Blow upon blow against the man’s head, chest and side. He heard bones crack and felt blood trickling through his fists. He hadn’t felt Ayers’s impact, but apparently his opponent had dealt him a few good hits to the face.
Quince blinked past the blurriness obscuring his vision. Shadows, then light, yet the moon lit up the area like a spotlight.
A bell rang. “And now, fight as felines,” Danville ordered in a booming voice. “Damn fine battle as men, though. You do our ancestors proud.”
Quince distantly heard commentary from the sidelines. His guys yelling at him to hold on. Just five—or was that fifteen?—more minutes. Alissa shrieking for Ayers to stop playing and kill him. Watson and the others shouting their encouragement as well, that Ayers end him now.
Ayers staggered as he shucked off his pants and shifted. Quince tried to hurry as well, but he had trouble coordinating his movements.
Claws ripped into his skin as he swore and finally got his pants off. It took him a few tries to find his animal spirit, and then he felt Joy inside him somehow, ragging on him to man up and shift already.
He shook his head and turned into his cat, a hybrid cougar and jaguar that wanted nothing more than to kill the cheater currently wrapping his teeth around Quince’s throat.
He would have had more trouble if Joy hadn’t been nagging his ass to quit pussying around. She actually had the nerve to threaten to leave him if he didn’t prove himself worthy.
Confused, awash in weakness and a murderous rage at the thought of his mate leaving him, he roared his fury and attacked Ayers with a vengeance. Around them, everyone went quiet, the sounds of enraged cat and Ayers’s gurgling the only things to be heard.
He clawed through Ayers’s belly and finally managed to grip the cat’s throat between his powerful jaws. And then he ripped his head back and tore out Ayers’s throat.
Ayers sagged, dead, a threat to Joy and Quince no more.
“What the fuck is this?” Miles’s shout drew his attention.
He wavered on his paws and meowed his confusion, then found himself tackled by someone from behind.
Before he could move, he heard yowls, screams of enraged female panthers and gunfire.
Quince tried to shake off his dizziness, wondering if he’d been badly injured or if Ayers’s drugs were to blame. Before he could figure it out, a large yellow paw slapped across his face. He managed to blink his eyes open and focus.
Miles sneered at him, his golden coat thick and unblemished, his ears back and his mouth opened in a hiss. Dickhead had a mouth of really big teeth.
“I don’t know what the hell this is all about, but if you think you can use my sister and—”
“So we have a new challenger?” Danville said.
“Challenger?” Miles looked behind him at Danville. “What is this—?”
Before Danville answered and ruined everything, Quince forced himself to concentrate on the plan. “I accept,” he snarled and knocked Miles on his ass.
So he’d had to fall on the big cat to make his move, but it worked.
“Get off me. You’re bleeding. You stink, and you smell…like you mated my sister!” Miles clawed him across the face and struck out with his hind legs, raking them across Quince’s belly.
Quince didn’t fight back. At all. “Pussy,” he said with bravado, smothering a groan. He needed Miles to engage, to make the fight look real. “Fuck, Miles. That’s a fifth grade move, if that.” Then, because he wanted no one to doubt that Miles had beaten him without question, he added slowly, so that he wouldn’t slur, “Your sister moves better than that. You should see her on her knees…”
Miles’s next assault knocked Quince down and left him unable to move.
As he went down, he saw Willow holding a gun, Dana and Joy in feline form watching Ayers’s people, and heard Joy shrieking his name as she bounded to his side.
Then he closed his eyes as blackness descended. They’d won, and his mate was safe. That was enough.
“Damn it. Leave him alone.” Joy threw herself at her brother just as he’d stopped himself from going for the final blow sure to end Quince’s life. She landed hard on top of him, but he didn’t try to move her.
He was breathing hard and staring past her at Quince, confusion making his whiskers twitch. He flatted his ears then raised them. “Joy?”
“We have a winner,” Alan Danville said with enthusiasm. For an old cat, he moved with the speed of a juvenile in his prime. In seconds, he leapt from the platform and reached them in four strides. “Congratulations, son.”
“Uh, thanks?”
Beyond them, Willow stood naked holding a weapon on what remained of Ayers’s groupies while Jace, Ellis and Rain pushed through the dead and injured. Dana remained a feline, hissing at the others until they stopped trying to escape into the woods. Maybe ten of Ayers’s people remained alive. And of course, Alissa happened to be one of them.
While Quince had been fighting the drug in his system and Ayers, Joy’d kept her spirit glued to his, giving him the strength to see past the fog in his mind and the lethargy in his body. But the poor baby had given his due. Especially to her brother.
“Joy, can you get off me now?”
“Oh, sorry.” She stepped off Miles and moved back to Quince. Danville had his hand on Quince’s neck and his eyes closed. “Is he okay?”
“He’s in pretty bad shape.” Danville opened his eyes, then smiled. “But he’s a fighter and he’s newly mated. He’ll survive.” He turned to Miles. “Well, pride leader? What do we do with them?” Danville nodded at Ayers’s group.
“Wait. What?” Miles blinked at the judge.
“Good thinking.” Danville nodded and said over his shoulder, “Nettles, secure Everton. He colluded with Ayers to cheat. Jace and the rest of you, handle these idiots.” He pointed to the group Willow watched over. “Put them in the cells underground.” The judgment cells located under the House, where offending felines went while waiting judgment. It had been a long time since Michael had imprisoned anyone. But she supposed the time had come to totally clean house, so to speak.
“Well, young lady. Do you want to explain things or should I?” Danville asked her, his voice gentle.
“I…” She looked down at Quince and had to work not to cry. He looked so still, so vulnerable lying there. “Could you, please? I have to see to my mate.”
A rush of voices and the scent of more cats poured through the woods. She leaned down to lick Quince’s injured face, remembering it wasn’t so long ago that she’d done the same in Cougar Falls. Then she sat by his side and waited for Doctor Hicks to reach them.
Miles stared in confusion at the chaos around them and shifted back to human. “What the hell is going on?”
From Quince’s provoking note and that fight, to Greg Ayers lying dead in cat form, to the battle he’d stumbled over tonight, nothing made sense. What were three judges doing presiding over this mess, and in the challenge ring no less? And why was his sister licking that bastard like he belonged to her? Fuck, that scent. They’d mated. Yet Joy looked proud to be by Quince’s side. And Jace, Ellis, Rain… They’d all been loyal to Michael and remained protective of Quince, keeping a watchful eye over him and Joy.