Selma shook her head, her eyes blinking, her feet planting into the ground in a way that I knew well. A strong stance helped you face down any foe, and my cousin, hers was rock solid. Her muscles tensed, her fists balled as she looked around her as if for the first time, a sharp wildness in her eyes that I’d never seen before. Marshall and Nance, they didn’t pay her too much attention, too focussed on pawing each other and congratulating themselves on their low-rent evil genius plans.
“No,” she said, as if testing the word, getting a feel for it in her mouth. Her lips quirked before she said it again. “No.”
That got their attention, the two of them pulling away from each other with looks of irritation, Nance about to open her siren song of a mouth.
“No, Mum,” Selma said, definite, absolute, her eyes narrowing, her jaw firming. “No, I’m not going to slide under Aidan, let him fuck me and knot me, thinking its Paige. No, I’m not going to be your little facsimile of an heir. You’re on your fucking own.”
Marshall stormed over, ready to lay one of those ham sized fists on her shoulder.
“No!” she snapped, freezing him to the spot. Because the word has power, because she had never been allowed to say it. Because of all the times it had been squashed down, swallowed up, skated over. Because there was no fucking way she was going to submit to this shit anymore.
Aidan looked down at me in confusion, Nance’s spell starting to fade, so I stroked the side of his face and placed a kiss on his mouth.
“I’m coming for you,” I said. “I’m coming for the town, and I’m coming for those who murdered my father and I’m gonna put them into the ground. Just hang on.”
His eyes glittered, something feral lighting within them before it all faded away.
“So now you see,” Ulfric said, both of us standing now in the familiar darkness. “This is your purpose, all the ulva’s purpose. The balance must be restored, you need to help your sisters get free.”
I was on my feet when the world faded back, the room, my mates all clustered in close. I tapped my fist to my palm, feeling my mate’s touches, the tension in my body. Power had lit within us like a fuse, and we were ready to go off.
“Bring it on,” I said.
Epilogue
All around the world, women woke up, though they didn’t know that at the time. Some had no idea of their shifter heritage, some didn’t even know they were asleep, but for all, there was a shift. From turning around, looking at the people, at the customs that hemmed them in and wondering if they still served them, to women saying no, no, over and over, the weight of the Mother behind those words.
Kailee stood outside the temporary arena, in the little tent that passed for a change room at these kinds of MMA fights. The ones where being human wasn’t a prerequisite and no one was going to complain about fur or fangs.
“Here,” a tall man with long black hair said, taking her hands and winding the protective wraps around her fists, making her flex her hands to see if they were too tight. “You’re gonna slay tonight.”
“Thanks, Ulf,” she said, bouncing up on her toes, moving to place a sisterly kiss on his cheek. But he moved, freezing still when her lips landed just centimetres from his. They stared at each other for a second, all the bundled up shit they carried around each day, but dared not put out there, front and centre in their eyes. She watched his tongue flick out, moistening those full lips, her eyes catching every movement.
“Schuster, you’re up!” someone shouted from outside.
She was up, away from her trainer, her friend, her shadow, her focus slamming back to the bout ahead. She could hear the crowd now, and they were baying for blood and she wanted to make sure it wasn’t hers. She smacked her fists together and then nodded to Ulf before striding out, up the dirt path to the cage beyond.
“Ready to go down, little girl?” some lunk of pumped up muscle and testosterone said to her when they met at the centre of the arena. “I like my chicks on their knees so I can—”
“Teach them a valuable lesson about steroid abuse and its impact on male genitalia?” she snapped back, her face a study of disinterest. “It’s OK, I know my clit’s bigger than yours, and I’m about to show you just how much.”
“When you’se two are done?” the bored ref said, holding up a hand. “I’d say keep shit clean, but why bother. On my whistle, beat the fuck out of each other. I’ll drag the bloody corpse of whoever’s left out.”
She skipped back to her corner, watching Clit Dick do the same, murder in his eyes. She just grinned, feeling the rush of adrenalin start to pump. That was OK, there ain’t no better time to come out swinging.
Nance sat down at Adam’s laptop, logging in with the credentials she’d acquired some time ago. A relatively small amount of money to a hacker on the internet placed a keylogger on the alpha’s computer, the man too hidebound and technologically challenged to do anything as simple as run a virus check. She brought up the alpha networking software but wasn’t surprised to see the session was already running. Men looked up, peering at their screens at the sound of someone joining the video call, frowns the most common response.
“I wasn’t aware that Lupindorf had appointed its next alpha,” Alpha Johnson said, leaning back in his desk chair, hands resting on his stomach.
“They haven’t, Alpha Johnson,” she replied, tacking on the honorific a little belatedly. “I’m here as the representative of the Spehr family until one is chosen.”
“Why?” another man asked, not bothering to soften the question. “Your brothers have been in
