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“Arnold’s going to kill Ice!” She squeezed Becca’s hand in a death-grip. “Why isn’t Daniel stopping the fight?”
She had never been so terrified in her entire life, not even when she’d been near death and seen Ice in his sabertooth form for the first time. Her heart pounded in her ears so loudly that it drowned out most of the growls and snarls.
Becca turned to her. Her face was alight with a fierce, almost feral expression, and her eyes glittered with sparks of bright gold. “Wait. I think Ice has a plan!”
Holly sure as hell hoped so. But if he did, she couldn’t tell what it was.
To her relief, Ice twisted away from his attacker almost immediately, shielding his vulnerable belly. The thick pelt over his flanks protected him, but Arnold’s claws left him with deep, bleeding gashes.
In return, Ice swiped at Arnold’s face with one huge paw. Blood droplets sprayed as her boyfriend’s wickedly sharp claws sliced through fur and flesh, raking savagely down the side of the other cat’s neck.
Only Arnold’s thick, dark mane prevented Ice from completing the stroke and tearing his opponent’s throat wide open.
Arnold yowled in agony, twisted sinuously, and rolled swiftly out of reach as Ice roared and swung his enormous paw down for a second strike.
The end, when it came, was brief and brutal. Arnold turned and lunged at Ice, forcing him to retreat. But Arnold’s attack failed when he landed well short of Ice.
Then, as Arnold’s forepaws hit the snowy ground, he staggered unexpectedly. His blood-covered foreleg folded beneath him and he went down.
Ice was on him in an instant. Before Arnold could regain his feet, Ice pinned his opponent’s enormous head to the ground with his paw before closing his fangs around Arnold’s throat and neck.
Arnold immediately stopped fighting and went limp. Apparently he realized any attempts to free himself would result in one of Ice’s deadly canines ripping through major blood vessels.
Daniel Langlais stepped forward, flanked by a dark-haired Latino man and an older woman, and began counting slowly backwards from ten.
As he hit “two,” Becca grabbed Holly in a hug. “He did it!” she exclaimed, just as Daniel announced, “Duel’s over! Victory goes to Isaac Peters.”
Ice growled, but didn’t release his motionless opponent. Holly’s breath caught in her throat.
“Don’t kill him, Ice,” Becca screamed.
Holly added her plea. “Please, Ice, you won! Let him go!”
When Ice still refused to back off, Daniel bent and fearlessly grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and twisted Ice’s mane. It looked painful, and made the big cat snarl.
“It’s over, son,” he said in a hard voice. “You won. Now kindly release Arnold’s throat, if you please.”
∞∞∞
Holy fucking spitballs, Ice thought in disbelief as he staggered back from his opponent. I actually did it!
He’d won against an older, bigger sabertooth, and successfully defended his mate.
That thought sustained him through the agony of shifting for the second time within a half hour. Slow, painful shifts were the downside of belonging to a lineage as ancient as the sabertooth cats. More recent shifter lineages, like grizzly bears and timber wolves, not only shifted more quickly, but apparently the process was also almost painless for them.
When he was finally back in human shape, shaking and in pain from the dozens of shallow gashes covering his skin, Holly and Becca were there with blankets and a first aid kit to bandage his wounds.
Ice took his time kissing Holly and reassuring her that his injuries looked worse than they were. She looked badly shaken by what she’d seen, and Ice worried that she might have a change of heart after seeing him at his most beastly.
Then Becca alerted them to Beckworth’s approach. The other shifter, his naked body also wrapped in a blanket, staggered towards the three of them.
Ice tensed and reflexively shoved Holly behind him. But Beckworth just grinned at him through the mask of drying blood streaking his face.
“Good job protecting your mate, Isaac. And thanks for giving me a good fight. It’s been years since I lost a challenge.”
Mingled pride and relief at having successfully defended his mate suffused Ice. He nodded to the other man. “You almost had me a few times,” he admitted. “I wasn’t sure how things would go.”
Then Beckworth’s green eyes sought Holly where she stood at Ice’s back. “Holly, Ice pointed out that you were willing to keep his secret at the cost of your job and your reputation. Now that he’s won fair and square, I’m going to trust you to do the right thing.” He paused, and his gaze pierced her. “Please don’t betray that trust. Everyone here at the ranch is depending on your discretion.”
