The cool mask of the potentate shrouded Linus’s features when he asked Lethe, “Are you sure you don’t want me to handle this?”
“Yes,” Argus seethed, pricked by her dismissal. “Let the necromancer fight a fellow alpha for you. Show them I’m right.” His laughter boomed, its edge sharp enough to cut. “Perhaps he can doodle on his arm and turn himself into a gwyllgi. At least he’s willing to bleed to get what he wants. Can the same be said for you?”
Her name caught in my throat, but I didn’t call for her. I had seen this happen too many times to believe it would go any other way than her squaring off against him. It was the gwyllgi way, and my interference always came at a cost. To her.
The best thing I could do was stand here, bear witness, and pray to the goddess she won.
The peripheral fighting slowed and then stopped now that the alphas were squaring off, and their packs waited to see what would happen.
“Call off your pets,” Argus sneered. “Face me like a gwyllgi or die a traitor and a coward.”
“Guys?” Lethe asked us. “You mind taking a step back? You don’t want to be in the splash zone for this.”
Linus joined me on what was quickly becoming the sidelines, and Hood drifted over too. The fact they stood to either side of me, each holding one of my hands, told me how much they trusted me to keep out of it if things didn’t go Lethe’s way. I didn’t growl at them, but I thought about it.
“Choose your form.” Argus, recovering his bravado, swaggered up to Lethe. “It’s the least I can do before I take your place.”
“Teeth and claws,” she said without hesitation. “I wouldn’t want you to go crying about how I beat you on two legs and it wasn’t fair. I’ll save us both the headache and maul you on four. What’s left of you can go home and lick your wounds.”
“Are you sure you won’t mate me?” He lapped up the attention. “I like feisty women. It would be a shame to rip out your lovely throat.”
“You targeted my child. My child. What kind of pathetic asshat stoops so low?”
“Your child is unnatural—”
“Are you here to talk, or are you here to fight?”
Hands spread wide in a helpless gesture, as if to say he had given her every chance to avoid this as long as she agreed to forsake her mate. “Challenge it is.”
Cletus tapped my arm seconds before a small hand closed over Linus’s and my fingers.
Nervous sweat dampened Eva’s palm, but defiance blazed in her eyes. Lethe was right. This kid was dominant to the core. And she would be in so much trouble when her grandmother noticed she was missing.
“Go, Mommy!” Eva stood between us, unflinching. “You got this.”
Pride and love brightened Lethe’s eyes as she blew her daughter a kiss. “Love you too, Diva.”
“Behold the abomination.” Argus swept out his arm. “Look at her. She’s half necromancer or might as well be. No gwyllgi pup matures at that rate, not even the fae ones. A true alpha would have accepted her loss and—”
“A true alpha is willing to give her life for her pack. That little girl is my pack, and she is my baby. I would have given my life to save hers, and I’m blessed that I didn’t have to lose my girl because a coward took a potshot at stealing my heir from me when he couldn’t beat me.”
“Argus couldn’t have done this alone,” Linus murmured. “He had help.”
Proving gwyllgi hearing was superb, Lethe scanned the gathering. “Who betrayed me?”
Those items hadn’t delivered themselves to her property, and the only way a gwyllgi—or anyone else—could have left the ring for Eva to find without laying down a scent trail or so much as a whiff of magic used to conceal one, was if the scent itself already belonged.
“Step forward,” she demanded, “and I will banish you for your courage in admitting your cowardice.” No one in the crowd moved. “Let me uncover your betrayal for myself, and I will kill you where you stand.”
The enemy gwyllgi were unable to hold Lethe’s stare and bowed their heads. As much as I wished shame had done the trick, for buying into this nonsense about Eva, it was Lethe’s dominance, pure and simple, hammering them into submission.
“Thirty seconds.” Lethe pointed at Hood, her eyes on Argus, and Hood set the timer. “Starting now.”
Ty stepped forward so fast it was almost a jump, and he spun terror-filled eyes toward his mother.
That fear explained why she had attempted to foist him off on Linus for a night when this all started. She wanted an inside man to report our progress to her. Too bad she underestimated Linus’s lone-wolf tendencies.
Bo, the amazing cook with a smile for everyone, joined him, her chin jutted and shoulders back.
Thank the goddess, she hadn’t tried to take matters into her own hands and poison us all.
“Argus is my brother.” She clasped hands with her son to cover his trembling fingers. “He’s a good man, and a good leader. He upholds the old laws, the old ways. He is what this pack needs.”
Poor little Eva, trapped in the same idiotic pack protocol as her father and mother, didn’t cry over the betrayal. Worse, she withdrew so far into herself, she could have been a doll standing between Linus and me. The dampness in her palms dried, the skin cooled, almost as if she had ceased to exist.
Comfort would make her appear weak, and that was the last thing she could afford at a time like this.
“I obey the old laws,” Lethe said, the words slicing through the air. “I do not kill any who wish to leave. I do not kill any who air their grievances to or against me. I do not kill in challenge or in battle unless forced. Those are the mercies I have shown this pack, who were born of liars and cheaters. Those are the kindnesses I have shown you all, and this is how you repay me.” Her upper lip quivered. “Who else?”
The bottom dropped out of my stomach as several gwyllgi who had joined us for cookouts and block parties, on hunts and on vacations, fidgeted where they stood, preparing to step forward and declare their loyalty.
To Argus.
“Her words are wasted breath,” Argus assured the others. “She won’t be your alpha when the sun rises.”
“The formal rites have been observed,” Hood interjected for the first time. “I’m falling asleep over here, waiting for you to do more than flap your gums.”
“Eager for your mate’s death.” He flashed his teeth. “You’re a cold one, Hood Lehenga.”
“Kinase,” he corrected the challenger. “I mated the alpha, who would rather fight you to the death than be yours.”
Red crept into Argus’s cheeks, a fitting counterpoint to his bluster. “You’ll pay for that.”
“I can afford it.” Hood shrugged. “Now shut up and let my mate kick your ass so I can get back to that carving station.”
An unseen signal raised Argus’s spirits, never a good sign, and he grinned nastily before shifting.
Lethe waited for his cue and still almost beat him onto all fours, causing a ripple of admiration through the crowd I no longer trusted to remain impartial, if they ever had been.
Hello, paranoia, my old friend.
With the Kinase heir at my side, who had been made into a talking point, I welcomed the tunneling of my vision until she and her protection were all I had room for in my mind. Not the worry, not the panic, not the fear.
Lethe was all nimbleness and lean muscle. Argus was bulk and speed. Their clash was terrible.
A few members of the crowd shifted to four legs, as if the bloodshed had flipped a switch they were helpless to control. They didn’t interfere, but neither did they assume their human guises. Somehow that made it worse. The animalistic quality of the battle was amplified by their snarls of eagerness or bays of support until the lawn became an arena, and Lethe’s fight for her life a spectator sport.
“Grier,” Hood whispered, barely an exhale. “Hold it together.”
I wanted to punch something. I wanted to take my dagger and ram it between Argus’s eyes then spit in them and watch as his soul extinguished.
“You said that out loud.” Eva blinked up at me. “You’re almost as scary as Mom.”
“Thanks.” I accepted it for the compliment it was and vowed one day to gain control of my mouth.
The stairs leading up into my head loomed in the forefront of my mind, an easy escape within reach. I could take those steps, cozy up in my safe corner, and forget all about this nastiness until it ended. But I was part of this pack, and I strived to follow its rules, even when I didn’t agree with them. I owed it to my friends, and to their daughter, to witness the cost of leadership.
Cletus, who had been watching our backs, tapped me on the left shoulder. I whirled in that direction to find a rangy blondish gwyllgi sneaking up behind us. Her eyes gleamed with malice where they locked on Eva, and saliva dripped from her open jaws.
Eva, who was Lethe’s daughter.
Eva, who was Lethe’s heir.
Eva, who would be a threat to Argus’s claim if he managed to defeat Lethe.
This guy really wasn’t taking any chances.
This ace in the hole must have been what put that ugly smile on Argus’s face.
“Savannah?” I reached for my bond with the city. “Can you handle that for me?”
The ground beneath the stalking gwyllgi turned the consistency of quicksand and mired the beast up to her knees.
“You can still come after Eva, if you want.” I watched her struggle and sink lower. “You’ll have to chew off your own legs to do it, though. Sucks, huh?”
The thrashing gwyllgi bayed a haunting note that her packmates lifted into song. It chilled my blood, but I couldn’t let them distract me.
With Linus by my side, Cletus watching my back, and the city roused to wakefulness, I returned my attention to Lethe.
Just that fast, she had snapped the long bones in Argus’s forelegs. His butt waggled in the air in a mockery of a puppy asking to play, but no matter how he struggled, he couldn’t regain his feet. The match was over. Point to Lethe. Except she didn’t stop there.