Aaron dove at one of the other armed rogues. Nate came charging through the battleground to join us, West wheeling to follow. The rogue Marco had tackled slammed her gun against the side of his head and managed to roll out from under him. He caught her wrist with his jaws. With a yank and a cracking sound, she gasped. The pistol clattered to the floor.
Phillipe had toppled when I’d hit him. He shifted as he sprang away. I melted his gun with a blast of dragon fire and swung around to pursue him. Where was Kylie? I had to make sure she stayed okay. I had to try to keep everyone here okay.
The snow leopard crossed Nate’s path, and the grizzly battered him to the side. All around us the battle raged on. One of the remaining human rogues fired a few more shots, one of them smacking Nate in the hip. Blood sprayed across the polished floorboards. Fur flew and animal voices shrieked. I could hardly tell which of the living bodies were my kin and which the rogues now.
In that glance, a hard certainty formed inside me. I didn’t care if Nate’s kin or Marco’s had doubted my ability to lead them. I didn’t care what the rogues might have offered them as an alternative. This was what the rogues brought. Violence, pain, mayhem. This was what they’d always brought.
Maybe I didn’t know how good a leader I’d be, but I sure as hell could do better by my kin than this.
With the strength of that resolve coiled tight in my belly, I blasted the rogue who’d shot Nate with a spurt of flame. He screeched and crumpled. The rogue whose wrist Marco had snapped was struggling to grip her gun with her weaker hand. I charred her to cinders before she could get a handle on it.
West had charged at one of the guys who held a rifle. The wolf snapped at the rogue’s legs while the guy tried to swivel far enough away to aim. He’d already gotten in one shot—a streak of starker red slashed through the ruddy silver fur on West’s back where a bullet had clipped him, only just missing his spine.
Rage flashed behind my eyes. I couldn’t fry the rogue without frying my mate at the same time. But I had teeth and claws too.
I bashed the guy’s head with a swipe of my foreleg. In an instant, West was on him, his teeth at the rogue’s throat. He kicked the rifle aside. I shot a bolt of white hot flame down on it, turning it into a bubbling mass of metal.
A sliver of a thought passed through my head: Mom would have made short work of the rogues that had attacked her family sixteen years ago, if she’d been able to fight like this. If she hadn’t had three daughters who couldn’t fully shift to try to protect.
The people we loved, the ones who were weaker than us—they made us vulnerable.
Panic washed over me. Kylie! I leapt over the staircase, searching for her. Searching for the snow leopard who’d managed to scramble through the fray.
I found both of them. Phillipe was facing off against Alice, still in her human form, but no less dangerous for it. He lunged at her, and she rammed her elbow into the side of his skull. The blow sent him staggering to the side. Kylie yelped. She groped toward a painting hanging just beside her. Heaving it off its hook, she hurled it at their attacker.
The corner of the heavy frame smacked Phillipe square in the head. I breathed a gust of fire toward the snow leopard, but he leapt out of the way at the last second. His cry of pain told me I’d at least singed him. He bolted away under the staircase.
With a roar, I barreled into the chaos of the fight. My talons picked off a jackal here, a rogue bear there, and another intruder, and another. The feline kin not too injured to keep fighting closed in around the dwindling number of remaining rogues. Which was a good thing, because the strain of the extended shift was catching up with me, with an even deeper pain than usual. Because I’d called my dragon form over me so quickly?
I’d have to ask Aaron about that, I thought vaguely as I tossed one last rogue against the wall. My muscles were contracting, no matter how hard I tried to hang on. I collapsed onto the floor. My human hands slammed into the floor, my human knees knocking the polished hardwood.
Sucking in a breath, I shoved myself to my feet. My gaze caught on a hunched form under the stairs.
Phillipe. The snow leopard sat curled in on himself. His left foreleg and most of that shoulder was burned black. His teeth were bared as he panted through the pain. Only the faintest shiver of sympathy touched me.
All of the blood spilled here was because of him. Why? So he didn’t have to listen to someone else telling him what to do? Because he thought he’d get some kind of glory among the rogues?
It didn’t fucking matter. The only thing that mattered was that he never did it again.
I strode over to him, slowing as I got closer. Phillipe snarled, but he clearly wasn’t capable of putting up much of an actual fight.
One of the other feline shifters, a cougar, came up beside me. “Drag him out,” I said to her. “Out where everyone can see.”
The snow leopard growled, but he couldn’t do more than squirm and wince as the cougar took him by the scruff of his neck. The larger cat dragged him out to where the noon sun streamed through the thrown open doors. I stalked after them. My jaw clenched.
The cougar let go of Phillipe and backed up a step. I loomed over the snow leopard, meeting his yellow-green gaze with a glare. From around the room, dozens of feline eyes fixed on me. And one pair of human eyes. Kylie gaped at me, her face still pale.
The thought of what she must think of me now sent a pang through my chest. But I couldn’t let those worries distract me. What I did here mattered a hell of a lot.
So I’d better do it good.
“Phillipe,” I said, pitching my voice loud. “You were kin, and you betrayed all the others you should have called kin. You brought all this destruction down on your alpha’s estate, your shifter community.” I swept my arm to indicate the entire foyer. “But I will give you a chance. Because I am not here to destroy if I can help it. So much of shifter kind has been broken by the rogues and kin like you. Will you help us rebuild it now? Or do you only care about wrecking things?”
Phillipe clung on to his feline form, his eyes narrowing. The muscles in his haunches bunched. I braced myself, feeling his intention. If that was how he wanted to end this, let them see him make the choice himself.
He threw himself off the floor with one final surge of strength, his jaws yawning as if to eat me whole.
My hand tingled as I drew a partial shift into my fingers. With the snow leopard’s sour breath in my face, I slashed my dragon talons across his neck, severing his throat.
Chapter 21
Marco
That traitor, Phillipe, crumpled at Ren’s feet with a gush of blood down his chest. My dragon shifter dodged backward, shaking her hand to withdraw her talons. As the snow leopard shifted back into Phillipe’s stringy human form, her head whipped around. Her gaze locked with mine. A sudden worry shimmered in her eyes.
Why? Because she’d killed one of my kin? Good riddance to that piece of excrement. She’d been fucking glorious.