Chapter 2 #2
My gaze drifts to the center of the room, and I can’t help it; it’s almost like a Pavlovian response.
Everything fades away as I recall Malik there in the spotlight, dancing like something out of a dream …
a wet dream. Fuck, the way he moved … His body responded to his every command, turning his raw alpha power into beautiful, heart-stopping grace.
I was transfixed, mesmerized, almost drooling on myself at one point.
But then the Leos’ angry shouts calling for the brothers’ deaths interrupted Malik’s dance.
I was seconds from intervening when Bodi, Rian, and their mates all dropped through a portal.
I almost laughed out loud when I saw that Leonora was too distracted to notice …
at first. The three black panther shifter brothers are quite the thorn in her side.
But her obsession with them runs deep.
And I’m going to find out why. Why them? She has hundreds of Leos under her rule, and—at least in her twisted mind—she loves them all. But what she feels for Malik, Bodi, and Rian is … more. It seems that no matter what they do, how much they revolt, she just clings tighter.
I stride to the center of the room and look down at a puddle of dark blood.
She holds on to those brothers even to the detriment of all her other Leos.
Why?
The longer I stare at the blood, the angrier I get.
My arms flex, and my hands clench. The Council should have stepped in long ago.
Hell, the other deities should have done something.
Maybe I should bring it up again with my contact on the Council.
She shut me down last time I suggested we ask other deities to help, but maybe now …
I mean, surely we can convince Justice, the god of Libra, to join us against Leonora.
He is a peacemaker and the holder of his namesake, the scales of justice.
I consider it as I lift my gaze. Chairs lay toppled over, gold runners cling to the edges of tables, some puddled on the floor stained with flecks of brownish-red blood.
I make my way across the room, gingerly stepping around bloody footprints, handprints, and pawprints.
I wince as I walk past a shattered chair, a tuft of white fur stuck to the sharp broken point of one of the legs.
As I approach a door, I take a large step over a gold sconce with a smear of blood along one side and black soot scattered in a fan pattern over the floor and up the wall.
My beast rumbles, “Incoming.”
A voice comes from the other side of the door. “Can you believe this?”
I jump to the side, hugging the wall as two shifters push through the door, quickly followed by several more. They all wear the black pants and tunics of Leonora’s hunters, but their faces are bare without their customary white masks.
The one who spoke upon entering continues. “We didn’t even get to come to the party, but here we are on cleanup.”
The shifters spread out, their eyes glowing gold as they call up their magic, raising their hands. A male comes towards me, his eyes shining with his power as he says, “I know. We missed everything! I heard things got pretty crazy.”
The broken sconce at my feet clatters against the marble floor as it floats back to its place on the wall.
The smear of blood sizzles and dissolves away, but the coals remain cold and unlit as the sconce clicks into place.
The shifter walks off without ever knowing I was a single step away, saying, “Nero’s ear was ripped right off. ”
A female in the center of the room taking care of all the blood on the floor says, “I heard that Leonora forced the shift on everyone, and only a handful have managed to shift back.”
Another female nods as she directs her magic to the chairs along the wall to my left, mending them and setting them up at their places at the table. “I heard she told everyone that if they were going to act like animals in her court, she’d treat them like animals.”
My beast makes herself small inside me, curling her thick tail around her snout as she whispers, “I don’t think I’d like being in a clan without the privileges of our enforcer job.”
I stroke her with a mental touch. “Not all clans are like this.”
My beast flinches as a loud screech stops all movement in the room for a few seconds as everyone looks at the male across the room. He has shoved one of the large tables against the wall in his apparent anger. His shoulders heave with his breaths as a low growl comes from his chest.
He hisses, “I wish someone would just kill them.”
Silence echoes off the soaring ceiling before another male to his right whispers, “Quiet!”
The enraged male spins, his claws sliding from his fingers, his fangs glinting with his saliva.
“Why? Why should I? Kadeen, Ishwar, and Asha risked it all for us. They almost succeeded in killing Rian, and if it wasn’t for that witch …
But now they’re—” His voice breaks, but he shakes off his tears.
“Now they’re dead. Them! Not the actual traitors.
Noooo. The panther brothers get a fucking banquet. ”
The male to his right speed-walks over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Shh. Do you want to join Asha?”
The angry shifter shrugs him off, but the vitriol in his voice is now tempered with sorrow. “Maybe. Maybe if I die eliminating the brothers, I’ll find peace in the afterlife.”
I take a quick look around the room, assessing. Most of the shifters in the room are hunched in on themselves, casting nervous glances at the doors, but a few hold the ember of anger in their eyes as they nod along with the shifter’s words.
How long before that ember sparks and burns the entire Leo clan to ashes?
A shifter at the other end of the room takes a step forward, clasping his hands and worrying his fingers. “We can’t blame the brothers. It’s not their fault that?—”
The angry male whips his head around, pinning him with a sneer.
“Isn’t it? They could just stop their selfish rebellion!
They had it all! They’ve been her favorites since the day their mother died and Leonora brought them here.
They had her affection, her love, her attention.
She gave them everything; territory, power, position, liberties that the rest of us never even dreamed of even asking for …
And they threw it in her face. They tried to fucking kill her just last year, yet here we are, cleaning the blood of our clan off the floor of a party held in their honor! ”
The other male grabs his arm, attempting to pull him towards the door. “Shhh! We know. I get it. We?—”
The enraged male yanks his arm out of his grip with a warning bark of his beast. The other male holds up his hands in surrender, backing away. But before any more is said, another male strides into the room.
I straighten at his arrival. The white porcelain mask still covers his face, but I remember that tawny hair, that lean, muscular build, and that small scar on his left shoulder that looks like a crescent moon.
He’s the Asiatic lion shifter who I’m almost certain helped Bodi, Rian, and their mates escape and then ushered Malik from the room.
Perfect. He’s the one I want to talk to.
All eyes turn to him as he stops a few steps inside the room, clasping his hands behind his back. His posture is relaxed, confident, calm, even though he’s a beta in a room with at least four alphas.
He says, “Why are you all still here? I expected this room to be put right and you to have moved on to your assignments for the day already.” His knowing gaze lands on the angry shifter whose hands are still balled into tight fists.
The lion raises a brow and asks, “Do I need to send additional help?”
The two stare each other down before the other one shakes his head. Interesting. How much power does this beta wield in the Leo clan hierarchy?
He nods his approval before spinning on his heel, saying over his shoulder. “You all have five more minutes.” The warning isn’t followed up by a threat, but it seems implied and the consequences well known the way everyone quickly moves back into action to finish cleaning the room.
I slip away from the wall and follow the masked lion shifter out into the hall. The quiet sounds of chairs and tables being set right, along with the faint sizzle of dissolving blood, fade behind me.