But even as I felt Eli start to relax, especially after I’d been approached by his wolf and I hadn’t been scared—I knew my chiding him for sniffing my ass had both amused and relieved him—everything seemed to turn to shit.
It hit me in the face exactly as it had with Austin.
It was there and then it wasn’t.
The scent. Again.
The power in the air.
It almost made me cringe.
It was nothing like what he’d exposed me to before, this was different.
I could sense it, even if I didn’t recognize it until the cat’s smell littered my space.
The creature stank. It wasn’t earthy and pungent like I’d thought before—the beast had evidently wandered close to us, triggering my she-wolf’s response. But this scent was vile.
Death and decay surrounded it, and only when I saw it leap out of the bushes at me, did I even realize what it was.
A cougar.
Where on Earth had that come from?
I leaped out of the way just in time, but Eli, of course, was already in my space.
He flew out of nowhere, colliding with the cougar, and as I felt him call on all his power, I wanted to die inside.
I wanted to crawl inside my soul and hide, because this level of power was so intense it scared me.
The cougar, quite naturally, was aggressive. Kali Sara, I couldn’t blame her. It was either act with aggression or just curl into a ball.
I scented that she was a she, and she fought with a brutality that was bewitching.
The pair of them struck each other, teeth snapping, claws raking, and blood dripping.
It was different, so much different than what I’d been exposed to with Austin.
There, it had been wolf against wolf, and inadvertent though it may have been, Ethan had prepared me for that with his beta challenge.
This?
This was different.
Cougars fought differently. Biting and kind of, well, the only way I could describe it was to compare it to the butterfly stroke in swimming. The curve of its arm was lethal, the way she could stretch and rake her claws was perilous, and even though I was cowed into place, frozen not out of fear but Eli’s dominance, I realized how beautifully she fought.
How majestic she was.
Eli was dark and dirty. He nipped and tore, slashed and cut through her defenses, and then I heard it.
The tiniest of muffled sounds.
Horror whipped through me as I ripped through the hold Eli had me in and saw the small cougar cub ambling toward us.
My eyes locked onto the tiny creature as he approached, mewling and crying for its mama.
My heart pounded as I saw Eli start to attack the cougar with a ferocity that the beast was too drained to survive.
I sensed her desire to defend her cub, and fuck, I couldn’t let this go on.
She needed to limp away, go and be with her baby.
I didn’t give a fuck that this was a different kingdom from the one I lived in.
I knew this was pure animal, and that it might bite me in the ass at some point, but having torn through the first chokehold Eli had on me, I managed to shred through the rest.
It was stupid. So fucking stupid. I knew that, but it wouldn’t stop me from doing it.
As the creature was protecting its cub, Eli was defending me. Making sure I was safe.
And I had to stop that.
Neither the cub nor I were in danger. The ones who mattered to us, on the other hand, were.
So I leaped forward, pouncing into the fray. My abrupt arrival had the cougar hissing, but she took advantage, surprising the shit out of me even as she swiped me with a claw, making blood spurt from my body, which had Eli snarling as my essence saturated the air, before she darted off. Limping as quickly as she could, she grabbed the cub in her teeth by the scruff and hurried away, leaving me a wreck on the ground.
Eli howled, long and low, outrage and sorrow fueling the powerful sound, and I shuddered, hating that I’d caused that, but unable to feel regret.
Even if it killed me.
Ten
Eli
“Why the fuck did you do that?” I roared, but even as the thought whispered into her mind, we shimmied out of being.
In seconds, we were away from the magical space and back in the circle.
She lay panting on the ground, blood spilling free, as Ethan and Austin leaped forward to tend to her.