“Why do we have an extra weretiger?”
Curran’s nightmarish face wrinkled, baring his teeth.
Da-Eun saw us looking and elbowed the other weretiger. He turned toward us. His huge striped body collapsed into human form, and Karter Byrne landed on the grass. The Alpha of Clan Cat flexed his broad, dark brown shoulders and waved at us.
“Lovely party. Couldn’t help crashing. I missed the hors d’oeuvres, but I helped myself to the main course.”
6
I sat on the balcony again, with my legs up on a wicker footstool and a glass of cold tea on my little side table, and watched Penderton’s construction crews strain to remove the body of the monster rhino. I was right. That creature was more magic than beast. Once the magic sustaining its life failed, it decomposed at an alarming rate. Its corpse was falling apart into big chunks. The crew scooped them up with bulldozers and drove them off to the side, to the freshly dug burning pit, racing against the encroaching darkness.
There was a reason Curran couldn’t pry its armor off. The bone armor plates were somehow fused to long metal and bone bars that passed through the rhino’s body on the inside. It should’ve died when the first bar pierced it, but magic kept it alive. Every time I thought about it, my hand ached for my sword.
Mayor Gene and an older woman stood in front of the carnage and waved their arms at each other. According to Jynx, the woman represented the town blacksmiths, and they wanted to recover the metal from inside the rhino. They were pretty sure it was gold. Mayor Gene wanted the gold buried due to the possibility of magic contamination. If they didn’t resolve it between themselves, they would come up here for my expert advice, and then the blacksmiths would hate me forever.
Curran sat in the rocking chair next to me. He was back in his human body, showered and fresh-smelling, and he was drinking beer from a big stein. He’d bought a small keg from the local brewery. It rested in the corner of the balcony now. Shapeshifter metabolism burned alcohol off in minutes, so his buzz was short-lived.
True to form, he had marched me down to the old prison, and Nereda patched me up again. The smoke claws had done a number on me. She offered me all sorts of painkillers. I settled for some aspirin. Over the years, a lot of my old scars dissolved from repeated visits to medmages and Doolittle’s expert care. Today fixed that right up.
The kid on the wall wandered out of the guard tower again.
“Foster!” Curran called out.
The teenager turned around to look at us. Curran pointed back to the tower. The kid hunched his shoulders and trotted back under the safety of the roof.
Keelan sat on Curran’s left, nursing his own beer and gently stretching his left leg every few minutes. Must’ve hurt it in the fight. We didn’t lose anyone, but we had a few broken bones. Owen took the Most Hurt Trophy with a shattered femur. After he rammed the rhino, it kicked him. While he healed him, Troy had asked him if it was a good day to be Owen, to which Owen apparently said, “Hell yeah. I knocked that big bastard on his ass.”
The door swung open, and Karter emerged onto the balcony. He wore a pair of pack sweats and a white T-shirt. In his thirties, Karter was six feet tall and built in that particular way of big cat shapeshifters—not bulky, but far from lean, his muscles thick, hard, and defined. The kind of muscle that could propel him up a tree or a sheer cliff, or crack an enemy’s skull with one well-timed slap of his hand. His hair was short and shaped with razor precision. He had a broad nose, high cheekbones, and a solid jaw. His eyes, under thick eyebrows, were expressive, and on the two occasions I had met him, he seemed to be the kind of man who knew the world was full of fools and he found it amusing.
I didn’t know him well. Karter rose to prominence after Jim became the Beast Lord.
“Beer?” Curran asked.
“Don’t mind if I do.” Karter walked over to the keg, picked up one of the steins waiting on the tray beside it, and poured himself a tall one.
Had Curran or I gotten up to pour him a beer, it could’ve been seen as an offer or demand of loyalty. This way we sidestepped it.
Karter grabbed a rocking chair, put it between Keelan and Curran, and sat. Interesting.
“Thanks for the help,” Curran said.
“Seemed like a fun fight,” Karter answered.
Keelan drank his beer and stretched his leg. “It was fun, wasn’t it? A good, fast chase, a big prey, everyone working together… Just like old times.”
Keelan, the plotter. Look how awesome things are when Curran’s in charge.
If Karter got it, he didn’t show it. They drank their beer. Two big cats, lounging about, pretending to be relaxed but very aware of where the boundary was, and a big wolf, cunning and clever, waiting to see which way the conversation would go.
“Ascanio Ferara is making a bid for the Beast Lord seat,” Karter said.
I did my best not to choke.
Ascanio used to be one of my shapeshifters. I’d known him since he was fifteen, and he was the proverbial twenty pounds of bouda crazy in a five-pound bag. Add in way too much testosterone, poor impulse control, and a heartbreaker’s face, and you had teenage Ascanio. Aunt B, the previous Alpha of Clan Bouda, had given him to me because although boudas cherished their children, especially males, Ascanio pushed even past their limits. She’d been afraid he’d piss off the wrong person and get hurt.
He had worked for me at Cutting Edge for several years, during which he received education, training, and a healthy dose of reality and experience. Eventually Ascanio chose to return to his clan, which was now run by Andrea, my best friend, and her husband, Raphael. I was sad to see him go, but I understood it. Ascanio wanted acceptance and respect from other boudas. He wanted to succeed on Pack terms.
Curran didn’t say anything.
“Ascanio is ambitious,” Karter said. “The Medranos are backing him. The kid is good at making money. It sticks to him the way it sticks to Raphael.”
But being a Beast Lord was about more than money. It was not a CFO position.
“And he’s good in a fight. Would’ve made a standout render if he’d chosen to go that route.”
Being a Beast Lord wasn’t about being the baddest fighter, either. I’d learned that firsthand.
“He doesn’t have the power base. The boudas are rich, but there aren’t enough of them. Still, they’re making moves, wheeling and dealing, trying to cobble a coalition together. However, there is one thing that Ascanio needs, and nothing they can do will give it to him.”
“And what is that?” Keelan asked.
“Integrity,” Karter said. “The boudas always look out for number one, themselves. They’re seen as cutthroat.”
“They honor their alliances,” I said.
“With you, Kate,” Karter said. “They are a rock when it comes to supporting the Lennarts, I’ll give them that. But when it comes to the rest of us, the saying is: before you enter a contract with the boudas, read every word of the fine print and then read it again. They always manage to get the lion’s share of the profits. We went into business with them a couple of times. Both times Clan Cat made money, and yet both times I came away feeling ripped off.”
Curran drank his beer.
“I don’t hold a grudge,” Karter said. “We did profit from the deals. If another one comes along, we’ll probably take it again, and we will make money again, but the feeling of having to watch your back with your business partner sticks with you.”
I knew that feeling. When Curran and I separated from the Pack, Jim used Raphael’s expertise to make a buyout offer for Curran’s shares. Jim had to do it, because as Beast Lord he couldn’t afford to have an outsider own a big chunk of the Pack’s businesses. Raphael had to do it because Jim ordered him to and he’d sworn loyalty to the Beast Lord, but the whole thing left me with an uneasy feeling that took years to pass.