Lily smiles and nods, wiggling her fingers at us. “Talk more later?”
“Absolutely. Go,” my minx says as she sips her martini. We watch them scamper off, and she chuckles as she turns to me.
“Are they all like that?” I mutter, rubbing my temples.
“No, Mercury’s on the eccentric side. Though, I guess everyone’s mad here,” she muses, standing on her tiptoes and looking around. “I think I saw our family over by the outdoor bar. I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise.”
I look over and see Talia spinning Baby like no one’s business, her eyes watching the sizable crowds that fill the room for anyone to come close to Sampson. I knew she’d be taking her job seriously.
Given the look of the crowd here, I can’t say that I blame her. My minx grabs my hand again and blinks us to their side. I have to say, she’s come a long way with that since she was dropping glasses mid-air on every try. She can get multiple people decent distances and herself long distances and through the portal to come out of the Rift.
She’s a natural if I’ve ever met one.
“Oi, Sampson, Golden Goddess. How’s it hanging?”
My primary gives us a look as if she’s ready to gut the both of us and growls through gritted teeth, “Thirty fucking minutes of chatty how-do-you-dos with morons and that’s what you have to say?”
“Oh, love, don’t fret. It’ll get easier as people drink and break off into rooms and groups and such. No need for the frowny face.”Minx leans in and brushes her lips over her mate’s, pressing their foreheads together.
I figure if it’s okay for them to have a moment, then I can have one, too. I stroll closer to the guest of honor and yank him close, stealing a kiss. “How about you, Sampson? Are you ready to jump ship for Bermuda on the yacht yet?”
He sighs, giving me that lethargic grin that makes my insides curl. “It sounds like a sodding plan to me, but it’d be impolite. At this kind of event, there’s a lot of schmoozing required of the queen.”
“The saving grace is the very little the two of you are wearing, that you’ve got my scotch behind the bar, and that the terror—” I shouldn’t have voiced that last bit out loud because a loud noise followed by raucous music out front stops me short. Everyone in the patio area turns their heads, watching the driveway in anticipation as the music gets louder on approach.
I have a bad sodding feeling about this.
The Main Event Begins
SARI
We’re here!
The Harleys descend on the neighborhood in a chorus of combustion, churning up a chaos of sound. We are an asphalt wave—all black leather and chrome—so when we swing off the main road onto the tree-lined drive of the cat’s house, every head on the estate’s crowded patio snaps in our direction with the precise, trained motion of prey animals smelling fire.
That makes my coyote howl in happiness.
The music already pounds, and the pack of us ride up two by two, except for me at the apex, splitting the chaos like a warhead. I glance in the mirror to make sure the others are in formation: Belle and Mayhem to my left, Amanda and Constantine to my right. Our timing is perfect, and the effect is more than I’d hoped for—the crowd out front cracks into pockets and the music almost falters, as if the DJ has to fight for the beat in the shadow of our arrival.
The house had always been a center of gravity for the community, but tonight, Cat’s gone full bacchanalia. The patio is lit with gold rope lights and that new spectrum LED stuff that throws magenta and blue across everyone’s faces, making the suits and the dresses, and the jeans and mesh shirts, all look like they belong to competing species. It’s like the casting call for a reality show from hell. But everyone is here, which means everyone will see us and, more importantly, see what comes next.
I simply cannot wait, but I need to make this entrance stick in people’s minds.
The party would have flown outdoors based on size alone, and the weather played along, thankfully. It’s warm enough for the men to keep their silk shirts open, but with a tang of storm that makes the air taste like lightning. From the way people cluster along the periphery—along the edge of the infinity pool, and in little knots by the outdoor bar. I can feel the tension in the way some glassware tilts and how hands hover, uncertain, over their drinks. They know what’s coming, even if they don’t know its shape.
We make our approach slowly, savoring it, the way you’d walk into a funeral of someone you outlived on a technicality. Not a single person moves to greet us, but no one steps aside either. It’s the perfect standoff, a tableau of power waiting to be rearranged.
I kill the engine first and let the silence settle like a punchline. The others follow suit, bikes ticking as they cool. We dismount in sequence, the click of boot heels and the strained creak of leather at odds with the clamor of the party. Belle runs a dramatic hand through her hair, a calculated gesture that throws her platinum curls into a curtain around her face. Mayhem cracks his neck,face split in a wolfish grin. Amanda stays close to Constantine, whose eyes are already scanning for threats, but she’s got a smile that says she’s shopping for something better. I take my helmet off—slowly, always slowly—and let my hair, stiff with product and the expectation of violence, fall into place.
It’s time for the main event, my little minions.
This is my moment. I feel it in the way the crowd leans forward, in the way my pulse is just a fraction of a beat off. I’ve envisioned this entrance for a month—this exact confrontation. We are the ones who stand at the edge of the party and demand that everyone else recalibrate. We are the ones who refuse to be erased by time or the social cannibalism of this place.
For a second, I allow myself to remember what it was like before Talia showed up and upended everything. Before her mate, before the coup, before the entire order of things was rewritten in blood and betrayal. There was a comfort to the old world—a social brutality, yes, but also clarity. I want to reclaim some of that because I believe in the right to change things on my terms. This night is a pivot point; if I can pull this off, if I can make them see what I see, the clock will start over.
We’ll have another first day in the Resistance, and The Zoo can recreate Dirty Deeds.
The others fan out slightly, a maneuver we’d practiced but never named, and I walk ahead, helmet dangling from two fingers like a grenade with the pin out. We stop ten feet from the nearest group, the hush finally spreading through the mass of bodies.
