Page 10 of The King

Just as planned, the enemy, no better than roaches running when the light is shone on them, funneled out of the bunker and into the trap set by the Dragons. Snipers on the ridge above took them all out before they could scurry back to the darkness, to live another day, and start their torturous reign anew.

It seemed callous and a senseless waste of life, but they were all fanatics. They had been trained from birth to hate anything Magical or Paranormal. The few any of them or the Council of Shifters had interrogated refused to see reason. They stood firm in their belief that anyone blessed by the Goddess and The Powers That Be with Special Abilities should be exterminated. There was no changing their minds. The zealots believed it was kill or be killed. Their doctrine was that no Supernatural deserved to live.

The Dragons, the Clan of the Sun, and the Big Cats had to act accordingly. The threat to their kin had to be eradicated. Their maniacal leader’s tyranny had to end.

"What was his name, Eden? Why can't I remember who he was? Doesn't he have to be…?"

Ripped from the present and thrown back into her memory, Ettie watched the images fly through her mind. Dirt, rock, grass, metal, pieces of concrete blocks, and all manner of debris shot into the air as explosion after explosion rocked the countryside. Every two seconds, another bundle of TNT went off, and another section of the horrid place that had caused the death and destruction of so many was decimated.

Her heart beat double time when she watched Max tenderly lift each and every one of the forty refugees into the vehicles he and his Big Cats had commandeered. There was no denying the man was a King. He not only cared for all Felines as if they were his own flesh and blood, but he saw the value in life in all its many forms while not being afraid to make the hard decisions.

“I have been such a hard-headed idiot.”

“Do - do I get to second that?”Eden was still slurring her words and having difficulty forming a sentence but somehow retained the wherewithal to give Ettie a hard time.

And the Demi-Goddess could give it right back even though she felt she'd been ridden hard and put away wet.

“No, you do not. You get to shut up and help me remember who the asshole was who hurt all those Shifters. How did he escape the Mad Bomber’s expertly placed explosions, and why does he have us tied to a bed.”

“I can’t recall either.”

“Do you remember anything other than what we just saw?”

Any other time, the silence that followed her question would've driven Ettie to spout off something sarcastic and smart-assy and generally pick a fight with the Empress Eagle with whom she shared her soul. However, on this one occasion in all their thousands of years joined at the soul, the Demi-Goddess simply waited silently, and prayed Eden would have some insight.

Time ticked by, probably slower than it ever had, but for the first time in a long time, Ettie wasn’t bothered. On the contrary, she took the time to think about Max and why she’d fought their connection with such vim and vigor.

Her cousins continued to say it was because she was too hard-headed, independent, and afraid to make a commitment that required compromise. For the most part, Ettie agreed.

However, if she was honest, which she always was and most times to a fault, her fear didn't come from the commitment or the compromise. Nope. What scared her more than anything else was that she would be a bad Mate.

Now, had she admitted that aloud or through a mental conversation with any or all of her cousins, or even Maggie Mae for that matter, they would've said that she was being silly. They would've comforted and cajoled her and told her how excellent she was at everything she'd ever attempted, and being Max's Mate would be no different.

But Ettie wasn’t sure.

After all, had she continued to search when she'd lost sight of that gorgeous King of the Big Cats, the man The Powers That Be made for her? No, no, she hadn't. She'd tried to call Maggie.

“Which ended up being a way smarter move since you found out that our mental communication was being blocked and ultimately that we'd been poisoned, or tranq'd, or whatever the hell happened to us,”Eden chimed in, sounding way more like herself, but still not answering Ettie’s original question.

“Okay, yeah, but what about…?”

“What about that rickety piece of crap payphone you ended up using? For real! I didn’t even know those antiques still existed.”

“No, that’s not what…”

“Oh, you were gonna say something about your cell phone not working?”Not even pausing for half a second, the Empress Eagle rattled on."Well, did you see that place? I'm sure there's no cell tower within a hundred miles. The Great Goddess knows I didn't see anything but four liquor stores, three gas stations, and seven cigarette vending machines. Whoever heard of all those poor people living in one place without a grocery store and clean drinking water."

“Oh, stop, yes, we were in Mexico…. HOT DAMN! That’s it. We were in Mexico. I actually remembered something. Do you think we’re still in Mexico? Do you think Maggie Mae figured out I was calling from Mexico? Do you think…?”

“That if you say Mexico one more time, I might lose my mind? Yes, yes, I do believe I will lose my mind if you say Mexico one more time.”

“No, that is not what I was gonna say. I was gonna…”

"Take me to her." The nasal voice carried as if it was riding on Eden's wings.

Ettie didn't know how she knew, but she was certain beyond all doubt that the woman belonging to the voice was more than halfway across the eighteen-thousand-square-foot locked ward. Baffled by her thoughts and even more so by the woman with pure evil pouring off her like Niagara Falls after the spring thaw, Ettie was just about to ask Eden what they could do to prevent the woman from touching them when fingertips that felt like a dead fish touched her face and a low, ominous voice threatened, "You will be the first to die, Bridgette Featherstone. But rest assured, I will also kill every single fucking piece of Magical Shit responsible for the death of my family."

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