CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“What’s wrong?” Eli demanded the moment his brother ended his call. “What’s happening?”

Nick looked at him, his jaw hard. “Ignacio and his pride are invading our territory as we speak.”

Eli’s stomach bottomed out, and his wolf froze. Curses and gasps flew out of his other pack mates and allies, who gathered closer.

“The rest of us have to leave, but you should stay with Casey,” Nick told him, urgency in every syllable. “Join us when you can.” And then they all rushed off.

Fisting his hands, Eli looked at his mate. The dark brown mink was still tearing into her opponent like a crazy critter from hell. They repeatedly lunged, pounced, and leaped at each other, always trying to grab the other’s legs, tail, or nose. Small tufts of fur flew as they rolled and twisted and flipped while wrestling for control, leaving yet more blood on the pavement.

He couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave Casey. But, fuck, it hurt not to follow his pack mates and join the battle that lay ahead of them.

“Your brother’s having trouble with Ignacio Rodriguez?” Adrian asked.

“Not Nick,” Eli told the Alpha. “Ignacio’s issue is with me and, to an extent, Casey. To cut a long story short, he believes that she’s his true mate. He wants me to suffer for claiming her, which means he probably intends to kill the people I love—it’s his MO.” Eli cursed a blue streak, hating how powerless he was to help them.

“I see.” Adrian looked at his Beta, who’d been eavesdropping. “Clare.”

Whatever the Beta female saw on his face made her nod and melt away.

Adrian turned back to Eli. “Until Casey moves to your pack later today, she’s one of mine. And I don’t take kindly to anyone targeting her mate. Clare will see to it that your brother has plenty of backup from my pack.”

“What kind of backup?” asked Eli, hope flickering to life in his belly. He’d take any aid at this point. The assistance of a mink pack was no small thing.

“Oh, approximately one hundred minks. Trust me, Eli—Ignacio won’t get out of this attack alive, and nor will any of his cats. Now wipe that worried look off your face and enjoy what’s left of this duel. Casey’s mink is just about done with Sherryl’s.”

Scrubbing at his jaw, Eli turned back to the fight just in time to see his mate tear a strip off the fawn-colored mink’s scalp. He winced. Fuck, that had to hurt. But he felt no sympathy for his mate’s opponent.

Panting heavily, the fawn mink looked tired and disoriented. It was no surprise, considering she was bleeding from too many injuries to count.

His mate had a lot of wounds of her own, and Eli could feel that she was in real pain. But, apparently, she was much like Casey and had an impressive tolerance for pain, because she was still fighting hard and dirty.

Claws unsheathed, his mate latched onto the neck of the other mink, who twisted and slashed at her with sharp claws. And then … honestly, they moved at such a dizzying speed that it was truly hard to follow exactly what was happening.

The whole time they fought, they shrieked and hissed and snarled so loud that he was surprised his ears didn’t bleed.

They had seriously fast reflexes, which was good, or his mate’s skull would have been punctured long ago by her opponent’s sharp teeth. The fawn mink was a vicious little shit, always trying to bite his mate’s head or claw at her eyes and throat.

The alarm on his phone chimed, alerting him that the border of his territory had been breached. Fuck. Despite knowing that his pack mates would soon have plenty of backup, panic rode him so hard that his heart was racing. “End it, Casey!” Because they needed to fucking leave yesterday.

Just then, the two minks backed away a moment, glaring at each other. They growled, scraping at the ground, preparing to lunge.

It was his mate who moved first. Back arched, tail whipping from side to side, she pitched forward and slashed at the fawn mink’s face. Then they were at it again—pouncing, rolling, and biting.

His mate finally got a firm grip on the fawn mink, who frantically spun and writhed as she tried to wriggle free. But his mate spun and writhed along with her, holding her tight. Then his mate sank her sharp teeth into the base of the other mink’s skull. She didn’t let her go. Just held her in that bone-crushing bite.

“Yield or she’ll kill you!” a Seal shouted. Her teammates echoed her, their eyes gleaming with horror.

The Seals’ coach leaned forward and shouted, “Yield, Sherryl!”

But the critter didn’t. It twisted again, pointlessly trying to claw at his mate, who then bit harder into her opponent’s skull.

Everyone sucked in a breath.

Eli watched as the fawn mink’s struggles slowed until, finally, it went limp. Dead. He let out a long breath, and his wolf almost sagged with relief.

Eli expected his mink to try playing with the corpse—she did that often at his territory. Instead, she backed away from the body and shifted.

Muscles quivering, Casey rose to her feet and stared down at the dead mink. Eli rushed to his mate and curled his arms around her, careful not to press on her injuries—she was covered in vicious bites and rake marks.

Knowing she needed a moment to gather her composure and have her injuries healed, he fought back his eagerness to leave and palmed the back of her neck. “You did good.”

She rested her forehead on his chest. And then Dennis was there, placing his hand on her shoulder. Eli felt the male’s warm healing energy flood her body. Unlike Ally’s healing energy, however, it didn’t soothe her pain. But her injuries were healed—that was what mattered.

She looked up at Eli. “I can feel anxiety and panic racing through you. I’m fine, the duel’s over.”

He grabbed her upper arms. “We need to leave now. I’m sorry, baby, but I can’t wait for you to wash away the blood—we have to go.”

She stiffened. “What’s going on? And where are the rest of your pack mates?”

Adrian appeared at her side. “Here are your clothes, Casey.”

“Eli, tell me what’s wrong,” she insisted, even as she pulled on her clothes.

Eli licked his lips. “Ignacio and his cats are invading my territory right now.”

“What? Shit! You should have left without me!”

“Fuck that, I’d never leave you while you were in the middle of a damn duel.”

“You bitch!” A Seal made a fast beeline for Casey. Kristin crashed into the bitch and took her down. A second Seal jumped into the fray, followed by another Hound. Then the two teams shifted into their mink forms and began ripping into each other.

“I should have seen that coming,” said Adrian before turning back to Casey, who was now fully dressed. “I’ve sent backup to Mercury Pack territory. Ignacio won’t survive this attack.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t take out some of my pack mates before then.” Cupping her elbow, Eli led her out of the crowd—most of whom gave her nods of respect or pats on the back—and over to the SUV.

Inside, she snapped on her seatbelt. “You’re going to kill Ignacio, aren’t you?”

Eli switched on the engine. “No.”

“No?”

“I want to,” he said, reversing fast out of the parking space. “I want to fucking dismember the bastard. But I’m not the only guy whose mate he targeted. And there’s someone in Nick’s lodge who wants Ignacio as dead as I do.” Once he’d driven out of the lot, Eli slammed his foot on the accelerator. “I’ll be surprised if Ignacio is still alive when we get there.”

For Cain, an advantage of being a sociopath was that you could accurately predict what other sociopaths would do. You knew how their minds worked, how they operated, how essential control was to them, and just how badly they’d react when they lost said control. You could also anticipate their next move. And so, Cain wasn’t outside the lodge, helping the others fight off the cougars. He was standing near the basement door, waiting for Ignacio, knowing he’d come.

The Alpha had deceived, manipulated, and blackmailed Casey in order to get into her head and gain control of her. In molding her reality, making her believe that her brother wasn’t paying his debts and that she was the only thing standing between Miles and sadistic punishments, Ignacio had gotten a firm grip on her. He’d become someone she was forced to interact and toe the line with. That had satisfied Ignacio’s need for power and dominance; had made him feel that she was under his control.

And then Eli had pushed him out of the picture, ripping that control away from him.

Ignacio’s attempts to punish him via the lone shifters had failed. He’d be determined to put that right. Determined to prevail over Eli and win at all costs—it was probably something only another sociopath would really understand.

Cain knew Ignacio hadn’t invaded Mercury Pack territory purely for a war. No, Ignacio had come to fix his failures. The abrupt attack on the pack had been a diversion. A way for Ignacio to get on the land and keep the strongest members occupied while he hunted down the pups he’d marked for death, trusting the cougars outside to eliminate Eli’s other closest relatives. Ignacio would want every single one of them dead. And he’d want to kill the pups himself because he knew it was their loss that would hurt Eli most.

More Phoenix wolves had appeared before the cats had the chance to launch their attack, so the cougars weren’t finding the battle an easy one. Cain doubted that Ignacio would care much if he lost pride mates or allies to this battle, though. People were often interchangeable to those like Ignacio and Cain.

One counsellor at juvie had told Cain that he was a ‘stable sociopath,’ if there was even such a thing. By that, she’d meant he wasn’t self-delusional and hadn’t let himself become a slave to his impulses.

Cain was no slave to anything. He was always fully in control of himself.

Ally constantly told him that he wasn’t ‘bad,’ just lost. She didn’t want to face the cold truth. Didn’t want to acknowledge what he’d become.

By his own admission, he didn’t care for society’s definition of right and wrong. He put his own needs and wants first, and he felt zero empathy for others—something he was glad of since, from what he’d seen, it seemed to weaken a person. The only people who held any value to him were Ally, his uncles, and Cassidy.

If asked, he would have said he’d have no problem walking away from his true mate. He didn’t bond with people. He was loyal to those that mattered to him. What he did feel for them … he wouldn’t term it ‘love.’ The feeling was fifty percent respect, forty percent possessiveness, and ten percent of something that was close to adoration—an odd brew that was intense but selfish, because he didn’t prioritize those people over himself.

He’d been fascinated by Eli’s telling of how he recognized Casey as his mate so fast. Cain hadn’t felt an instant emotional pull toward Cassidy. Hadn’t quite simply known she was his mate. But he’d felt something on first meeting her. Something he hadn’t been able to name; something that had tickled his instincts in a way he couldn’t explain. It had grown with each interaction they had, until he’d finally recognized it for what it was: a primitive sense of ownership.

Cassidy … when he looked at her, Cain saw someone that belonged to him. Someone he had innate rights to. It was the ‘someone’ part that surprised him. He tended to view people as tools to be used, but he didn’t regard her as something that he owned.

He didn’t want her the way he imagined a person would want their mate—he wasn’t a fucking pervert, for Christ’s sake. He just wanted her to be safe. Healthy. Happy. He’d want that for any child. With Cassidy, it was vital to him that she was all those things, and he’d do whatever it took to make that happen. Lie. Cheat. Kill. Die. It was the latter part that was a telling point, because there was nothing self-sacrificing about Cain.

She brought him a sense of … something that quietened all the chaos inside him. He selfishly drank in whatever it was, giving nothing back because he didn’t have anything to give.

The best thing he could do for his true mate would be to walk away—he knew that. Really, Cain saw no logic in making a place for himself in her life, waiting for her to grow old enough to be claimed, when the reality was that he was probably incapable of forming a mating bond with anyone. And that was why, just a few months ago, he’d made the official decision to leave Cassidy’s life.

His uncles had tried to talk him out of it; had insisted he was a good guy “deep down.” They were wrong. He wasn’t unfeeling or callous, true. He felt emotions, but they were more like flickers of feelings—never anything deep or meaningful.

Regret? Yeah, he felt it … when his actions hadn’t gotten him the result he wanted. But guilt? No. Shame? No. Remorse? No. A wish that he hadn’t caused someone pain? Only if said person’s pain then impeded him in some way. He would never harm the people he valued—that was as close to a “good guy” as Cain got.

He’d intended to stay away from Cassidy and cut all contact between them. But when he’d heard she’d been shot … he couldn’t describe what he’d felt that day. It had been dark. Irrational. Turbulent. Violent. An all-consuming rage he hadn’t experienced since his years at juvie.

There was no way he could have stood back and let Nick take care of it. Cassidy wasn’t Nick’s to protect or avenge, she was Cain’s, and so he’d intended to be at her side until the threat was eradicated. And he’d realized he’d been bullshitting himself when he thought he could leave her life. It would never happen.

Cain could never have remained in the shadows, watching over her—he was too selfish for that. He might not be able to give her the emotional feedback that another male would, but he’d never let a thing harm her. Never violate her trust, allow anyone to exploit her gift, or risk her safety. That had to count for something. And if it didn’t, well, she was welcome to try fighting his claim to her when she was old enough. It wouldn’t work, though.

The scent of cougar drifted to Cain mere moments before Ignacio appeared in the hallway. He’d clearly followed the pups’ scents, just as Cain had anticipated.

Surprise briefly flared in Ignacio’s eyes. “Ah, Cain Holt. So you are in contact with your foster sister, after all. Well, since you’re here instead of participating in the battle, I’m assuming she’s behind that door over there.”

“You made a mistake coming here,” said Cain. “But I’m glad you did. It saves me the bother of hunting you.”

“For what, exactly? I have done nothing to your foster sister or uncles, nor have I done anything to hinder the actions of The Movement. I would imagine very little else matters to you.”

“But you are responsible for all the recent trouble that this pack has been having. An associate of mine had a long talk with the falcon who survived the attack on Eli; he named you as the person who’d hired him and the other falcons. So, it seems highly likely to me that you also hired whoever shot his niece. That I have a real issue with.”

“Since when did you have a soft spot for children?” Ignacio raised a hand. “I have no beef with you, Cain, so I’m going to give you a chance to leave and let me deal with this matter. If you like, you can take your foster sister with you. But the others will stay.”

“So that you can kill every last one of them?”

Ignacio shrugged. “It won’t be long before Eli returns. I like the thought of him arriving to find sheer carnage.”

“But you also mean to kill Eli, don’t you? You mean to finish the job that the falcons barely started.”

“It’s true that if you want something done right you should do it yourself.”

“If you kill him, you’ll kill Casey.”

Something flashed in Ignacio’s eyes. “And why should I care if anything happened to her?”

“Considering you believe she’s your mate, I’d say she’s probably the only person on this planet who matters to you. I get why you want Eli dead. If someone not only imprinted on my mate, they convinced her that they were her true mate—that she was born for them, that she belonged with them, that she was no one whatsoever to me—I’d want him dead. Dead and buried.

“If I couldn’t have her, I’d at least want her to acknowledge that she was meant for me. But Casey hasn’t acknowledged that she’s yours, has she? Eli has her utterly convinced that you’re no one to her. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. In any case, they’re mated now. And like I said, killing him would kill her.”

Ignacio’s jaw hardened. “Their bond is incomplete.”

“But not fragile.”

“She’d survive his death. Casey is too strong to do anything but survive. She and I are very much alike, you know. Driven. Resilient. Ambitious. She understands how achieving what you want in life can mean making sacrifices you might resent.”

Cain wouldn’t say that she and Ignacio were alike at all, but whatever. “That doesn’t mean she’s your mate.”

Ignacio’s face darkened. “She is mine.” The words were spoken flatly, but there was a wealth of possession there that was almost child-like in its simplicity.

A normal person might have questioned how Ignacio could ever have mistakenly thought that she was his mate. But people like him and Cain couldn’t rely on feeling the pull of the mating bond, since they didn’t feel in the same way that normal people did. They just didn’t have the emotional capacity to.

It was clear that Ignacio was drawn to Casey, and Cain could understand it. She was strong, loyal, full of life, and fairly brimmed with positive energy. She was everything Ignacio could never be; everything that the people around him had never been. For him, she’d be like a lone bulb in a dark room.

Given the cougar’s nature and past, it was not at all surprising that he’d want to own her. And that was all it was—Ignacio wanted to possess her. Not because she was born for him, but because she appealed to him on a level that no other female had done before, and he’d mistaken that for the pull of a true-mate bond.

“I don’t believe she’s yours, Ignacio. And I don’t just say that because I’ve seen her and Eli together. I say it because you see her as a thing that belongs to you, not a person—I can hear it in the way you speak of her. You’d never prioritize her needs over yours, would you? Having the position of Alpha is more important to you than she is, which tells you everything you need to know.”

Ignacio snapped his teeth together. “Think what you like, Holt. But facts are facts. Casey Frost is mine.”

“Here’s a real fact for you.” Cain took a step toward him. “You’re going to die today, Ignacio. See, you’re right that very little matters to me other than my family and the Movement. But there is a little someone who matters above all else to me. A little someone who’s safe behind that door you want to get through. A little someone you had shot.” Cain felt his nostrils flare. “I almost lost my mate because of you, Ignacio.”

The cougar went very, very still. “I didn’t know she was yours.”

“I don’t care.”

“If I’d known—”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference to you.” Cain tilted his head. “Men like us … we live with dark, violent, destructive thoughts and urges, don’t we? They poke at us. Prod us to act. And we have to make a conscious decision every day not to act on them, even though we see no real reason why we shouldn’t.

“Me personally? I don’t understand why I should be so concerned about following what’s ‘right’ when the lines of morality are blurry at best. Morality is objective. Ethics can be twisted to suit a person’s agenda. For example, I can argue that I’m justified in killing you, considering you’ll kill a whole lot of people today if I don’t. But that’s not why I’m going to kill you, Ignacio. I’m going to do it because the thought pleases me. Because you tried to take the thing that matters most from me. Because I’m a cruel, vindictive bastard who likes to hurt people sometimes.”

Ignacio lifted his chin. “You won’t find me easy to kill, Cain.”

“You’re already dead. You were dead the moment that bullet sank into my mate.”

Eli had no sooner switched off the engine than he was hopping out of the SUV. Following the growls, snarls, shrieks, and hisses that rang through the air, he ran out of the parking lot, dashed around the main lodge, and onto the clearing near the play area. There, he skidded to a halt. His wolf ceased panicking and blinked in surprise.

Dozens of dead cougars littered the field. Many of his pack mates and allies were working in teams to bring the live cougars down, and they were taking their time about it, since there weren’t many foes left standing. The rest of his pack mates and allies stood aside, watching while Taryn healed their wounds.

But what grabbed Eli’s attention was that some of thelive cougars were covered from almost head to toe in a mass of writhing, clawing minks. More of the little critters surrounded them, hissing in tune as their pack mates savaged the felines.

“That beat sounds oddly familiar,” Eli said to his mate, who didn’t look whatsoever surprised by the sight in front of them.

Clearing her throat, Casey shrugged. “It’s Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust.”

Eli stared at her. He’d have said she couldn’t possibly be serious that the damn minks were, essentially, singing while slaughtering fellow shifters. But, yeah, he recognized the song now. “They do this a lot when they’re in battle?”

“I want to say ‘no, of course not,’ but you’d know I was lying. Look, they don’t get to battle like this often—they’re just making the most of it.”

“Making the most of it,” he echoed.

Just then, a cougar staggered past them with a pallas cat wrapped around its face and a second pallas cat curled around its hindleg. Of course, the sight wouldn’t have been so weird if there wasn’t a long line of minks following, each clinging to the tail of the mink in front of them while the leader clung to the cougar’s tail with its teeth. It was like they were doing the fucking Conga dance or something.

“I see you judging them,” said Casey.

“How can I not judge that?”

A yelp made Eli’s head snap to the right. Zander’s wolf jerk away from a cougar who’d torn a strip out of his flank.

A loud curse burst out of Gwen, who was stood amongst the spectators. “For God’s sake, Zander, stop playing with the fucker!” She aimed her gun and fired. Instantly, the cat slumped to the ground. “There,” she said to her mate. “See how easy that was?”

Shaya snorted a laugh and turned to speak to Taryn, but then she noticed Eli and Casey. Shaya beamed at them. “Hey, you’re here.”

Eli crossed to her. “Doesn’t look like our help is needed.”

“Oh, it’s not.” Shaya smiled at Casey. “Glad to see you’re okay after the Sherryl-thing. Your mink friends made all the difference here.”

Gwen nodded. “Don’t know how they got on our territory without setting off any motion sensors, but they came out of nowhere. And then they were just everywhere.”

“Some were scrambling up trees and then dropping onto the backs of cougars, puncturing spinal cords with their teeth,” said Taryn. “Some just jumped onto the cougars and scalped the fuckers. Other minks were latching onto cat-jugulars while their furry little friends swarmed the body of their prey until you couldn’t even see the cougar anymore. In fact, some are still doing that.”

“Ooh, and a bunch of them circled a cougar and did that weird war dance,” Gwen added. “But it was more like they were just playing with it for messed-up fun … and then they all just lunged at once—it was amazing.”

“I wish we could have recorded it all with our phones,” said Shaya. “I’ve heard it said that minks go into killing frenzies, but … yeah, I guess I just didn’t expect them to decimate the cougars’ numbers so fast.”

Eli glanced at the cats. “Which one of them is Ignacio? I’m hoping you’re going to tell me he’s among the dead bodies.”

“I spoke to Jesse a minute ago when Taryn healed his wounds before he threw himself back into the battle,” said Shaya. “He said he hadn’t scented Ignacio out there, but that doesn’t mean the asshole isn’t among them.”

Brow furrowing, Eli gave the area another once-over. “Where’s Cain?”

“According to Ally, who calls me every five minutes to check that Derren’s okay, Cain insisted on guarding the basement,” said Shaya.

Eli exchanged a look with Casey, and then he took her hand. “Let’s go have a chat with Cain.” He kept his body slightly in front of hers as he led her into the main lodge. They’d only made it a few steps inside when a familiar scent reached his nostrils, making his wolf bristle. Eli bared his teeth. “Ignacio’s here.”

“Bastard,” she hissed.

Adrenaline pumping through him, Eli followed the scent trail, which took them to the hallway near the basement. It was empty. No Ignacio. No Cain.

“Look,” said Casey, pointing at the floor.

His jaw hardened as he noticed a few specks of blood there. Eli’s nostrils flared as he drew in the scents around them. “That’s Ignacio’s blood. And he went that way,” Eli added, gesturing toward the back door. “Cain’s scent is tangled with his, so it looks like they went outside together.”

Eli again walked slightly in front of Casey as they tracked the two males. The scents took them out of the lodge and into the surrounding woods. Usually, he’d hear birds chirping and animals moving around in the underbrush. But right then, the only sounds were that of leaves rustling and the tree branches creaking in the breeze. It was almost eerie.

The smells of pine, moss, and wild mint were heavy in the forest, but Eli didn’t let them distract his senses from the scents of Cain and Ignacio. Dead leaves and pine needles littered the ground, but he and Casey moved soundlessly through the woods, thanks to their enforcer training. Their targets’ scents took them deeper and deeper into the maze of tall trees.

Eli’s step faltered as another strong smell slammed into him. Blood. He hastened his pace as he followed the thick coppery scent, aware that Casey was close behind him and—

He halted as the two males finally came into view. Eli sucked in a shocked breath, and his wolf stopped pacing. Ignacio was sprawled on the ground and … shit, there was so much blood. It looked like he’d been attacked by Jack the fucking Ripper. Deep gouges crisscrossed his body. Organs were spilling out. His face had been smashed to a pulp. The meaty parts of his thighs and arms lay beside him.

And Cain, well, he was standing over the body, holding what looked like a heart. He wasn’t panting with rage or glaring at the remains of Ignacio with hatred. He was just … looking.

“I guess I don’t need to ask if he’s dead,” said Eli.

Cain’s gaze sliced to him, utterly devoid of emotion. “I know you wanted the pleasure of ending him, but I won’t apologize for stealing that pleasure from you. He coveted your mate, but he tried to have mine killed. He would have killed her tonight if I hadn’t been here. I had more of a right to execute him than you did.”

Execute? Eli wouldn’t have used that word to describe what Cain had done to Ignacio. No, it was more like the guy had butchered him. Not that Eli had any complaints about it. Yeah, he’d longed to tear Ignacio into tiny little pieces, and he wished he’d had the satisfaction of watching him die. But Eli couldn’t regret that Cain had taken care of the matter—not when he’d made the cougar suffer in such a spectacularly brutal, albeit slightly sickening, fashion. His wolf very much approved.

Also, Eli couldn’t deny that Cain had the right to wipe Ignacio from the Earth—he’d avenged his mate, just as any shifter would. “Did you chase him out here?”

“No,” replied Cain, sliding his gaze back to Ignacio. “He tracked the pups to the basement; he was going after them. I didn’t want to kill him in the lodge, so I brought him out here.”

“You knew he’d go after the pups, didn’t you?”

Cain shrugged. “I know Ignacio’s brand of logic.” He tossed the heart on the ground as if it was a ball that he was bored of playing with. “Is the battle over?”

“Probably. Only one way to find out.” Eli headed back to the clearing with Casey. His pack mates and the Phoenix Pack members were all stood aside in their human form, staring open-mouthed at the cougar-littered field, watching the minks in sheer fascination. Eli felt his brows fly up in surprise.

Nick spared him a brief glance and said, “Um … I’m not really sure what’s happening.”

“That looks … wrong,” said Trey.

Shaya nodded. “I mean, the minks are so small and yet they’re actually dragging dead bodies along the ground. Bodies that are a lot bigger than they are. And they don’t even seem to be struggling.”

“It’s the whole piling-the-bodies-on-top-of-each-other thing that has my attention,” said Zander. “The minks are also lining other carcasses neatly in a row.”

Derren rubbed his nape. “For me, what’s even weirder is that they’re rolling the severed heads over to the stacks of corpses.”

“At least they’re tidying up after themselves,” said Mila.

“They’re not tidying up, they’re gathering their kills together so they can gloat over their successes.” Bracken nudged Madisyn. “Can you honestly tell me you still think those furry little beasts aren’t stone-cold trophy killers?”

Kathy heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Honestly, Bracken, you can be so dramatic.”

The wolf gaped at her. “You’re the one that called minks the psychopaths of the shifter kingdom.”

Kathy put her hands on her hips. “Why are you bringing up old crap?”

“Wait, is it just me or is their number shrinking before my eyes?” asked Harley. “It’s like they’re just … melting out of sight.”

“Damn, that’s eerie,” said Gwen.

Eli suspected they were all disappearing through whatever burrows in the ground they’d used as an entrance. Minks could easily fit through tiny nooks and crannies, including mouse holes. He looked down at his mate. “Am I right in thinking they probably would have taken some of the carcasses home if the cougars weren’t too big to fit through the burrows?”

Lips pursed, Casey nodded. “It’s a likely scenario.”

Smiling, Jaime took a long breath. “Man, I want to be a mink.”

Dante sighed at his mate. “I don’t know what bothers me more. That you’re weird enough to declare something like that, or that you truly mean it.”

Nick took a step forward. “Well, this will make disposing of the bodies a quicker job. I suppose we’d better get started.”