look at me, and answer my question.’
‘I’m not your Bride, Anita. I’m just one of your many tigers to call. I’m not even bound that tight to you, because you already had a white tiger when you found me, so you just bound my black half. I don’t have to obey you.’ He was going all distant and angry on me, which was something he’d done when I first met him, but he’d stopped doing it with me.
‘What’s to stop me from asking Nicky, then? He has to tell me.’
‘He’s never traveled with Micah.’
‘He can’t answer the question, can he?’ I asked, staring at his sunglasses, as if I could see his eyes through them, but I’d found that even if I couldn’t actually see someone’s eyes, staring as if you can through dark glasses unnerves some people.
‘No, he can’t,’ Domino said, and he was arrogant and angry, and his power pushed like heat against my skin.
‘There’s a reason that Micah never takes Nicky, or Dev, or anyone who couldn’t keep a secret from me, isn’t there?’
‘Don’t do this now, Anita, not with Micah’s dad and family,’ Domino said.
‘Don’t do what? Find out that you’ve all been keeping something from me, including Micah?’
Domino’s hands started to flex over and over. It wasn’t exactly making fists; it was more like a cat will knead with its claws. It’s a sign of high anxiety among all the big-cat lycanthropes. Domino knew I understood what it was, and the fact that he was doing it anyway meant either that he was that desperate to calm himself down or that he couldn’t help it, which meant he was fighting for control. That scared me, because Domino had excellent control of his beast; if he was that stressed, then the answer to my question was even worse than I’d thought.
‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘Micah’s fighting for dominance to bring the groups into the Coalition?’
Domino shook his head, his hands kneading the air, fingers tensed and arched as he fought the growing heat that seemed to shimmer around him. I turned my head to the side and could see the ‘heat’ rising off him. It was a bad sign.
‘Anita, after what happened with Ares, if he loses it in front of the cops, they will shoot him,’ Nicky said.
I tried to calm myself down, because I couldn’t even think past the thought of how many times Micah went out of town to talk to different groups. No one could win that many fights in a month and have no injuries to show for it, and Micah wasn’t big enough, or physical enough … He was a leader, but not that kind.
‘Ease down, Domino,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose you because of something stupid.’
He bit his lower lip and shook his head, as if I’d asked him another question.
‘I’ll let it go, because honestly your reaction just now is answer enough.’
He took a few deep, even breaths and I felt him shove the heat of his beast back in its metaphorical box. I was finally able to shield enough that I’d only felt it as heat and not as a tiger. My own cats hadn’t even tried to surface. I was getting better at this. We all were. I just didn’t know how much better Micah had gotten at parts of it, like lying to me.
Domino finally spoke in a low, careful voice as if he were fighting to control even that. ‘I swear to you that Micah doesn’t fight every time he leaves town. Diplomacy and … softer methods work most of the time.’
‘What does softer methods mean?’ I asked.
Domino’s power spiked like a fever burning against my skin.
‘Let it go for now, Anita,’ Nicky said. He moved so he was blocking the police’s view of Domino.
I counted slowly to ten, though without being able to do the deep breathing that should have gone with it, it wasn’t nearly as calming. ‘I won’t ask you any more questions right now, Domino, I promise.’
I couldn’t see around Nicky’s body, but I could feel that another wereanimal was coming closer. Their energy breathed along my skin like a breath of hot air. This power stirred my beasts and I ‘saw’ in my mind’s eye my hyena stand up and shake itself like the big dog she resembled. She started trotting down a long, sunlit hallway that was usually shadowed, but the hyena trotted in the light, and tall yellowed grass appeared for her to do a curious