becoming linked through the familiar bond. But he already had a familiar, and that was an exclusive partnership, so these dreams and vision flashes had to be something else. And the only thing he could think was that some part of his coyote magic was coming to the fore, telling him he needed to move on, that a true coyote mage didn’t stay in one place—or with one mate—for long.
But he didn’t want to leave Skywatch, damn it, and he didn’t want to leave Cara. She needed to know he was capable of sticking around.
And he was sticking, damn it, would continue to stick, no matter what it took.
He must have muttered something under his breath, because as the last few stragglers jogged up the stairs to the hall and the door banged shut a final time, Mac cocked his head and rolled an eye back in inquiry.
“We’ll go down there in a minute. I’m just waiting for… There she is,” he said as he spotted Cara coming down the path, stalking stiff legged with her hands jammed in the pockets of her studded jacket. “Uh-oh. I’m guessing things didn’t go so well with Carlos. Come on.”
They slipped out of the cacao grove and angled to intercept her near the picnic area. Up close, Sven caught the snap of anger in her eyes as she glanced at him, then watched her try to shove it behind a calm facade. “Hey, wait up,” he said, catching her wrist and drawing her into the lee of the huge ceiba tree. “Give yourself a minute. You don’t want to go in there looking like that.”
She glared up at him. “Looking like what, exactly? And are we really hiding behind a tree? Seriously?”
“You look like you’re about to rip a chunk out of the first person who crosses you, and I’m pretty sure the goal was to keep this meeting as calm and controlled as possible. As for the tree thing, yeah, but only because it means I can do this.” He drew her into his arms, but when she shot him a don’t even think about kissing me right now glare, he tucked her head beneath his chin, wrapped his arms around her and held on tight. “Give yourself a minute, okay? Just breathe and remember that he’s not going to change.”
She stayed tense for a moment, then exhaled a shuddering breath and relaxed against him. “Damn it, don’t be nice to me. I need to go into this meeting a little pissed off.”
“How about calm, focused, and ready to kick some ass?”
Laughing a little, she sneaked an arm around his waist and squeezed. “Yeah. That’ll work.” She eased away, then looked up at him. “Thanks. You’re not a bad guy to have around.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said lightly, though the comment brought the same sort of clutch he used to get when one of his casual hookups had dropped a not-so-casual remark about him sticking around. Only this time he was the one trying to hem himself in. Stifling the urge to hold on to her too hard, he let her go instead. “Ready to go blow up the hierarchy?”
She groaned. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Sorry.” But as they headed for the training hall, walking side by side but not touching, he took heart from the fact that she looked more resolute than grim, and her eyes held a gleam of step off; I’m in charge. And, damn, that was sexy.
He let her take the lead going up the steps and through the doors, and then on into the main room. It was packed with winikin, some sitting at the round tables, others lounging at the closed-down bar. Pretty much every one of them took one look at her and then another, longer look at him and the big coyote that slunk at his heels.
Some of those looks were friendly enough, but most weren’t. Especially the ones coming from the two guys who’d gotten hurt in the dustup two days earlier. Sasha had patched them up, but they still had some healing to do.
There were mutters of, “Now what?” and, “What’s he doing here?” and, “I heard he’s schtupping her.”
Sven zeroed in on the last commenter, a twenty-something guy who met his glare for about five seconds before looking away. A couple of the guy’s buddies shifted as if looking for a fight, but Sven just raised an eyebrow and kept going through the throng.
His restraint got an approving look from Cara as she reached the place opposite the bar where a couple of risers formed an impromptu stage for meetings and karaoke. There was no sound system, so she stepped up on the stage and gave the room a minute to settle.
Moving around behind her, so he was off the risers and thus not looming, and Mac was more or less out of sight, Sven took up his I’ve got her back position and tried not to picture Kevin Costner in The Bodyguard, because gods knew he’d never admit to having watched it.
Like a good bodyguard, he scanned the crowd, trying to figure out where the biggest threat was going to come from. And he found Carlos staring daggers at him from the back of the room.
A pang went through him at the look in the winikin’s eyes, but he locked gazes for a long moment, then sent the other man a nod. Carlos grimaced and looked away, but Sven figured the message was clear enough. He had followed through with his promise to Carlos, and waited to get his sign. Cara’s father didn’t need to know that the sign hadn’t really mattered, though, because despite everything else, he just bloody well felt right when he was with Cara.
Even now, as she held up a hand and waited for the mutters and shuffles to subside, and he stood there knowing that they had a hell of a fight ahead of them, he was exactly where he wanted to be.
It was when they were apart that the doubts—and the visions of being somewhere else—crept in.
“Okay, I’d like to get started,” Cara said, pitching her voice to carry to the far corners of the room, where the radicals had gravitated—Carlos and a few of the old guard on one side, Sebastian and a dozen or so rebels on the other. Sven kept his eyes moving as she continued. “I know there have been some major rumors flying over the past couple of days. Some are true, some aren’t, and most are a mix of the two. I had thought about apologizing that I’m just now calling this meeting, but the thing is, I’m not sorry for the delay. We needed the time to figure out the facts, what we think they mean, and what we’re going to do about them.”
Sebastian called, “And by ‘we,’ do you mean you and the Nightkeepers’ king, or you and lover boy there?” One of his buddies thumped him to shut up, but a couple of the others nodded.
Cara shot him a cool look. “Do you want to tell this, or should I?”
He snorted. “Spin away, boss. Go ahead and tell us how you sent Zane and Lora to live on a nice farm somewhere, like you’d tell a six-year-old when her dog bites someone and gets put down, or how you’re not fucking us over by hooking up with that one.” His chin jerk went in Sven’s direction. “And how it makes total sense for him to be in charge, even though the king said we could damn well lead ourselves, because you think that you might be able to use his magic, and that’s why the hellhound came back after you. Like that makes everything hunky-fucking-dory.”
Sven raised an eyebrow at the extent of the rumors. It seemed that there wouldn’t be much in the way of surprises, then. Just some clarification and—hopefully—redirection.
Nodding to Sebastian, her face set in falsely pleasant lines, Cara said, “If you’re finished?” When he grumbled and subsided, she swept the room with a look before clasping her hands at the small of her back in almost a parade rest. Sven could see that her fingers linked and held and turned white from the pressure. Her voice, though, stayed steady as she said, “Okay, then. Taking it from the top…”
Clearly and concisely, she led her people through the events of the past week, giving them the facts and interpretations, the caveats. She told them more than Sven would have, maybe even more than Dez had intended for her to reveal, but at this point it was probably the only way to go. Given the depths of the rumor mill, whatever she left out would come back to bite her in the ass somehow.
Which meant Sven got far more play than he would’ve liked, and he had to fight not to squirm at times. She glossed over the sex and his push-pull of affection and alluded to their history only in passing, but any idiot could have filled in the gaps, and while a number of the winikin were pains in his ass, none of them were stupid.
He tried not to react as she built her case. Instead, he watched the crowd. And damned if he didn’t see faces smoothing out, then a nod here and there. It started in the middle of the room, where Natalie and JT sat at the intersection between the two cliques, and then edged outward in an almost imperceptible ripple, one that might’ve been invisible to anybody in the thick of things. Sven, though, was on the outside looking in, and he saw it.
Pride trickled through him. She had them. She fucking had them. Or most of them, anyway. As for the holdouts ringing the room… well, they were going to be the wild cards, weren’t they? He just hoped to hell the others would be enough to trump.
Finishing the recitation with a quick rundown of the evidence suggesting that the ancestors—and presumably
