He nodded thoughtfully. “Tristan’s right. You’ve never had any sort of proper training, not in a larger framework. If nothing else, it’ll help you to at least understand their structure. It certainly couldn’t hurt. If you’re to lead an army, you have to understand that army.”
“Yeah. True. Something we probably all should’ve clued into before now.”
Austin shrugged. “You’re a unique case. Your position in the army isn’t the same as everyone else’s, and you have different talents. It’s been working so far, but with all these new people, and with the size we are now, the system we’ve got going might become increasingly difficult to maintain.” He shook his head, baffled. “But how did a fight over a schedule get us here? Niamh…” He laughed softly. “She said she was feeling like her old self again and mentioned how happily meddlesome pucaswere in olden times—I have a feeling we haven’t seen her real power yet.”
Not even close,Ivy House said.There is a reason she held a high position in that circle. I’d worried she wouldn’t reclaim her former glory. Looks like she just needed higher stakes. The mages pushed her. Their leaving was a blessing in disguise. She’ll rise again.
A feeling like Ivy House rubbing her hands together, as though she were some sort of villain, infused me. That couldn’t be good.
“Ignorance is bliss,” I mumbled. At least for a little longer.
A crease formed in Austin’s brow—he couldn’t hear Ivy House and had no clue how dark she could be—before he gradually pulled away. “Time to get to it. Are you ready?”
“She’s in no real danger, right?” I asked as he took my hand and led me toward the cluster of shifters. They fell silent as we drew near.
“No,” he murmured. “Less so than normal, I’d wager.”
I didn’t get a chance to ask why as the group fanned out into a haphazard line. Aurora stepped forward…along with a big dude stacked with muscle and sporting a hardcore resting dick face. He had tree-trunk arms and topped out at probably six foot three. There was not an ounce of fat padding his frame.
“She’s going to fighthim?” I accidentally said, my face probably showing my intense unease.
Aurora’s eyes glittered in that way that said she was laughing at me. I had zero idea why. He was a monster compared to her.
“She wants the position he holds,” Austin said. “This is how she gets it. Now, Jess, as co-alpha, you will be monitoring the challenge. You’ve heard?—”
“Wait, what?” I blurted.
He slowed his words. “You will be monitoring the challenge. I’ll help you. It’s important that you get practice on when tointercede and when to let it go. When it’s me being challenged, my well-being will fall solely in your hands, as will my status as alpha. Stop the fight too early, and you risk people thinking you have no faith in me. Too late, and…curtains. You’ve had experience being challenged and experience when someone—me—cuts your challenge short.”
My thoughts flashed to my fight with Sebastian.
“You’ve seen me battle a phoenix when victory was anything but decided, and you didn’t intercede,” Austin continued. “This is just like that.”
He failed to mention that Icouldn’thave interceded in his battle with Cyra. I hadn’t been strong enough to take her, or even to help him.
“You can also heal,” he said. “So, you have a better idea than most about how close a fight can get.”
“Is this another one of Niamh’s ideas?” I asked as quietly as I could, trying not to move my mouth. “Toss me into the fire?”
“No. This is training. There might be times when a challenge for me comes out of the blue. Maybe not even a challenge, but just an attack. You’ll be thrown into it just like you are now. The rules will still apply.”
Maybe I was biased, but I liked the gargoyle way of doing things much more than the shifter way. None of this felt natural. Leadership shouldn’t rely solely on strength and power. A good leader could still lead when they were older, assomegargoyles had proven. Hell, Mimi hadn’t been the strongest or most powerful, but the pack had helped her keep her placement anyway because she was excellent for their well-being. This just seemed barbaric.
But I nodded, because it wasn’t up to me to change this culture. That was up to Austin. He’d already loosened the pack mentality and blended much better with the gargoyles. Hopefully, he’d come to see that experience, intelligence, andlogic went a lot further in a leadership role than strength and brawn.
“Right. Fine,” I said, doing a really good job of hiding my annoyance. Hopefully.
“Okay.”
Austin faced the others, who fanned out a little more, giving the challengers space. Aurora and the mammoth stripped off their clothes. Someone came forward to take them, and then the challengers nodded respectfully at each other. That was nice, at least. There was no animosity.
When they shifted, Aurora’s flash of light and heat was significantly brighter and hotter than the other’s.
“Wouldn’t males have an advantage over females with this system?” I couldn’t help but ask as Aurora morphed into a Siberian tiger like her dad. The other guy changed into a massive wolf, but his form wasn’t as large as hers. “And the type of animal? Wouldn’t this system pass up someone who’s extraordinary at organizing and leading and managing a pack because they turned into a…a deer, or something? Or even a smaller wolf than this guy?”
The wolf’s head lowered as he sized up Aurora, slinking around her as wolves so often did.
“Sometimes yes, and definitely yes,” Austin replied. “It’s something I’ve thought about because a situation like that has cropped up. Most packs are small, and the members of the hierarchy are mostly peacekeepers and enforcers. They’re extensions of the alpha, who needs to protect the pack against people trying to take it over. They hold power like a policeman might. The rest of the town is essentially just a town, part of a pack but not needing to challenge for the protective, peacekeeping role. As you saw with Kingsley’s pack, there are a great many more townspeople minding their own business than enforcers. Our setup here…is quite a bit different,especially concerning the various species we have cohabiting,” he continued with a faint shrug. “We need to stop thinking like a pack and a cairn and Ivy House, but rather as one big unit. For that, we’ll need a governing body. That body will have a different skill set than the peacekeepers and will need to elevate themselves in a different way.” He paused. “I just haven’t figured out how that’s going to work yet. I want us to talk to my brother about it, and maybe a couple of the other more levelheaded alphas too. I also want us to talk to some of the cairn leaders, if we can, to ask how their setup works. Tristan is very knowledgeable, but he didn’t hold the position. There’s a lot he doesn’t know. I want to ask the lead basajaunak…”
