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He rocked to a stop, letting me ride out the aftershock. I hugged him, shivering with bliss. “Now that’s my princess,” he said softly. His arms came around me, returning myembrace.
I tucked my head against his shoulder, overwhelmed by more feeling than I could blame on the sex. “And this is my mate,” I whisperedback.
He kissed my cheek, running his fingers over my hair. I nestled closer to him. How much longer could we stay here? It had become such a beautifulescape.
Marco tipped back my head to claim my lips again. The kiss started out gentle, but as I returned it, fresh desire stirred inside me. He made an approving sound as I kissed him moredeeply.
I was just thinking we might go for a second round—to make up for lost time and all—when a clatter carried through the greenhousewalls.
We both froze, ears perking. For a second, there was nothing. Then the air split with theboomof agunshot.
Chapter 20
Ren
Marcoand I scrambled out of the pond. No time for clothes. No time to even try to dry off. Droplets trickled down my back and over my chest as we raced along the path toward the door. Any heat that had still been in me fled. All I felt was a chill piercing straight through the middle of mychest.
Another shot rang out, one that sounded as if it was coming from inside the mansion now. My muscles clenched. Memories flickered by in the back of my head. The clean pale halls of the dragon shifter home, splattered with blood. A sister, a father, another, sprawled on the floor. The click of a rifle beingreloaded.
A coppery flavor rose in the back of my mouth. No. I wasn’t going to witness another slaughter. The rogues wouldn’t take my alphas from me. They wouldn’t take any one of the kinhere.
But the thud of my heart and the shots still reverberating in my ears told me they most likely already had. And to barge onto the estate in the middle of the day, guns blazing, they must have hadhelp.
Not from Julius. We’d left him locked in that holdingroom.
I glanced at Marco as we reached the door. “There’s another traitor among your kin,” I said. “That must be why Julius was being so dodgy. He really didn’t know that much. He was someone else’spuppet.”
Marco jerked open the door. “So it seems,” he said, his voice tight. “Which just means someone else here needs to feel my fangs in their jugular before the hour isover.”
If he could get close enough before he took a bullet. My lungs clenched. I grabbed his arm. “We’ll hurry, but we can’t go rushing right in there. They have weapons. We don’t. We’ll have to besmart.”
Marco shot me a sharp smile. “I know how to fight smart, princess. Don’t you worry about me. Didn’t you see me lastnight?”
He took my hand, squeezing it tight, and we ran together down the hall. Voices clamored and a scream echoed from up ahead. My nerves twitched to shift, to rain a furious fire down over everyone who threatened my kin, but I didn’t dare give in yet. I needed to save every bit of that energy for the actualfight.
Marco didn’t have the same concerns, though. He gave my fingers another squeeze and then let go. A second later, he was leaping forward in jaguar form. Within a few bounds, he’d completely outpacedme.
I couldn’t let him run into the fray alone. I pushed my legs harder, drawing on all the dragon strength I held even in my humanbody.
We turned a corner, and the main foyer with its expansive staircase came into view up ahead. A body was slumped at the base of the stairs. Three others ran past the hallway, their faces white with panic. A lion bounded forward and jerked to the side as one of the guns boomed. Blood boomed on his tawnyshoulder.
“There’s no point in fighting!” a vibrant voice called out. Something about it struck me with a twang of recognition. “We’ve got no quarrel with the regular kin. Bring forward the alphas and the dragon shifter, and the rest of you can go about your business asusual.”
Another voice reached my ears from farther away: Nate’s rich baritone. “Away into your rooms, feline kin,” he was hollering. “Lock your doors. This is for us to dealwith.”
Were the other alphas already there too? My pulse stuttered. I threw myself forward even faster, the muscles in my legs burning. Marco dashed on ahead of me, his paws thumping against the heavy pile of therug.
The lion charged again, even with its limp. The air crackled with gunfire. There was a thump out of my view, but I could imagine all too well what had happened: the great cat slumping and sinking back into his human form. Blood pooling under his slackbody.
Another memory flashed through my mind, so sharp and stark I lost my sense of the hall around me. I was five, clutching my wolf father’s arm. Sobbing so hard my stomach lurched. Hands tacky with blood. That click of the rifle. Then my mother’s fingers snatching my arm and wrenching me to myfeet.
Away.Away.
I stumbled, and suddenly the foyer was right there in front of me. The body I’d imagined lay just a short distance from my feet—Coreen’s husband, his eyes unblinking. I jerked myself back against thewall.
Chaos reigned all around the staircase. The feline shifters hadn’t listened to Nate’s call, at least not most of them. Even in a crisis they apparently weren’t willing to listen to a bear. Panthers and tigers, lions and lynxes, snarled and lunged at animal foes of all sorts beneath and on either side of the steps. Several other bodies were slumped in its shadow. I couldn’t tell which were our people and which rogues. There seemed to be a hundred enemies battlingus.
My alphas were in the middle of the fray, Nate’s bear and West’s wolf looking as though they were trying to urge the other shifters down the central hall while fending off the rogues, Aaron’s eagle swooping around the stairs to tackle a weasel about to leap at the others fromabove.
