about her dad.”
“Yeah. Sucks to be you.”
Watching Mercy wipe off the green paint using her forearm, he tracked her as she strode over, sniffed around to confirm their location, then climbed up the tree to join them. “Sorry, Merce,” he said. “I wasn’t aiming for your face.”
A scowl but no real anger from Mercy, his friend as quick to forgive as her temper was hot. “Don’t worry about it.” She finished cleaning off the paint. “Tell me what gave me away.”
“Caught your scent, but it was your gun that gave me your exact position,” he said. “You should’ve primed it earlier.” The faint click had been all he needed.
“Damn.” She looked at Lucas. “What gave you away?”
“I was overconfident, knew Blondie was here but didn’t think he’d make the shot before I got him.”
The three of them fell silent as a unit as something changed in the air. Vaughn. The jaguar changeling moved differently from the leopards, was quieter, a shadow. That made him near impossible to hit at night, but it was late afternoon now, which meant Dorian had a slightly better chance if he didn’t screw up.
Falling into the quiet space where he could hear his pulse as a soft echo in his ears, slow and easy, he didn’t look. No, he just was. And when his body wanted to turn in a hard motion and his finger wanted to squeeze the trigger, he did it before his conscious mind realized Vaughn had doubled back on him.
Vaughn didn’t swear like the others. He just snarled. “Next night hunt, Blondie,” he said. “Your ass is toast.”
Dorian allowed his body to relax now that the exercise was complete. Jumping down after Mercy and Lucas, he grinned at the jaguar. “Bet you ten bucks I can hit you at night.” He enjoyed giving himself a challenge, enjoyed pushing himself.
“Like taking money from a cub.” Shoving a hand through the thick amber of his hair, Vaughn looked at Lucas and Mercy. “Who do you put your money on?”
“Lucas.” Mercy placed her hands on her hips, her tone snarky. “He’s a black panther, you idiots. You think you’re going to see him?”
That, Dorian admitted, was an excellent point. So far, he’d never managed to take Lucas down on a night hunt, but neither had he managed to hit Vaughn. The two of them were really good at night. Just like Mercy was really, really good at dawn. She was a ghost. He was still considering that when Nate appeared out of the trees with an unfamiliar male by his side. The guy looked like he was around Luc’s or Vaughn’s age; his green eyes were a little wild in his dark-skinned face, as if his leopard was just waiting to explode out of his skin.
Taking in the scene, Nate gave Dorian an approving nod. “We’ll talk through the exercise tonight at dinner,” he said. “For now, I want you to meet Clay. Lachlan’s just accepted him into DarkRiver.”
The older boy didn’t smile, didn’t look particularly as if he wanted to be in a pack, but he nodded at their greetings.
“Clay’s been on his own for a while,” Nate said. “I want the four of you to store your paint guns and take him for a run, show him around.”
On his own? Dorian didn’t know any cats that young who’d been on their own. Wild cats might be okay with a solitary life, but changeling cats were human, too, and they needed to be with pack. Even the loners didn’t always roam alone. “You like paintball?” he asked Clay as they walked to store their guns in back of a truck Nate had parked some distance away.
“Never played.”
“Here.” Mercy passed him her gun. “Have a go at some trees. It’s pretty fun.” A scowl. “Except if Blondie here is shooting at your face.”
“Hey! I said sorry!”
Clay looked from one to the other, a slight easing in his expression. “Jeez, you hit a girl in the face?”
Mercy punched Clay in the arm at the same time that Lucas choked and Vaughn hissed out a breath. “She’s not a girl,” Dorian told the confused guy. “She’s a dominant and she can probably kick your ass in hand-to-hand combat.”
“Huh.” Clay stared at Mercy. “Really?”
Mercy raised an eyebrow, then looked her far bigger opponent up and down. “You want a demonstration?”
She put Clay on his ass three minutes later. Slapping her hands together as if dusting them off, she said, “And my work here is done.”
Getting up, Clay