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A tiny bit of the tightness inside me released. “Yes,” I said. “Please. And come back the second you see anythingconcerning.”
She nodded and slipped away between the trees. Clothes rustled off, and her eagle form leapt up through the branches. I watched her disappear against the darkeningsky.
“I don’t know what they might have planned,” West said. “But I haven’t seen or scented any rogue presencenearby.”
“Neither have I,” Nate put in. “Maybe thisistheir plan. They’re staking everything on Julius defeatingMarco.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make sense to me. They’ve never played by the rules before. There’s got to be something more to it. But maybe the challenge is a separate part of the plan. Maybe Julius wanted to get that over with, to prove himself in front of his kin, before he has the rogues take on the rest ofus.”
Whatever happened, I needed to be ready. And I’d need to protect Kylie too. I edged a little closer to her. “If things get crazy, you stay with me, allright?”
She saluted me. “Got it, dragonqueen.”
The smile tugged at my lips again. Then I looked into the ring, and any humor I’d been capable of feelingdied.
One of the estate attendants had stepped into the middle of the glade between Marco and Julius. “A challenge for alpha has been called,” she said in a ringing voice. “When my arm drops, the fight maybegin.”
She held her hand up as she backed up to the ring of rope. When her back hit it, her hand clenched. She jerked it down to her hip in one sharpmovement.
Julius sprang with a growl that was half human, half animal. His body shifted into tiger form as he lunged through the air at Marco. But Marco was prepared. He shifted and dashed low under the larger cat, spinning to scratch at the tiger’s belly as he slid out of reach. Julius roared. Four thin red lines formed against hisfur.
“First blood!” someone in the audience hollered. Someone else let out a whoop. I assumed that was good for Marco. My hands had closed around the rope in front me, the coarse fibers digging into myskin.
“Wow,” Kylie murmured. “They really aren’t playingaround.”
No, they weren’t. Not at all. Julius whirled around, still plenty fast despite his size. My gut sank, seeing just how much bigger he was than Marco now. The tiger had to be at least twice as brawny as the jaguar, taller and longer and more solidly built. If he pinned Marco even for asecond...
That was obviously Julius’s intention. He leapt at Marco again, swinging a paw as if to cuff his alpha. Marco dodged to the side, not quite in time. The tiger’s claws raked over his haunch. He didn’t make a sound, but I saw his lips curl back in pain. I gripped the ropetighter.
“So... how far exactly do they go?” Kylie said in a smaller voice than before. “How do we decide when someone’swon?”
“When one of them can’t get back up,” Westmuttered.
I swallowed hard. Murmurs were rippling through the crowd again. Were they upset that Marco hadn’t really fought backyet?
He must have been working up to it. Feeling out his opponent’s style before he took the offensive. Before Julius could make another lunge, Marco dashed at him with a yowl. The tiger lurched forward to try to batter the jaguar into submission, but that was exactly what Marco had expected. At the last second, he darted around the bigger cat and lashed out at Julius’s bellyagain.
The tiger was moving forward with too much momentum to dodge. Marco’s claws opened a deep gash in Julius’sside.
A nice bluff. Of course, if Marco was going to win here, he had to put on a front, prey on the larger shifter’s confidence. That was the cunning his kin were supposed to be known for. And none so much as theiralpha.
It wasn’t so different from how he’d bluffed about his attitude toward me to his kin, put on a front of seeing me as nothing more than a means to an end. But I knew with every thud of my pulse that he’d used those words the same way he’d made that mad dash. A distraction, a show of force, to open up the way to what he really wanted. When this kind of hostility was what he’d had to face, month by month, I wasn’t sure I could even blame himanymore.
Julius whipped around, his yellow eyes flashing. Marco sprang nimbly out of the way. But the tiger didn’t seem slowed down by the gouge over his ribs. He hurtled after the jaguar like a Mack trunk, and Marco couldn’t keep out of the way quite fast enough. The larger shifter bowled himover.
I flinched, my heart thumping so fast I thought it would explode from my chest. A scream caught in my chest.No!Not my alpha. Not mymate.
Nate set his hand over mine, squeezing my fingers, but the contact barely registered. I couldn’t pull my eyes from thefight.
Marco rolled onto his back, all four sets of claws scraping at the tiger’s hide. Julius smacked him in the head and snapped at his neck, but the jaguar twisted out of the way and the last second. He sank his teeth into the tiger’s foreleg. When Julius flinched, Marco shot out from under him. He flung himself toward one of the trees, ricocheted off the trunk, and slammed into the tiger’s side right where he’d clawed himbefore.
Julius let out a snarl that was as much pain as anger. He charged after Marco, clearly aiming to pummel him to the ground again. Marco slipped around him, but he wasn’t moving quite as fast now. Blood dripped from where the bigger cat had clawed his shoulder andhaunches.
“Geez,” Kylie said, even more faintly. “They’re really taking this to the end, aren’tthey?”
The fear in her voice wrenched at me, as much as seeing Marco battered and bloody did. Every nerve in my body was shrieking at me to intervene, to protect my mate. I held myself back by the barest of threads. If I stepped in, if I messed up this challenge somehow, the victory might go to Julius bydefault.
I wouldn’t let him kill Marco. Not if it came to that. I knew that much right down to mybones.
