The moment her paws touched the ground, Lana launched herself forward. Her body was a sleek, sun dappled blonde with vivid black markings around her face, tail, and heavy paws. A terrible yowl tore from her throat as she descended on her father mid-shift.
The shifters collided with a flurry of claws and snapping teeth, their great cougar bodies locked in a life or death struggle as each tried to get the upper hand. Lana was slightly smaller than her father, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t seem to get a firm hold on her. She darted out from under him and leapt on his back. Her claws came down on his flank just before he shook her off and dove for her throat.
Next to Camille, Viktor shifted his stance, subtly putting himself between her and the battling cougars in the circle. Every single person gathered around the edge looked ready for anything as the fight got worse.
Heavy cougar jaws snapped and tore at beautiful, tan fur. Razor sharp claws sank into thick muscle. Growls and deep, pained yowling echoed all around them, bouncing off of the canyon walls to fill the valley below with the song of violence.
It was hard to tell who was winning. They both looked so similar, and when they were in constant motion, grappling with one another, they were simply two tan and black blurs. Red blood splattered the white platform. It smeared under scrabbling paws, creating a macabre painting baked by the sun.
Camille watched with the eyes of a predator and a deep internal stillness. It was horrible and yet astonishing to watch. Two shifters, so alike, clashed in a remarkable display of strength and skill. The beast in her was impressed by their speed, their viciousness. The woman could only find deep, aching relief that she was not watching her own consort out there.
It was not his blood smeared across the platform. They were not his howls of pain and rage that filled the air.
He stood beside her — strong, grim-faced, with one arm wrapped firmly around her waist. His scent was a heady perfume in the air, guarding her against the metallic stink of blood and magic, and his nearness was a balm to her pressing fear.
Somewhere in the tangle of limbs, there was a deep, bone-chilling snap.
Camille started, her eyes widening as one of the cougars — gods, she wished she could tell which one — managed to pin the other down. Blood smeared their muzzle and eyes of wild gold were locked on their opponent as they bore down on its neck.
One of the pinned cougar’s legs collapsed at an odd angle, destroying their balance and sending both to the ground. Camille could only guess by the wet sheen and glint of white bone that the snapping sound was the cougar’s right foreleg.
Digging her fingers into Viktor’s side, she breathlessly whispered, “Who—”
“Lana’s on top,” he answered, voice raw. “She’s got him.”
She swung her eyes back to the pair just in time to see Lana close her jaws around the back of Andreas’s neck. He thrashed hard, trying to shake her off, but she would not be budged. Pride for the woman Camille didn’t know and horror for what she had to do swelled in her chest. I cannot imagine the strength it takes to do this for your people.
For her mate, she would rip out any throat, put herself at any risk, but for her people? Camille was not sure she could have killed her own mother, no matter the circumstance.
Viktor did.
She risked looking away from the bloody spectacle to check on her consort. He stood stock still beside her, his beloved face carved from stone. Did he suffer when he watched Lana do what he’d done? Did he have regrets? Did he feel guilt and yet know that it was the right choice — the only choice?
Camille’s throat thickened as she peered at him from under her lashes. In that moment, she got the acute sense that they had both suffered a great deal in the twenty years that lay between them. Perhaps that suffering had made them strangers, but it also made them akin.
There was so much she didn’t know and she—
Movement outside the circle caught her eye. Over her shoulder, she watched as magic rippled around Andreas’s packmates just as their alpha let out a horrendous roar.
All eyes were fixed on the death match, so she was the only one who caught the split second it took for them to turn from man to cougars.
“Stop!” Her bellow came too late. Two sets of heavy paws slammed down inside the circle. Both cougars were already bounding forward, ready to leap onto Lana’s back and tear her from victory before anyone else in the circle could turn their heads.
In an instant, everything changed.
Magic burst like bubbles around them as one shifter after another burst into their other forms. Viktor howled in outrage and shoved her back into Kaz’s waiting arms. Her cousin snatched her to his chest and hauled them both backward, toward the cover of the tram, as Valen and the rest of their entourage waded into the melee.
Everyone arrowed toward the brawling cougars. Coyotes mingled with lynx, wolves, and swooping eagles. Elves moved to guard the tram, matte black claws at the ready, and Lee, unshifted, barked orders for everyone to stop from somewhere near the center.
Camille tried to follow the figures, her eyes moving, searching for her familiar coyote, and found him guarding Lana’s back as she struggled to snap her father’s neck and defend herself at the same time.
The cougars were thoroughly outnumbered, but they were close enough to Lana and her father to make separating them a difficult and dangerous task. All the shifters were bigger than their natural animal counterparts, but cougars in particular had a muscle advantage over nearly everyone except the wolves and, notably, Taisia the bear shifter.
“Gods, would you look at that,” Kaz muttered. Together, they watched as Taisia’s huge body launched into the fray, clearing a path toward Viktor and Lana. Viktor was outmuscled by his opponent, but he was quick enough to keep them busy until Taisia took one heavy paw to their side and simply swept them off the platform.
There was a blood curdling yowl as the cougar tumbled over the edge and down into the canyon below.
There was a split second of stunned silence, followed by the soft whump of a body making contact with the ground and, from the center of the fray, the meaty crunch of a neck being broken.
For a frozen moment, no one moved, nor breathed, nor dared to make a sound as Lana opened her jaws and let her father’s corpse fall to the platform.
She lifted her head and, opening her blood-streaked muzzle, let loose a roar of triumph that shook the canyon walls.
Viktor and the other cougar were the first to recover. Two things happened at once: the last of Andreas’s loyal packmates lunged for Lana’s throat, and Viktor leapt at him from the side. Her coyote knocked the surprised cougar to one side and, in the coyote way, was immediately joined by his packmates.
Letting out a musical, yipping howl, they worked together to pin the larger shifter down. Jaws clamped on legs, digging into heavy muscle to wrench him onto his back, and coyote claws shredded a soft underbelly.
Viktor, snarling muzzle smeared with blood, dropped all his weight onto the cougar’s prone chest. In one smooth move, Camille’s consort lowered his head, ripped out the cougar’s throat, and tossed it over the side of the platform to join the corpse below.
In the calm that settled over them, Lee sighed, “Well, that’s one way to do it.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven