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It had been wereleopards and werejaguars in New Mexico. They had mistaken me for another lycanthrope. Narcissus made the same mistake. I saw his eyes widen, then narrow. He glanced at Jean-Claude, and he laughed. “Everyone says you’re human, Anita.” He raised a hand and caressed the air just above my face, touching the swirl of energy. “I think you should come out of the closet before someone gets hurt.”

“I never said I was human, Narcissus. But I’m not a shapeshifter either.”

He rubbed his hand along the front of his dress, as if trying to get the feeling of my power off his skin. “Then what are you?”

“If things go badly tonight, you’ll find out.”

His eyes narrowed again. “If you cannot protect your people without guns, then you should step down as their Nimir-Ra and let someone else have the job.”

“I’ve got an interview set up day after tomorrow with a potential Nimir-Raj.”

He looked genuinely surprised. “You know that you don’t have the power to rule them?”

I nodded. “Oh, yeah, I’m only temporary until I can find someone else. If the rest of you weren’t so damn species conscious, I’d have farmed them out to another group. But no one wants to play with an animal that isn’t the same as them.”

“It is our way, it has always been our way.”

And I knew the “our” didn’t mean just werehyenas but all the shifters. “Yeah, well it sucks.”

He smiled then. “I don’t know whether I like you, Anita, but you are different, and I always appreciate that. Now give up the gun like a good little girl, and you can enter my territory.” He held his hand out.

I stared at the hand. I didn’t want to give up my gun. What I’d told Ronnie was true. I couldn’t arm wrestle them, and I would lose a fair fight. The gun was my equalizer. I had the two knives, but frankly, they were for emergencies.

“It is your choice, ma petite.”

“If it will help you make the choice,” Narcissus said, “I have put two of my own personal guards in the room with your leopards. I have forbidden the others from causing further harm to your people until you arrive. Until you enter the upper room where they’re waiting, nothing more will happen that they don’t want to happen.” Knowing Nathaniel, that wasn’t as comforting as it could have been.

If anyone would understand the problem, it would be someone who ran a club like this. “Nathaniel is one of those bottoms that will ask for more punishment than he can survive. He has no stopping point, no ability to keep himself safe. Do you understand?”

Narcissus’s eyes widened just a touch. “Then what was he doing here without a top of his own?”

“I sent him out with one that was supposed to watch over him tonight. But Gregory said that Elizabeth deserted Nathaniel early in the evening.”

“Is she one of your leopards, too?”

I nodded.

“She’s defying you.”

“I know. The fact that Nathaniel suffers for it doesn’t seem to bother her.”

He studied my face. “I don’t see anger in you about this.”

“If I was angry at everything Elizabeth did to piss me off, I’d never be anything else.” Truthfully, I was just tired. Tired of having to rescue the pack from one emergency after another. Tired of Elizabeth being up in my face and not taking care of the others, even though she was supposedly dominant to them. I’d avoided punishing her, because I couldn’t beat her up, which was what she needed. The only thing I could do was shoot her. I’d been trying to avoid that, but she just may have pushed me far enough that I was out of options. I’d see what actual damage had been done. If anyone died because of her, then she would follow. I hated the fact that I didn’t care whether I killed her. I’d known her off and on for over a year. I should have cared, but I didn’t. I didn’t like her, and she’d been asking for it for as long as I’d known her. My life would be simpler if she were dead. But there had to be a better reason to kill someone than that. Didn’t there?

“Some advice,” Narcissus said. “All dominance challenges, especially from your own people, must be handled quickly, or the problem