“Don’t you dare challenge me,” he growled. “Because I’ll choose four legs and I’ll snap you in half with one bite.”
I smiled at him even though a heavy dose of fear and shame slid through me. I chose to answer as if none of that curdled my blood. “I’d still kick your ass on four legs. You’re too fucking slow and stupid to realize when you’re outmatched. It takes more than size to run things in a pride.” I kept the flail spinning, wanting nothing more than to crush his skull with a few well-placed blows. He deserved that and more to be honest.
His eyes slid to the weapon again and his throat bobbed. The tension between us crackled and grew as I picked up speed with the flail, feeling it as if it were an extension of my own body. A humming began to ripple through the air and I realized it was the flail. Confidence flooded me and I opened my mouth to do exactly what he’d told me not to—nothing new there. A challenge would bring this all to a head and perhaps I’d finally be able to drive him out. We didn’t need him. And I could be done with this one way or another.
I was stopped short by a soft cry from the side of the room. A young girl ran forward. She was as blond as Steve, and at first glance, everyone thought she was his daughter because of the age difference. She was built nearly polar opposite to me in our body types, with her big bust, wide hips and tiny waist—a perfect hourglass if ever there was one. I had none of that going for me, as I was slim from top to bottom like my mother, from what I knew of her.
Her arms swept around his middle and she raised herself on her toes to kiss him, forcing him to face her. But his eyes kept on me, anger simmering in them.
My stomach rolled and I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t throw up on them both. Her hands cupped his face, trying to draw his eyes to her. Finally, he looked at her and she smiled up at him. “You’re alive, Steve! I saw the horses in the stable but I wasn’t sure you’d make it back to me.”
I grimaced and turned away from the vile sight. “Just because I’m his ex-wife doesn’t mean I’d let him die, Kiara.” I wanted him gone, not his death. Notwithstanding today.
“I never said that,” she whispered, her eyes wide with horror. I almost felt bad, almost. She was a nice kid, and I liked her, but the reality was he’d used her, groomed her to fall for him as her mentor, and in the end, he’d fooled us both. I’d been the one to get away from him, and she’d chosen to stay, even after she found out he’d been . . . flouncing us both along with a few others, as my new friend Marcel the satyr would have said.
“What, no challenge?” Steve threw at my back, snapping something inside me. There was no thought as I spun, drawing a kukri blade and throwing it in a single motion that didn’t leave me any time to consider if it was a good idea or not. To be fair, I aimed to his right, to miss him and drive the blade into the wall behind him. A good scare was what I’d been going for.
The idiot dodged the wrong way. The kukri blade buried deep into his shoulder, driving through with both the force of the throw and the wicked edge of the blade that was designed to cause as much damage as possible.
He threw his head back and roared, the sound echoing through the big room as he grabbed the knife’s handle and tossed the blade to the floor. Kiara cried out—again—and put her hands over the wound as she stared back at me with horrified wide amber eyes. “Why would you do that? Why would you do that when you just said you didn’t want to kill him?”
Fuck, I’d made a mess of this. I touched the ring around my neck to make sure it was still there before I answered. “Because he’s a fucking set of saggy camel balls who’s lucky I don’t kill him for leaving me to die! Any other alpha would challenge and kill him, Kiara. Remember that.” I took a few steps forward and picked up the blade. Hard to believe I used to love him, that he was my world, and I thought we would see each other through anything. But there was that old saying in the desert that I knew now was a truth.
The surest way to hate someone to the core of your soul is to love and trust them with all your heart first.
I’d given him everything I was, and he’d thrown me away like I was worthless, like my life and heart were nothing to him.
I wiped the blade off and put it back in its sheath on my thigh. Behind me, Steve snarled curses at me, Kiara sobbed and Ish did her best to calm them both. I looked for my brother but he was gone, leaving the scene of the crime yet again.
Leaving me to face the music alone. Classic.
I sighed and lifted my nose, catching the smell of grease, desert, and lion that was uniquely Bryce. I followed my nose away from the bellows of Steve as Kiara tried to soothe him, and deeper into the Stockyards. I knew where Bryce would be without my nose, but still, he’d surprised me here and there. Older than me by almost ten years, he’d been my protector my whole childhood, teaching me alongside Father how to fight, how to hunt and protect others, and now that the roles were reversed . . . well, let’s just say he didn’t handle it in a very polite fashion.
I knocked on the door to his room and workshop on the south side of the complex. “Bryce?”
“Yeah.” He sounded none too pleased that I’d followed him.
I drew a breath and pushed the door open even as my worries over how he’d receive the news that I’d died and then showed up alive made me want to hesitate.
“Hesitation will get you killed,” I said as I stepped into the room. His head snapped up and his deep amber eyes narrowed.
“Why would you say that?”
It had been something our father had taught us when we were training to fight. Hesitation killed. Someone would die if you hesitated. Leap in and fight for what you need to fight for, don’t hold back, don’t let uncertainty rule your thoughts. It was something I still struggled with, the uncertainty of who I was holding me back from making the snap decisions that were needed. Sure, throwing the knife had been a snap decision but even as I’d thrown it, I’d known it wasn’t the best decision, and therein lay the rub.
I smiled but the smile fled as I walked closer to him and the table he sat at. “I wasn’t sure you’d want me to come back alive, so coming in here to talk was . . . hard.”
“Harder than sticking the pig?” He lifted an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. He folded his arms over his chest, and I was struck as I was so often at the near-perfect reflection he was of our father.
“Nah, that’s easy. No hesitation there. Talking is harder.” I ran a hand over the edge of the work bench that hid his legs.
“Then don’t talk. Go rest.” He leaned forward and picked up his tools, his eyes avoiding mine.
“Is Darcy back yet?” I asked, hopeful that perhaps I’d just missed her somehow. Now that Steve wasn’t in front of me, that feeling of fear for my best friend grew once more. No matter that we’d left on perhaps not the best of terms, she was still my friend. One of few.
And Bryce had a soft spot for Darcy, though he would never tell her. He would never want her saddled to someone like him. In our world, weakness was death, remember? Bryce was about as low as you could go—weaker than me, weaker even than the human Maks. Because it hadn’t always been that way, he was . . . unpleasant most days.
He shook his head. “No.” There was more, I knew there was and I didn’t like it when he got like this. Moody, to say the least. That was what happened with a trapped lion forced into a cage there was no escaping. It made them mean and dangerous in their words.
My shoulders tightened, bracing for what was coming. “Say what you want to say, Bryce. I can take it.”
“You came in here, you say what you want to say first,” he snapped and tossed the tools on the bench. I opened my mouth but he beat me to it.
“I don’t like you going on these hunts for the jewels with Steve. We both know he doesn’t give even a single shit about your life. We both know he’ll leave you behind and one day you aren’t going to come back. We both know he wants full leadership here and only your life is stopping him. You need to stay here and take on more of that role, you need to lead.”
I swallowed the emotions that rioted inside my body. “Would it matter to you if I came back?”