Page 67 of A Lion's Heart
CHAPTER 16
Rome stood behind the podium in the Grand Hall of the Central Zone Headquarters. It was the largest meeting space in the facility with three hundred cushioned seats, burgundy carpet and warm beige painted walls. Rome wore a dark gray suit with the silver Topétenia insignia pen on his left lapel. On the wall behind him were the shields of each tribe. They were positioned around the newly designed Shadow Shifter shield that signified their unity and loyalty to each other.
As Rome looked out to all the shifters in this zone and his family seated on the front row, he thought that what he was about to do was for all of them. It was his job to unify his people and to carry them into the next generation with the smartest and most innovative ideas possible. He believed he was about to do the right thing.
“Keller Cross of the Bosinia tribe is on his way back to Assembly Headquarters for debriefing and reassignment,” he began.
“Golden Harris has been quarantined due to the poison that was on the blade Lial Johansen used on him. The medical staff as well as one of my Lead Enforcers, Ezra Preston, will be searching for the exact poison and how best to rid Gold’s body of its toxins.”
There were a few murmurs throughout the room and Rome made a point of looking all around as discreetly as possible. He inhaled deeply as he stood there quietly, searching for any scent, any sign of infiltration, but found none.
“Cole Linden, who served as the Central Zone Faction leader since its inception, has been found.”
There were applause and cheers but none that wiped away the block of concern Rome still carried for his friend.
“He is currently in a comatose state,” Rome continued. “Lead Curandero Ary Delgado is not sure how long he’s been this way or how long he will stay in this condition. She will continue to work with the medical staff to find a way to bring him out of it.”
He found Kalina’s gaze and held it for endless moments. She was his rock. The one who had held him last night as he’d cried for the friend that he’d missed these last twenty years, and for the possibility that he may not ever open his eyes again. She was also the one who had soothed his irritation that Decan Canter was his daughter’s mate.
When Kalina nodded Rome stood taller. He removed his hands that he hadn’t realized he’d clenched against the side of the podium and prepared to speak again. To say the words that he knew would take many in this room by surprise. As for him, he’d known it would come to this. Baxter and Eli had told him the time for the Shadows was now. And he’d listened. Over the years Rome had gained a newfound respect for the Overseer who had raised him and who loved Nisa as his flesh and blood granddaughter. He’d also come to appreciate the Seer who Rome had watched being trained and recognized his leadership abilities and loyalty long before any other callings had come to the young jaguar. Together, their foreshadowing abilities had aided Rome on numerous decisions made on behalf of the shifters. He hadn’t liked their last prediction, but none of this was about him. Regardless of what others might say.
“Decan Canter will be the Interim Central Zone Faction Leader from this day until I give further notice.”
Nisa looked crestfallen and Rome instinctively wanted to go to her. To pull her up and hug her close the way he used to when she was a little girl. But his little girl had grown up. He wasn’t sure when or what the hell he’d been doing while it happened, but she wasn’t the spitfire that used to hide under his desk and read books while he was working just so she could be close to him. No, his baby girl had stopped following him around a long time ago. He’d just been too busy to realize that when she stopped following him, that meant she would inevitably find another man to look to. He only prayed—for the lion’s overall safety—that Decan was up to the challenge.
The meeting ended shortly after his announcement and Jace’s brief address to the shifters he’d been responsible for in the last twenty years.
“How could you?” Nisa asked the moment he walked through the stage door leading to a back room.
He’d had to tear his gaze away from the sorrowful look on her face when he’d been on stage and when the other shifters around had stood and began moving through the room, he’d presumed that Decan, correction, hercompanheiro, would go to her and take care of her. The fact that she’d made it through that crowd to catch up with him the second he walked through this door didn’t bode well for how Decan was going to deal with her in the future.
“I’ve done everything right,” she continued. “Everything!”
Rome watched her breeze past him and moved to close the door. He turned around to see her standing with her fists clenched tight at her sides. She had his complexion but otherwise looked so much like her mother it was eerie. She’d always kept her hair short like Kalina’s, but in a curlier fashion that suited a minimalistic personality. Nisa wasn’t interested in pretty things or primping and posing. She’d grown up with her nose in one book after another. Listening intently to everything Baxter had to teach her. She loved learning to fight with Eli and Ezra and hearing about the seriousness of security from Nick. And when X had let her climb up onto his lap while he’d been working on one of his many tablets at the time, she’d been in heaven. But no matter what, his little girl had always come back to him, cuddling into his embrace and looking up at him as if he could do no wrong. It was a powerful emotion for a man that had gone through the things Rome had to experience. She’d taken every part of him and made it brighter with just her smile.
Now she was glaring at him and he thought it might just make more sense to kill whoever had hurt her enough to put that look on her face. Unfortunately, that person was him.
“My job is to lead our people, Nisa. To do that I have to make the best decisions for us as a whole.”
“And I’m not the best decision. That’s what you’re saying, right?” she asked and took a step closer. “I excelled in everything! You know it because everybody reported back to you when I finished a test or some tasks they threw my way. I even sucked up every complaint I had when you decided I needed a bodyguard to accompany me on this mission. I traveled with him and I didn’t usurp his authority or report the things I knew he was doing wrong to you. But he gets the job! He gets to lead an entire zone and I get to what? Go back home and play in my room like a good little girl?”
Did she really not know? Rome thought.
She was correct in that she’d done everything right. She’d passed all the tests, and he’d thought—after picking up the scent of theircaloryesterday—that the logical next step of accepting hercompanheirohad been completed successfully as well.
“You don’t go back, Nisa. Never go back, never look back. There’s nothing there. Your future is in front of you,” he told her. “That future is with yourcompanheiro.”
“Oh you mean the backstabber! He stole my job! I was supposed to be named Faction Leader. I came here and I updated the holodeck. You know the one that I created! I even found out that someone had broken into confidential files. I went on that mission above ground and brought back valuable information. And oh yeah, I snuck above ground last night and stopped your new Faction Leader from killing the best and most valuable witness we’re ever going to have in this war. So how is it that he gets the job and I don’t?”
“He’s a Serfin.”
She tilted her head, staring at him perplexed. “And? That’s just DNA.”
“It’s evolution,” he replied. “As this new world has evolved in the past twenty years—changing its climate, accommodating more types of shifters and other beings, and foregoing the leadership it had been built on—so have we had time to evolve down here. We’re no longer in the positions we were in before, so it stands to reason that our beliefs need to change. So far there have only been Topétenia Faction Leaders. Now, there will be Serfin representation in the upper ranks. More changes are coming, Nisa and we need to be ready. My actions cannot only be about my family.”
“But I’m just as qualified as he is, regardless of our DNA,” she said, deflated.
Rome moved to her then, touching her shoulders. “You are qualified to take my job,” he told her with a grin. “I’ve never known a more tenacious shifter in my life.”
