Page 17 of Shifters Unifying
“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 anafter, and I’ll be there. For us, there is always anafter.”
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 constantlyaftermy 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 ofland. 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?”
