of the hall, right where it bended out of sight, head angled down as he looked at the kid. “I’ve been called back. You might have decided to fly solo, man, but I’m still part of the clan and unless I cut ties, I have to answer to the Alpha. You know what happens if I don’t.”
“How can you go back to her?”
I closed my eyes at the sound of his voice. He sounded like what he was, really. A scared kid. A lonely one. Even if he did grow three inch fangs when he was pissed. Tiger, I was thinking. He shifted into some kind of tiger. I’d seen stripes trying to come through on his skin.
I figured that meant the Queen Bitch was a tiger, too.
Queen of the Jungle. She probably liked that.
Enemy…my hand tingled.
Now I had two of them to deal with. And those were just the local ones. Heaven help me if my grandmother ever decided to acknowledge my existence again.
But those were problems for another day.
“If I don’t go back, you know what happens. I’m rogue and they send everybody after me,” Damon said, his voice hard and flat.
“Then just take her out!” Doyle half-shouted.
“And step into her shoes? Shit. Grow up, kid. It’s not as simple as that.”
Damon’s eyes cut my way and then he looked back at the boy. “Stay here. Out of trouble…the witches here can help if you start feeling shaky. They’ve done it before and Es is decent people. And…” his voice dropped to a threatening growl. “Keep your eyes, your paws, your thoughts off what’s mine. Because I will be back…and as much as I love you, Doyle, you won’t stand a chance if you hurt what’s mine.”
Doyle muttered under his breath and swore. He walked away; although I couldn’t see it, I knew he was gone. The intensity in the air faded and instead of two angry shifters hovering nearby, there was only one.
My one.
He looked at me and then jerked his head as he headed outside.
There was a car waiting.
Es had said it was on loan.
It was long, lean and black, a throwback from the days of those old muscle cars and it looked like it might have been made just for him. As he leaned back against it, he stared at me with fury dancing in his eyes. “You had to do it, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.” I thought it all through one more time. Then I nodded. There wasn’t anything I would have taken back or changed. “Yeah, pretty much.”
“Fuck.” He bit it off and turned away, hands braced on the hood of the car.
“Can you take her?”
He tensed. “Don’t start on me, damn it. I hear it from Doyle all the time; I don’t need it from you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
His snarl seemed to echo for miles. “Yes!” He whirled around and stormed up to me, closing a hand over the front of my vest as he hauled me onto my toes. “I can. But it doesn’t mean I will. I don’t want to lead her fucked-up clan of maniacs and that’s what I’d have to do if I killed her.”
“She doesn’t lead. She terrifies and abuses.” I lifted a hand to his cheek. “I know what your Alpha is like.”
“No,” he said, his teeth clenched. “You don’t. You don’t have a fucking clue.”
“I think I do.” Studying his unyielding face, I brushed my thumb over his lip. “She’s like my grandmother.”
His lids flickered.
“You want to know why I don’t flee when I’m afraid?” I said softly.
The hand clutching my vest let go and he spun away from me.
“You asked about my back. Aneira children are placed on the training field when we are strong enough to lift a training sword. I wasn’t strong enough until I was six. I was slower. Weaker. I had the shit beaten out of me by cousins who were better than me, more skilled.
“The teachers pushed me hard, but they weren’t cruel. Then my grandmother started coming to practices and…” I shrugged. “I was eight the first time she took a whip to me. I wasn’t fast enough during one of the exams for the year-training. I failed. So I was whipped…in front of the rest of the students, in front of the teachers, in front of my cousins.”
I gave him a faint smile as he stared at me, his eyes so dark they were nearly black. “You probably figured out we weren’t exactly attending public schools or anything. This