My little kitten can hold her own in a fight. It made my cock stir to watch her take the larger males down. And then she turned that dagger on me. My heart had never beaten so wildly in my life.
It thuds hard in my chest as I run to find her. The thuds ring in my ears because my blood supply is low. I haven’t eaten for nearly two days. But my blood lust will have to wait until I make sure that Zahara is safe.
When I round a corner, I see her. She’s surrounded. But not by male shifters. She’s surrounded by women. All of them older. All of them with the smell of fur.
Zahara has her back to a corner as the women close in around her. Not a single fist is raised. Only voices. It looks like they’re all in the middle of an argument.
“Why should she wait?” says a woman who could only be described as a cougar. Her face is wizened with age, but her body is as supple as a coed’s. “She might as well fuck him now and be done with it.”
“It has to be done on a full moon, in accordance with the prophecy,” says Itzel, the woman who came to fetch Zahara earlier.
“This is biology,” says the cougar, “not magic. She is fertile now.”
The arguing continues from both sides of the alcove. The only one not joining in is Zahara. She looks away from the shouting, as though she isn’t hearing any of it. The faraway look in her gaze reminds me of myself, of all the times I was chained to a wall or strapped down to a bed so that a rich, upper-class woman could use my body to fill Domitia’s coin purse or garner a favor.
I never needed to be strapped down. The chain hasn’t been made that could hold me. The binds were an illusion for the human women who purchased my service. The reason I didn’t fight was a whole other game that my mistress liked to play.
Domitia was known for her power plays. She’d had me mindfucked ever since I was a child. I always bent to her will. She got off on seeing the physical manifestation of my compliance.
Is that why Zahara is standing there in the middle of this argument? Has she been mindfucked by one or all of these women? They’re talking about a prophecy. Didn’t she say something to me about a prophecy?
I take a step towards her, ready to bulldoze my way through all of them to get to her. That’s when I feel the dagger at my throat.
I only barely stop myself from taking the head of the person who threatens my life. Any other time during the last two centuries, I might not have cared that my life might end. It had all been a misery. But tonight I have known happiness, and I want another taste of it. I want another taste of Zahara.
Therefore, I can’t kill the woman behind me. She smells like Zahara. She must be kin. I don’t think Zahara would like it if I decapitated her aunt or cousin.
“Go back the way you came,” a feminine voice whispers into my ear. “Follow the passage and take the tunnel to the right. It will take you back to the surface.”
“The surface?”
“You are trying to leave, aren’t you? You are trying to escape?”
Why would I leave? This is where Zahara is. When I don’t answer her immediately, she gives an irritated sigh.
“We’d heard you weren’t right in the head.”
That is what’s whispered about me. It’s likely true, though Gaius and Hadrian get pissed any time anyone dares to say it aloud. Which is why people never dare raise their voice above a whisper if they even dare to say it.
“You know what they’re going to do to you?” the woman continues. “They’re going to breed you. They’re going to use your sperm to make a child. And then they’ll—”
“Drop the knife, Pia.”
I turn at the sound of Zahara’s voice. She still has her back against the wall. But even from this distance, I can see the tension in her limbs. She’s poised to pounce, like a jaguar scenting its prey.
Her gaze flashes a bright yellow. Her skin bristles, like it’s not flesh, but fur. Her white teeth flash and I catch a bit of fang. It causes the beast below to stir with desire for her.
“He’s trying to escape,” says Pia.
And then there are more daggers, fangs, and fur. But when I look up, all I see is Zahara. There is a flash of hurt in her dark eyes before her features turn to steel.
Chapter 8
Zahara
“I just want to make sure you understand what’s at stake here, child,” Itzel says, bringing my attention back to the lecture at hand.
I had drifted off as the voices of the women rose up from both sides of me. Those standing on the right with Itzel are the purists. They believe that I should follow the letter of the prophecy and wait to give up the goods at the appointed time, which is the full moon in two nights’ time.
Those prowling on the left are led by Zuma, who isn’t a jaguar. She was originally from my father’s tribe but moved down to Guatemala a generation ago. Though she is a cougar, the jaguar shifters accept her. What isn’t so acceptable is her disregard for the old ways of the Maya.
“I just want to make sure she knows she can use his stake for a little fun before she has to get down to business,” says Zuma, giving me a wink.
I don’t return the cheeky gesture. I purse my lips and let the air out through my nose. For all
