Page 103 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
“Maybe you should wait for that meeting until after we decide who the Alpha of this colony actually is.”
Hawk stepped forward, shouldering through the crowd. Everyone fell back in silence to let him pass. He came to a halt in front of Leander, gave a respectful nod of his head, then turned to Alejandro. He said, “Don’t you agree? Brother?”
A snarl of such hostility ripped from Alejandro’s throat that all the tiny hairs on Morgan’s body stood on end. Hawk, however, simply smiled.
“A challenger,” said Leander with interest, eying Hawk. For some reason, he sounded not at all surprised by this turn of events.
“A good-for-nothing, illegitimate bastard!” spat Alejandro.
“?‘Illegitimate bastard’ is redundant.” Leander spoke to Alejandro, but his gaze, razor sharp, stayed on Hawk. “And I’m afraid he’s correct, under the circumstances. The meeting will have to wait. When does it happen?”
When Alejandro didn’t reply—too busy shaking in fury and biting his tongue—one of his guards spoke. “Sunset.” He hesitated only a moment before adding, “My Lord.”
“Then we’ll have the meeting an hour after sunset,” Leander said, still staring at Hawk. The two of them locked eyes. Neither moved, or said another word, but there was violence in the stillness and silence, and for the first time, Morgan felt real fear for Hawk.
Leander had, so far, killed three challengers to his own rule. He could easily make it four.
Tension rippled in a palpable wave through the crowd.
Still looking at Hawk, he called out, “Morgan. Alexander. Will you please show us to our quarters?”
They made their way forward, and it was only when they finally stood directly in front of him that Leander looked away from Hawk. He looked first at Xander, nodding, then at Morgan. She willed herself not to break eye contact with him.
“You look well,” he said. “Jenna will be pleased to know the jungle hasn’t wilted you.”
That was all that he said, but with those neutral words, Morgan knew he meant her no harm. She released the breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Xander squeezed her hand. “I can think of few things that could,” she said, and, just for good measure, dropped a swift, graceful curtsy.
Leander pressed his lips together, his eyes dancing with mirth. So low it was almost inaudible, he said, “Agreed.”
Xander said, “Shall we?”
“Lead the way.”
Hand in hand, Xander and Morgan pushed through the whispering crowd, while Leander and his entourage followed.
As they walked, Morgan felt Viscount Weymouth’s eyes burning into her back.
Years later, Jack would look back on the next twenty-four hours as the single most defining day of her life.
She’d never been good at waiting, she remembered that much about herself as she paced back and forth inside Morgan’s elegant home as the shadows grew long on the floor, and the songs of the night creatures of the forest began to echo through the trees. She also knew she’d once excelled at hiding, at slipping unnoticed through spaces and melting into the background, though she didn’t recall exactly why she might have cultivated that talent.
Combined with a growing sense of anxiety and the two aforementioned facts, Jack found it impossible to keep her promise to Hawk. At dusk, she crept from her assigned waiting spo
t, climbed silently down the planks affixed to the tree that formed a ladder to the ground, and followed the thrum of the drums into the jungle.
She didn’t know what she’d been expecting, but what she encountered stole all the breath from her lungs.
In a clearing surrounded on three sides by towering trees, the fourth a sheer cliff wall of red clay, where a flock of hundreds of blue and scarlet macaws perched, preening and picking at it, was a massive depression in the ground, roughly the shape of an oval. Ringed at regular intervals with torches spitting flame, with sides that sloped down toward a flat, dirt floor, it was a naturally formed arena. A throng of people encircled it, and many more were perched in the branches of the trees all around, staring down, watching the two men who stood there, bare-chested and barefoot, facing one another.
The man facing her direction was Hawk.
She knew immediately this was the contest Morgan had told her about. This was the fight where only one victor could emerge.
Jack crept forward, careful to keep behind the trees, stifling a scream as a brilliant blue snake with a red-tipped tail slid silently down the trunk closest to her. She jumped back, her hand to her chest, and bumped into something solid.
“Well, well, what have we here?”
Jack whirled around. Standing there in the shadows was a man with iron-gray hair and small, round spectacles. He was older, paunchy, and had a menacing smile and freezing eyes.
