Лорел Гамильтон - Rafael

“If I can do it, why are you so worried?” I asked.

“They can’t kill you, but you can’t kill them either, Anita. You’re small like me, but on top of it, you’re a woman and no matter how much you hate it, that does make a difference. You don’t train to wound, you only train to kill. I’m worried that your training will take over and you’ll kill someone.”

“What happens if I accidentally do?”

“Then the rules change,” Claudia replied.

“Change how?” I asked.

“If you kill one of us in the melee, then they can kill you,” Claudia answered.

“That’s why I’m worried,” Micah said.

“I’ll be acting as your guide tonight since it’s your first time; if it happens, I’ll fight with you,” Claudia said.

“I will be at Rafael’s side, so I cannot be with you, but I will send help if it happens,” Benito added.

“So you’re not afraid that I can’t defend myself, you’re afraid that I’ll be overzealous and kill someone else?”

“You don’t train to save lives, Anita, just to take them,” Micah said.

“You train to kill rivals, how is it different?”

“I also train to discipline people when I don’t have to kill them. Your version of that is to stab them with blades that have no silver content or use lead bullets and let them heal.”

“Do I take in non-silver blades?” I asked.

“Do you own any?”

I blinked at him. “Not really.”

“And that’s my point,” he said grimly.

“You bought non-silver blades for Fredo’s classes,” Claudia said.

“I think of them as practice blades for class, and in regular kali, practice blade means aluminum or plastic with no edge and lighter weight than real blades,” I said.

“But for the invitation-only classes, practice blade means non-silver with an edge,” she said.

“It would be a live blade anywhere else,” I said.

“But for tonight, it will cut and wound, but they will heal, and it’s almost impossible to kill one of us without silver.”

I nodded, but added, “I’m going to take a few blades with enough silver content to cause wounds that won’t heal instantly, just in case people need the reminder.”

“I agree,” Claudia said.

“I would like you to dress as my queen tonight, Anita,” Rafael said.

“Define dress ?”

“Sexy dress, heels,” he said with the vague answer that so many totally straight men give when pressed for clothes suggestions.

I shook my head. “You know I can’t dress like that and carry blades. Hell, I can’t fight in heels, or at least not as well. If you want me all dressed up, you need to give me enough bodyguards to make me feel secure.” In my head I thought I still wouldn’t have wanted to dress for anything but the fight, but that could just be my nerves talking.

“Would it be too much to ask for you to wear makeup and leave your hair down?” he asked.

“Makeup, sure; we’ll negotiate on the hair. It gets in my way in a fight.”

“You’re angry with me,” he said.

“Angry, no; upset, hell yes.”

Micah raised his hand. “I’m upset with you, too. If you knew it was a possibility that she would have to fight through the crowd like I did, you should have mentioned it while we were making our plans.”

“I told you, if I had dreamed that they would vote to force Anita to fight her way to my side, I would not have suggested her coming tonight,” Rafael said, and there was just an edge of warmth like a breath of power to dance warm over my skin.

“Apologies are lovely, Rafael, but if anything happens to Anita between the moment she enters your world and sits down beside you, then we will revisit your oversight,” Jean-Claude said.

“Are you threatening me?”

“Oh yes.”

“We’re allies here,” I reminded them.

Micah said, “No, in this moment we are men engaged to marry the woman we love, and we all trusted Rafael to know his people well enough to risk you.”

“What he said,” Nathaniel added, and his energy trailed hot to meet with Rafael’s so that suddenly I could see black fur in the darkness inside me where the beasts waited. The leopard flashed yellow eyes upward, but the rat’s black eyes were like a glint of darkness within a moonless night.

The rat started to ease into the light, and the leopard followed it as if it were hunting. One great black shape hunting the smaller and then the next moment the rat was huge, as big as the leopard.

I blinked and tore my attention away from inside me to the room and found that Rafael had moved beside me. It was like being plugged into a wall socket—a jolt of energy that shot through me to the rat inside. So much power it almost hurt, and just like that the rat jumped the leopard hard enough that it staggered me. Rafael grabbed my arm to help steady me, but the rat got bigger and the beasts were tearing me up.

I jerked away from him, and Nathaniel was there, holding me. The moment he did the panther roared inside me and the rat was getting the worst of it, but they were still tearing me up inside. I knew the damage wasn’t literal, I knew they weren’t tearing up internal organs, it just felt like it.

I didn’t need to see Rafael to know he was kneeling with us and the rat grew again, sending the leopard rolling. Nathaniel rolled himself around me, and the leopard fought back, but I needed it to stop.

“Rafael, back off!” I yelled.

“What’s happening?” Micah asked.

“I can feel the rat inside her now,” Rafael said, and he didn’t sound upset about causing me pain, more like he felt wonderment as if something about it felt good.

Nathaniel said, “It’s not supposed to work this way.” His voice sounded like he hurt, too. They should have both been hurting; that was part of what a moitié bête could do, take some of your pain.

“I’m a king,” Rafael said, as if that made sense of it all.

“You’re not her king, I am,” Micah said, and he touched my face, still standing above us all. His leopard rose in a wave of warmth and power that went directly from the skin of his hand to where he touched my face. His leopard poured down into that darkness and pulled my leopard to it. He didn’t try to fight the rat, he just called my leopard like a black shadow to meet his, and there was no more room for anything else, especially not with Nathaniel beside us.

“Her eyes,” Claudia said.

Nathaniel’s skin ran warmer and he looked at me with the gray eyes of his leopard. He was the only shapeshifter I’d ever met whose natural eye color was more exotic than his beast’s.

Micah said, “Look at me.” Still on our knees, we looked up at him, and I knew that for the first time all three of us were looking at each other with leopard eyes.

13

WHEN THINGS HAD calmed down enough that my eyes weren’t the bright yellow of my leopard, I turned on Rafael. “What the fuck was that about?”

“I didn’t know your eyes could change like that,” Rafael said. He looked shaken and he had apologized, but it was too late for that, at least to me.

“It’s just started happening,” Micah said.

“What? Why, Rafael? Why did you keep pushing at it when you knew you were hurting me?” It was all I could do not to touch him physically, and I didn’t mean in a romantic way. I wanted to at least shove him, but I knew better. If I shoved him and he did anything aggressive at all, I’d do more. I wanted to do more. I was pissed, and I was about to risk life, limb, and maybe more with him as my closest animal to call. No one else would get to me in time if he pulled something like this again.

“The power, Anita, I’m so sorry, but the power was incredible. It felt so good and I could feel that there was more, that if we just touched more, the power between us would be even more.” He reached out as if to touch my hair, and I hissed at him like a cat does. That sort of scared me, so I just walked farther away from him.