****
“You intend to mate me?” Keira glanced at Raul, pressing her lips together.
“Shut up,” she said quietly. The words had come out of her almost without warning; she could sense Harold’s intentions to find a way to detain Raul, to keep him long enough for certain members of the panther clan to arrive at his home. “We’re not going to get much help from Harold,” Keira added. “He wants to spill wolf blood. Not that I can completely blame him.”
“We’re going to need to figure out what the story is on that female he imported,” Raul told her. “If he’s right…”
“Then we’ll have to figure out which wolves were behind it,” Keira said, nodding. “They’ll have to face justice.” She frowned. “I wasn’t aware of any panther female dying, though.” On the other hand, she hadn’t felt the telltale signs in the Alpha’s mind that he was lying. Of course, Harold had been so shielded mentally that it was difficult to get much more than the strongest impulses from his mind; certainly, she hadn’t been able to communicate with him the way she could have with another member of the clan.
“He may have brought her in secretly, not introduced her to the rest of the clan yet,” Raul pointed out. “He might have been waiting to see how she and Lachlan got along.”
“He wanted me for Lachlan,” Keira said. She glanced at Raul in the driver’s seat of the car again. “He’s not going to be inclined to help you. We need to be careful with him.” Raul sighed.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding slowly. “Neither of our Alphas are strictly speaking trustworthy at this point.” He glanced at her, smiling wryly. “Everyone seems to have ulterior motives.” Keira chuckled at the understatement. “So, you want to mate me. That’s news.”
“I told you, shut up about that,” Keira said, her cheeks burning as the blood rushed into her face. “I had to tell Harold that, because he would have grabbed you otherwise.”
“The day I can’t handle a panther…”
“You couldn’t handle me,” Keira countered.
“The day I can’t handle an old panther with a young panther at my side is the day I give up on being a wolf.” Keira rolled her eyes.
“I couldn’t have defended you without marking you as my mate, without coming out about it,” Keira said. “I’d be going against my own kind for a stranger.”
“So, you want to be my mate,” Raul said, his lips twitching with amusement.
“That’s not—ooh,” Keira took a slow breath, closing her eyes. “I don’t want you to end up being killed—or hurt more than you already are—because Harold’s out for revenge,” Keira said. “That’s all.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” Raul said, chuckling lowly. Keira heard the pleased, almost growling undertone in his voice. “I thought you wouldn’t ever mate someone who couldn’t best you in combat?”
“And I won’t,” Keira said tartly. “That’s why it was just a maneuver. I can’t believe you’re taking it seriously.”
“I could best you in combat,” Raul said. “Even now, as long as you fought fair, I could do it.” He pulled off of the surface street and onto the dirt road that led out to the safe house, and Keira opened the window a crack; she had the uncomfortable apprehension that Harold might have set someone to track them, that her Alpha might be more interested in getting what revenge he could for Lachlan than in waiting for full justice.
“You couldn’t best me in combat on your best day,” Keira told Raul tartly. She sniffed at the air coming in from outside of the car, sorting through the scents even as she reached out with her mind. There was no sign of panther—and more importantly, in Keira’s thoughts, no sign of wolves either.
“You want to test that theory?” Keira glanced at Raul. His hazel eyes glimmered with mischief.
“You’re injured,” she told him tartly. “It wouldn’t be a fair fight.”
“You aren’t challenging me, though,” Raul countered. “I’m challenging you. If I think I’m up to it, who are you to argue with me?” Keira stared at Raul and smiled slowly, shaking her head.
“You want me to mate you,” she said, amused.
“I just want to prove you can’t take me in a fair fight,” Raul said, shrugging.
“If you go through with the challenge I’m not going to hold back,” Keira told him, looking him up and down. Raul chuckled.
“If you did, I’d be disappointed in you as a shifter and a panther both,” he told her. He shut the car off and opened the driver’s side door, and Keira, tingling all over, unbuckled her seatbelt and climbed out of the passenger side seat as well.
“Are you seriously challenging me?” Keira looked at Raul doubtfully, able to picture each of the wounds on his body that she had cleaned and dressed only hours before. Shifters healed quickly, but it was difficult for her to credit the possibility that Raul was actually recovered enough to fight her. “Because I mean, the last time we battled, you weren’t even injured and I almost had you.” Her heart beat faster in her chest, and the animal part of her consciousness began to rise to the fore. Keira could feel the magic of the transformation crackling along her bones, through her veins.
“I think you’re worried I’ll show you up,” Raul said. He reached down and tugged the hem of his tee shirt up, hauling the fabric along his torso and over his head. “Then you’ll have to mate me, by your own rules.”
“I just don’t want to kill you,” Keira said.
“So then don’t kill me,” Raul told her. He smirked. “Make me submit, if you can.” He began unbuttoning the fly of his jeans, and Keira went to work on her own clothes, quickly discarding them. She could feel her nerves tingling, her body preparing itself for the transformation. She could still see where some of the injuries on Raul’s body were healing; they had mostly closed up, but Keira knew that he was almost certainly in at least a little pain.
“You’re an idiot,” she told him, sinking down into a crouch, ready to begin the transformation. “I’m going to pin you and then you’re going to make me feel bad about it because you’ll be all bloody and injured.” Raul snorted, sinking onto his knees.
“Just take it seriously,” he told her, his hazel eyes dancing with pride and mischief. “I don’t want to think that I only beat you because you were less than your usual strength out of pity.”
“Fine,” Keira said. She willed the change onto herself and shuddered as her bones began to shift and move inside of her body. She didn’t pay any attention to Raul for the moment, absorbed in the transformation working its way through her body; she felt the fur sliding through her skin, the way her skull flattened, stretched, moved inside of her, her teeth elongating. She felt her fingertips changing, her hands turning into paws, claws sliding out of her skin.
In moments, the transformation was complete, and Keira rolled on the ground, twisting and stretching. She looked around and saw the lupine shape of Raul a few feet away from her. In the part of her mind that was still human, Keira had to admit that Raul made an impressive—and impressively large—wolf, that by any standard he was formidable, even injured.
Keira let out a long, low growl, slinking and sidling. She could remember fighting Raul before; but there was a different feeling behind their confrontation now. In part, it was due to the fact that Keira knew that she didn’t actually want to harm Raul; their sparring was a power play, not a true life-or-death fight. Raul replied to her growl with a full-throated howl, throwing his head back, and then they both began circling each other. In spite of her competitive, proud words only moments before, Keira felt doubt swimming to the surface of her mind; she didn’t want to hurt Raul. The animal part of her consciousness recognized what they were doing—the ritual behind their circling, the sparring that they would engage in as soon as one of them was ready to make the first strike—and she wasn’t sure if she wanted to go through with it.
Raul lunged first, turning sharply and launching himself at her, growling in a way that Keira immediately recognized as non-threatening. Keira feinted, slipping away from Raul’s range, twisting under his lunge. She pushed the human part of her mind back, and threw herself into the fight, acting and reacting, falling into Raul’s rhythm, following his movements.
The battle between them ebbed and flowed; Keira threw herself at Raul, targeting the parts of his body that weren’t already injured. She tried to trip him up, tried to knock him over, tried to get underneath him and send him sprawling. In return, Raul lunged and turned and twisted, ramming her with his shoulder, colliding with her. They tumbled to the ground together, first one on top and then the other, growling and purring and barking playfully. Keira’s whole body was awake and alive with a mixture of competitive fury and almost unwilling desire as the battle between them intensified.
Keira felt herself beginning to tire, and realized that Raul was starting to stumble and stagger. Panting, the human part of her mind smiled and she looked for her opening; when Raul staggered in the midst of a feint out of her range, she twisted, lunging for his hindquarters.
Keira felt her legs go out from under her and shrieked in surprise as momentum carried her to her side and then her back. In an instant, Raul was on top of her, growling in a low, steady, playful tone, his mouth on her throat—but not bearing down even slightly. Keira struggled, but she was incapable of knocking Raul off of her body, or budging his weight from her center of gravity; she was inextricably pinned.
Keira struggled for a moment longer, but it was clear that Raul had tricked her, that he had managed to actually pin her. She growled and relaxed underneath him, signaling her submission.