With that, she swept away from me, leaving me with a lot to think about. I sat there awhile longer before I called Carl with a brief update. He put me on speakerphone so Esther could speak, too.
“They pretty much agreed to put a leash on the shifters, but Daimhín had a quiet word with me afterward,” I said.
“Oh, no,” Carl groaned. “That’s never good.”
“She said that without the alpha, the rest of the shifters are slowly losing their minds and their control, some faster than others.”
Dead air.
“So that’s happening to me,” Esther said dully.
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. You’ve been free for a long time. You know how to handle it. You got past the worst ages ago. Don’t think you’re anything like them.”
“I’m a shifter, aren’t I?”
“You’re a free shifter,” Carl said firmly.
“It’s true,” I said. “But you’re still not safe. The shifters might be told off, but that pesky lack-of-control thing might lead them to renew the only focus they have—finding you.” I chose not to tell her that I was probably in worse danger from the insanity of untethered shifters because she had enough to worry about.
She blew out a shaky breath. “And if the cul-de-sac isn’t safe from me? What are you all going to do if I go crazy, rabid even?”
“We’ll shove the biggest sleeping pill Anka can make down your throat,” Carl said.
Esther managed a brief laugh.
“Seriously,” I said. “You didn’t have a pack growing up, just Aiden, and you turned out great. The rest of the shifters have just been too used to being told what to do, is all. They’ll find themselves again. And eventually, an alpha will step up. They’re probably having some challenges as we speak. They’re weak until they have a leader, so we’ve nothing to worry about, but just in case, I’d prefer it if you hung around in the cul-de-sac. When things have calmed down, we’ll reassess. Is that okay with you?”
“Yeah,” she said after a pause. “I think that’ll be okay.”
“I’ll tell you both everything that happened when I get home. Want me to pick up some food?”
They did. After I hung up, I left the courthouse and started walking home. I remembered Daimhín mentioning that a new alpha would soon arrive.
Just hurry the hell up, whoever you are.
The shifters were more of a menace than the werewolves were, but the werewolves had killed before. The niggling doubt at the back of my mind turned into a simmering growl that I realised was coming from behind me. I whirled around to see a hulking figure stagger into the light of a streetlamp. Greg, Mac’s second in command, lifted his lips to reveal fangs. I wondered what he shifted into, then I realised that didn’t matter. He wasn’t likely to be alone.
When I reached out with my other senses while backing away to put distance between us, I couldn’t find any shifters. Greg
was
hunting me alone.
“The Senate decided to neuter the shifters,” I said. “You’re supposed to back off and leave us alone. Don’t beta shifters do what they’re told these days?”
He growled again, more menacingly than before. He approached me, his gait awkward as his legs were stuck in a partial shift, which wasn’t pretty.
“You should really get that looked at,” I said, still stepping backward.
He punched a lamppost and left a dent.
“What the hell do you want with me?” I demanded, tired of the cat-and-mouse game he was playing.
“I want to kill you,” he said, his mouth full of fanged teeth made to rip flesh from bones.
Chapter Ten
These shifters are really starting to piss me off.
They had already thrown a few digs while trying to plant me in the old Council cells, and I’d had just about enough from them.
“I’m going to start losing my temper soon.” I circled him. “This is out of order, and it has to stop.”
“Can’t… stop,” he growled, a flash of panic in his eyes.
“Look, I know you’re having trouble without your alpha keeping everyone under control, but you’re just going to have to man up and deal with it. You can’t have Esther, and you can’t have me.”
“Esther is… weak.”
“She’s strong enough to do fine without an alpha leading her by the nose,” I shot back. “Now cut it out. I have a lot of very specific shifter-related aggression built up this week. I’m going to unleash hell on your arse if you don’t leave me alone.”
“Never.” He lurched forward and grabbed at me.
I quickly stepped aside, forcing him to reach for empty air, then pushed his back to use his weight against him. He toppled forward, as unstable as a newly born deer. I almost felt sorry for him, but then I remembered the mess in my house and how Anka’s face had looked when she’d stood outside her trashed shop. Then I wasn’t feeling pity anymore. I kicked the back of his thigh, and he landed on his knees, but he was up again in a flash as if he had suddenly remembered how to control his body.
“I’m warning you.” I jumped on the balls of my feet, secretly excited. I hadn’t fought much of anything in a long time, and I hated being out of practice. My old injuries were healed, and I felt better than ever. I was pretty sure I could take a Lurch-sized shifter anytime.
When he threw a punch, I almost laughed at how slowly he moved. But it was just a feint, and he caught me in the gut with his other hand. I jumped back, eyes watering with pain.
“Nice comeback,” I said, then I moved in close, palm-struck his nose, and backed up again.
He barked out a laugh through his streaming nose then straightened and moved toward me scarily quickly. I double-punched his gut, but he wrapped his arms around me, trapping my arms, and lifted me in the air. I kicked out ineffectually, and he threw me on the ground. My forearms skidded against the concrete beneath me.
Greg made to stomp on me, but I rolled over and easily avoided him. I swung my legs around and tried to kick his feet out from under him, but he was too steady.
He lifted me again, gripping the back of my jacket and jeans, lifting me precariously high in the air. When he dropped me, I managed to slow my fall by gripping his jumper on the way down. I flipped, bounced on my feet, and twisted my body back into the air to wrap my legs around his neck in an upside-down pose. I almost squeed for joy. I had been practising that move for
months
with Carl.
But then the shifter kneed me in the head as he pulled my grip free. I toppled, barely avoiding landing on my head. He kicked my stomach, and I flew straight into a nearby lamppost. I winced at a sudden sharp pain in my spine, but I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. Greg ran at me again, and I had to jump to my feet and run to get out of his way. He did a weird, awkward movement as though trying to shift again, and he tripped and whacked his face against the very same lamppost I’d struck.
But even that didn’t slow him down for long. He came at me again, his pain apparently fuelling his rage.
“Cut it out!” I shouted as I struggled to keep out of his reach. “Stop trying to pick me up like a doll, you arse!”
“Enemy… of the… pack,” he grunted.
“Just listen to yourself for a minute.” I backed away from him. It had occurred to me that I couldn’t fight the entire pack, should I encounter them, so I needed a better idea for dealing with angry shifters. “You don’t need Esther anymore. Mac’s dead!”
“Shame,” he said. “Somebody has to take the shame.”
“So what are you going to do? Torture Esther?”
“I would
never
.” His face contorted. “That was Mac’s idea.” His expression cleared. “That was his tradition, not mine.”
I avoided half-hearted strike. “So what was your tradition?”
“A fight,” he said. “A proving. She has to fight for her good name, for her freedom.”
“But she’s injured,” I said. “How is that fair?”
“Family,” he said. “Family fights in your place.” He growled and lunged at me again.
I punched his face and put distance between us. “Snap out of it, Greg!”
He looked pained. “I
can’t
.”
“Concentrate! You said someone can fight in her place?”
“Be her champion, her second.” He trembled and rubbed the side of his face. “It’s so hard to control the shift when there’s nobody else there.”
“The rest of the pack is there,” I said. “You can all rely on each other.”
“No, it’s too noisy. No control. No ties. I can’t take the pain. There’s so much pain.” He sank to his knees, clutching his head.
I approached him warily. “So be the alpha then.”
“I’m no alpha. There is no alpha.”
“There’s one coming,” I said. “Or, at least, one coming home.”
He looked up at me, blinking rapidly. “Really?”
“The vampire queen told me. Her seer said one is on his way. It’s going to be okay. You can forget about Esther, and—”
“Alphas never forget. He could be like Mac. Esther’s dead.”
“Unless someone champions her first,” I said. “You told me that. Somebody can take her place.”
“Aiden’s gone. Nobody will take her place.”
“It’s Aiden’s punishment,” I fumed. I helped the shifter to his feet, forgetting about the fact he’d been trying to kill me five minutes ago.
Then he was the one who put distance between us. “Aiden’s a coward,” he said, panting. “He will never come back to champion her.”
If Aiden hadn’t come back to save his sister already, then he likely never would. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Greg’s face screwed up with confusion. “Do what?”
“Be Esther’s champion.”
He tried to laugh, but it sounded like a hacking cough instead. “You’re no shifter.”
I flashed my fangs. “There. I just shifted.”
“You’re not her family.”
I bristled. “I’ve been more family to her than her brother ever was. She’s
mine
, and I’m responsible for her.”
He staggered back a few steps. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll contact you with a time and place.”
“You seem less…
rawr
all of a sudden.”
“I feel better. More… controlled. You made me focus on something else.” He gave me a puzzled look. “I will speak for you, urge the others to accept you as Esther’s champion. Expect to hear from us soon.”
“And this isn’t a trick?” I asked. “You’re not trying to fool me?”
“You have my word.”
“So when I fight in her place, win or lose, she’ll be free.”
“It’ll be forgotten, but
you’ll
still be an enemy of the pack… if you survive. Only an alpha can remove that stigma. But you show courage and strength. I won’t be the one to cull you as an enemy of the pack.”
He’d been the one to name me an enemy in the first place. Ignoring his shifter logic, I gripped the hand he held out to me. He nodded, squeezed my fingers, then lumbered away. For an instant, I thought I heard something close by, a footstep or a heartbeat maybe, but when I checked, nothing was there.
“Paranoia,” I whispered. On the walk home, I gingerly touched my spine, expecting to feel pain, but it was fine, probably not even bruised. In fact, I felt great, as though I had released months of tension in one little scrap with a crazy shifter.
I paid attention the rest of the way, but I didn’t get a sense that anyone else had followed me. Even the Chinese takeaway was quiet for a change. Still, I was relieved to see the cul-de-sac. I waved at one of my neighbours as he headed out for a night shift. Our little community was pleasant to be a part of.
I headed into my house, where Carl and Esther were waiting, and left the food on the coffee table in the living room.
I threw myself onto the sofa and rested my legs across Carl’s lap. “I’m bloody well wrecked.”
“That’s pretty much your usual reaction to an evening with the Senate,” Carl said.
Esther was sitting cross-legged on the floor at his feet, leaning against him as she chewed her fingernails.
“It’s been a weird night,” I said, yawning. “I went to the public meeting, witnessed a marriage proposal, and had to listen to the paragon outing the werewolves as human-killers.”
“Uh-oh,” Carl said.
“But! I did manage to persuade the Senate to ask the shifters to back off, and I at least begged off a little time for the werewolves. So that counts as a win, right? The paragon is really into extinction right now, and he’s trying to pull other people into his buzz. There’s going to be a full investigation first, so maybe something will come up.”
“And if the werewolves really did do it?” Esther asked.
My stomach turned. “Since when is death met with death, officially speaking? Anyway, the paragon’s not going to let this lie, but I feel like it’s a personal agenda. When he left, Daimhín said that Eloise reckons we’ve nothing to worry about from a paragon army, so that’s a bonus, at least.”
Esther did a weak fist pump into the air. “Oh, yay, I suppose.”
I reached out for the Chinese food and found a bag of wontons to snack on while I spoke. “The big news is that Greg confronted me on the way home, and it looks as though Daimhín was right. The shifters are seriously dopey right now. For a minute there, he could barely remember how to stand. Then he seemed to focus on, you know, killing me, so that helped him.”
“Ava,” Carl said warningly.
I leaned back my head with a grin and closed my eyes.
“Anyway
, we got to chatting, and he calmed down enough to make sense. Apparently, Mac’s idea of making Esther take a punishment is actually a bit of a sore point. Even the shifters have opposing traditions, it seems. Greg said that where he’s from, the shifter in question has to fight for their good name, their honour, I suppose.”
“I have to fight for my life then,” Esther said. “Honour is life with the shifters. Shame is what kills us, but only figuratively speaking. Our shame is put to death by killing our bodies.”
“You have some sick traditions,” Carl said.
“It’s not my fault,” she protested. “Loyalty, trust, and honour are the three most important things for a shifter, according to Aiden.”
“He had none of those,” I murmured.
“Ideally, then,” she said snappishly. “But for Mac, he swapped out trust for power. And the loyalty didn’t work both ways. Honour is honour in any language, but we obviously find opposing things honourable.”
“I’m pretty sure Greg didn’t know about the captives,” I said, “even though he was second in command. Looks like Mac was pushing people only as far as he could.” I reached for another wonton. I hadn’t eaten for ages, and my throat was starting to feel achy in the I-heart-blood sort of way. “Except for you, Esther. He couldn’t get anywhere at all with you.”
“That’s because of you,” she said softly. “You and Carl and everyone else. If I didn’t have you, I would have stayed with Aiden, would have been sucked into Mac’s pack.”