only if you choose it.'
Christoph couldn’t help but smile at the memory of hearing the Goliath Code for the first time. It seemed like a long time ago when Barry had read it off a card he kept in his wallet. Christoph had really liked that one line, a warning against being bullied. These days, most Weres used it as an excuse to act up or referenced it when they bragged.
'A quiet path is deadly for a wolf,' Christoph thought. 'Nothing down that road.'
He looked at Ashi, who was silent and staring into space, both hands still clutching the collar. 'When have you ever really believed in the Code? Analie, a tiny low-rank, considers the Code holy.'
Despite the burn, Christoph didn’t react when Mouse nicked his neck. As Royce approached, Christoph snarled, his mouth full of fangs. He lashed out with quickly-growing claws. Pain lanced his neck and shoulder as he lunged. ‘Ouch, sword. Screw it.’ He growled and lashed out again. Ashi was scrambling across the floor, clumsy without his usual strength and agility, trying to get away from the rapidly shifting Were.
“To hell with you!” Christoph roared around large fangs.
Royce breathed a sigh, unheard against Christoph’s roaring. He’d thought Ashi more likely to snap and lash out than Christoph, but apparently he had been mistaken.
The aching burn of claw marks on his skin only made him more resolved to what he had to do.
While Mouse was trying to dissuade Christoph from shifting by goading him with a few shallow swipes of the silver-tainted sword, Royce ended the fracas by backhanding the Were. A second time, Christoph’s head cracked against the hardwood.
Shaking a bit of blood from the back of his hand, Royce returned to his original task, snapping the collar around Christoph’s throat before the Were could recover himself and attempt a second attack.
Mouse tucked one of the swords into the thick leather belt riding low on her hips, tossing the other to John, who fumbled it. She dropped to her knees, gathering Christoph in her arms and glared at Royce as she cradled the injured Were against her.
“That was immeasurably stupid,” Ashi muttered.
Christoph raised one fist groggily in the air, his head spinning. “Go-go Goliath, mighty, mighty Goli—”
“For God’s sake, this not the time for pack fight songs!”
“—ath, fight, fight Goliath, stomp—”
“Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, would you shut up?!” Ashi shouted.
“—stomp-stomp and chomp-chomp-chomp and—”
“Christoph!”
Christoph shut up. God, his head was killing him. The cuts from the sword hurt like hell. The usual feeling of being able to launch himself at something or punch through a guy’s face was gone. He felt kind of noodly, kind of weak. Not a feeling he liked at all.
He gingerly felt the back of his head and then his jaw. Intact. He looked up. ‘Hey, girl. Hey, boobs.’ He grinned, stars twinkling at the edges of his vision and his temples throbbing. What he intended to be, “Hey, good-lookin’” came out as, “Think I have a concussion.”
“I think my head is broken,” Christoph groaned.
“I don’t think anyone will notice,” Ashi snapped.
Simultaneously they growled at each other. Or tried to. Christoph let out a hiccupping rasp while Ashi snorted and then wheezed. They stared at each other in horror.
John’s brown eyes were locked onto Christoph. “He’s snapped. You broke him.”
Royce didn’t turn around, pulling his personal checkbook out of one of the drawers of his desk and scrawling some figures on it. “He’s in shock. Give him time to adjust.”
“Shock?” Arnold said, staring with horror at the rambling Were. “He’s loony-tunes. Unhinged.”
Mouse made a faint hissing sound of displeasure, running one of her hands through Christoph’s hair as she practically smashed his face against her chest with the other. Royce sighed, holding out the check to Arnold as he faced Mouse.
“I’m not turning into Max Carlyle. Relax.”
Mouse recoiled as if he’d slapped her, trembling as she clutched Christoph against her cleavage.
Being smashed against a pair of breasts was certainly not a terrible situation. Christoph was having a hard time wrapping his wits around all of this. Ten minutes ago, he assumed he was going to die painfully, but quickly. Five minutes ago he assumed he was not going to die but that there was going to be a lot of pain involved. Two minutes ago he thought he was going to die again. Now he was being held by a beautiful woman (and never mind that she’d wounded him recently).
Hopefully this would all start making sense soon. That hope was not