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Abattle raged in the fighting ring, Alpha Heir against Alpha.
A more dangerous battle raged inside my chest, the magic I carried burning to be released, to protect my mate. If I didn’t control it, there was the chance it could kill every single shifter gathered here, and would kill indiscriminately. There were many here who did not deserve death.
Though many deserved more than death, and I itched to deliver it to them slowly, painfully. I pushed the urge to kill to the back of my mind. I had other work to do, and I could sense time had almost run out.
I slipped to the back of the crowd, my slight stature helping me to avoid notice. When I’d first found my wolf form, I’d regretted my size, so much smaller than others when I shifted. Even in my human form, I was nowhere near the size of shifter males, though I was taller than many females. Taller than my Flor, though her spirit towered over every other shifter I’d met.
She lay beside the ring, crumpled and motionless, though I couldn’t let myself look at her, or my control would break. She was so thin, starved. Old and new scars marked her skin, though I knew they should all vanish at her first shift. Flor was a marvel. Strong, fast, and fierce, with a deep well of honor and kindness, but so close to death. She might even die while the Heir fought for her.
The darkness inside me roiled, roaring a soundless no. She had to live, or I would set my own magic ablaze and take the entire rotten Meridion pack with it.
Not Meridion. Southern. I reminded myself that the packs on this continent were no longer called by their original names, the ones I’d first seen written on my father’s hand-drawn maps hundreds of years before. Meridion, Oriens, Boreal, Occidens, Centralis… I’d repeated the names of the places that had seemed distant and exotic over and over as a child. What a disappointment to visit Meridion, once a great pack, and find Southern in its place.
I’d changed my name as well, of course, long before I traveled to this Conclave. I’d been drawn from my home far away to this continent years before, but not known where I would find what I sought. Who I sought. I’d spent two decades looking for her, not finding any trace.
Had I known she had been here all along, suffering… I stifled the rage that threatened, and I glanced back at the ring once more, at Flor.
While the corrupt Alpha and the others had spoken, I’d slipped through the wall of protectors and made sure Flor’s wounds were bound tightly. I’d tried to send a small trickle of magic into her, but encountered a strange resistance, my power only connecting to a small part of her spirit. It had helped, but her blood still flowed too freely.
Those bandages were now blood-soaked, and my little mate was growing weaker.
My mind spun with possibilities. I couldn’t unleash my magic, bite her against pack law, heal her, and reveal myself. Not unless all was truly lost. Some among the Council would surely recognize my power and try to kill me. Others would do worse, especially if they knew how I was connected to Flor. I glanced at the Eastern Alpha, one of the most corrupt. He wasn’t the strongest here, but his spirit was the most twisted. I couldn’t risk him discovering my presence and hurting my little mate.
My little mate was strong; she would survive these wounds. There was a greater danger to her I needed to address.
I used the small magic my mother had taught me when I was a child in St. Petersburg to stay unnoticed as I slipped away. While they watched the fight, I moved unseen through the crowd, doing insignificant things. I spun hobbles of magic thread around the knees of the Southern Enforcers. I slipped blade after blade out of their scabbards and pockets, even some guns, tossing them into the storm drains and ditches nearby. No one heard the splashes of the weapons hitting the water.
No one paid any attention as I disarmed the Southern shifters, spinning minor illusions so they would still feel their weapons nearby. Small confusions, my mother had told me. She had made a game of it for me, a child’s amusement. Take the object, leave the false memory of forgetting their weapons at home, in the dining hall, elsewhere.
The largest Southern Enforcer was too alert and guarded for me to approach without his notice, his mind too strong, but the others were soft and weak, especially the younger ones. They would have been cast out of my father’s pack, fed to the new moon as sacrifice. They weren’t warriors; they were meat.
My little queen, though, was a warrior. A goddess. Even with her short hair and her camouflaged scent, I had recognized what she was.
A thorn bush, pricking the unwary and unworthy.
A sharp blade, tempered in the fires of agony and despair, shining in the darkness. Ready to be used to remove the rot from our world.
Why the Moon Goddess had seen fit to gift Her little shadow with so many mates was a mystery. Maybe she had a need for more protectors. Maybe she had a need for more love.
There was something intrinsically magical about her, that reminded me of the sacred places near my childhood home. A deep stillness, like she knew how to go to the well of the moon and harvest its power.
I had watched her do it, in her battle with the coward wolf. Watched her sink into that space, slowing time. Did she even know she was using magic? Who had taught her that? The shifters on this continent had done all they could to stamp out any magic that didn’t come from their own wolves.
Movement in the darkness alerted me to the presence of a group of shifters. Southern, from the smell. They did not bathe often enough and revealed themselves by their stench, as well as their clumsy footsteps.
A few dozen were sneaking away, shadows moving along the ground to the west of the ring. To the armory? Yes.
Of course, they were planning to attack their guests. The rumors had been widespread in the Borderlands, where I had spent the past few years. Southern was weak and could never overcome the others in a fair fight. But if they gutted the heart of the Council and worked with the dark witches as I had heard they did… then, yes, they could make a hole wide enough in the combined North American pack’s fabric to tear a larger chunk free for their own greed.
Hidden by the shadows of tall trees, I followed the noisy footsteps to the armory door. I’d found this place earlier and picked the lock to see what they had for defense. The blades were decent, although I had a feeling the current Head Enforcer hadn’t been the one to purchase them. They were fine old weapons, but left to rust, not taken care of for at least a few years.
When all but one of the Southerners had disappeared inside to collect their weapons, I slipped behind the guard and slid a blade into his neck. With a thrust and three twists of the blade, my other hand firmly over his mouth, he was dead, his head falling with a quiet thunk to the earth below.
“Thank you for your life,” I whispered, spooling his glowing energy onto my knife. “I accept the gift on behalf of my queen.”
The smell of blood would alert the others, so I made quick work of the door handles, using the dead man’s blood to mark a rune that would erect a wall of silence around the place, then another rune to lock the exits.
Mother had warned me not to use blood magic often. It unbalanced the spirit of one’s wolf. But I felt my wolf and I were aligned in our purpose tonight. We both knew that even if Flor survived long enough to shift and join a new pack, these cowards were already under orders to kill all outsiders. They would have taken her life at the order of their deranged Alpha.
