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Cannon looked between the five of us, and then he threw back his head and laughed loudly.
“It is not a laughing matter,” Bale said quietly, and I could see how tightly his hands were fisted at his sides, and if I could see that, I knew Cannon could as well.
“It is funny,” Cannon said as he reached up and made a show of wiping his eyes. “You are male and superior?” he said with scorn. “You are male, and if a female cannot beat the shit out of you, then she shouldn’t call herself a fighter.”
“Our females do not fight in the pack,” Bale corrected him.
Well, they should.
“Well, they should,” Cannon growled as he stood, and I was pretty sure that had my jaw not been hanging open as he echoed my thoughts, it would have been as I assessed his sheer size.
He was huge.
If he were less than six five, then I’d eat my shoe. He was as wide as he was tall. His shirt pulled tight across the breadth of his shoulders, clinging snugly to his pecs and down to his trimmed waist. The buckle on his jeans was a snarling wolf’s head, and as I took in his thick thighs and loose shit-kicker boots, my gaze returned to the buckle. It caught and held my attention.
“A pack that only allows half of it to fight is weak,” Cannon said as he crossed his formidable arms across his chest. “And a weak pack”—he looked at me and smiled wide—“means easy prey.”
When Bale went to protest, Cannon held his hand up for silence. “The girl’s innocent,” he said as he held my stare. He turned his attention to Landon. “She beat you because she’s better, not because she shifted. You don’t need to taste her blood, old man. Any shifter worth his salt knows that girl’s been away from her wolf form for too long.”
Even though he spoke in my favor, he still managed to insult me with his tone. Cannon winked at me, and I knew he was enjoying riling me up, and once again, I felt the need to hit him.
“Bale.” Cannon’s chin dipped fractionally, and I felt Kris tighten his grip on my arm. “My pack arrives tomorrow for the ball. You have any more of these delicate flowers in your pack…” he said as he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Landon. “Because I’ll tell my pack not to try in the games. We don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
He ignored Landon’s scowl as he stepped closer to me. “You should enter, though. You, I’ll enjoy wrestling with,” he told me as he once more took in my body. Kris jerked me back toward him, and with a low laugh, Cannon left the shaman’s house.
My head was spinning, but I still followed his form as he walked away from the village and toward the long grass.
“Shaman?” My brother’s terse voice brought my attention back to the room’s inhabitants.
“I would smell it too, this close to Kezia’s heat. I would smell the wolf on her.”
“Bale?” Kris demanded.
“Go,” the pack leader was still looking out the window, his attention on the retreating alpha’s back.
Kris’s firm grip on my arm finally brought me out of my stupor when we were halfway home.
“What the heck is wrong with you?” I demanded as I wrenched my arm free.
“Cannon.”
“Because he’s a dick?” I asked eagerly as I rubbed my arm.
“No.” Kris hurried me into our cottage, quickly locked the door behind him, and then checked that the windows were closed.
Bemused, I followed curiously after him to his bedroom, and my eyebrows rose in surprise as he pulled out a worn duffle travel bag.
“Kris?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Where are you going?” I walked over to him and perched on the side of his perfectly made bed. “You’re freaking out?”
“Pretty much,” Kris said as he tugged open the bag and inhaled quickly. “Ugh, it stinks. Don’t be fussy about what you put in here. That stink will stay.”
“Me?” He was making no sense. “What’s going on?”
Kris stopped and looked at me. “You might need to leave.”
