by Jade White
Anara shoved her pants down and pulled her shirt over her head, dropping both of them to the floor. In a few quick steps, she was at her door and she threw it open, stepped outside, and slammed the door closed. A moment later, she transformed and hopped down to the ground beneath the porch.
She watched Amelia sprint down the path, but before she could decide to go aid her older brother, she noticed another lion lurking beneath the main structure’s porch. Anara’s ears pinned back against her head, and she growled before she bolted across the way. She pounced, slamming into the lion before he could try to outnumber Aibek.
The lion snarled and stumbled before he moved like a whip crack, one massive paw surging out to box Anara across the face. He skittered backward, away from her, and Anara had only a moment to shake her head and regain her senses before the lion slammed into her, bowling her into the snow as if she weighed nothing at all.
This was going to prove…taxing, Anara decided, as she clamped her jaws into one of the lion’s paws and held on tight until he was forced to jump off of her to wrestle his leg out of her mouth. She let him go without much of a hassle to instead retreat to a safe distance again.
She backed away, backing under the porch of the main structure. Her mother was likely in the building above them, but she did her best not to think about that, and instead just hoped that Faina would have the good sense to stay inside. For a moment, she sort of wished the family had a gun, but even then, the idea of their very human mother getting caught in the middle of everything sent a shiver down Anara’s spine.
The lion stalked closer, his head cocked to one side as he watched her, as if he was contemplating whether or not she was even worth it, or if he should still go to Darius’ side to help deal with Aibek. That was not going to happen, though.
She scooped snow into her paw and hurled it at the lion’s face. He grunted in surprise and shook his head, flinging snow aside. Once his face was clear, Anara gave him the most unimpressed look she could possibly manage. It had the desired effect; the lion’s affront was clear, and he surged forward.
Anara bolted sideways, her tail swaying in a way that was almost playful. She just had to keep his attention on her. If he was angry—if he thought she wasn’t taking him seriously—then that would be easy.
As he caught his balance from the missed pounce, Anara pranced past him, swatting him right in his face with the end of her tail before she yanked her tail in close to herself, before he could grab ahold of it. She peered at him over her shoulder, head cocked to one side and eyes half-lidded in boredom.
His hackles rose, though it was hardly noticeable with his mane, and his tail lashed like a bullwhip. The end of Anara’s tail twitched casually, and then she laid down, her legs stretched out beneath her in the snow.
For a split second, the lion reared back slightly, recoiling out of sheer outrage at the blatant lack of respect. Anara blinked at him impassively, her ears tipping backward lazily.
It was obvious when he was going to pounce. His muscles bunched, his legs tensed, and his tail slashed through the air like a knife. He projected his movements with all of the subtlety of a flying toolbox, and it was easy for Anara to roll out of the way before he was anywhere near her.
It was almost fun, leading him around by the nose. She was almost enjoying herself. Had she been in any other circumstances, it would have felt very similar to playing with Sezim and Serik when they were younger. If nothing else, that thought helped keep Anara’s nerves at a manageable level. Of course, it was thoughts like that which led to the lion finally landing a hit on her.
The lion’s teeth closed around Anara’s front leg, just as she tried to bolt. His grip was not ideal, closing around her elbow rather than the long bone. It was by sheer reflex that she flexed her elbow as she tried to wrest her limb free. There was a strange popping noise as the lion’s jaw popped out of the socket on one side, and after that, freeing her leg was easy.
The lion stumbled back, wet, incoherent noises spilling from his mouth as he tried to paw at his jaw. Not thinking through the pain, he transformed, kneeling naked in the snow as he reached up to try and pop his jaw back into place.
Anara surged forward, her teeth clamping around his very human neck. He managed the very beginnings of a scream before her jaws clenched shut, her teeth sinking through his windpipe. The scream died to a soggy burble, and Anara held on until he stopped twitching. Only then did she drop him, letting the body fall into the snow.
Cautiously, Anara crept out from under the porch. It was about time to see what everyone else was doing and to see if anyone else needed help.
*
Aibek watched Amelia leave before he slowly dragged his attention back to Darius. The pride leader eyed him disdainfully and paced in a slow circle around him. Aibek growled, his ears folding back and his hackles standing up all along his back.
“Oh, please,” Darius scoffed, rolling his eyes. “This is entirely unnecessary. I’m here for one reason. Just stop playing keep away with her and my pride, and I will be on our way.” He didn’t even seem particularly upset at how many of the lions had been killed for his whims.
Aibek bared his teeth in response, his tail lashing like an agitated snake behind him. For a moment, Darius looked almost offended that he wasn’t being obeyed, as if everyone was supposed to simply drop everything to fawn at his feet.
Instead, Aibek gathered his legs beneath himself and pounced, throwing Darius from his feet and into the snow. Darius thrashed, and then there was the sound of shredding cloth as he transformed at last, using his hind legs to easily kick Aibek aside. Darius rolled and heaved himself back to his feet, and when he straightened back up, he towered over Aibek, like a wolf staring down a housecat. He certainly didn’t seem to think Aibek was any more threatening than the average housecat.
Aibek couldn’t say he was surprised, though. His mental image of Darius had never been of a humble, well-adjusted man.
For a few moments, they simply paced in circles around each other, each one waiting for the other to make some sort of mistake, to reveal some sort of weakness. From higher up the mountain, there came a loud, feline caterwaul, and both of them looked. Aibek, however, recovered his faculties quicker. He surged forward, his claws extending so he could rake them across the side of Darius’ face before he retreated again.
Even by the standards of a lion, Darius was an obscenely big cat. Aibek, conversely, was only slightly larger than the average snow leopard. He was not going to win through sheer might, and he knew that. But he also knew his home, his mountain, and the weather. He could make them work for him. He could make it so Darius didn’t even know what had hit him.
Darius’ retaliating lunge was clumsy. He was heavy, and his paws were designed for dry ground, not walking on snow, and he sank right through while Aibek managed to stalk across with ease. Aibek twisted out of the way, turned, and bolted, running up the stairs to the porch attached to the twins’ room.
Darius, suspicious, paced along the bottom of it, waiting for Aibek to come back down. So Aibek hastened him along by steadily shoving snow off of the porch, dropping it down on the lion’s head. Had the circumstances been different, it would have been funny watching the lion’s patience run out until he clambered up the stairs.
He lunged, clearing most of the distance of the porch in one bound, and Aibek hopped up and over the railing. When he landed in the snow below, he sank several inches, but not so much that he couldn’t toss himself out of the way when Darius hopped down behind him.
Darius, on the other hand, snapped and snarled as he sank deep into the snow, the layers of rime cracking and dragging him deeper. He thrashed, practically trying to swim his way out of the snow. Aibek had to wonder if Darius had even transformed in the snow at all up to that point, or if he had simply always sent the other members of his pride out to do his business for him while he stayed at camp.
The idea rankled at Aibek. He couldn’t imagine treating his siblings or Ame
lia like his own personal slaves or lackeys, purely for his own comfort. What gave Darius the right? Then again, he didn’t seem to care much about what he actually had a right to; he seemed to regard his opinion as the end-all determining factor.
Aibek pounced, landing on Darius’s back, his claws flexing and sinking through the fur with one paw. The other paw, he raked down Darius’s neck, ripping away clumps of his mane before sinking his teeth into the bared skin beneath.
Darius tumbled like a domino, tossing himself sideways into the snow and throwing Aibek off. Aibek landed in a heap and scrambled back to his feet, only to get batted aside almost as soon as his paws were under him. With a growl, he righted himself once again, his tail lashing and his teeth bared and ready.
Darius moved first, lunging forward, his jaws snapping. Aibek wove aside, quickly enough that only the rounded tip of one ear was snagged, and it was quickly torn free from Darius’s hold. Aibek ducked, dodging the next swipe of one massive paw, and then hurdled himself toward the stairs leading up to the porch of his own room. For a few moments, it was as if they were playing Ring Around the Rosie, as they wove between the posts holding the porch up, before Aibek finally bounded up the stairs and onto the porch itself.
Aibek gave Darius no time to come up after him. As soon as he was on the porch, he clambered up onto the railing and jumped down, landing on Darius’s back and latching on like a limpet. Darius grunted at the impact, but it didn’t affect him for long.
Darius reared back, tossing Aibek aside but unbalancing himself in the process so that he fell over backward. Aibek took advantage of the opening, his teeth sinking into the bared throat while the claws of his hind paws dragged over Darius’ stomach. Darius thrashed, but the snow softened his movements, and he couldn’t get his legs beneath Aibek to launch him off again. Aibek’s jaws tightened, his teeth sinking through the lion’s windpipe with a soggy crunch. Gradually, Darius’s struggling grew slower and clumsier, until it stopped entirely. Finally, Aibek unclenched his jaw and hopped aside.
Aibek stood over the body, his chest heaving and his tongue lolling as he panted. Blood dripped sluggishly from his muzzle, and he took a few steps away from the corpse to sit down heavily in the snow.
He looked up, looking toward the regular slope in time to watch Amelia climb her way to the top of it again. They stared at each other for a moment until Amelia looked to the side, and Aibek turned his head to see Sezim and Serik carefully picking their way down from the top of the emergency path. Turning the other way, he saw Anara creeping her way out from beneath one of the porches. Slowly, they all congregated in the middle of the cluster of buildings, gathering in tense silence until they realized that there were no lions joining them.
They sat in a loose triangle, Anara across from Aibek, and the twins clumped close together around Amelia to make up the third corner. None of them moved for a moment as they simply let it sink in that they had won. The lions were gone, and they couldn’t come back. They couldn’t attack anyone else again. With the lions gone, the snow leopards and Amelia were safe.
With a cheerful grunt, Sezim tackled Amelia into the snow, and they tumbled back and forth, pawing carefully at each other until finally Amelia extracted herself from the tangle of legs and tails to press herself against Aibek’s side. He jerked out of his stupor, ducking his head to nuzzle her before he got to his feet. He jerked his head toward the main structure, where they all knew Faina was waiting with bated breath to know what was going on.
Slowly, limbs sluggish and heavy with exhaustion, everyone else all fell into step behind him. They had all earned a bit of a break and a bit of a celebration after everything they had been through that day.
CHAPTER NINE
The den was full of naked people, and Faina. Of the assortment of nude people, the only one who could be called decent was Amelia, as she was wrapped in a blanket. Heedless of any of the nudity, Faina embraced each of them in turn, squeezing each of them to her chest like she was worried they were going to disappear into thin air.
“That,” she finally began, holding Serik at arm’s length once she let him squirm his way out of the embrace, “was awful.”
“What, you didn’t think we could do it?” Sezim asked, aghast. “Talk about a lack of faith.”
Faina cut her an unimpressed look. “Am I supposed to enjoy watching a bunch of murderous strangers try to rip my family apart?”
“We will need to do something with the murderous strangers’ bodies at some point,” Aibek pointed out, glowering at the floor.
“That can wait,” Amelia informed him blandly before she grabbed his arm and tugged him down to join her under her blanket on the couch. “We’ve all earned a bit of a breather, don’t you think?”
“I’ve earned a goddamned nap,” Sezim added emphatically before she practically keeled over into one of the chairs. It was still before noon, but the adrenaline high was wearing off for all of them, leaving them all groggy.
“Not yet,” Faina instructed sharply, prodding Sezim’s knee with her foot. “You can wait a few minutes.”
Groaning emphatically, Sezim sat back up. “Whhhyyyyy?” she asked, dragging the word out.
Faina’s response was to leave the room. When she returned, she had a first aid kit in hand. Thankfully, patching everyone up was a relatively quick job. Their injuries were surprisingly mild, and there was no need for any stitches or anything more advanced than some gauze and tape. Shifters always healed quicker than an average human being.
Finally, once everyone had been tended to, Faina closed the first aid kit and tucked it under her arm. “Alright. Everyone go get some sleep. Not for too long, though. You all need to get something in your stomachs eventually, so try to wake up in a reasonable timeframe and head to the kitchen. I’ll have something ready by the time you start waking up.” She did not say that she was going to cook away her lingering nervousness, but it was pretty easy to guess that was what she meant.
Sezim was the first to throw herself out the front door, before she transformed and bounded away into the snow. Serik followed shortly after her, followed by Anara. Aibek and Amelia were the last to leave, basking in the warmth of the den for a few more moments before Amelia transformed and followed Aibek out the door, where he transformed as well.
Back in Aibek’s room, and once again human-shaped, it took a few moments for them to get the door to latch properly after it had been so violently thrown open earlier in the morning.
Amelia flopped down on the bed, her arms spread out to her sides so she could take up as much of the bed as she could. She grunted when Aibek flopped down on top of her, his head in the crook of her shoulder.
“Comfy?” Amelia asked. She didn’t really mind his weight on top of her, and he was warm. The blanket was still on the bed, beneath her.
“Mmhmm,” he hummed in confirmation, and he shifted around, making a show of getting more comfortable on top of her.
Amelia lifted a hand, scratching her fingers through his hair absentmindedly. “I can’t sleep,” she stated eventually, her hand falling back to the bed. It bounced slightly as it hit the mattress.
“Should I move?” Aibek asked, his voice partially muffled by her shoulder.
“No, you’re fine,” she replied, waving it off with a flippant motion. “Just…can’t sleep.” She turned her head to nose at the side of his head. “What about you?”
He grumbled incoherently against her shoulder, eventually turning his head enough to say, “I cannot sleep, either.” He propped himself up on one elbow. “You are alright, right?” he asked, looking her over.
She reached up to flick his nose with two fingers, grinning when he recoiled, a look of intense indignation on his face. “I’m fine,” she assured him. “I mean, I’m a bit sore, sure, but with the jump I made earlier, I’d be fucking amazed if I wasn’t sore.”
“Jump?” he asked, bemused.
“Oh, uh.” She cleared her throat. “I cleared the hill in about a jump and a
half. I didn’t want to have to slow down.”
Aibek sighed slowly, lowering his head to her collarbone for a moment. “Do you make a habit of trying to break your wrists and ankles?”
“Only when I have to,” she sniffed primly in response. She poked the side of his head with two fingers, and he lifted his head again. “You can’t really say anything right now,” she pointed out. “Darius was like twice your size, and you hardly even stopped to think before you had a go at him. So if I’m reckless, then so are you. You’re, like…doubly reckless, even.”
“Yes, well, only when I have to,” he parroted back at her with a fond, crooked smile. “I could not let him hurt you or my family.”
“That does make me wonder, though,” she added slowly, lifting her head to nudge her forehead against his chin. “Why do all this?” she asked, letting her head drop back down to the mattress. “You could have tossed me out on my tail as soon as you realized how much trouble I was going to be.” She lifted her hand to prod his cheek with one finger. “And don’t give me some ‘it was the right thing to do’ crap,” she commanded sternly. “You have bypassed that point. You’ve flown past it at Mach six.”
