J. Geissinger - Shadow’s Edge

Another voice interrupted, and the room turned to him. Viscount Weymouth.

“No one is impugning Lord McLoughlin here, Lady Jenna—he has vouched for your ability, as well as your motives. But the Law demands proof, and your continued objection puts you in quite a precarious position. We are living in dangerous times...we must know your loyalties and learn your Gifts, if you have any, especially since it will be so easy for you to provide any kind of proof. You are either Ikati or you are not. You are either with us or against us.”

Murmurs of assent were heard around the room. Leander saw nodding heads and smug looks of congratulation passed from face to face.

With a flush of anger that brought the blood to his face, Leander curled his hands into tight fists. Morgan was right. These men were nothing more than posturing idiots, enamored by the sound of their own voices, too complacent with unchallenged control and authority to have any empathy or humility left. They ruled only for themselves, for their own pleasure and comfort and egos.

For the first time in his life, Leander felt that perhaps it was time for a change.

“The Law ,” Jenna repeated, mocking. “Right. You can never escape the death grip of your perfect, shining, barbaric Law .”

She stared at them all with eyes of frost...then her gaze found Leander across the room.

All at once the calculated nonchalance seemed to drain away from her face, leaving it open and naked, as if the layers of an onion had been peeled back to reveal its tender core. Her eyes shone clear and bright, her smile faded to the barest, melancholy lift of her lips. Her voice, when it came, hovered just above a whisper.

“I almost feel sorry for you. You don’t know what you’re missing. You don’t know how amazing it is to be...free.”

A giggle from another dark corner of the room. Leander knew at once it was Morgan, though he didn’t turn to look.

“Leander has told the Assembly that you Shifted before your birthday, Lady Jenna,” someone said sharply, ignoring the muffled laugh from Morgan.

Leander cut his gaze to the heavily accented voice.

Durga, the Baron Bhojak, Alpha from Nepal.

He sat in front of Jenna, in the center of the table, his hands folded across the swell of his belly, legs splayed out in front of him, his posture that of someone bored entirely by the proceedings. But Leander knew better. Durga had earned himself a reputation for running his colony with an iron fist. He was old-school, a hard-liner, a purist. The Law above all.

“Did he?” she murmured, still looking at Leander with those glittering eyes. It sent a tremor straight through his core. You don’t know what you’re missing ...

“Yes. This is...unusual. Highly unusual. Incredible, actually.” Durga brushed an invisible piece of lint from the lapel of his black suit jacket and kept his gaze lowered as he continued. “I do not recall, at least in my lifetime, a single instance of a half-Blood Ikati Shifting before their twenty-fifth birthday.”

There was an open challenge in his voice. Leander watched as she moved her gaze to Durga and tilted her head to the side, considering him in silence.

Alejandro sat in a chair slightly angled toward him. Even from across the room, Leander felt the desire pulsing off the man in waves. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Jenna. They trailed up and down her body, over and over. He stared at her with his lips pursed and brow furrowed as if he was trying to memorize a highly difficult equation.

Leander pushed away from the wall and lowered his fists to his sides. His lungs tightened under a band of steel that made it hard to breathe.

“Well,” Jenna said lightly, brushing her hair over her shoulder with a graceful, feminine move of her hand, “it wasn’t the first time.”

Leander, forgetting Alejandro completely, blinked at Jenna.

It wasn’t the first time?

No one moved. The silence was deafening.

“The first time was when I was still a child. And there have been other times since then, though not in years, I’ve been too careful...” She stopped herself, her eyes flickered over to him. A faint blush of pink rose up on her cheeks.

Leander was the first to recover. “How old were you the first time?” he asked into the raw and hungry silence.

“Ten,” she said, her voice wavering. She cleared her throat. “I was ten. It was the day my father disappeared.”

Not a sound was to be heard in the drawing room. Not even a single breath was drawn.

Ten.

Leander felt all the blood drain away from his head. He had first Shifted at eleven, the youngest of his peers, the youngest of his entire colony. No one else he knew had made the turn before twelve. And like him, all the others were full-Blooded Ikati .

But if she had been Shifting since she was ten ...

“Impossible,” Durga scoffed to a chorus of agreement from the gathered men. Their voices were first tentative, then grew more confident as he repeated it again. He crossed his thick arms over his chest and shook his head. “That’s simply not possible!”

Only Viscount Weymouth remained silent, gaping at her. Alejandro leapt from the chair as if it had burned him, as did two other men, staring hard at Jenna with faces ominous and tight and filled with a pinched, dark desire—animal, wholly dangerous.

“If this is true...” Alejandro didn’t finish his sentence. He lifted an open hand toward Jenna, then dropped it, his mouth working silently like a fish out of water.

Leander took a step away from the wall. He never moved his gaze from Alejandro’s face.

“It is a lie,” Durga said, flatly. He pushed to his feet, straightened his dinner jacket, and peered at Jenna with a sneer, disfiguring his face. “Do not forget who this is, gentlemen—this is the offspring of tainted blood, sired from an illegal union. She is the daughter of a criminal. She is half human , clearly inferior, clearly a danger to all of our tribes!”

He pointed a stout, accusing finger at her, his face hard and red. “No half-Blood Ikati has ever Shifted at that age. That is a fact. Not only is she lying, she simply is—”

“ I am my father’s daughter .” Jenna’s voice rang out through the close and suddenly suffocating room, its pitch clear and strong. “I am not a liar and I’m not inferior to anyone. Especially you .”

She stared at Durga with a look of such vitriol he paused with his finger in midair, as if shock had muddled his brain, making him forget what he was doing there.

He blinked once, astonished, and Leander knew exactly what the man was thinking. He was simply flabbergasted she would dare speak to him this way. To stand up to him. He most likely could not remember the last time anyone had done so, if ever in his life.

He was Alpha of the Ikati, a leader of beasts that paraded as men, a deadly, revered warrior, a lord and a master and a ruler of all he surveyed.

He was absolutely, unequivocally beyond question, beyond reproach. It was their way. It was his birthright. It was the Law.

And she was nothing but a woman .

“You will prove to us all, right this minute, whether or not you are one of us,” another man from the circle insisted. This drew nods of agreement around the room. “If you do not—”

“Show them,” Leander said roughly, moving out of the shadows to pace toward her. He felt the rising tension in the room, saw the looks of cold calculation on the faces of the men, sensed something ugly and dangerous beginning to unfold.

“No.”

Her eyes met his, but her face had closed off, the stubborn defiance was there again. She wouldn’t listen to him, he knew. But he had to make her listen, because she was putting herself in terrible jeopardy.