by Eva Chase
But one of the kin around me might be scheming right now to overthrow all of us. I studied each of them as Marco ushered me deeper into the room.
“Alpha,” a woman in the first group we approached said, with the slightest bob of her head in deference. Her scent told me she was a lion. She turned her golden eyes on me. “And this is the dragon shifter.” Her tone gave away no clear emotion, but I felt her sizing me up. I lifted my chin instinctively, wishing I’d insisted on changing into something more elegant than jeans and a T-shirt.
“This is the great Serenity herself,” Marco said languidly but without any hint of irony. “I hope all of my kin will make her feel welcome.”
“Naturally,” the lion shifter said. She offered an elegant hand for me to shake. “Coreen of the Bushnells.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” I said, biting back any other comments I might have made about the warmth of her welcome—or lack thereof.
The other introductions went pretty much the same way. A cryptic remark, a once-over, a mild show of respect. The feline kin were definitely a lot different from the other shifters I’d met. I didn’t get hostile vibes from any of them, but really, it was hard to tell who might have been simply unaffected and who outright dismissive.
“Are they always like this?” I murmured to Marco when we stopped by one of the tables for a moment alone. “Or are they insulting you—or me—or someone?”
He chuckled. “Princess, this is about as enthusiastic for leadership as my kin ever get. I’m actually impressed.” His head turned, and he sighed. “Well, I was. Prepare yourself.”
For what? I wanted to ask, but the problem he’d seen coming was already on us.
“Well then,” purred the lynx shifter who’d sidled up at my right. I couldn’t tell whether the flecks of silver in his tawny hair were part of his animal’s coloring or a reflection of age, but if he was any more than thirty-five, he wore the years well. He gave me a sly grin as he considered me. “Aren’t you the loveliest shifter I’ve ever seen walk in that door. No offense meant to my alpha.”
He winked at Marco, who smiled indulgently. “None taken, Silvan. I know exactly how lovely I am without you buttering me up.”
“Perhaps while you’re busy with your duties, I could take this treasure on a tour of the estate.” Silvan’s attention came back to me. His voice practically dripped with flirtation. “There are so many things I could show you.”
I’d bet there were. I clamped my jaw, not sure whether I was more likely to laugh or sputter in indignation. Was he seriously propositioning me right in front of my mate?
Marco didn’t seem to care—but then, Marco made a habit of appearing not to care about anything. And maybe this guy thought he could get away with the flirtation because his alpha wasn’t fully my mate yet.
Any good humor I’d been feeling about the encounter died. I gave the lynx shifter a firm stare. “I appreciate the offer, but I know Marco will look after me just fine.” I tucked my hand around Marco’s elbow at the same time. My jaguar shifter didn’t say anything, but I felt a tremor of pleased energy travel through his posture.
Silvan seemed unfazed. “Well, if you should change your mind, I’m sure you can find me.” He sauntered off.
“Wow,” I said. “That was... something.”
“I should probably warn you that you’re likely to get at least three similar offers before the day is over,” Marco said. His smile turned crooked.
A murmur rose up near the doorway at the far end of the ballroom. I glanced over, and my gaze caught in a shock of neon pink hair. My heart leapt.
“Kylie!”
I dashed across the room, suddenly glad I wasn’t dressed up, because I could move a heck of a lot faster in sneakers than heels. My best friend squealed when she saw me. We threw our arms around each other, me being careful not to squeeze her too hard with my newfound dragon strength. Not that Kylie was any lightweight. She was small, yeah, but full of wiry toughness.
When I let her go, she looked around the room, her eyes sparkling. “This is freaking amazing, Ren. And I thought Marco’s place in New York was posh. So this is, like, the capital of cat shifters?”
I grinned. “Something like that. I can’t believe you’re here! How long can you stay?”
“I’m supposed to be back at work on Tuesday, but I can always call in. I haven’t used any sick days yet. Oh my God! I’m going to get to see you be a dragon.” She grasped my hands, and we spun around in an excited little dance. “Where are those hunks of yours, anyway?”
I looked up and realized we’d become the center of attention. The shifters all around the room were staring at me and my bestie—well, mostly at my bestie. One woman’s nostril’s flared.
“Why has a human been allowed into our estate?” she demanded.
I stepped closer to Kylie automatically, my hackles rising. Marco strode over with an air of authority I’d rarely seen him emit. But then, this was the first time I’d seen him among so many of his kin.
“The human is your dragon shifter’s ally,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. “And you will treat her with the same respect you would a dragon. Any arguments?” He offered a sharp smile.
Several heads turned away. The other stares lowered. The woman who’d complained muttered something, and Marco said, in a soft, clear voice, “What was that, Livia?”
Her lips pressed flat, her face paling slightly. “Nothing, sir.”
Marco didn’t look convinced, but he let it slide. “A surprise visit, but a welcome one,” he said to Kylie as he joined us.
Kylie’s expression had gone a bit tight. “It’s not going to be a big deal that I’m here, is it? Everyone seemed so chill in the other shifter village, I didn’t think they’d get upset.”
“They’ll get over it. We felines are very adaptable.” The smile he gave her was a lot warmer than the one he’d offered the crowd.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing Kylie’s arm. “You’ve got to be hungry. They’ve got everything to eat here.” I kept my tone chipper even though my heart was thudding. Alice caught my eye from across the room, and I nodded. I was definitely going to want her to have my best friend’s back around this bunch.
We’d only made it partway to the tables when a new voice boomed across the room. “Alpha! If you even deserve that title.”
Bristling, I pivoted on my feet. A hulking tiger shifter was stalking toward Marco, his head high and eyes lit with menace. The guy must have had at least half a foot and fifty pounds on my jaguar shifter.
A prickle ran over my skin as my body instinctively readied to shift. I held myself back. It wasn’t going to help Marco’s case if his mate fought his battles for him.
“Julius,” Marco said blandly. “What are you nattering about now?”
The tiger shifter came to a halt a few feet from his alpha and scowled. “I say you’re not strong enough to lead us all. I say a real alpha would have consummated his bond with the dragon, not stepped aside while other kin’s leaders did, leaving all of us still waiting. I say I could crush you with one blow of my paws.”
My skin went cold. The other shifters had fallen completely silent, even more still than when Kylie had arrived. Marco folded his arms over his chest and cocked his head. “Is that a formal challenge, or just bluster?”
“Consider yourself challenged,” Julius growled. “Tonight, unless you’re going to try to weasel your way out of it.”
“No weaseling necessary,” Marco said lightly. “I’ll be happy to settle this tonight. May the best kin win.”
Chapter 14
Ren
Kylie looped her arm around mine as an attendant led us down the hall to our rooms. She pitched her voice low. “So... this whole challenge thing. What exactly does that mean for Marco?”
I swallowed hard. My pulse hadn’t stopped racing since the tiger shifter had swaggered out of the ballroom. I wished I had a better idea what the challenge had meant myself
.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “The other guy wants the alpha position. I guess they fight it out. Tonight.” In, what, just a few hours? Marco couldn’t have been prepared for that.
Was this what being alpha had been like for him all along? Random challenges at every turn, not even being able to spend an hour back on his estate without some asshole confronting him? That would get old awfully quick. Suddenly I didn’t find it hard to believe he’d meant the comment he’d made about giving up the position.
Only he couldn’t do that and still be my mate. If he forfeited his position as alpha, my bond would shift to whoever was named in his place.
And the same if he lost this challenge.
“But he’ll be fine, right?” Kylie said. “I mean, he’s stayed on top this long.”
“Yeah,” I said. If only I felt totally confident of Marco’s victory. In the back of my mind, I kept seeing the tiger shifter standing over him, taller and broader. Size wasn’t everything—but it mattered a hell of a lot in a fight.
“Geez. I had no idea things would be this tense. I’m sorry if I made the situation any worse.”
“Hey.” I pulled Kylie around to face me as the attendant opened a door for her. “I’m glad you’re here. Any trouble Marco’s kin make is their fault, not yours. Thank you for coming. Just having you with me makes everything feel a little easier to handle.”
My best friend beamed at me and pulled me into another hug. “That’s why I’m here.”
I hugged her back, and then stepped away. “I do still want you staying safe, though. Can you just, like hole up in your guest room for a little while. I think I should talk to Marco.”
Kylie waved me off. “Of course, of course. Go tend to your ‘mate.’ I can already see I’ve got plenty of luxury in here to keep me occupied. But if you run into any handsome unoccupied shifters, feel free to send them my way too!”
I couldn’t help laughing, even though my stomach was still tight. “I’ll do that.”
Marco’s private rooms were just down the hall from mine. I knocked. “Marco?”
“Come in,” he called from the other side. When I stepped in, he was standing by the chaise lounge in the sitting room. He shot me an amused glance. “You don’t need to knock with me, princess. Consider these rooms as much yours as they are mine.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Are you okay?”
Marco shrugged with a careless air, but I knew him well enough now to notice the angry glint in his indigo eyes. “Challenges happen. They have before and will again. It isn’t how I would have hoped to spend my first evening here with you, but we’ll just have to make tomorrow night even better to make up for it.”
His grin looked a little tense too. I walked up to him. “It sounded like that Julius guy had been a pain in the ass before now.”
Marco nodded. “He likes to hear himself talk, especially if it’s to complain about how anyone else is doing things. Apparently he’s decided to graduate from talking.”
“Do you think he’s the one allied with the rogues?” I asked.
“It could be. A challenge, if he succeeded, would be a fairly direct way to disrupt the status quo. But he’s not going to succeed, so really it’s a very bad plan, if it is one.”
Julius had radiated aggressive disdain, but there was no way for me to tell whether that feeling was simply personal or whether he had a larger agenda. It didn’t really matter anyway. It didn’t change what I’d come here to do.
I touched Marco’s face, tracing my fingers along the line of his angular jaw. “I guess we could enjoy ourselves before tomorrow evening too.”
A different sort of light sparked in Marco’s eyes. He dipped his head close to mine. “What exactly did you have in mind, my Princess of Flames?”
I kissed him in answer. He hummed low in his throat and kissed me back, his hands rising to tangle in my hair. The graze of his fingers over my scalp left my whole body tingling in anticipation.
He tilted my head slightly to deepen the kiss. I pressed my mouth to his hungrily. The bond inside me thrummed with eagerness, urging me on.
Without breaking the kiss, I stepped backward through the doorway into the bedroom. Marco followed. His tongue teased into my mouth, and for one hot, heady moment it sparred with mine. Then I had to let go of him to hop up on the bed.
Marco prowled after me, nothing but longing in his gaze now. He bent over me on the bed and claimed my mouth again. His fingers brushed over my breasts with just enough pressure to pebble my nipples through my shirt and bra—but not half as much as I was dying for. I arched into his touch, and he chuckled breathlessly.
“All in good time,” he murmured on his way into another kiss.
No. The more time we took, the more opportunity he had to question my motivations.
I grasped his shirt and tugged it up. Marco let me peel it off, staying poised over me for a few seconds as I drank in his lean chest. I ran my hands over the planes of solid muscle, and his eyelids dipped.
“Princess,” he said in a hungry growl.
I pulled my shirt off too. Marco leaned in to kiss his way down the side of my neck and across my collarbone. I whimpered when he reached the boundary of my bra. To my relief, he made short work of that obstacle. With a quick gesture, he’d unhooked it and tossed it aside. Then he was slicking his tongue over one needy nipple.
I gasped at the rush of pleasure spreading through my chest. Yes, this was exactly what we both needed. One of my arms looped around Marco’s shoulders. The other crept down my body to undo the fly of my jeans. I caught Marco’s hand and guided it along the same path.
He groaned when his fingers reached the dampness on my panties. I shivered with longing, the ache between my legs only growing as he stroked me there.
“So determined,” Marco said in a low, amused voice. He paused, his hand going still. His eyes sought out mine. His expression had turned abruptly serious. “Princess, what are you doing?”
Shit. “Seducing you?” I said with all the coyness I could manage, fluttering my eyelashes at him. “Is that a problem?”
He withdrew his hand completely. I almost moaned at the loss of contact. He set it on the other side of my body and lifted himself so he was staring down at me.
“Why now?”
“Does it matter? I want you, you want me...” I teased my fingers down his bare chest to the waist of his jeans.
Marco closed his eyes for a second as if gathering his self-control. When he looked at me again, his gaze was stark. “Ren. Please. Why now?”
I couldn’t bear to lie to my mate, not when he asked me like that. I swallowed hard. “I do want you. But I also... Julius took a jab at you because our bond isn’t consummated yet. I thought if it was, maybe he’d back down.”
“Oh, princess.” Marco let his head drop until his nose almost grazed mine. “Do you really think I’ll lose to that sorry excuse for a tiger?”
“No,” I said, mostly honestly. The images that had haunted me since Julius had first spoken his challenge floated back into my head. All the ways I might find Marco after the battle, battered and bleeding. “I don’t want to see how badly he might hurt you while you’re winning. If I can save you from that...”
Marco sucked in a breath. “There was a time not long ago when I thought you might enjoy seeing me batted around some.”
My back stiffened. The idea that I’d wish that kind of pain on him wrenched at me so hard tears sprang into my eyes. “No,” I choked out. “I was angry at you, but I would never want—that’s the last thing I—”
Marco’s eyes had widened. He brushed his thumb over my lips, stopping my struggle for words. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was only a joke—a bad one, clearly. I... didn’t realize my wellbeing meant so much to you.”
“Of course it does, you idiot,” I muttered. “You’re my mate. You’re obviously upset about the challenge. I just thought, this is the one thing I can do that might help...”
“Seren
ity.” Marco lowered himself on his side next to me and tugged me against him. He kissed my forehead, his voice a little shaky. “You have no idea how much you’ve helped already, with everything you’d done so far. And I’m not upset about the challenge because I’m afraid of Julius. Confrontations like that—they just stir up memories I’d rather avoid.”
I nestled my head against his shoulder. “Like what?”
He hesitated for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter. “You’ve asked me before how I got this scar.” He touched the pale line that bisected his eyebrow. “I told you it was from a challenge. That particular challenge... came from a kin-member I’d considered a friend. One of my closest friends. We’d grown up together, played and trained together before I was even named next alpha-in-line. I’d have fought to the death for him.”
My throat had gone tight. Oh, God. “But instead you had to fight to the death against him.”
“Not to the death. Not in that moment. But I had to fight him, yes. I had to hear him tell me he didn’t believe I deserved to be alpha, that I didn’t deserve to even be kin, and then I had to beat him into submission.” Marco paused with a hissed inhale. “It was him or me, and in the end I chose me.”
“You did what you had to do.”
“Yes. But when there’s a challenge, the loser is banished. An alpha can’t have someone who tried to undermine our authority just hanging around. And Devon didn’t know what to do with himself once he was out on his own.”
“What happened?” I asked. I could already tell from the weight in Marco’s voice that it wasn’t good.
“He ended up tangling with a bunch of vampires. They were really not pleased about whatever he said or did to them.” Marco swallowed audibly. “When we found his body... it was obvious they’d tortured him for a while before they’d finished the job. So no, I didn’t kill him. But I did send him to his death. And the worst death I can imagine.”
I wrapped my arm around my mate, hugging him. “You didn’t have a choice. You couldn’t have known what would happen to him. It’s not as if you made him mess with those vampires.”
