger form as he lunged through the air at Marco. But Marco was prepared. He shifted and dashed low under the larger cat, spinning to scratch at the tiger’s belly as he slid out of reach. Julius roared. Four thin red lines formed against his fur.
“First blood!” someone in the audience hollered. Someone else let out a whoop. I assumed that was good for Marco. My hands had closed around the rope in front me, the coarse fibers digging into my skin.
“Wow,” Kylie murmured. “They really aren’t playing around.”
No, they weren’t. Not at all. Julius whirled around, still plenty fast despite his size. My gut sank, seeing just how much bigger he was than Marco now. The tiger had to be at least twice as brawny as the jaguar, taller and longer and more solidly built. If he pinned Marco even for a second...
That was obviously Julius’s intention. He leapt at Marco again, swinging a paw as if to cuff his alpha. Marco dodged to the side, not quite in time. The tiger’s claws raked over his haunch. He didn’t make a sound, but I saw his lips curl back in pain. I gripped the rope tighter.
“So... how far exactly do they go?” Kylie said in a smaller voice than before. “How do we decide when someone’s won?”
“When one of them can’t get back up,” West muttered.
I swallowed hard. Murmurs were rippling through the crowd again. Were they upset that Marco hadn’t really fought back yet?
He must have been working up to it. Feeling out his opponent’s style before he took the offensive. Before Julius could make another lunge, Marco dashed at him with a yowl. The tiger lurched forward to try to batter the jaguar into submission, but that was exactly what Marco had expected. At the last second, he darted around the bigger cat and lashed out at Julius’s belly again.
The tiger was moving forward with too much momentum to dodge. Marco’s claws opened a deep gash in Julius’s side.
A nice bluff. Of course, if Marco was going to win here, he had to put on a front, prey on the larger shifter’s confidence. That was the cunning his kin were supposed to be known for. And none so much as their alpha.
It wasn’t so different from how he’d bluffed about his attitude toward me to his kin, put on a front of seeing me as nothing more than a means to an end. But I knew with every thud of my pulse that he’d used those words the same way he’d made that mad dash. A distraction, a show of force, to open up the way to what he really wanted. When this kind of hostility was what he’d had to face, month by month, I wasn’t sure I could even blame him anymore.
Julius whipped around, his yellow eyes flashing. Marco sprang nimbly out of the way. But the tiger didn’t seem slowed down by the gouge over his ribs. He hurtled after the jaguar like a Mack trunk, and Marco couldn’t keep out of the way quite fast enou
gh. The larger shifter bowled him over.
I flinched, my heart thumping so fast I thought it would explode from my chest. A scream caught in my chest. No! Not my alpha. Not my mate.
Nate set his hand over mine, squeezing my fingers, but the contact barely registered. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the fight.
Marco rolled onto his back, all four sets of claws scraping at the tiger’s hide. Julius smacked him in the head and snapped at his neck, but the jaguar twisted out of the way and the last second. He sank his teeth into the tiger’s foreleg. When Julius flinched, Marco shot out from under him. He flung himself toward one of the trees, ricocheted off the trunk, and slammed into the tiger’s side right where he’d clawed him before.
Julius let out a snarl that was as much pain as anger. He charged after Marco, clearly aiming to pummel him to the ground again. Marco slipped around him, but he wasn’t moving quite as fast now. Blood dripped from where the bigger cat had clawed his shoulder and haunches.
“Geez,” Kylie said, even more faintly. “They’re really taking this to the end, aren’t they?”
The fear in her voice wrenched at me, as much as seeing Marco battered and bloody did. Every nerve in my body was shrieking at me to intervene, to protect my mate. I held myself back by the barest of threads. If I stepped in, if I messed up this challenge somehow, the victory might go to Julius by default.
I wouldn’t let him kill Marco. Not if it came to that. I knew that much right down to my bones.
Marco picked up his speed again despite his wounds. He raced around Julius, biting and clawing at the tiger’s legs at every opening, leading the tiger in a whirling chase around the arena. Julius pounded after him. With each turn, his orange and black fur darkened with more streaks of blood.
“All right! Let’s end this!” someone hollered from the crowd. I didn’t know which of the shifters he was supporting.