Page 59 of Lucky or Knot
My eyes glowed, I could feel it, the shaman’s spell burned out by the force of my alpha fury.
“Fuck, what the fuck is he doing here,” Louie stuttered, sounding two seconds from a heart attack. He clearly recognized his uninvited guest.
“Shoot him,” Cunningham growled, and Louie let out a shockingly high-pitched shriek for someone with his chest measurements and then dived under the table.
“He didn’t mean you,” I said, even though Louie had the right idea. Cunningham meant me, and Louie was close enough to be in the line of fire.
I took one step to the side, making sure Raven was completely behind me. A couple of bullets would barely slow me down. I’d take the first barrage so I could shield Raven, and then I’d charge. Maybe Raven could throw some magic into the mix.
But as Cunningham’s men raised their guns, a new commotion broke out in the front of the club, Cunningham’s men and someone else they were confronting. There were shouts of alarm, an argument, and cutting through that, a cool, sardonic voice I recognized.
“You won’t like how that works out for you, believe me,” Declan MacKenna said in reply to someone’s threats as he stepped into the club, brushing aside one of Cunningham’s bodyguards with total nonchalance and possibly more force than necessary. Right behind him clustered several of his own security team—and Blake, who had a look on his face like a kid who’d been caught with both hands stuck in the cookie jar.
I winced, both on his behalf and my own. If I lived long enough for Declan to chew me out for dragging his mate into this kind of fuckery, it’d be a humiliating half hour.
Everyone turned to look at the newcomers, even Cunningham.
“What the hell is going on?” Raven complained, shoving at my back. “Move aside!”
“Not until they put their guns away,” I said, and shoved him back, a lot more gently.
Which they hadn’t, although they’d been lowered in response to this new influx of high-profile witnesses.
Declan’s eyes were sharp and assessing, darting around and taking it all in, and I recognized the flex of his hand: claws at the ready. His men were shifters too, and they also had guns.Killing our kind wasn’t easy, but there might have even been enough combined firepower and natural weaponry in the room to pull it off.
Silence fell for a long, pregnant moment.
It was kind of like the famous standoff scene from that Clint Eastwood movie, with the music everyone hummed at times like this. Only instead of the good, bad, and ugly, we had the contemptuous, the frothing, and the naked—and the terrified, if you counted Louie.
“This has nothing to do with you,” Cunningham said, his voice thick with rage. “This is a private matter. Get out before I deal with you, too.”
Declan opened his mouth, but Blake stepped up to his shoulder, stared Cunningham down, and said, with the utter confidence and arrogance of someone who’d actually used that line in the past and gotten the reaction he felt he deserved, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you know who I am?”
“What?” Cunningham said, after a beat. “What?”
“Yes,” Declan said, and his deadpan delivery didn’t do much to hide the grin breaking out on his face, “you’re never going to get away with this, not in front of one of the eminent Castelli pack.” Blake made a face and elbowed Declan in the ribs. “Former, anyway. Now my mate, and I know you know who the fuck I am. Cunningham, this is over. You’re not going to commit murder. Not in public, and definitely not with us standing here watching you. Enough.”
“He stole from me,” Cunningham said, and his voice had gone guttural, his shift starting to take over. “He stole my property. He’s going to pay.” He turned to shoot us a look over his shoulder that would’ve killed if it could. “They both are.”
It was my turn to grin. Because Cunningham couldn’t possibly have handed me a better cue if he’d tried. And while he’d have been able to refuse and have his guys shoot me withonly his own people and some humans as witnesses, he couldn’t possibly wriggle out of it in front of Declan and Blake, two other wealthy and prominent alphas who’d be only too happy to publicize his cowardice.
In some ways, shifter culture hadn’t evolved much since the eighteenth century. We didn’t use swords, but then again, we didn’t need to.
“Happy to,” I said, and stepped forward. “Clearly you want to settle this the old-fashioned way. I accept your challenge. Alpha to alpha.”
Declan raised an eyebrow, Blake started to laugh, Cunningham stared at me in horror, and his men all turned to each other and muttered amongst themselves.
Behind me there was total, ominous silence. I turned to glance at Raven, whose expression had gone fixed, his posture rigid. “This isn’t necessary,” he said, strain in every syllable. “There are—I had plans for those thousand years of torment. We already discussed the reasons why you shouldn’t do this!”
The thousand years of torment. Right. And if I believed that was really his problem with me doing this, maybe he had a bridge to sell me. He’d already watched me almost die once this evening, but he couldn’t imagine this was a fight I’d lose. Not if Cunningham didn’t get help from his men, and Declan wouldn’t let that happen. So it couldn’t be that, either.
I flashed back to that moment of clarity after I’d ripped up my bedroom wall, how I’d realized Raven might’ve been as afraid of me, in my blind rage, as he was of Cunningham’s violence.
Retribution from Cunningham’s minions aside, the possibility of prison time aside…Raven didn’t want to see me become a killer. And I couldn’t blame him for that, not at all.
“This is necessary for me,” I said, because Raven deserved honesty. “But I won’t kill him,” I conceded, with a lot less regretthan I’d expected. Raven’s happiness and comfort and trust in my ability to control myself mattered more than my own visceral satisfaction. “I promise.”
Raven tilted his head, examining me, and finally seemed to find what he’d been looking for, his shoulders losing some of their tension.
