His eyes flash with the promise of victory. “What’s the winner get?”
“Bragging rights?”
He snorts. “How about a kiss fro-”
Raiden’s hand is around his throat before he can blink. “Finish that sentence, and the only thing you’ll be kissing is your own asshole when I’m done with you. This is a celebration. Let’s not ruin the evening by starting the bonfire early, shall we?”
Grinning, I clap my hands once sharply, making the rest of them jump. “Now, how about that race? Maybe it’ll help burn some of that asshole energy off of you. Up the beach, scale the rock wall, jump from the top, cross the lake, and end at the tree behind where Dom’s pack is gathered. Since bragging rights aren’t enough for you, let’s have fun with it. First place gets to pick which loser has to strip naked and crabwalk across the entire beach while balancing a cup of honey on their stomach.”
One of the silent spectators pipes up. “That’s… weirdly specific.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you realize the real punishment for mouthy teenagers is looking stupid in front of their friends, and their crushes.”
Now that Raiden’s backed off, idiot one fumes, “No shifting. Wings are cheating.”
Raiden and I grin in tandem. “No shifting. Let’s see how well they train you around here, shall we?”
In less than two minutes we’re all in position, another guy volunteering to start us off and watch for cheating. “On your marks, get set… Go!” Taking off in a dead sprint, we’re all relatively evenly matched, the sand sucking down our feet and trying to trip us up.
Raiden keeps pace beside me, murmuring under his breath. “It’s Terra. She’s the only one that Amara’s come in contact with I don’t know the abilities of. I’ve no doubt I can pay the kid off and claim she can’t remove it, but I’m not sure how Amara will react to the news. I don’t want her to look at us like her captors, Kodi. What do we do?”
Leaping onto the rock wall, I imbue my voice with complete confidence. “We're going to show her that she’s just as dangerous as the rest of us.”
The next few feet I have to concentrate on finding handholds, the rocks slippery from constant mist. “The heart of the issue is Amara considering herself a liability, that she's going to get us killed because she isn't good enough. We need to prove her wrong.”
No shifting, but they didn’t say anything about abilities, and a few are clearly using their other halves’ enhanced strength to scale the wall, and I’ve spotted a couple discreetly using claws to keep from losing their grip. The two of us coordinate effortlessly without saying a single word. This isn’t a battlefield, but it may as well be with the way Raiden comes to life like I haven’t seen in ages, completely in his element.
Waiting until I’m ahead of him, he slaps his palm against the cliff, superheating the rock until steam hisses off of it with every droplet sprayed from the nearby waterfall. Once I feel the heat reach my toes, I jump as high as I can, morphing the metal band on my arm into a spike that I drive into the rock. A series of curses and shouts echo as I haul myself the rest of the way to the top, forcing the spike deep enough to send chunks of rocks tumbling down behind me. Rolling onto my stomach as Raiden jumps to avoid the mini rockslide, I reach down and catch his hand with half a second to spare.
Grinning at me as I haul him up, he says, “Not too rusty after all.”
“You’re the one that hasn’t kept up with your training. I was worried you were going to embarrass yourself in front of our girl.”
We break into a jog toward the top of the waterfall, and he flips me off. “Amara, I could live with. But those cocky little fledglings? No chance in hell.”
Nearing the drop-off, an idea hits me. “Want to really make them hate us?”
“Like that’s even a question,” he scoffs. “What did you have in mind?”
A glance over my shoulder shows several people scaling the ledge, not far behind and glaring like they might actually try to tackle us, and I can’t help but grin. Taking Raiden’s hand in a tight grip, I skid to a halt, using my moment to whip him forward hard enough my shoulder nearly pops out of its socket.
He goes sailing halfway across the water before crashing beneath the surface. It gave two of the others a chance to catch up and dive off the edge, but Raiden has such a massive lead now, it was worth it. Blowing the ringleader a kiss, I jump, curbing the impulse to snap my wings out and glide; either through the air, or under the water.
But cheating is Stone’s forte, not mine. I like the satisfaction of exploiting loopholes in the rules, no one able to discredit my victory. By the time I pop up, swimming to the shore, Raiden’s already chatting with Dom and his brother-husbands. I wind up taking fourth place, but it doesn’t even matter.
My newfound nemesis came in fifth.
Because there’s nothing tantruming man love more than someone being the bigger person, I offer him a friendly -not atallcondescending- handshake. “Well done. Top five is nothing to sneeze at; we should do this again sometime, it was fun.”
He bats my hand away with a scoff. “You cheated.”
I cock my head. “How so?”
Red creeps up his neck as he fumes, “Howdidn’tyou!? First your buddy sets the rock on fire, then you tried to kill us with a rock slide, and you threw your friend halfway to the finish line!”
“And… which part of that was cheating?” I turn to the referee. “Only rule was no shifting, right?”
A shameless smirk is plastered on his face, and I see now why he volunteered. “That would be correct. As such, you and Mr. Garrison are the only twonotdisqualified.” Outraged cries ring out, but he shouts over them all. “Settle down, you damn babies. Anyone with eyes could see the claw marks you made in the stone, not to mention Josh.” He levels an unamused stare at one of them. “You surfaced without your shorts, dimwit. Even if you’d been smart enough to dress before surfacing, the water’s clear enough to see a damnleopard seal.”
