Gladiator Cheetah, page 17
part #2 of Gladiator Shifters Series
Not until the wolves cheated, at least, and the entire pack of them swarmed Aeolis, there in the center of the ring. Then she did scream, and reached for a rifle she didn't have, because Aeolis had made her leave it in the Jeep. And one way or another, it would all be over long before she could race back up, get it, and return.
Never, ever again, she promised herself, but even as she came to her feet, crying out in objection, so, too, did the Imvelo shifters.
But they didn't just rise. They stampeded.
Two were gazelles; Shannon had known that. They were a pair, a man and a woman, with ridged horns that curved gracefully upward. Shannon would have imagined that they would be reluctant to leap into a pack of predators, but they were swift and certain, showing no fear. That might, Shannon supposed, have to do with the fact that she was pretty sure they were at least half again as large as gazelles of their type usually were. They bounced in and pranced with delicate hooves that clearly bore down a lot of pressure on tails and feet, then spun and ran at a truly astonishing speed, drawing wolves after them so that other shifters could…
…could smash into them without mercy. There was an elephant in the arena. She waded around, throwing wolves stupid enough to get near her with her tusks, and once, with her trunk. She simply picked it up and threw it against the wall with huge force. It slithered to the earth and didn't rise again. Shannon suspected it never would.
Lions swatted wolves out of the air as the elephant threw them, leaping like house cats with a mouse toy. One wolf shifted as a lion caught it, and Shannon averted her gaze as the feline's back feet slashed at a human's defenseless belly. A wildebeest charged through the lions' space, tossing its horns and catching the wolves that jumped at its face. For a few seconds, enough wolves piled on to bring the wildebeest to its knees, but Aeolis appeared, slamming into the top wolf. Blood spattered, and the wildebeest surged to its feet again.
The noise was incredible, the air filled with snarls and barks and roars and howls, all momentarily dimming beneath the elephant's irritated trumpet, then rising again. Shannon wanted to press her hands over her ears, but she couldn't make herself move even that much, as if the most primal parts of her brain demanded that she stay still so she wouldn't become prey, herself.
Joash alone of the shifters stood to the side, as human in appearance as Shannon, a look of ancient sorrow in his gold eyes.
For a full minute or two, she had no sense of who was winning, only that sheer chaos was unfolding in front of her. Then the floor began to shudder with rhythmic pounding, so loud, so steady, that dust fell from the cave roof, drifting in pulses toward the sand floor. Before she could guess what was happening, a rhinoceros pounded through the entrance to the arena floor.
It smashed the entrance itself, widening it to accommodate its own girth as it sped onto the sand. Wolves and Imvelo shifters alike scrambled out of the way, but the rhino, incredibly fast for something of its size, spun and went after a wolf, impaled it, tossed it aside, did it again, and again, until the wolves scampered for the seating, for the entrance, and the rhino chased them back to the arena's entrance, where it stood screaming and trumpeting, until the last wolf had fled.
By then the rest of the Imvelo shifters had returned to human form, scattered around the arena, some favoring injuries, but everyone staring at the rhino. It bellowed a few more times, sending its anger after the wolves, before it turned back to the rest of the arena.
It shifted as it did so, leaving Ndleleni heaving with the same breathless fury in its space.
Shannon squeaked with surprise while most of the Imvelo shifters moved swiftly and smoothly to crowd around Nido, murmuring relief and thanks and already sharing stories of what they'd all just experienced.
Aeolis, though, shifted to cheetah form and took a few long, smooth leaps to Shannon's side, then shifted again and caught her in his arms to crush her against his chest. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." Shannon spoke into his chest, then lifted her head, aching with worry. "Are you?"
"He barely scraped me," Aeolis promised, then looked toward Joash, who remained solitary and sorrowful at the edge of the arena seating. "I never would have believed they'd do that with him here."
"Just because you worship him doesn't mean everybody will," Shannon said as gently as she could.
Aeolis looked at her, surprised. "I respect him, I don't wo…" Even he seemed to hear the doubt in his voice, and he sighed, a weak smile coming and going. "I don't worship him," he said again, this time more softly. "Revere might be a better word. But clearly you're right, anyway. And I have to submit to his judgment now."
Real surprise coursed through Shannon. "What's there to judge? You not only won, but then they broke the rules of engagement."
"Shifters died here today," Aeolis replied simply. "Shifters who hadn't entered the arena under a battle pact."
"None of them were the good guys," Shannon said indignantly. "Which is lucky, if you ask me. I don't know what would have happened if Ndleleni—I didn't know he was a shifter!" she added, changing the subject but still indignant.
"It wasn't my business to tell you, nor his desire to. Most of his true kin have been hunted to the edge of extinction, and he holds things close." Aeolis frowned toward Nido, a gentle, concerned expression. "I hope he'll be all right, after this."
"He will be," Shannon said with conviction. As Aeolis lifted his eyebrows, looking at her questioningly, she said, "He has you to make sure he will be. Come on." She took his hand, squeezing his fingers. "Let's go talk to Joash."
"You don't have to," Aeolis said, sounding uncertain now, but Shannon snorted.
"Of course I do. He's gorgeous and all, but somebody's gotta kick him in the shins if he decides something dumb, and you're never gonna do that."
"I'd like to say you're wrong, but…" Aeolis tightened his hand around hers in turn. "Together, then."
"Always." Hand in hand, they crossed to the tiger shifter, who lifted his gaze to watch them approach, and sighed when they stood in front of him.
"I wanted so much for this to be a simple happy occasion," he said mildly. "Two people finding each other, love conquering all. And it has, because without the love you share, this place would have fallen to wolves and human hunters alike. But I hoped no shifters would die today. We're few enough as it is. More than you'd suppose," he said to Shannon, who had been about to ask, "but not so many, in the grand scale of things. You've done nothing wrong," he said then, obviously to Aeolis. "None of this is your fault. It wasn't you who broke the rules of engagement, nor your people who paid for that foolishness. This will reverberate through the wolf clans, but won't impact the rest of you."
"That seems unlikely," Shannon said, not exactly under her breath.
Joash and Aeolis both gave her sharp looks, although Aeolis's had humor in it. "She's right, you know," he said to Joash, and the tiger shifter shrugged agreement.
"Queens often are." He sighed, looking at the bodies, which had, a little to Shannon's surprise, remained wolves. "What will we do with these?"
"I'll carry them out," one of the shifters said, distastefully. "At least that way we'll only have to make one journey."
Aeolis frowned. "Are the tunnels big enough for you?"
"I think so." The shifter turned into the elephant and went to see, while Nido approached Shannon and Aeolis.
"If Liyana doesn't fit, I do. I can pull them on a litter. They can be left for the hyenas."
"They will be burned." Joash's tone brooked no argument. "They may have disgraced themselves, but the ceremony of fire is more to protect the living than honor the dead. I will preside, and it will be done."
Ndleleni dropped his gaze, nodding, and the elephant shifter returned to say, "I'll fit through most of them. We can make do, where I won't." She shifted to her elephant form again and went around the arena, picking up dead wolves and draping them over her back.
Shannon pressed both hands over her mouth, both sickened and fascinated. A couple of the wolves ended up on Nido's back, instead, and Liyana carried one in her trunk, too, as the surviving shifters began to file out of the arena. Shannon, hanging way back, whispered, "What's the ceremony of fire?" while Joash doused the arena torches.
"It's what you imagine." Aeolis took one of the remaining torches and offered Shannon his other arm, walking quietly and carefully behind the line of human-shaped shifters. "Like a Viking funeral, for shifters. We burn our bodies, at death, to ensure human scientists never happen upon us."
"That's both sad and beautiful," Shannon said after a few moments' consideration. "Will their families be able to come?"
"No," Joash said, behind them. "I'll bring the news myself."
"I'm sure the pack will tell them before you do," Aeolis said.
"No doubt, but despite today, people do tend to believe me."
Shannon glanced over her shoulder at the tiger shifter. "Why is that?"
"I'm extremely, extremely pretty."
Taken aback, Shannon laughed out loud, the sound bouncing up and down the cave walls. She clapped a hand over her mouth, embarrassed, but at least both Aeolis and Joash were grinning.
"It's true," Joash said languidly. "That is part of why people tend to believe me. We're shallow, untrustworthy creatures, we people, and want to believe in beauty."
A kerfuffle sounded in front of them, voices suddenly bouncing off the walls the same way Shannon's laughter had. All three of them exchanged glances, then hurried onward, worried, only to find the procession had reached a spot slightly too small for Liyana to fit through, and now they were rearranging dead wolves. There were only—only!—seven of them, but that turned out to be a lot, when they had to be re-loaded onto an elephant with only a foot or so to spare on either side. Liyana had knelt to let others load her, and when she stood again, filling the passageway, Shannon got a thrill of claustrophobia that had never previously bothered her.
She was glad when, a slow, long walk later, they emerged into what proved to be a brilliantly sunny afternoon. Shannon stopped, blocking the sun with her hands, and stared around the green savannah in astonishment. "I was expecting it to be night, somehow…."
"It felt like we were down there a long time." Aeolis pulled her into an embrace, burying his nose in her hair. "And maybe we were, in a way."
"I'm so glad you're all right." Sudden tears tightened Shannon's throat, as if emerging into daylight had released emotion she hadn't allowed herself to feel while they were still underground. "I knew you could beat him in a fight, but when the whole pack went after you…if the rest of the Imvelo shifters hadn't been there…."
"But they were," he said gently. "Shannon, you've been through so much in this past week. I can't believe how strong you are."
"Week?" She looked up with an incredulous, wet laugh. "God, you're right, aren't you? Today's the 7th day since I got here. Please, please promise me something, Aeolis?"
"Anything."
From the sincerity in his golden eyes, Shannon knew he meant it with all his heart, which made her smile a little as she said, "Please promise me the next week won't be this crazy-busy?"
"Oh, I promise," he agreed fervently. "I promise." He buried his face in her hair again, then moved his lips to her throat and murmured, "Maybe it could be another kind of crazy-busy, though," and a shiver ran through her.
"I could live with that," she admitted in a purr. "I don't suppose we could just sneak off now…?"
Aeolis, moving his mouth to hers, smiled against her lips. "I'm afraid not. We're going to have to do the funeral pyre now, before everyone comes back from the neighboring villages, and someone will need to clean the blood from the sand in the arena, and I'd like to check on that cheetah queen before the day is out…"
"Oh my god!" Shannon stepped back and threw her hands in the air, laughing. "I thought dating another athlete was hard, but you're impossible! Where do we find time for each other in all of that? Will we have romantic moments of me lying on top of the Jeep with my rifle, watching you through the scope just so I can see you a couple times a day? And let me tell you, your cheetah form is pretty cool and all, but it's not, like, sexy, so I don't want to just be watching you lope all over the savannah with your spots and everything, you hear me?"
"I'd do what she says," Joash said, passing by.
"I intend to," Aeolis murmured, and bent his head to kiss Shannon, a soft, sweet kiss with promises of so much more. "I intend to. For the rest of my life."
EPILOGUE
18 months later
Two cheetah cubs, lanky but clumsy with youth, chased each other around the savannah at breakneck speeds, crashing into each other and somersaulting across the dying winter grasses. A larger male cheetah burst out of the brush, running them down; one of the cubs leaped into the air in terror while the other lost its footing and slammed face first into the earth.
Aeolis shifted to human, absolutely weeping with laughter, while Shannon, sitting on the Jeep's hood a few dozen feet away, let go a staccato round of applause and stood up on the vehicle. "All right! Everybody come home now, it's time to go eat!"
Aeolis turned back to a cheetah and picked one of the cubs up by its scruff while the other raced along with him, running in and out of his legs in an attempt to trip him. He booted it aside and it bounced across the ground, then scrambled back to try again. After a second failure, it ran ahead, shifting from cheetah to barely-staggering human toddler between steps.
Shannon jumped off the Jeep and collected the little girl, kissing her hair. "Was that fun? Were you fast? That's my girl. Ack. Don't drop him, Ay. Don't—Aeolis!"
The second cub got dumped on its butt, squealing indignantly as he, too, shifted from cheetah to toddler. "Mama! Thump!"
"Oh, no," Shannon disagreed. "Mama didn't go thump. You went thump!"
He gave her a look of exasperation that children his age shouldn't be able to command, yet manifestly did. Aeolis, shifting to human, picked the little boy up, issued a completely insincere, "Sorry," and pulled Shannon into his free arm to kissing first her, then their daughter, then their son.
Shannon leaned into the kiss, then gave him the best scolding look she could come up with. "Please don't drop our children, Ay."
"It's good for them."
"I'm not sure it's good for anybody to be dropped. Come on," she said more firmly. "We have to get the kids back to the village. Nido radioed in about trespassers on the northern border and I want to go check it out."
"What your mama means is she wants to go plant a dart in a poacher's ass," Aeolis said to the kids, who looked at one another before, in a chorus, yelling, "PochaSAAS!"
"My parents are supposed to be here in two weeks," Shannon told Aeolis. "You get to explain this to them."
He stole another kiss, murmured, "Any time," and, after loading the kids into their car seats, they drove off into the sunset together.
please turn the page for an excerpt from GLADIATOR HAWK
EXCERPT: GLADIATOR HAWK
Susan Connolly had known about shapeshifters forever.
Practically forever, anyway. Since before her son was born, anyway. Her life was divided into two epochs: Before Jason and After Jason, so anything that came before his birth counted as 'forever' ago.
She had thought she'd left shapeshifters behind, though. She'd certainly tried. Learning her boyfriend—Jason's father, Blake Lockwood—was a shapeshifter had been enough to ghost him on, before she even knew she was pregnant. But Jason had taken after his father's side of the family, so now there were days when Susan was just grateful she hadn't given birth to an egg.
But it wasn't just Jason, and it wasn't just Blake-from-long-ago. It was the wolf shapeshifter Remus Sverre, who had cornered Susan, then tried to kill her boss, who also turned out to be a shifter.
It was Scott Asher, her most recent ex-boyfriend and—more importantly, it turned out—Remus's lackey. He wasn't a shifter himself, but he'd only been dating her to get at the Gladiator Foundation's secret database of shapeshifter families, a genealogical record that dated back thousands of years. Three months ago, he'd stolen it. She hadn't seen him since.
And if Susan ever got her hands on him again, she was going to squeeze his head so hard his eyeballs popped out.
She muttered, "Splorch," under her breath, and thought that most people would probably be satisfied with imagining their revenge.
But she'd made a career out of not being satisfied with anything but the brass ring. She'd gone to college at seventeen, graduated in three years, and had her MBA two years later. She'd worked for charitable foundations, trying to make the world a better place while she rose through the ranks. Made friends in high places, hoping they'd pay off one day.
Of course, the friendship that paid off turned out to be one from her undergrad days, just an ordinary friendship, not one she'd hoped to leverage. But then she hadn't known then that big lumbering shy Garius Beren, who was lazing his way through a degree, was related to those Berens, either. She'd only half remembered him, when he rang a few years later to ask, without preamble, if she would like to be the new head of the Gladiator Foundation, the charitable arm of the billion-dollar Gladiator Group.
Susan, age twenty-seven at the time, had said yes, of course.
A week after she started, she found out she was pregnant.
If she could manage running a global charity while being the single mother of a shapeshifting toddler, she could sure as hell find Scott Asher and pop his eyeballs out of his head.
Which was why she was now stalking a fundraiser she'd made a public statement about not being able to attend. It was hosted by the Selkie Group, the sea life preservation program that Scott Asher worked for. Susan was certain he would be a no-show if he thought she would be there, but figured she might finally get a line on him if she wasn't supposed to be in attendance. She usually worked out of the foundation's Italian headquarters, so being unavailable for a fundraiser in Cork, Ireland, wasn't entirely out of the question.
