Shadow's Edge (26 page)

“Won’t you take
his
word as proof? Are you calling him a liar?”

Leander heard LeBlanc grind his teeth together and smiled in grim satisfaction to himself. She was clever. Whatever LeBlanc’s answer, he either conceded defeat or
admitted treason. The Law didn’t allow for Alphas to openly challenge each other without provoking a fight to the death.

Another voice interrupted, and the room turned to him. Viscount Weymouth.

“No one is impugning Lord McLoughlin here, Lady Jenna—he has vouched for your ability, as well as your motives. But the Law demands proof, and your continued objection puts you in quite a precarious position. We are living in dangerous times...we must know your loyalties and learn your Gifts, if you have any, especially since it will be so easy for you to provide any kind of proof. You are either
Ikati
or you are not. You are either with us or against us.”

Murmurs of assent were heard around the room. Leander saw nodding heads and smug looks of congratulation passed from face to face.

With a flush of anger that brought the blood to his face, Leander curled his hands into tight fists. Morgan was right. These men were nothing more than posturing idiots, enamored by the sound of their own voices, too complacent with unchallenged control and authority to have any empathy or humility left. They ruled only for themselves, for their own pleasure and comfort and egos.

For the first time in his life, Leander felt that perhaps it was time for a change.

“The
Law
,” Jenna repeated, mocking. “Right. You can never escape the death grip of your perfect, shining, barbaric
Law
.”

She stared at them all with eyes of frost...then her gaze found Leander across the room.

All at once the calculated nonchalance seemed to drain away from her face, leaving it open and naked, as if the layers of an onion had been peeled back to reveal its tender
core. Her eyes shone clear and bright, her smile faded to the barest, melancholy lift of her lips. Her voice, when it came, hovered just above a whisper.

“I almost feel sorry for you. You don’t know what you’re missing. You don’t know how amazing it is to be...free.”

A giggle from another dark corner of the room. Leander knew at once it was Morgan, though he didn’t turn to look.

“Leander has told the Assembly that you Shifted
before
your birthday, Lady Jenna,” someone said sharply, ignoring the muffled laugh from Morgan.

Leander cut his gaze to the heavily accented voice.

Durga, the Baron Bhojak, Alpha from Nepal.

He sat in front of Jenna, in the center of the table, his hands folded across the swell of his belly, legs splayed out in front of him, his posture that of someone bored entirely by the proceedings. But Leander knew better. Durga had earned himself a reputation for running his colony with an iron fist. He was old-school, a hard-liner, a purist. The Law above all.

“Did he?” she murmured, still looking at Leander with those glittering eyes. It sent a tremor straight through his core.
You don’t know what you’re missing
...

“Yes. This is...unusual. Highly unusual. Incredible, actually.” Durga brushed an invisible piece of lint from the lapel of his black suit jacket and kept his gaze lowered as he continued. “I do not recall, at least in my lifetime, a single instance of a half-Blood
Ikati
Shifting before their twenty-fifth birthday.”

There was an open challenge in his voice. Leander watched as she moved her gaze to Durga and tilted her head to the side, considering him in silence.

Alejandro sat in a chair slightly angled toward him. Even from across the room, Leander felt the desire pulsing off the man in waves. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Jenna. They trailed up and down her body, over and over. He stared at her with his lips pursed and brow furrowed as if he was trying to memorize a highly difficult equation.

Leander pushed away from the wall and lowered his fists to his sides. His lungs tightened under a band of steel that made it hard to breathe.

“Well,” Jenna said lightly, brushing her hair over her shoulder with a graceful, feminine move of her hand, “it wasn’t the first time.”

Leander, forgetting Alejandro completely, blinked at Jenna.

It wasn’t the first time?

No one moved. The silence was deafening.

“The first time was when I was still a child. And there have been other times since then, though not in years, I’ve been too careful...” She stopped herself, her eyes flickered over to him. A faint blush of pink rose up on her cheeks.

Leander was the first to recover. “How old were you the first time?” he asked into the raw and hungry silence.

“Ten,” she said, her voice wavering. She cleared her throat. “I was ten. It was the day my father disappeared.”

Not a sound was to be heard in the drawing room. Not even a single breath was drawn.

Ten.

Leander felt all the blood drain away from his head. He had first Shifted at eleven, the youngest of his peers, the youngest of his entire colony. No one else he knew had made the turn before twelve. And like him, all the others were full-Blooded
Ikati
.

But if she had been Shifting since she was
ten
...

“Impossible,” Durga scoffed to a chorus of agreement from the gathered men. Their voices were first tentative, then grew more confident as he repeated it again. He crossed his thick arms over his chest and shook his head. “That’s simply
not
possible!”

Only Viscount Weymouth remained silent, gaping at her. Alejandro leapt from the chair as if it had burned him, as did two other men, staring hard at Jenna with faces ominous and tight and filled with a pinched, dark desire—animal, wholly dangerous.

“If this is true...” Alejandro didn’t finish his sentence. He lifted an open hand toward Jenna, then dropped it, his mouth working silently like a fish out of water.

Leander took a step away from the wall. He never moved his gaze from Alejandro’s face.

“It is a lie,” Durga said, flatly. He pushed to his feet, straightened his dinner jacket, and peered at Jenna with a sneer, disfiguring his face. “Do not forget who this is, gentlemen—this is the offspring of tainted blood, sired from an illegal union. She is the daughter of a
criminal.
She is half
human
, clearly inferior, clearly a danger to all of our tribes!”

He pointed a stout, accusing finger at her, his face hard and red. “No half-Blood Ikati has
ever
Shifted at that age. That is a fact. Not only is she lying, she simply is—”

“
I am my father’s daughter
.” Jenna’s voice rang out through the close and suddenly suffocating room, its pitch clear and strong. “I am not a liar and I’m not inferior to anyone. Especially
you
.”

She stared at Durga with a look of such vitriol he paused with his finger in midair, as if shock had muddled his brain, making him forget what he was doing there.

He blinked once, astonished, and Leander knew exactly what the man was thinking. He was simply flabbergasted she would dare speak to him this way. To
stand up
to him. He most likely could not remember the last time anyone had done so, if ever in his life.

He was Alpha of the
Ikati,
a leader of beasts that paraded as men, a deadly, revered warrior, a lord and a master and a ruler of all he surveyed.

He was absolutely, unequivocally beyond question, beyond reproach. It was their way. It was his birthright. It was the Law.

And she was nothing but a
woman
.

“You will prove to us all, right this minute, whether or not you are one of us,” another man from the circle insisted. This drew nods of agreement around the room. “If you do not—”

“Show them,” Leander said roughly, moving out of the shadows to pace toward her. He felt the rising tension in the room, saw the looks of cold calculation on the faces of the men, sensed something ugly and dangerous beginning to unfold.

“No.”

Her eyes met his, but her face had closed off, the stubborn defiance was there again. She wouldn’t listen to him, he knew. But he had to make her listen, because she was putting herself in terrible jeopardy.

“If you don’t, there will be consequences, my dear,” Viscount Weymouth said, his voice wavering. He looked stricken by some unnamed terror. He hadn’t moved from his chair, though by now the entire room was on its feet, energized by the growing conflict. He cleared his throat and
spoke again, his tremulous voice now gone quiet. “Very, very unpleasant consequences, I’m sorry to say.”

“Jenna,” Alejandro began, his tone soft and capitulating though his face was dark with something Leander didn’t like at all, “
meu caro,
perhaps you do not understand.”

He moved a step closer to her, reached a hand out toward her but thought better of it when she stepped back with a grimace. He smoothed the hand over his hair instead and smiled to hide the fleeting look of anger that crossed his face.

“We mean no disrespect. We do not wish to alarm you, or to harm you, for that matter. We are only here to get a few answers, as
friends
.”

He slanted a calculated look toward Durga, who took the hint. He lowered the arm he still held out toward Jenna and sat down heavily in his chair with a look of astonished outrage. But Leander knew it was all a ruse. They
would
harm her if she didn’t obey, and quickly. He was at her side in ten paces, angling his body between her and the roomful of silent men.

He had to make her understand. He had to protect her.

“I’m well aware of how you treat your friends,” Jenna said coldly just as Leander reached her.

“Don’t do this, please.” He said it low into her ear, his fingers resting on her forearm. “All they need is a simple confirmation of the truth. There is no need for this.”

“I’m not afraid of them.” Her eyes were as sharp as her voice.

“You would be wise to be very afraid of them. They don’t know you as I do. To them you are only a threat, an unknown quantum. They are not as...fond of you as I am. And they will not be as lenient with you. They won’t be lenient at all.”

She hesitated, lowering her gaze to his fingers on her arm. Then she looked up at him, her gaze clear and guileless, all traces of anger and posturing gone. “They want the truth? I asked
you
for the truth, and look where that got me,” she said, her voice gone small. “I don’t know if the truth is all it’s cracked up to be.”

With a flash of intuition, Leander knew what he had to do.

“Fine,” he said roughly, tightening his fingers on her arm. “Don’t know.”

He pulled her against his chest, took her face between his hands, and kissed her hard on the lips.

For a moment there was nothing between them but her body rigid with anger and shock, her lips flattened, her face twisting away. He held her face in his hands, hearing the murmurs of surprise from the gathered men and the sharp intake of breath from Alejandro, and kept his lips pressed against hers.

He felt her heartbeat, pounding wild, angry. He heard the little sounds of protest she made in her throat, felt her hands balled against his chest, trying to push him away. He thought she would never relent.

But then something softened between them, just barely. A shade of tension eased from her neck, her lips turned from stone to velvet. Her arms, braced so hard against his chest, began to release, then draw up around his neck. Her body arched against him and she drew in a breath through her nose.

Her lips parted.

She took his tongue into her mouth, and he slid his hands into the glossy weight of her hair, cradling her head, feeling the warm, lush length of her body against his. She
slid her fingers up his neck. They tightened in his hair, drawing his head down further, deepening their kiss.

She made another low sound in her throat, but this one was purely erotic.

He forgot his hasty plan to save her, forgot his jealousy and worry and everything else in the universe. Only a single thought remained as he tasted the honeyed sweetness of her mouth and held her in his arms, so slim and firm and real against him. Unbelievably real.

Mine.

She finally pulled away, her eyes still closed, her lips brushing against his as she breathed out a single, ragged word.

“Bastard.”

And then, for the second time in four days, Leander was left staring at Jenna’s empty dress as it slithered to the ground at his feet.

In all her life, Jenna had never been so humiliated. Or so angry. He
kissed
her. He
forced
her to Shift. In front of
everyone
.

But the worst part, the most agonizingly wretched part, was the way she had responded.

She hid her face in her hands and groaned as she remembered it. The way her skin began to tingle and flush even as she was trying to fight him off, her mouth opening to accept his tongue, his scent filling her nostrils, his hands an inescapable vise around her face, the hard length of him suddenly pressed against her, holding her captive.