The nature of shifters was their unpredictability. Especially once they gave in to stronger emotions, such as anger, desperation, or fear, and acted more on instinct than on human and Fae rationality, capturing their minds and bending their wills worked only about half the time.
This was not one of those times, Raine realized as the shifter sensed something and like frightened prey his mind started spiraling, thoughts mixing with memories mixing with plans mixing with pure instinct, causing Raine’s own head to spin.
Fuck! Whirling around, Raine found Loche and Iviry, and he didn’t hesitate as he stormed up to them, even if it finally looked like they’d come together somewhat; their eyes were only on each other as Loche elegantly led her across the dance floor.
When two of Iviry’s guards tried to get in his way—as if he were the fucking danger—Raine forced his way into their minds, snarling,You’re letting me the fuck through or I’ll throw you off this ship.
“Regent, Iviry,” he snapped when neither looked his way, even as Iviry’s guards dropped to the side, letting Raine barge through the moving crowd.
They were too fucking careless.
And he needed to have a word with Iviry’s damned guards if it was this easy to get to her.
Finally, blue and gray eyes found his, and Raine forced himself to lower his voice not to alert the entire crowd.
“Trouble is heading this way,” he rushed out. “Five shifters. Strong ones—and ones trained to evade mind control. They are angry and drunk, and I am betting they’re about to corner you.”
As Raine finished, that sense of warning—the flicker of electricity—charged the air, and the peals of laughter and low murmurs that had previously seemed welcoming dropped a few octaves, the sounds becoming darker, more apprehensive.
When the crowd shifted again, Raine realized he’d been wrong.
So fucking wrong.
It wasn’t just five shifters.
Somehow, during the time he’d approached Iviry and Loche, more shifters had joined them, as well as severalhalf-Fae. The group that pushed through the paling crowd, which scrambled to the sides of the ship as they took in what was happening, was over thirty people.
But that wasn’t what had Raine’s blood first freeze and then heat so much that a menacing sound he didn’t even know he could conjure wound its way through his throat.
The half-Fae flanking the five shifters whose thoughts he’d picked up each dragged a person with them, and Raine quickly understood it was almost the entire new Havlands council.
Venko was yanked forward first, and while he sported a black eye, the one still open was wild, and he spat and snarled as he tried to get out of the much taller half-Fae’s grip. A human woman, a Fae female, and Dedrick Reinsdor were hauled forward next, each with varying degrees of injuries, but it was Frelina’s furious face as a shifter held on to her neck, shoving her behind them, that Raine couldn’t tear his eyes from.
Those fucking?—
“Iviry, get behind me,” Loche ordered, and to his credit, there wasn’t an ounce of fear in the regent’s sharp order.
When Iviry snapped something back, Loche shot her guards a look that had even the two Fae shrink back, and they quickly went around him, each flanking the Fae leader as Loche remained a step ahead of her.
Red tinted Raine’s vision as he glared from the regent to the shifter holding on to the female he’d just realized he was absolutely and utterly obsessed with, and he fucking missed Merrick and Kerym and Thissian so much his chest ached.
With one look, they would have been able to come up with a plan to get these fuckers to stand down.
Instead… Raine shot his narrowed gaze around.
Instead, they had two guards who didn’t even fucking hold on to Iviry—their fucking leader, who appeared as if she would spring before Loche any second.
Instead, he caught frightened gazes from the people hovering by the railings.
Instead, the crowd seemed even more divided than it had been to begin with as the half-Fae and shifters snarled at humans and Fae alike who came too close.
“Please tell us why you are ruining a perfectly good evening?” Loche drawled as the ones who had once been rebels—the ones the regent had freed—came to a halt before them, the instruments that the musicians had left behind lying by their feet. “And why our council looks like they’ve already been to war?”
A lethal smile threatened to break out across Raine’s face when he caught Loche’s eyes.
The regent was as furious as he was, and while Loche didn’t have magic, Raine knew what it felt like when your mate was threatened. The human leader would not need any powers other than those of his weapons, should the idiots try to step around him.
They can’t get out alive,Raine hissed into his mind as the leader moved a step forward.No matter what shit comes out of their mouths. No more chances, regent.
