Page 41 of On A Rift’s Edge (Riftworld #2)

Fuck. The last thing Lyall wanted was a reason not to hate Arimanius.

Remi came up to stand next to his father. Lyall expected his friend to try and smooth talk Cesmak or to negotiate a deal, but instead he stood there with his arms folded across his chest. “Rats stick together. You take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

Cesmak lunged at him, transforming as she did into her hellhound form. Remi crumpled, and the fear and fury flooding through Lyall gave him enough strength to rip himself free from Gremory.

Pain seared his neck, but Lyall ignored the torn skin as he raced toward Cesmak, whose teeth had closed around a tangle of Remi’s clothing.

But not Remi himself.

A chinchilla scurried up to Lyall and bit furiously at his neck. Lyall pulled away, then realized Remi was trying to chew the collar off him.

Cesmak whirled around, realizing that she was chomping on a pair of empty jeans, but Arimanius moved to intercept her, swinging a massive wooden club studded with glistening thorns.

Lyall was familiar with the weapon, as well as the poison the thorns could inject. Hellhounds were resistant to most toxins, but not this one. Trapped in his terrier form, he couldn’t help his mother any more than he could stop her from slaughtering everyone in the room.

Ari swung at Cesmak’s head, a good try, but the alpha of the Mt.

Hood clan was faster. She dodged the blow and slammed her shoulder into Arimanius, knocking him onto the floor with an awful crunching noise.

One of his legs was now bent in an unnatural angle.

The club rolled along the floor, then sprouted four twig-like legs and scuttled away.

Cesmak stalked closer to the wounded mafia boss, opening her jaws for the killing bite.

Kat rushed forward and put himself between Cesmak and Arimanius. “Alpha Cesmak, my name is Katsuo Nakamura, and I’m your son’s Matchmaker-chosen mate. If you want to kill Ari, you’ll have to finish me off first.”

Panic and pride warred inside Lyall. Here was the real Kat, ready to put himself in danger to save others, even if they didn’t deserve it.

Lyall loved him so much it hurt.

He forgot all about the collar and charged at his mother, leaving Remi squeaking in protest as he was dragged along, still gnawing away at the band encircling Lyall’s neck.

Lyall got to Cesmak within seconds, but his mother swiped out a paw, sending Remi’s chinchilla form flying. The small animal landed in a heap, unmoving.

Shit. Unlike Lyall, Remi was more vulnerable in his Riftworld form, not less. He tried to dart toward his friend, but Cesmak pinned him down with the same giant paw she had used on Remi.

“Does the human speak the truth, Gre?” Cesmak spoke to her wife in their clan’s language, but Gremory shifted forms and answered her in English.

“He’s Lyall’s Matchmaker-chosen spouse, yes.

” Gremory sounded intrigued by Kat, which given her habit of experimenting on things she found interesting didn’t reassure Lyall at all.

He tried to squirm free, but Cesmak extended her claws around his body in warning.

He shot a glance toward Remi, hoping he had been pretending to be injured. Remi wasn’t moving.

“An interesting conundrum.” Gremory came closer, her booted feet close to Remi’s crumpled form.

Lyall’s head was squished sideways under the weight of Cesmak’s foreleg, so he could only see the lower half of his birth mother’s human form as she approached.

She had on her version of living leathers, a robe-like garment with silver-gray scales.

As she walked, her hand slipped into a pocket and pulled out a thin chain.

Ari had tech like the collar Lyall was wearing, but Gremory had her own invention, a living metal that could bind and control even other hellhounds. Would his birth mother do that to him?

“Best not to risk offending the Matchmaker by killing the pretty human Lyall has been honored with by its profound wisdom.” Gremory held out the silver links, and they coiled around her arm like a pet snake.

She continued, focusing on Cesmak and not even glancing down at Lyall.

“The battle is over, beloved. Tell Arimanius to release our son from his current shape.” She gestured at Giana, who stood pale but defiant behind her injured husband.

“In exchange for the life of this other human, perhaps.”

“No.” Cesmak pressed down harder on Lyall, who had been trying to get his small jaws in a position to bite his mother. “They will all die, and Lyall can stay in this pathetic Earth form for a month as punishment.”

Gremory sighed. She might be the voice of reason compared to her wife, but her main focus had always been her research, not the living people around her.

Not even her son.

“I can use this to keep both Lyall and this interesting boy quiet and cooperative while you do your work.” Gremory reached out a hand to Kat, who set his jaw and held his ground.

Cesmak snarled and charged forward, unable to wait the few seconds it would have taken for Gremory to tie both Kat and Lyall together and drag them off.

Lyall had expected that and managed to wriggle out of his mother’s grasp as she shifted her weight. He didn’t have much of a plan. Remi was unconscious at best, and he had no other way to shift back into his hellhound form.

If he had to fight his mothers as a Scottish terrier to protect Kat and Remi, he would.

He knew how stubborn Kat was, and he didn’t think he would step aside and let Cesmak kill Ari.

The first few drops of water barely registered, but as the dripping intensified, Lyall was forced to look skyward.

All that got him was a splash of water to his face. He blinked, then shook off the drenching shower that rained down upon him. Above him floated a sphere of water, rotating like a top and spraying water everywhere.

Teo, now fully in his hopper form, fell out of the sphere and landed with a splash in front of Lyall. He spread his bulbous fingers out wide.

The shift from Earth natural laws to the Riftworld universe was abrupt. One second Lyall was a Scottish terrier, the next he was a full-grown hellhound, snarling in the face of his alpha.

Lyall knew how to challenge the military leader of his clan for the leadership position. The words, the posture—they had been drilled into him since childhood. He had never wanted this, never thought that a fight that might end in his death or having to kill one of his two mothers was acceptable.

Kat had risked his life to protect Arimanius, a man who had deceived and tricked him, in order to do what was right.

It was Lyall’s turn to do the right thing. Even if it killed him.