Harden
He was on cloud nine. Or maybe even ten. It didn’t matter, the numbers didn’t matter. Nothing mattered! Spinning around on his toes as he walked back toward the embassy, Harden didn’t bother to hide the grin from his face. He’d had so much fun. Dancing and flirting with Erika had been the perfect evening he hadn’t known he’d needed.
There were a few blemishes, like that asshole trying to warn her away from him, but so far it seemed that Erika was made of sterner stuff, and wasn’t going to let herself be intimidated by some two-bit nobody who thought that Cadians had more of a “claim” on these women than any outsiders.
Harden wasn’t sure why they considered him such a threat, but then again, it could be something as simple as a hatred for outsiders.
Shouldn’t humans of Cloud Lake fall under that label too? I wonder if he sees the hypocrisy in that double standard. It was unlikely, of course; most people with those antiquated mindsets were rather blind to anything that didn’t suit their particular view of the world. They liked things the way they liked things, and change was something to be abhorred.
Harden would gladly leave Cadia and go back to Kronum if he could. You know. If it still existed. It was that one minor detail that was preventing him from doing it, and would always prevent him. The place had been destroyed. Its occupants killed or forced into service where many of them had died defending a cause they didn’t believe in. The buildings had been burned, the fields salted. His home was a wasteland now. Where else did they expect him to go?
Shaking his head, he pushed those thoughts to the side. A grin spread across his face as he realized he could push them aside. There was something happier, something more exciting that he could think of instead. Erika’s smiling face appeared, the round face and long thin auburn hair draped about her. He found himself sighing longingly at just the mental image of her.
“She’s amazing,” he said to himself, a little skip in his step. Harden couldn’t wait to see her again.
“Who’s amazing?” a voice said from behind him.
His entire mood came crashing to a halt almost as fast as his steps did. Turning slowly, Harden regarded the bald-headed older brother that he’d been unable to find earlier.
“Your mother,” he said dryly. “What the fuck do you want?”
“You to leave her alone. They aren’t for you. None of them are.”
“Who the fuck are you to judge?” he snarled back.
He wasn’t afraid to take this one on. If there was one thing Harden had an excess of, it was combat experience. Human, shifter, armed, unarmed. He’d been fighting a cover war for near two years to save his home. This little snot-nosed puppy didn’t know a damn thing about who he was messing with. Out here, alone, with nobody around.
Big mistake, motherfucker. Big mistake.
Harden took a step forward, but as he did, he heard something scrape on the sidewalk behind him. Turning, he noted two others, neither of whom were the kid brother he’d roughed up at the ball.
Well shit. Testing the air, he noted with a relief that at least both of the newcomers were wolf shifters. Three wolves on one wasn’t exactly fair odds, but he also didn’t expect them to shift, either. That might give him an edge. He knew some tricks. Some dirty tricks. There were no rules in a street fight, but most parties, especially the ones expecting to be victorious, often abided by some false code of honor or some bullshit.
Not Harden. If they came after him, they were going to regret it, and quickly. None of them were going to be spending the night with a human woman, that was for sure. Not after he was done with their punk asses.
“Brought some backup this time, did you?” he sneered. “Couldn’t handle me yourself, so had to get the gang to come beat me up?”
Taunting them probably wasn’t the smartest move, but he’d already judged that things were going to get ugly. There wasn’t going to be a peaceful resolution. Not tonight at least. So, may as well get them mad he figured. Stoke their fury, they wouldn’t fight very well. He’d be able to take advantage of that.
“Pansy,” he muttered. “I should have known you were too much of a coward to face me on your own. Where did you dig these two pathetic excuses for followers up from?”
“They saw you dancing with that woman, and like me, they couldn’t stand by and let that happen.”
“Oh, I know. Heaven forbid another shifter dance with one of the three hundred women that were there tonight. Oh my goodness! What a terrible occurrence. Whatever shall we do!” he said, mocking them one and all. “Was she the only one you could approach? Was that it? You were too scared to be a big boy and talk to another women?”
He rolled his eyes as their eyes widened with fury and hands tightened into fists, knuckles turning white and popping from the exertion. It was too easy. Way too easy. They had numbers, but they were a bunch of amateurs. He put the odds at six to one that they would just get in each other’s way when they tried to attack him.
“Seriously boys, you’ve got your little lacy panties all in a bunch simply because I was born a thousand miles to the east of here?”
“You aren’t Cadian. You don’t belong.”
“Wow, what a bunch of gatekeepers you are. I bet you have so many friends, don’t you?” he taunted some more. “The life of the party, that’s you guys. Let me guess, you all made a pact coming in to tonight that you wouldn’t leave virgins, is that it? Come in puppies, leave a real dog?”
He heard one of the two new faces snarl and tensed as the three of them came at him at once. Ducking below their blows, he stepped into his original antagonist and then stood up, launching the man from his feet with his shoulder.
Spinning, he intercepted a hand reaching for his collar and held the man still. His body weight shifted to his back foot and Harden snapped his left leg straight up, scything it directly into the man’s crotch. The shifter howled in agony like only a wolf can and fell to the floor holding his manhood.
A fist hit him in the head but Harden was already moving with the blow, so it dealt a glancing hit instead of being the devastating strike it could have. Grabbing the hand before it could retract, he pulled the third shifter with him, and they went down in a heap. Harden twisted as they went, so he landed on top of his attacker. The leg he’d had straight out bent and came up to his chest, landing right in the stomach of the man below him.
Harden clamped both hands briefly over the hapless shifter’s mouth as he tried to vomit, forcing it all back into him. The man began to choke and Harden quickly wiped his hands on the man’s suit and then rose, kicking him once in the balls and then using his nose like a golf tee with his foot, crushing it horribly off to the side.
He didn’t believe in quarter when they came for him. Fuck that. Harden turned just in time for Baldy to take him in the cheek with a punch. Reeling, he felt blood stream from his nose.
Shit, there goes the suit.
Getting up onto the balls of his feet, he began to dance around, dodging blows, but not returning any. It was all boxing technique. His hands were up, protecting his face from anything he couldn’t dodge, while he moved around in a circle. Fighting was intense, and took a lot out of someone. The swings slowed rapidly, and Baldy began to breathe heavily, his punches come farther and farther apart.
Harden toyed with him until he saw the other attacker, the one he’d downed with a single shot to the groin, begin to rise. Then he went on the offensive. His fists flashed out and past the exhausted blocking attempts. One, two, five. He landed punch after punch, breaking bone after bone. Left orbital. Nose. Jaw. Right orbital. Harden finished up with a hard kick to the groin for good measure, and Baldy collapsed.
He contemplated killing them all as he sent a flying elbow into the side of the just-recovering shifter’s head, sending him face-first into the concrete of the roadway, smashing his jaw among other things as he limply fell. It would be easier that way. They would never bother him again. He would be free of their influence.
But Harden was tired. So tired of the killing. He’d seen so much of it, been a part of so much, that he just wanted peace. Peace and quiet.
And acceptance.
It didn’t seem like he was going to get that anytime soon, however. These punks, young kids who thought they were the shit, weren’t going to go away. Killing them might end his troubles, though if it got out it was he who’d done it, then there would likely be others to fill their places.
Maybe scaring them off would do it.
Harden padded forward to the leader, Baldy, and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. The shifter whimpered but didn’t submit, didn’t turn his head to the side to expose his neck. Defying him even when he could be killed.
“I could kill you,” he growled into the man’s ear. “Right now, easily. I could do it. I’m sorely tempted to. It would remove a stain on Cadia’s good name. But,” he said conversationally, “I’m not going to. Not today at least.” His voice filled with ice. “That’ll change if you try something like this again. Understand?”
The shifter didn’t say anything, though he tried to glare at him through the haze of pain that must have been filling his mind just then. Angry, Harden slammed the man’s face into the ground and pulled it back up until it bent back painfully.
“I said, do you understand me?” he snarled.
Baldy’s eyes closed, but he felt the head move up and down in a nod.
“Well, I’m glad we could come to an accord,” he said and rose, leaving the three moaning shifters behind as he continued back to the embassy/motel.
He couldn’t help but shake the feeling that leaving them alive was a bad idea, but no matter how he thought it through, killing them was worse. Harden looked down at himself.
“Aww man,” he complained. His suit was ruined. Blood spattered the front of it and a large portion of his shirt was now red instead of white. “Those motherfuckers.”
For a split second he almost went back and finished the job just because of that, but he didn’t. The suit was worth more than they were, in his opinion. Maybe it could be cleaned. He’d have to check into that. Maybe Erika could recommend him an option.
Erika.
The smile reappeared on his face as he waltzed up the steps to the former Mineshaft Motel, now the Cadian Embassy in Cloud Lake. The name “motel” was somewhat misleading. It had been built in the mid-nineteenth century, a two-story affair with two wings stretching out to either side, containing over fifty rooms per wing. The rooms weren’t large, or spectacular, or anything really. But they were more than enough for his needs. Most of the shifters were doubled, or even tripled to a room, but his was one of the tiniest rooms there were, little more than a bed, a dresser, a closet, and a bathroom. So he’d gotten one to himself, thankfully.
Ignoring the looks from the shifters milling about the lobby exchanging stories about their evenings, he went up the left-hand set of curved stairs and down the hallway toward his room. Once inside, he nearly tore his clothes off and then fell onto the bed.
He was asleep in seconds, dreaming of a certain purple dress and the woman beneath it.