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Alice was there too—in human form, pushing Kylie behind her in one corner. My pulse hiccupped. I didn’t know how they’d ended up in the room, but they were trapped now unless they ran through the fighting. My best friend braced her back against the wall, her arms hugged tight around herself. Her wide eyes were fixed on figures at the other end of thefoyer.
Across the thick runner by the mansion’s double doors, the rogues still in human form were standing. Two held pistols and three others rifles. They’d gathered more weapons than the other groups had carried for previous attacks. My gut twisted at the sight—and then twisted tighter when I spotted a familiar face in their midst as they marchedforward.
I’d counted wrong. There were three pistols, but the guy holding the third wasn’t a rogue. It was Phillipe, the patchy haired snow leopard shifter who’d made such a show of praising Marco lastnight.
As if he’d felt my gaze on him, his eyes darted to the side and found me. The woman beside him raised her rifle to take a shot at Aaron, clipping him in the wing. Phillipe smiled thinly and motioned to theothers.
“There’s our dragon shifter,” he said, his jovial voice turned cruel. “Take herdown.”
Three of the guns snapped toward me. I threw myself back toward an open doorway down the hall. At the same moment, Marco hurtledforward.
The jaguar slammed into the nearest rogue, knocking her over just as she fired. The guy next to him flinched, his shot going wild. Phillipe swore and pointed his pistol atMarco.
“No!” I reeled forward again, pushing off the floor as I did. The shift ripped through me faster than it ever had before. My muscles screamed, and my skin stung. A stabbing pain shot through my bones. But I was there, with a draconic roar, plowing straight into Phillipe before he could pull thetrigger.
Aaron dove at one of the other armed rogues. Nate came charging through the battleground to join us, West wheeling to follow. The rogue Marco had tackled slammed her gun against the side of his head and managed to roll out from under him. He caught her wrist with his jaws. With a yank and a cracking sound, she gasped. The pistol clattered to thefloor.
Phillipe had toppled when I’d hit him. He shifted as he sprang away. I melted his gun with a blast of dragon fire and swung around to pursue him. Where was Kylie? I had to make sure she stayed okay. I had to try to keepeveryonehereokay.
The snow leopard crossed Nate’s path, and the grizzly battered him to the side. All around us the battle raged on. One of the remaining human rogues fired a few more shots, one of them smacking Nate in the hip. Blood sprayed across the polished floorboards. Fur flew and animal voices shrieked. I could hardly tell which of the living bodies were my kin and which the roguesnow.
In that glance, a hard certainty formed inside me. I didn’t care if Nate’s kin or Marco’s had doubted my ability to lead them. I didn’t care what the rogues might have offered them as an alternative.Thiswas what the rogues brought. Violence, pain, mayhem. This was what they’d alwaysbrought.
Maybe I didn’t know how good a leader I’d be, but I sure as hell could do better by my kin thanthis.
With the strength of that resolve coiled tight in my belly, I blasted the rogue who’d shot Nate with a spurt of flame. He screeched and crumpled. The rogue whose wrist Marco had snapped was struggling to grip her gun with her weaker hand. I charred her to cinders before she could get a handle onit.
West had charged at one of the guys who held a rifle. The wolf snapped at the rogue’s legs while the guy tried to swivel far enough away to aim. He’d already gotten in one shot—a streak of starker red slashed through the ruddy silver fur on West’s back where a bullet had clipped him, only just missing hisspine.
Rage flashed behind my eyes. I couldn’t fry the rogue without frying my mate at the same time. But I had teeth and clawstoo.
I bashed the guy’s head with a swipe of my foreleg. In an instant, West was on him, his teeth at the rogue’s throat. He kicked the rifle aside. I shot a bolt of white hot flame down on it, turning it into a bubbling mass ofmetal.
A sliver of a thought passed through my head: Mom would have made short work of the rogues that had attacked her family sixteen years ago, if she’d been able to fight like this. If she hadn’t had three daughters who couldn’t fully shift to try toprotect.
The people we loved, the ones who were weaker than us—they made usvulnerable.
Panic washed over me. Kylie! I leapt over the staircase, searching for her. Searching for the snow leopard who’d managed to scramble through thefray.
I found both of them. Phillipe was facing off against Alice, still in her human form, but no less dangerous for it. He lunged at her, and she rammed her elbow into the side of his skull. The blow sent him staggering to the side. Kylie yelped. She groped toward a painting hanging just beside her. Heaving it off its hook, she hurled it at theirattacker.
The corner of the heavy frame smacked Phillipe square in the head. I breathed a gust of fire toward the snow leopard, but he leapt out of the way at the last second. His cry of pain told me I’d at least singed him. He bolted away under thestaircase.
With a roar, I barreled into the chaos of the fight. My talons picked off a jackal here, a rogue bear there, and another intruder, and another. The feline kin not too injured to keep fighting closed in around the dwindling number of remaining rogues. Which was a good thing, because the strain of the extended shift was catching up with me, with an even deeper pain than usual. Because I’d called my dragon form over me soquickly?
I’d have to ask Aaron about that, I thought vaguely as I tossed one last rogue against the wall. My muscles were contracting, no matter how hard I tried to hang on. I collapsed onto the floor. My human hands slammed into the floor, my human knees knocking the polishedhardwood.
Sucking in a breath, I shoved myself to my feet. My gaze caught on a hunched form under thestairs.
Phillipe. The snow leopard sat curled in on himself. His left foreleg and most of that shoulder was burned black. His teeth were bared as he panted through the pain. Only the faintest shiver of sympathy touchedme.
All of the blood spilled here was because of him. Why? So he didn’t have to listen to someone else telling him what to do? Because he thought he’d get some kind of glory among therogues?
It didn’t fucking matter. The only thing that mattered was that he never did itagain.
I strode over to him, slowing as I got closer. Phillipe snarled, but he clearly wasn’t capable of putting up much of an actualfight.
One of the other feline shifters, a cougar, came up beside me. “Drag him out,” I said to her. “Out where everyone cansee.”
