Chapter One #2
“We’ll stay to the back,” Jen said, her eyes flashing. “And prove there’s nothing wrong with our clan!”
“So I go in front… alone?” Jace asked quietly.
“You’ll go behind Cyrus and me,” I reassured him. “In line with the other clan members, and in front of the auxiliaries.”
“Just walk in like you own the place!” Ulmer said, passing by and clapping Jace on the back hard enough that the boy almost fell over.
“I’m going to be sick,” Jace informed me, and looked it.
“Okay,” Cyrus came into the room where we were all huddled up, and unlike Ulmer, he looked like a dream in a perfectly fitted tux.
It hugged his broad shoulders and somehow managed to hide most of the muscles all Weres had in abundance, while setting off his tousled brown curls and whiskey-colored eyes.
He’d gotten a deeper tan since coming to Vegas, and it looked good on him, although I had yet to discover something that didn’t.
And while the get-up should have appeared odd on a man who was almost as devoted to his jeans and western shirts as Jace was to his street wear, he pulled it off.
Somehow, he looked like he was born to it, which he sort of was. Arnou was the leading clan, and he was one of its favorite sons. Yet here he was, trying to start a new clan to give outcast boys a fresh start.
It was a big gamble. Once an outcast, always an outcast, as far as the Were world was concerned. Nobody had ever tried reintegration before—or as far as I knew, even proposed it.
Yet here we were.
I felt a nervous tickle down my spine and told myself to get a grip.
“You look fantastic,” Cyrus told me, sweeping me in close for a kiss, his hand warm on my skin through the open back of my borrowed dress.
The girls had been leaning heavily on Sebastian’s credit card, which had been needed until Cyrus’s recent stint as vargulf was lifted and his access to family funds was restored.
And afterward, on the clan’s money, which right now was basically Cyrus’s bank account, since my war mage salary didn’t cover much.
I could have done the same, but one look at the price tags on appropriate attire had had me calling up a friend with a massive wardrobe and asking for a favor.
And she had really come through. My ensemble for the evening was red and orange, which sounds gaudy but wasn’t, transitioning from a simple crimson slip-style top with spaghetti straps to a sleek ombre-colored body and a skirt that flared out around knee-level into delicate vertical ruffles in different shades of orange, yellow, and white.
They fluttered up when I moved, giving me the look of an upside-down candle, with my dark hair the wick and the dress the flame—
And was suddenly causing me to worry that people would assume I was wearing the clan colors when we hadn’t decided on those yet!
Crap.
But at least the kiss made everyone relax slightly. Seeing their Alpha and Lupa—the latter the word for a female clan leader—showing affection reinforced the whole clan’s bonds. Weres were touchy-feely and liked public displays of affection.
Jace even stood a little taller while everyone gathered around.
“Alright,” Cyrus said. “It’s down to the wire, and we’re up next. We need a name and have to decide. We can always change it later, but we have to have something for them to announce.”
“Dark Sun,” Luis said immediately. He was the newest recruit, with his South of the Border good looks showcased by a perfectly fitting, traditional tux.
“For the last time, we are not naming ourselves after your favorite D&D campaign,” Noah, an exasperated blond, told him.
“And I don’t think ‘dark’ is a word we want to be associated with right now,” Lee said. His head of impressive dreads crowned a tux that he’d managed to make his own, with a pair of purple velvet slippers and a matching jacquard bow tie. They complemented his dark skin and handsome features.
“Yeah, naming ourselves after the other side in the war doesn’t seem smart,” Andy agreed, referring to the Black Circle, a bunch of dark mages the Corps had been fighting for centuries, although never as viciously as right now.
Andy was an early member of the group, a tall, quiet, brown-haired boy who didn’t say much, but when he did, people tended to listen.
“I just think the name sounds cool,” Luis protested.
“It’s not about sounding cool,” Noah said, for maybe the hundredth time. “It’s supposed to say something about us, about who we are. Most clans are named after founders or members who did big things—”
“The Cyrus clan it is,” somebody said, laughing, but there were a lot of nods.
“—but those are the older clans like Arnou. Modern ones are usually named after something descriptive about them or the area they live in or used to live in: Sunseeker, Red Mountain, White Plains—”
“We live in Vegas,” Jace said doubtfully. He looked a little better after the kiss and conversation change.
“High Rollers it is!” Jason put in, the tall redhead’s Adam’s apple going up and down as he laughed.
Nobody joined in that time. We had been discussing this for days and had cycled through all possible variations on the basic idea of the clan: Reclaimed, Reforged, Unbroken, Restored, etc.
, and gotten nowhere. But this was important, as a clan’s name often became how they were fixed in people’s minds thereafter.
“I still like Phoenix Rising,” Chayton said.
He was another founding member, with Native American features and a fresh haircut to tame the shaggy Were mane that grew faster than nature should have allowed, and which he usually wore in a ponytail.
He was also another quiet one—a lot of the boys were, as their short lives had taught them to be cautious, as anything a vargulf said could be taken the wrong way and bring on a fight.
One that they weren’t likely to win with no clan behind them.
“Too cliché,” Noah—who was definitely not quiet—pointed out. He’d taken the naming thing seriously and had come up with half of the suggestions so far. “Besides, we’re not birds, we’re wolves.”
“It’s a metaphor,” Lee argued.
“It’s expected, which none of this was. It doesn’t fit us—”
“Says you. And anyway, why do we want something that fits us? What are we supposed to call ourselves? The Hated? The Unworthy? The Disappeared?”
Lee was one of the more bitter of the boys, which was saying something, but he wasn’t wrong.
The Were world was not kind to its outcasts.
And the fact that these were mostly teens, many of whom had lost their clan status over events beyond their control, either through mistakes their families had made or internal clan politics, didn’t cut them any slack.
“That doesn’t describe you,” I said quietly, and had furious black eyes turned on me.
Then the herald stuck his head in the door and tried to keep a sneer off his face. “You’re next,” he said shortly. “Name?”
“Fireborn,” Cyrus said, as smoothly as if it were a long-established fact. “From ashes, we rise.”
Everybody exchanged glances, but nobody contradicted their clan leader. Not that they probably would have in any case, but I saw some smiles breaking out. And heard the name whispered around the group, as people tried it on for size.
The medieval horns the Clan Council liked to have blown at every possible occasion blared out, causing me to jump slightly.
“The Fireborn,” the herald’s magically enhanced voice rang out.
And, okay, it was showtime.