Marc couldn’t see.
If he was, it was faint.The motion of his lungs was barely there.But then, his eyes weren’t working properly.
They were blurred with tears and all he could see was the rage on his peoples’ faces as they approached the Panther, disgust emanating from their pores, fear and hatred, too.
God, she’d just outed herself to their Pride in the worst possible way.El would be shunned, he knew.Especially if the Pantera were behind this unprovoked attack.
A shout had his head jerking toward the source of the noise, and he saw Shawn, a male who wasn’t his Triad brother but who also was, thanks to the Mother’s divine intervention, coordinating the men who were trying to put out the flames.
He was a soldier, and Marc had seen Shawn’s record.He’d dealt with worse shit than this in his years in the CUBS.
The acronym might have sounded cutesy, but what the Shifter troops did was anyone’s guess.
It was like saying a SEAL was all heart, not a mean son of a bitch when it came down to it in a firefight.
Marc shrugged off the stupid thoughts as he staggered to Trip’s side.
The Panther reared back and bared her teeth at him, but then she sawhim, and stopped.
In her eyes, he saw El.The human was trapped within the Panther form, and Marc knew how true that was.
Last night, she’d shifted for the first time.They hadn’t even known she was a damn Shifter, and jealousy had turned her into the animal standing here today.
She had no control over the cat.Control was learned from childhood, from the moment of the first shift.Now, she had a feral cat, one who’d been denied and tucked away for decades, and whose mates were under attack.
Jesus, could the day get any more complicated?
Adam skidded to a halt at his side.“What the fuck’s going on, Marc?”he asked, backing up when El bared her teeth at him too.
“It’s El.She’s a Panther Shifter.”
Adam swore under his breath, but the people around them heard Marc’s declaration, and gossip soon spread.
Marc ignored it to swipe at his eyes and to clear his vision.He saw Trip was, in fact, breathing, and relief made him feel nauseated.
“We need to get him to shift.”
Adam nodded, then swore again.The sound of his thudding footprints backing off caught Marc’s attention, and he turned to see where Ryan’s PA was going.
Seeing Ryan, torn up, burnt, his hair near as dammit singed off his fucking head had Marc’s eyes widening in horror.But the sound that El made?
It was a scream.
A pure Panther scream that had the hair at the back of his neck jolting to attention.The beast’s head swiveled between her two downed mates, but Ryan made it easier on her by collapsing against Adam’s side and letting his brother haul him over to where Trip lay too still on the ground.
“We need to make them shift,” Marc repeated, and Ryan grunted.
“I don’t know if I can.”
Adam gnawed at his cheek.“Do you think it’s true what they say about a Pantera female?”
Marc blinked, scouring his memory for what ‘they’ said about Panther Shifter females.
When nothing was forthcoming, he turned to Adam and demanded, “What?I’ve heard nothing about extra gifts?”
Adam shrugged.“Don’t know if it’s true or not, but when a female shifts, her mates can get caught up in it.”
“Why would that happen?”If anything, in their culture it was the other way around.
