by Chase, Eva
Aaron dove at one of the other armed rogues. Nate came charging through the battleground to join us, West wheeling to follow. The rogue Marco had tackled slammed her gun against the side of his head and managed to roll out from under him. He caught her wrist with his jaws. With a yank and a cracking sound, she gasped. The pistol clattered to the floor.
Phillipe had toppled when I’d hit him. He shifted as he sprang away. I melted his gun with a blast of dragon fire and swung around to pursue him. Where was Kylie? I had to make sure she stayed okay. I had to try to keep everyone here okay.
The snow leopard crossed Nate’s path, and the grizzly battered him to the side. All around us the battle raged on. One of the remaining human rogues fired a few more shots, one of them smacking Nate in the hip. Blood sprayed across the polished floorboards. Fur flew and animal voices shrieked. I could hardly tell which of the living bodies were my kin and which the rogues now.
In that glance, a hard certainty formed inside me. I didn’t care if Nate’s kin or Marco’s had doubted my ability to lead them. I didn’t care what the rogues might have offered them as an alternative. This was what the rogues brought. Violence, pain, mayhem. This was what they’d always brought.
Maybe I didn’t know how good a leader I’d be, but I sure as hell could do better by my kin than this.
With the strength of that resolve coiled tight in my belly, I blasted the rogue who’d shot Nate with a spurt of flame. He screeched and crumpled. The rogue whose wrist Marco had snapped was struggling to grip her gun with her weaker hand. I charred her to cinders before she could get a handle on it.
West had charged at one of the guys who held a rifle. The wolf snapped at the rogue’s legs while the guy tried to swivel far enough away to aim. He’d already gotten in one shot—a streak of starker red slashed through the ruddy silver fur on West’s back where a bullet had clipped him, only just missing his spine.
Rage flashed behind my eyes. I couldn’t fry the rogue without frying my mate at the same time. But I had teeth and claws too.
I bashed the guy’s head with a swipe of my foreleg. In an instant, West was on him, his teeth at the rogue’s throat. He kicked the rifle aside. I shot a bolt of white hot flame down on it, turning it into a bubbling mass of metal.
A sliver of a thought passed through my head: Mom would have made short work of the rogues that had attacked her family sixteen years ago, if she’d been able to fight like this. If she hadn’t had three daughters who couldn’t fully shift to try to protect.
The people we loved, the ones who were weaker than us—they made us vulnerable.
Panic washed over me. Kylie! I leapt over the staircase, searching for her. Searching for the snow leopard who’d managed to scramble through the fray.
I found both of them. Phillipe was facing off against Alice, still in her human form, but no less dangerous for it. He lunged at her, and she rammed her elbow into the side of his skull. The blow sent him staggering to the side. Kylie yelped. She groped toward a painting hanging just beside her. Heaving it off its hook, she hurled it at their attacker.
The corner of the heavy frame smacked Phillipe square in the head. I breathed a gust of fire toward the snow leopard, but he leapt out of the way at the last second. His cry of pain told me I’d at least singed him. He bolted away under the staircase.
With a roar, I barreled into the chaos of the fight. My talons picked off a jackal here, a rogue bear there, and another intruder, and another. The feline kin not too injured to keep fighting closed in around the dwindling number of remaining rogues. Which was a good thing, because the strain of the extended shift was catching up with me, with an even deeper pain than usual. Because I’d called my dragon form over me so quickly?
I’d have to ask Aaron about that, I thought vaguely as I tossed one last rogue against the wall. My muscles were contracting, no matter how hard I tried to hang on. I collapsed onto the floor. My human hands slammed into the floor, my human knees knocking the polished hardwood.
Sucking in a breath, I shoved myself to my feet. My gaze caught on a hunched form under the stairs.
Phillipe. The snow leopard sat curled in on himself. His left foreleg and most of that shoulder was burned black. His teeth were bared as he panted through the pain. Only the faintest shiver of sympathy touched me.
All of the blood spilled here was because of him. Why? So he didn’t have to listen to someone else telling him what to do? Because he thought he’d get some kind of glory among the rogues?
It didn’t fucking matter. The only thing that mattered was that he never did it again.
I strode over to him, slowing as I got closer. Phillipe snarled, but he clearly wasn’t capable of putting up much of an actual fight.
One of the other feline shifters, a cougar, came up beside me. “Drag him out,” I said to her. “Out where everyone can see.”
The snow leopard growled, but he couldn’t do more than squirm and wince as the cougar took him by the scruff of his neck. The larger cat dragged him out to where the noon sun streamed through the thrown open doors. I stalked after them. My jaw clenched.
The cougar let go of Phillipe and backed up a step. I loomed over the snow leopard, meeting his yellow-green gaze with a glare. From around the room, dozens of feline eyes fixed on me. And one pair of human eyes. Kylie gaped at me, her face still pale.
The thought of what she must think of me now sent a pang through my chest. But I couldn’t let those worries distract me. What I did here mattered a hell of a lot.
So I’d better do it good.
“Phillipe,” I said, pitching my voice loud. “You were kin, and you betrayed all the others you should have called kin. You brought all this destruction down on your alpha’s estate, your shifter community.” I swept my arm to indicate the entire foyer. “But I will give you a chance. Because I am not here to destroy if I can help it. So much of shifter kind has been broken by the rogues and kin like you. Will you help us rebuild it now? Or do you only care about wrecking things?”
Phillipe clung on to his feline form, his eyes narrowing. The muscles in his haunches bunched. I braced myself, feeling his intention. If that was how he wanted to end this, let them see him make the choice himself.
He threw himself off the floor with one final surge of strength, his jaws yawning as if to eat me whole.
My hand tingled as I drew a partial shift into my fingers. With the snow leopard’s sour breath in my face, I slashed my dragon talons across his neck, severing his throat.
Chapter 21
Marco
That traitor, Phillipe, crumpled at Ren’s feet with a gush of blood down his chest. My dragon shifter dodged backward, shaking her hand to withdraw her talons. As the snow leopard shifted back into Phillipe’s stringy human form, her head whipped around. Her gaze locked with mine. A sudden worry shimmered in her eyes.
Why? Because she’d killed one of my kin? Good riddance to that piece of excrement. She’d been fucking glorious.
I rose up out of my jaguar form, ignoring the aches and pangs where I’d have new scars tomorrow. Then I brought my hands together and started to clap.
Around the room, my kin and the other alphas were gradually shifting back. Most of them joined my applause. Ren’s head swiveled as she took in our response, looking startled and then, with a lift of her chin that made my heart swell with affection, owning it. Not a princess of flames anymore. The woman before me was every inch a queen.
I walked up to her and took her hand. “He got what was coming to him,” I said in a low voice. “You were amazing, Ren.”
I leaned in to kiss her, and someone gave an exhausted but still joyful whoop in the crowd. All of my kin had to feel it now—that my bond with my mate had been consummated, that their own desires could bring them new feline children after all these years. But that wasn’t the only reason to celebrate.
Ren kissed me back hard, as if replenishing her strength through the meeting of our lips. I was happy to give anything she
needed to take. She touched my cheek, finding the claw mark just below my eye that hadn’t yet sealed. I shook my head to tell her not to fret about that. The wound only stung a little while I stood here next to her.
Then I turned to face my kin and raised our joined hands in the air in a gesture of triumph. “The rogues and the traitors among our kin have been put down. This is the security a dragon shifter brings us. A new age for us is about to begin. An age when shifters will work together against our enemies, and live and love without the shadow of violence hanging over us.”
“Here’s to the dragon shifter!” someone—I thought Silvan—shouted from our audience.
“To the dragon shifter!” a bunch of voices joined in. Some wary, some limping, but all bright-eyed, several of my kin slunk over to show their respects to Ren, as if they’d only just met her.
Better late than never. A smile crept over my face as I watched them bob their heads and press their hands to hers, murmuring words of gratitude and encouragement. No one here had ever seen a battle like this on our home ground before. And no one here had seen a dragon fight like Ren just had.
Even a cat could appreciate the strength she’d shown—and the mercy.
My gaze traveled away from her to those we’d lost despite my mate’s courage and all of our best efforts. Coreen’s husband, Raoul, had taken a fatal bullet to the chest. The rogues had dealt fatal flows to a few others in the fray. A couple of my attendants who’d rushed in to help had fallen and not gotten up. And there were many kin alive but too weakened from their wounds to stand.
Several more attendants had slipped into the room now that the chaos had settled. I motioned them over. “Bring our injured kin to the medical room, quickly. And we’ll need to arrange a funeral for the dead.” I paused. Not all of the dead. Phillipe had lost the right to that respect, and the rogues had never earned it to begin with. “The rogues we’ll burn too, elsewhere.”
They nodded and ran to follow my orders. Coreen had gone to kneel by her husband, resting her hand on his forehead, her shoulders slumped. “I’ll help see to him,” she said in a rough voice to the attendants who’d joined her. Her gaze found mine.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her mouth twisted. “He fought well. He didn’t know how to stand back. It wasn’t his nature.” She looked over my shoulder, toward Ren, and then back to me. “Thank you,” she added. “Maybe we have gone too long without a dragon shifter.”
“I have no intention of losing this one,” I said, and she managed a hint of a smile.
I made my way back to Ren. Some of my kin were still clustered around her, fawning over her. She was holding herself straight, answering them all warmly, but I could sense the exhaustion in her. My mate had fought too many battles in the last few weeks.
I wrapped my arms around her from behind. Even with the pain of my healing wounds, the feel of her bare skin against mine was heaven. I pressed a kiss to her shoulder and murmured in her ear, “Shall I escort you back to your rooms? I can’t imagine how big a break you need after all that.”
Ren’s lips twitched. She leaned into my embrace for a moment. But her eyes traveled across the room to where her human friend was standing.
“I think there are a few things I need to take care of before I get to do any resting,” she said.
* * *
Ren
I walked over to Kylie tentatively, watching for any sign that I’d come close enough. She’d never seen my dragon form before, and her first time, all she’d seen me do was clobber rogues and fry them into cinders. And then I’d sliced open a guy’s throat right in front of her.
She’d already been having trouble coping with the violence she’d been faced with. And now I was right in the middle of it. Maybe she’d just want to head right home and never speak to me again.
My best friend saw me coming and moving forward to meet me. I stopped, letting her set the pace. To my surprise, she strode right up to me and threw her arms around me, not seeming to care that I was naked and a little bloody.
“Oh my God, Ren,” she said. “I was so scared for you. But you were such a badass! Holy shit, those rogues didn’t know what hit them, did they? Fucking assholes.”
I hugged her back with a halting laugh. “You were scared for me? I was freaking terrified one of them would hurt you.”
“Aw, I had my eagle bodyguard fending them off. No problems there. And I got in a couple hits of my own.” A tremor ran through her body, but she sucked in a breath and kept her voice steady. “I mean it. You were amazing.”
My heart felt as if it had cracked open. My own breath came in almost a sob. Kylie pulled back to stare at my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I just— Maybe it was stupid. I’ve been so worried that this whole... well, everything would be too much for you.” I waved to the remains of the battle around us. “It’s not what the shifter community is usually like. At least, from what the guys have told me it isn’t. But everything is such a mess right now. I don’t want to have to fight, but I do have to. People are dying... You shouldn’t have to deal with all that.”
“Hey,” my bestie said firmly. She gripped my shoulder until I met her eyes. “I don’t have to. But I want to. The second F in BFF stands for forever, remember? How much shit did we get into and then back out of when we were in New York? So the stuff you’re mixed up in now is a little scarier—fine. Maybe I need to take a step back sometimes, but I’m still in this with you.” A grin broke over her face. “My best friend is a dragon. How many people can say that?”
I really laughed then, and squeezed her with another hug. “You’re the best, Kylie. I’m sorry I was shutting you out.”
“I get it,” Kylie said gently. “Just don’t do it again, you hear?”
When I let her go, we stepped to the end of the room. Kylie’s gaze drifted over the wreckage. “So... we don’t have to worry about any more of those jerks showing up, do we?”
“I don’t think so. From what we heard, this was their last-ditch effort, all-in to take us down. Otherwise Phillipe wouldn’t have shown his hand.”
And we’d defeated them. The rogues were decimated now—the ones who’d wanted me and my alphas dead, at least.
My legs wobbled under me. I might have tipped back against the wall if a large hand hadn’t caught my arm.
“Hey,” Nate said, bending to kiss my temple. “The shift and the fighting took a lot out of you.” He glanced at Kylie. “Do you mind if I borrow her and make her get some rest?”
“Please do,” Kylie said with a sweeping gesture. She shot me a grin and a wink as the bear shifter ushered me away.
The other alphas were waiting in the hall. “What about the rest of your kin?” I said to Marco.
“Ah, they’re pretty good at looking after themselves,” he said in his usual languid tone. “I gave a nice little speech and passed out some orders. That should hold them over for at least a few hours.” His expression turned more serious. “We’ll have the funerals tomorrow.”
“And luck willing, no more for a long time after that,” Aaron remarked. He took my hand as we headed to my guest suite.
When we reached the door, the four guys followed me in. I crawled onto the bed, and they piled on around me. The morning’s exhaustion was already catching up with me. I yawned and set my head on the pillow, surrounded by their warmth, and just like that, I was out.
* * *
I woke up, a little groggy and achy but feeling a lot more alive than before, to a streak of late afternoon sun drifting through the window. I stretched on the bed, and my mates stirred. Looking down at myself, I grimaced.
“Okay, I think a bath is in order before dinner.”
Marco slid off the bed with a chuckle. “As much as I’d like to join you for that, I think I’d better touch base with my kin. But I will see you at dinner... and after?”
The lilt of his tone sent a flutter of desire through me. I pushed myself up to meet him, pulling him into a kiss. �
��Of course ‘and after.’”
I’d already checked out the bathtub in the suite’s bathroom. Like the bed, the circular tub was plenty big enough for five. Four should be a piece of cake. I turned the taps until the water was gushing out in a steamy stream. A handful of sea salt to make it nice and invigorating—perfect!
“I take it we’re all invited?” Nate said, strolling in after me.
“The more the merrier. I’d like to think of it as a big, wet reset button in this visit. Good-bye, rogues! Hello, whatever the heck shifters usually do!”
“There’s plenty of time for you to learn all of that,” Aaron said. He slipped his arm around me and pressed his lips to my shoulder. “And I look forward to guiding you along the way.”
“Hmm. Me too,” I said with a suggestive waggle of my eyebrows that made him laugh.
As I plunged into the hot water, West finally emerged from the bedroom. He took in me already submerged and his fellow alphas climbing in after me, and shrugged. “Why not?”
Well, that was about as much enthusiasm as I could hope for from my wolf shifter.
The whisper of the water against my skin brought back the memory of the more pleasant activities I’d gotten up to this morning. My little interlude in the pond with Marco. All the fun that could be had while playing around in the water. I licked my lips, looking around at my mates. Then a deeper urge gripped my heart.
I could have lost any of them today. If one of them had been caught by the wrong bullet, like Coreen’s husband had... Just the thought of it wrenched at me.
They needed to know just how much they meant to me.
I glided through the water over to Aaron. He smiled, reaching to cup my cheek. I settled on his lap and leaned in for a kiss. His other hand settled on my waist, his thumb stroking over my side as our mouths pressed together slickly. I was plenty hot and bothered already by the time I eased back. But I held myself a little away from him and gazed into his bright blue eyes.
