Darkness Bound (31 page)

One corner of Leander’s mouth quirked. He gave the barest of nods, then looked away, releasing her.

Morgan sagged against Xander’s strong shoulder. He wound his arm around her, pulling her close. He bent and whispered in her ear, “There, you see? I told you he’d be fine.”

The day’s not over yet.
She burrowed closer to him.

“Where’s Bhojak? And LeBlanc?” said Leander to Alejandro. “I want to call a meeting of the Council of Alphas. As soon as possible.”

Bhojak and LeBlanc were the Alphas from the Nepal colony and the Quebec colony, respectively. They’d arrived with their retinues months ago, and had retreated with them to far corners of the rainforest settlement, as far away from each other and Alejandro as possible. They rarely mingled with others, excluding themselves from the frequent rituals and ceremonies that took place. They and their families were refugees, and though they’d been welcomed with open arms, they had a refugee’s sense of displacement, of longing for home. Of rage.

“I’ll call them,” Alejandro said.

“Maybe you should wait for that meeting until after we decide who the Alpha of
this
colony actually is.”

Hawk stepped forward, shouldering through the crowd. Everyone fell back in silence to let him pass. He came to a halt in front of Leander, gave a respectful nod of his head, then turned to Alejandro. He said, “Don’t you agree? Brother?”

A snarl of such hostility ripped from Alejandro’s throat that all the tiny hairs on Morgan’s body stood on end. Hawk, however, simply smiled.

“A challenger,” said Leander with interest, eying Hawk. For some reason, he sounded not at all surprised by this turn of events.

“A good-for-nothing, illegitimate
bastard
!” spat Alejandro.

“ ‘Illegitimate bastard’ is redundant.” Leander spoke to Alejandro, but his
gaze, razor sharp, stayed on Hawk. “And I’m afraid he’s correct, under the circumstances. The meeting will have to wait. When does it happen?”

When Alejandro didn’t reply—too busy shaking in fury and biting his tongue—one of his guards spoke. “Sunset.” He hesitated only a moment before adding, “My Lord.”

“Then we’ll have the meeting an hour after sunset,” Leander said, still staring at Hawk. The two of them locked eyes. Neither moved, or said another word, but there was violence in the stillness and silence, and for the first time, Morgan felt real fear for Hawk.

Leander had, so far, killed three challengers to his own rule. He could easily make it four.

Tension rippled in a palpable wave through the crowd.

Still looking at Hawk, he called out, “Morgan. Alexander. Will you please show us to our quarters?”

They made their way forward, and it was only when they finally stood directly in front of him that Leander looked away from Hawk. He looked first at Xander, nodding, then at Morgan. She willed herself not to break eye contact with him.

“You look well,” he said. “Jenna will be pleased to know the jungle hasn’t wilted you.”

That was all that he said, but with those neutral words, Morgan knew he meant her no harm. She released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Xander squeezed her hand. “I can think of few things that could,” she said, and, just for good measure, dropped a swift, graceful curtsy.

Leander pressed his lips together, his eyes dancing with mirth. So low it was almost inaudible, he said, “Agreed.”

Xander said, “Shall we?”

“Lead the way.”

Hand in hand, Xander and Morgan pushed through the whispering crowd, while Leander and his entourage followed.

As they walked, Morgan felt Viscount Weymouth’s eyes burning into her back.

Years later, Jack would look back on the next twenty-four hours as the single most defining day of her life.

She’d never been good at waiting, she remembered that much about herself as she paced back and forth inside Morgan’s elegant home as the shadows grew long on the floor, and the songs of the night creatures of the forest began to echo through the trees. She also knew she’d once excelled at hiding, at slipping unnoticed through spaces and melting into the background, though she didn’t recall exactly why she might have cultivated that talent.

Combined with a growing sense of anxiety and the two aforementioned facts, Jack found it impossible to keep her promise to Hawk. At dusk, she crept from her assigned waiting spot, climbed silently down the planks affixed to the tree that formed a ladder to the ground, and followed the thrum of the drums into the jungle.

She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but what she encountered stole all the breath from her lungs.

In a clearing surrounded on three sides by towering trees, the fourth a sheer cliff wall of red clay, where a flock of hundreds of blue and scarlet macaws perched, preening and picking at it, was a massive depression in the ground, roughly the shape of an oval. Ringed at regular intervals with torches spitting flame, with sides that sloped down toward a flat, dirt floor, it was a naturally formed arena. A throng of people encircled it, and many more were perched in the branches of the trees all around, staring down, watching the two men who stood there, bare-chested and barefoot, facing one another.

The man facing her direction was Hawk.

She knew immediately this was the contest Morgan had told her about. This was the fight where only one victor could emerge.

Jack crept forward, careful to keep behind the trees, stifling a scream as a brilliant blue snake with a red-tipped tail slid silently down the trunk closest to her. She jumped back, her hand to her chest, and bumped into something solid.

“Well, well, what have we here?”

Jack whirled around. Standing there in the shadows was a man with iron-gray hair and small, round spectacles. He was older, paunchy, and had a menacing smile and freezing eyes.

He reached out and grabbed her.

It should have surprised him more than it did. But Edward had come to understand during his time on Earth to expect the unexpected . . . so the sight of a half-dressed human female creeping around in the jungle, obviously spying, was little more than another oddity of his already odd life.

She was strong for a human—a female human, at that—but she wasn’t a match for him, though he was no longer young. Or even in shape, for that matter. He twisted her arm behind her back, so high she squealed in pain, lifting onto her toes. He yanked her head back with a hand in her hair and hissed an unmistakable warning in her ear, enforced by the presence of the stiletto he always carried, now pressed against her throat.

Whoever she was, he knew she wasn’t Expurgari. They only recruited men. A bounty hunter? An environmentalist reporting on the destruction of the rainforest who took a wrong turn somewhere, and now was hopelessly lost? Doubtful, but anything was possible. Either way, this would earn him points with the powers that be.

Maybe they’d even let him kill her himself.

Smiling at that thought, and grateful he’d found a satellite phone in the Alpha’s deserted quarters so he was finally able to make that important call he hadn’t been able to make for days, Viscount Weymouth shoved the female forward, broke through the edge of the trees, and walked into the clearing.

Alejandro’s fist caught Hawk square in the jaw and knocked him staggering back.

Regaining his balance quickly, Hawk snarled at him in the Old Language, a curse forbidden to speak to the Alpha—but as far as he was concerned, Alejandro was Alpha no longer. He lunged forward, teeth bared, and crashed headlong into his brother’s chest. They went down onto the dirt with a heavy thud that shivered the ground and was audible all the way up into the trees. Rolling and punc
hing and howling like a pair of slavering wolves, they were a spectacle that sent the crowd into a frenzy.

They leapt to their feet and began to circle one another. Alejandro swung, H
awk feinted. Hawk swung, Alejandro Shifted to Vapor, and his hand punched through a cool cloud of mist. The linen drawstring trousers Alejandro had been wearing slipped empty to the ground with a sigh. Hawk froze as a black panther appeared before him, crouched to spring.

Hawk couldn’t Shift. His hand was injured; he’d cut it when he’d crushed the jar of ointment in his hand. Trapped in human form, he’d have to fight at a serious disadvantage.

For a hair of a moment, Alejandro looked surprised, waiting for Hawk to Shift, also. When he didn’t, the look in the panther’s eyes changed to one of victory. Then one of deadly focus.

There was only a single rule that governed this contest.

The loser dies.

Just as Alejandro leapt into the air with a powerful thrust of his haunches, Hawk caught sight of a flash of red with his peripheral vision. Distracted, he turned his attention away from the panther for a split second, snapping his gaze to the right and finding Jacqueline’s face, pale, grimacing in pain. The flash of metal beneath her jaw: a knife.

Then a pair of razor-sharp fangs sank into his shoulder, and he went down, blood spurting over his chest.

Morgan felt the disturbance in the air at the exact same moment she caught sight of Viscount Weymouth pushing Jacqueline through the crowd, which also happened to be the same moment Alejandro leapt on Hawk in the arena and tore a sizable chunk of flesh from his shoulder.

Deep in the marrow of her bones, she knew what was about to happen.

Time slowed to a snail’s crawl. Her vision came into perfect, crystalline focus, and she saw everything unfold simultaneously. There was Hawk on the ground, executing a swift, precise roll that took him from beneath Alejandro so efficiently for a moment the panther was off-balance, his long tail cracking like a whip behind him as he hissed and spun around. There was Viscount Weymouth, shoving his way toward where she stood with Leander, Xander, and the other Assembly members to one side of the arena, the expression on his face one of smug satisfaction, the crowd parting in shock to let him pass. There was Leander, rigid and feral-eyed, no longer paying attention to the contest below, but staring with avid concentration at the sky above, twilight staining it mottled purple and blue like a bruise.

And there, far off in the evening sky, was a white dot, vivid as a star on the distant horizon. Only this star sported wings.

It was moving fast in their direction.

Together, Leander and Morgan whispered, “Jenna!”

Jack’s heart was choking her.

She couldn’t catch a breath with it in her throat, as it beat furiously in fear and horror. The man shoving her forward had the strength of a bear in spite of having the appearance of an elderly fop, and was sweating in his fitted white dress shirt and formal black slacks. He pushed her relentlessly on as she tried to twist out of his grip, stumbling, panting, trying not to let the knife on her jugular press too hard against her skin.

He threw her down. Morgan was there, and Xander, and others she didn’t recognize, a mass of bodies pressing in to see, everyone gaping at her captor. But Jack was looking to her right and down, to the awful scene in the arena: a bleeding Hawk and a giant, spitting black cat, ears flattened against its head, muscles bunched beneath its glossy black coat, sinking into a crouch.

My God, it’s going to eat him!

“No!” she screamed.

The panther flicked a look over its shoulder. Hawk took the window of opportunity and leapt on the animal, throwing his big arms around its neck, knocking it off balance. Then Jack was hauled to her feet roughly by a strong pair of hands, and she lost sight of Hawk altogether as bodies around her closed the gap in her view.

“My Lord,” said the man who’d had the knife at her throat, bowing stiffly to Leander. He kept his hand fisted in her hair as he did so. “I found
this
”—he gave Jack a kick—“hiding in the shrubbery. Shall I slit its throat?”

Leander shouldered past him, ignoring him, looking up at the sky as if it were about to rain diamonds.

“You bloody duffer, Weymouth!” screeched Morgan. She hauled off, made a fist, and punched the man right in the nose.

He fell to his knees with a cry, clutching his face. Blood poured between his fingers.

Gasps went up all around them, loud and amazed, and for a moment Jack thought it was because of what Morgan had done. But then she realized no one was looking at Weymouth.

Everyone was looking up.

She stood. Her eyes rose to the heavens, and she squinted, searching . . .

Impossible! Impossible!

It repeated in her head like a record stuck in a groove, over and over. Her mouth dropped open. Her knees turned to Jell-O. Her heart took a swan dive toward her feet.

Sinuous, beautiful, gleaming white as a pearl, the creature had silver-tipped wings and barbs along its powerful tail, a mane like a horse’s flowing down its long, elegant neck. It was moving at an incredible rate of speed, scoring the sky like an arrow shot from a bow, magnificent in the economy and grace of its every movement.

Even at this distance, Jack saw the curved talons that tipped the legs drawn up against its belly, the preternatural yellow eyes . . . and the muzzle full of razor-sharp teeth.

A dragon. Holy mother of God, she was looking at a
dragon
.

A gentle hand on her arm. “Magnificent, isn’t she?” Morgan spoke in a soft tone of wonderment, as she shook out the hand she’d used to hit Weymouth.

Jack’s mouth wouldn’t form words.

“Jenna,” Morgan clarified. “The Queen.”

Behind them, Weymouth was sputtering curses, staggering to his feet. He entreated Leander to punish Morgan, to make an example of such a volatile female, but Leander had no time for him, because he was watching the Queen like a bloodhound, watching her speed and the slight, telling tremble in the tips of her wings.

“Too fast,” Leander muttered, judging the speed of the dragon by her distance from where they stood. “She’s coming in too fast!” He turned to the crowd and, waving his arms, roared at the top of his lungs, “MOVE!”

Panic erupted in the clearing. Everyone began shoving and pushing, directionless, shouting at one another while trying to get away. Jack was pushed along by a surge of bodies toward the trees. She desperately tried to look for Hawk, but the arena was obscured by a sea of bobbing dark heads. She stumbled and fell, and someone picked her up with a hand under her arm.

Jack looked up just in time to glimpse the dragon overhead—big as a starship, its vast shimmering wings beating furiously in a futile attempt to slow itself, thrashing the air all around so dust swirled up and her hair flew into her eyes—then the tops of the trees were sheared off as it hurtled past. Greenery exploded everywhere like confetti shot from a cannon.

A great, thunderous
boom
was heard as it landed, shuddering the earth beneath Jack’s feet. It shook every branch in every tree for miles. Then came a deafening cacophony of shrieks and cries as thousands of birds took to wing, disturbed from their perches, rising in droves to darken the sky.

Then all went still. Jack looked up through the flurry of leaves drifting down from above to behold the great white dragon standing in the middle of the arena, chest heaving, smoke pluming from its nostrils, wings aloft. It stretched its scaled neck, looking around as if trying to locate something.

Or someone. Leander bounded through the crowd toward it, tearing off his shirt.

Hawk
, thought Jack.

She pushed to the front of the crowd. Just as she reached the place where the bodies thinned to emptiness to reveal the open clearing, the long, ragged claw marks gouged deep into the earth, the dragon shimmered and lost shape. Seconds later, only a glittering plume of mist hovered above the ground where the creature had once been. Everyone around her took a sharp intake of breath.

Jack sensed it, too.

Power. Raw and elemental, a sizzling current passed over her skin, unlike anything she’d ever felt.

Then the plume of mist gathered in on itself, reforming to take the shape of a woman.

She was nude. Pale and blonde whereas all the others except Jack were dark and golden-skinned, she stood silently, her gaze trained on Leander. Jack suffered the fleeting thought that maybe this whole adventure was the result of a psychotic break. Maybe this all was happening inside her mind, because this couldn’t be happening in real life.
It wasn’t possible
. Then she spied Hawk and her poor heart gave such a painful throb she felt sure she was either crazy or dreaming, because she didn’t know him at all, but her heart definitely did.

Somehow, he’d gained the advantage over the massive black panther. They were in one corner of the arena, and Hawk was on the animal’s back, an arm around its neck, the other squeezing his opposite fist, his muscles bulging as he bore all his weight down on its throat.