Page 6 of Shifters Unifying (Shifters Destiny: Willow Creek Shifters #2)

CHAPTER SIX

emma

The Gathering Place

Between Bear Trees & Red Tail Territories

Near Twilight

Only a handful of alpha shifters remained at the new gathering place, including the snipping squirrel shifter. The sun slanted in the sky, casting bright red over the landscape. I led our small group into the clearing, taking my human form without breaking stride. The others did also.

The squirrel woman met us at the entrance to the conclave as we approached, a mass of fabric in her arms. “There you are,” she said, offering the wad to me, her midnight hair hanging nearly to her waist. The dark brown of her eyes hid her pupils.

“I intended to introduce myself properly before we returned to our home.”

“Oh, thanks,” I said, finally recognizing the clothes I’d left behind. I didn’t bother redressing.

She offered her hand, and I shook it. “My name is Salali,” she said. “It means squirrel in Cherokee. My people are from Northeastern Oklahoma. We come from a long line of warriors.”

“I’m Emma Carter, rainbow vet and formerly of Willow Creek. I don’t know where my people are from,” I said, leaning back on my heels. “I was adopted as a child. To human parents.”

“That explains much.”

“More than I should have to explain to you,” I snapped with more irritation than I intended. I need a snack and a nap. More softly, I asked, “What can I help you with?”

“I would like to offer our territory as your first training grounds.”

“Impossible.”

Her jaw slacked, and she gaped at me. “I beg your pardon.”

At her words, I quirked an eyebrow. “Have you selected your five warriors?”

“We are in-process,” she stammered. “They will be selected within the week.”

“The same is true for most clans. Once you have them, send them to Six-Mile. If you’re first, I’ll train with your clan first, if not…” I shrugged. “It makes no difference to me who is first to complete my command. Obedience is the only way to curry favor with the multimorph.”

Behind me, Olivia sneezed, or maybe she was trying to cover a wheezing laugh. No doubt Jasper had gone red in the face to keep his reaction to himself. Logan made no sound at all, but the back of my head burned as though he was shooting daggers through me.

“Yes, multimorph.” Salali almost curtsied, and she rushed away, calling to her beta to hurry. “We have clan business to complete.”

“Ye handled that well, lass,” Jasper whispered.

“I’ve seen enough alphahole behavior now that I know how to replicate it. Strength is appreciated by most clans.” I turned to a red-faced Olivia. “Who’s next?”

She gestured toward the woman who had been dipping her snacks in her water during the meeting. “The raccoon shifter request—”

A shout from outside the edge of the clearing cut her off. Logan stepped between me and the possible threat, but Phil, a wolf shifter and bodyguard from Six-Mile, crashed through the tree line.

“Alpha,” he called, waving. “I need to speak with you.”

“What is it?” Logan asked as Phil came close.

“There’s a border skirmish between the big cats and the foxes.”

“Which ones?” he asked.

“The usual. Ville Platt and Red Tail.”

Logan frowned. “I thought we’d moved passed that. Which shifters?”

Phil shook his head. “It’s Giselda and one of Marcus’s lesser shifters.”

“See? Toddlers,” I said, pinching the bridge of my nose before dropping my hands and shaking it off. “What’s the gripe between them?”

“Giselda wants to build a new home on the edge of Red Tail, and the corner of her new home juts into Ville Platte.”

“She’s old and prone to eccentrics. Who’s the Ville Platte shifter?”

“Tossle.”

“Tossle?” I repeated. “I’ve not met that one. Is that actually a name?”

Logan nodded. “Tossle has been a feral cat for as long as any of us can remember. He’s a loner, and he’s practically as old as Giselda, probably older. They both march to the beat of their own drums, so they should be getting along.”

Phil said nothing.

“Who did they ask for?” Logan asked.

“The sent a runner to Six-Mile to request the aid of the multimorph and her mate,” he said. “I brought the SUV from Six-Mile. Based on the report, the contested spot on the border is near a logging road, and it’s fastest to drive.”

“You ready for this?” Olivia asked.

“So, it begins.” I sighed. “Take me to them.”

Logan sent Phil and three other shifters back to Six-Mile with our ATVs. After they’d hurried away, Logan slapped my ass. “You know what an SUV has?”

“What’s that?”

“A backseat where we can sit next to each other, and with enough time, mate again. Have you ever had sex in a backseat?”

I scrunched my nose, trying to recall a time. “Well, I had better keep every brain cell on negotiating the dispute between the two rival clans.”

His gaze narrowed, and his expression hardened, but he bowed slightly. “As you wish, multimorph,” he said stiffly. “But there will be an after, and I’ll be there. For us, there is always an after.”

I shuddered as his promise—his threat—sank into my bones. Navigating my life as the unifier of the clans was growing more and more complicated with Logan constantly on my tail.

No. A smirk twisted my mouth. Complicated by Logan constantly after my tail.

When we reached the disputed ground, the sun had sunk behind the horizon, and the haze of twilight wrapped the confrontation in an eerie glow. The new moon hung just over the trees, providing little light.

Two lines of shifters stood along the invisible border between the two territories, each shifter carried a weapon. The big cats in their human forms wore small knives, shaped as claws, and at least half of them had shifted into their cat forms, spitting and hissing from their side of the territory.

The foxes paced the line between the territories, yowling and yipping as they patrolled what they considered theirs.

The cacophony would have been enough to lead us here.

The cat shifters in their cat forms were all bigger than the fox shifters, but if Flynn and Jasper were any indication, Red Tail had far more heart than any clan I’d ever met.

Giselda shook her walking staff at the big cats.

Her long gray hair hung around her face like a curtain, covering her breasts and brushing the tops of her hips.

“I remember when this was all Red Tail territory, and I raised my kits here, in this clearing, between these trees. I took my first mate, the father of my kits, under the full moon, there on the rock.” She pointed again.

“I want to die where my life had been the happiest.”

A gnarled older man bared his pointed teeth and hissed on the other side of the invisible line. Then he shook his fist at Giselda. “This is my land, earned it by the old right, and I won’t give it up.”

I leaned toward Logan. “The old right? What’s he talking about?”

He cleared his throat. “Tossle killed Giselda’s mate and bested her in a fight.

To be hair, she was pregnant with her last kit at the time.

But he earned the right to take over their plot of land.

Ville Platte adopted all big cats into their pride and then used this method to expand their territory to accommodate each of their members comfortably. Red Tail was impacted the most.”

“No wonder there’s bad blood between them.”

“The cats and the foxes rarely get along for long,” Logan murmured. “Memories of murders and conquests are long-lived.”

“It was all perfectly legal at the time,” Olivia offered. “It’s only marginally frowned upon now. That’s more because murders between clans tend to wind up with human law enforcement involved. We strive to avoid that as much as we can.”

Crime had never occurred to me—not anything beyond the internal problem of Acheron. Humans had sheriffs, and they had jails. What would that mean for any shifter who broke the law? I still had so much to learn.

At least these two had asked for my help, and I intended to do the best I could with the two who had placed their trust in me. It should make governing them easier, shouldn’t it? How to go about negotiation a reasonable agreement between them?

Marcus Steele stood to the side, warily observing the interactions without comment. As I approached him, he straightened.

“Marcus, do you have this in hand?”

He studied me for a long moment. “I recommended that they fight to death, winner takes all.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’d let two old shifters kill each other?”

“It’s the way our pride earned the land we’re standing on.”

I scowled at the disinterested alpha. “There has to be another way.”

He waved to battle lines. “When they refused to settle it the way they had decades ago, I suggested you. Giselda agreed immediately. Tossle took more convincing. So, be my guest. Consider it your first test as a multimorph.”

My head shake brought a puzzled expression to his face. “Not until you agree to abide by whatever I decide.”

“Done,” he said. “It was my idea, after all. I will abide by whatever you decide to do with these old shifters who’ve stirred up both clans.”

I turned to the assembled warriors. If each of them joined my army…

Midway down the line, somebody yelled and threw a punch across the boundary. A big cat screamed, and a female black fox launched itself across, snarling and biting at the air. She darted between the shifted big cats, biting their heels as she absorbed a dozen cuts from sharpened claws.

“Ye’re all sons of bastards and hellspawn. Forever a thorn in our sides,” a human fox roared. “For my mate! Red Tail to the death!”

Then he lifted his spear and threw himself into the cats, sparks glinted between his spear and the talon shaped knives of the cats.

He slipped to the ground between two cats who clawed him relentlessly.

Answering affirmation spread through the foxes, and they rushed the border.

A panther screamed, and three others echoed.

The clang of metal on metal set my teeth on edge, and anguished screamed sliced through their air, making it clear I’d have a long line of warriors who needed healing when this day concluded.

All hell had broken loose.

“That’s it,” I bellowed, suddenly furious at the bickering between them. The petty in-fighting had no place in our battle with Acheron, and it would only destroy our kind from the inside out. “I will finish this.”

I dropped to the ground and sank my fists into the earth as a rush of wind crashed through the trees, charging toward us with more energy than I’d ever embraced. It slammed into me, and my eyes bulged as my cells drank it all in. The rainbow tattoo on my hip tingled and then turned bright.

My hair lifted from my neck. Colors spun in the gust as multimorph voices called from centuries gone by. The magnolia tree burned in my mind. The ground shook beneath us, sending warriors tumbling aside.

Never again. Never again.

Snap!

A line of fire ignited over the border, hanging in the air over their heads.

The burst shone down like a horizontal thread of lightning, turning the ground below as bright as day.

Thunder followed each electrical popping sound.

Branches shot out from it, and the battle lulled as thirty shifters looked up.

“Emma,” Logan yelled. “What are you doing?”

Go big…

Or die.