She circles around to my back. I feel I should keep an eye on her. But she’s a small woman. There’s no physical damage she could do to me. But she could make things difficult between me and Zahara.
“Come, have a seat.” Itzel points to a raised slab of stone.
My feet hesitate after I’ve taken the first step towards it. The slab reminds me of the dungeons in one of Domitia’s castles. She liked to chain me up in the basement for the use of her clients. I could easily have broken the chains, but it was the psychological enslavement that Domitia got off on. And the chains made the wealthy women who sought my favor feel that they held all the power.
“I’ll just go to her room,” I say, taking a step away from the stone altar.
A sharp pain rakes across the back of my head. I look over to see that the cougar has struck me with a rock. She struck me hard, because I can see blood staining on the rock’s surface.
The blow dazes me, but it doesn’t bring me down. What does bring me down is the dagger to the chest. Itzel is on me as I fall to the ground. In the space of one moment, I have three thoughts.
My first thought is not to crush the old woman who is Zahara’s relative.
My second thought is how unlike Zahara this woman looks and feels.
“Now you’ll bleed.” Itzel’s voice sounds far away. “And when you’re close to death, you will give us the child, and the gods will be appeased.”
Bleed? Child? Gods?
My last thought is: why? I would have given Zahara this. I would have given her my life if it meant she would have the child she wanted. She didn’t need to take it.
But what had I expected? I was born a slave. As I’m dragged to the altar and my wrists are shackled in chains, I know the answer to my last question: it’s fitting that this is the way I’ll die. It’s exactly as I’ve lived my life. In bondage.
Chapter 27
Zahara
“Wake up, Zahara.”
Everything aches. My head. My arms. My legs. Even my eyelids. So, naturally, opening my eyes is the last thing I want to do.
“Zahara, you have to wake up.”
I slap at the hand shoving my shoulder. My fingers come away wet. When I open my eyes, I see blood on my claw tips.
I’m halfway through a shift. My panther feels like it’s trying to leash the human part of me that wouldn’t wake.
Pia stands over me, cradling her forearm. Blood seeps through her fingers. Her mouth is pursed, as though she’s holding in her canines.
The word sorry doesn’t enter my brain. The last thing I remember about Pia is the blow to the head she dealt me. I growl at her, preparing to give my body over to the panther to exact revenge for that cheap shot.
“Hey,” she says, holding up her bloody hands. “We can settle that score now. Or, you can deal with the more important matter at hand.”
The only matter at hand is whooping the ass of this traitor and then getting the hell out of here to find Virius.
“The ritual has begun.”
I blink a few times. Ritual? “It can’t start unless…”
I can’t bring myself to complete the sentence out loud. The ritual can’t start unless Virius is here. Which means he’s here.
Of course he’s here. I knew he would follow me. In trying to get away from him, in trying to save his life, I led him right into the trap that would kill him.
“We have to hurry,” says Pia.
“We?”
“If I hadn’t taken you out, Itzel would’ve likely chained you to the altar to wait for him. Then you’d be helpless beside him.”
I know time is of the essence, but I have to ask. “Why are you doing this? You tried to let Virius escape that first day. And now this. Why?”
“This isn’t the way,” says Pia. “I’m all for preserving our history and ways, but this? The virginal sacrifice and lambs to the slaughter bullshit, that needs to stay buried in the past.”
“Right!” I agree.
Pia and I stand there in a moment of new age, feminist solidarity. Instead of doing a fist bump, I grab the handle of the door. I still have to get out there and rescue my man like the modern heroine that I am.
We turn out of the room and walk on silent feet down the narrow corridor. My palm presses against the cold, hard stone of the walls. My ears strain for any sign of Virius. I don’t hear his deep baritone, but I do smell his unmistakable scent.
“He’s not looking so good,” says Zuma’s voice.
Peering into the clearing, I see Zuma standing over the slab. Lying prone on his back is Virius. His eyes are closed. His sun-kissed skin looks pale. His large body looks sunken in.
“Maybe you should back off a bit there, Itzel. We don’t want him to die.”
“That is his destiny.” Itzel tips a bucket on the floor towards her.
I see red. The red of Virius’s blood drips from a wound in his wrists into the bucket. That isn’t his only wound. There’s a stake in his chest. They put a fucking stake into his chest.
I’m preparing to charge forth, but something holds me back. Pia.
It takes everything in me not to lash out at her. Looking into her eyes, I see what she’s trying to say. We need a plan. There are twenty shifters watching the events unfold on that dais.
Some wear stoic, unfeeling faces. Most of the gazes are averted from the scene, as though they can’t stomach the ritual either. But the stoic faces still outnumber the two of us who are ready to spring into action.
“Um, I know it’s been a long time since you’ve gotten any,” Zuma is saying. “But cocks don’t stand up if the john they’re attached to can’t.”
“The gods demand a sacrifice,”
