Somehow.
Eva looked at her in poorly concealed horror. “Won’t he have . . . claws? And not cute tiny, puppy ones?”
“We’re a little concerned about that,” Pia said grimly. “And he hasn’t yet shown any sign of his human form.” Some Wyr babies were born in their animal form, and others were born in human form. Still others, if they were not already in the same form as their mother, shapeshifted while in utero, although that was more rare. “The doctor wants to plan a C-section.”
“I see.” Eva pulled her hand away and stepped back.
They had roused the baby. Pia felt an invisible presence settle around her neck and shoulders, a bright, fierce loving innocence. It was a waking version of what she dreamed so often these days, the peanut draping his graceful, delicate white body around her, his long, transparent wings tucked close to his body. Nobody else but her could sense when he did that, not even Dragos. She put a hand to the base of her neck with a small, private smile.
“Guess we better get you to Charleston,” Eva said. “You got a job to do.”
“I guess we’d better,” said Pia.
“I just want to know one more thing,” said Eva.
Pia turned to unlock the restroom door. “What’s that?”
Eva put her hand on the door and held it shut while she met Pia’s gaze pointedly. “Tell me we can change radio stations now.”
Pia bit back a chuckle. “Yes, please. Let’s get off the elevator.”
Eva took hold of the handle and pulled the door open. The other five in their group were hanging in the hallway, looking thoughtful, their arms piled high with food bags and drink carriers. Johnny was already eating a sandwich.
Reaching a détente with Eva was one hurdle down. Now all Pia wanted to do was reach their rented estate and settle in for the evening. She wouldn’t be meeting with any Elves until the next day.
She couldn’t wait for nightfall. She only hoped she wasn’t so excited that she couldn’t fall asleep, because that would seriously screw up everything.
TWO
After seeing off Pia’s mini-cavalcade, Dragos flew back to the city.
He missed her ferociously already, the ache so bad it hurt his chest. Each wing stroke that took him further away from her felt wrong as hell. They had not separated since they had come together and mated last May.
Wyr could survive separations from their mates, sometimes for years if necessary, but it always felt like privation. He almost called her back to him a half-dozen times. Only the thought of their shared mission kept him silent, although his massive jaws ached from how hard he clenched them.
When he reached Manhattan, he spiraled down through the frigid air to land in a large, cordoned-off area in a parking lot by Four Pennsylvania Plaza. After he shimmered into a shapeshift, he let go of the cloaking spell and strode toward the main entrance of the massive, round Madison Square Garden building.
He glanced up as he approached. The banner had gone up weeks before. It was several stories tall and very simple. It read SENTINEL GAMES, with the dates for this week down below, along with the simple graphic of a gigantic, crimson dragon rampant.
That’d do.
The twenty-thousand by ten-thousand-foot arena seated 19,500 and it had all the latest multimedia technology, with giant television screens to show spectators in close-up the details of what occurred down below. The arena had undergone extensive renovations over the last several months, heavily subsidized by Cuelebre Enterprises, down to and including the Cuelebre Enterprises Executive Suite, which perched above the rest of the arena like an aerie.
All the tickets for the week of the Games were long gone. The tickets were for four-hour slots and had been free on a first-come/first-serve basis to any Wyr or resident of New York State who applied. The first ones to go were on the last day, when the final round of contests would take place and he would name his next seven sentinels. A limited amount of seating and suites had also been made available, for an exorbitant price, to any of the other races who were willing to pay.
And they were all willing to pay. Dignitaries from all the other Elder Races, along with many human nationalities, would be attending.
People would watch the Games for a variety of reasons. Some would be evaluating the strength of the Wyr demesne and making notes of the personalities involved. The week would showcase a lot of talent, so no doubt some, including Cuelebre Enterprises, would be headhunting for a selection of opportunities that lay outside the sentinel positions.
Also, many Wyr would gain a sense of security from knowing their demesne remained strong and capable of handling any threat. Still others would watch for the blood sport, which was barbaric, of course, but Dragos had never made any bones about the fact that the Games themselves were barbaric. They were supposed to be. PETA members were completely outraged and utterly confused.
The weeklong event would also be televised on pay-per-view cable worldwide, which would help to defray some of the massive cost, but the bottom line was the Games still remained the single most expensive project he had personally sponsored in generations.
In this case, profit was not the point. This was governance, a calculated, lavish display of wealth and an exercise of raw, brutal strength.
Just as humans had many different countries splattered across the globe, all the other Elder Races had different demesnes—in the continental United States, in Europe, Asia, Africa and other places.
All except for the Wyr. The Wyr had different communities, such as the gargoyles in northern Scotland, the wolves of the Great Steppe in southwestern Russia, the gazelles of the African plains and the mysterious, ancient kraken of the North Atlantic who rarely interacted with others or came to land.
But there was only one Wyr demesne, one Wyr ruler.
Cuelebre, the Great Beast.
And there had been only one event like this in the last thousand years. That had been the first Sentinel Games, when his original seven had fought their way to their current positions. Then, he had recruited the most Powerful of the Wyr throughout the world. They had come together to establish who was the strongest amongst them, and they had fought for the chance to rule by his side.
He had been working toward this point since Tiago and Rune had left their positions last summer. This time the worldwide recruiting and screening effort had been conducted electronically. Notices had gone out, job application forms had been posted, and an entire team of recruiters and HR personnel had spent the last several months screening and checking references for all the applicants.
They had arrived at a short list of 448 contestants, and most of those were predator Wyr. There were any number of lions, of course, and several gargoyles. Dragos liked the gargoyles. They were community minded, and when they changed into their Wyr form, their stone-like surface was almost impossible to penetrate in hand-to-hand combat.
There was one of the two other known thunderbirds in existence aside from Tiago, a clash of harpies, and a very interesting, rare individual who was mixed race but whose Wyr side was strong enough that he could shapeshift. Most interesting of all to Dragos, there was a rare pegasus. While Powerful immortals, as herbivores pegasi were peaceful creatures, and it was unusual for one to seek out such a public, potentially violent position.
All-predator sentinels made for a hawkish group, a fact that was brought home to him when Pia, with her more peaceful outlook, began to sit in on conferences and voice her opinions. It might not be a bad thing to have a pegasus as a sentinel—as long as he could establish his prowess in physical combat. If he couldn’t fight worth shit, there was no point. The pegasus could go push some pencils in a bureaucratic position somewhere. Right here? It was call of the wild, baby.
The shortlist of contestants also included all five of his current sentinels, who had to participate in the Games to prove they were stil
l the strongest and the best, because while the Wyr demesne adopted modern technology, legal concepts and principles, at its heart it was still a feudal system. It had to be; his sentinels needed to be the strongest and most capable of taking down any other Wyr who might go rogue, and they also had to be capable of leading a world-class defense against any potential attackers.
Might did not always equate with right, but it did provide damn strong security in an uncertain, often brutal world.
Still, the participation of the five sentinels was probably just a formality. Probably. The only stipulation Dragos had made was that they fight other contestants, because the point of their inclusion wasn’t to find out which of them was the strongest against each other. The real question was, were they stronger than anybody else?
Everyone was on edge, and more tempers than just his had flared frequently over the last few weeks. Crews had been laboring overnight to put the last touches on the combat arena. It was a simple area, a huge cordoned-off space with a sand-covered floor. The sand could be raked in between bouts to get rid of the blood.
Because there would be blood.
With all the paperwork and formalities out of the way, the Sentinel Games had just one objective: beat your opponent by any means possible. One fight, Wyr to Wyr. No weapons, no second chances, no holds barred.
There was just one rule: don’t kill anybody.
At least not on purpose.
• • •
Nobody wanted to talk to Dragos these days. No doubt it had something to do with him being so snarly. He was liable to bite off somebody’s head if they so much as looked at him funny. That wasn’t winning him any friends.
Which was all right with Dragos. He didn’t need friends, and he didn’t want to talk to anybody else, anyway. He could probably stand to not talk to anybody for the entire length of Pia’s trip away.
Yeah, that could potentially save lives and maintain inter-demesne alliances. Unfortunately, that strategy wasn’t on his agenda for the foreseeable future.
Approximately twenty thousand spectators were on site, along with countless staff and security, a team of medical personnel on standby for the week, the four hundred and forty-eight contestants, a gaggle of assorted dignitaries, some protest groups and a shitload of press.
Whenever his five current sentinels were not competing, they would be working with Wyr divisions in NYPD to maintain an extra-sharp vigilance throughout the city. This week would be particularly challenging for them, for they would have virtually no downtime between rounds in the arena, other than what they might need to physically heal from any injuries. They were all taking the rigors of the week as their own personal challenge to excel.
Lines went down the street. It was taking a while to usher in all of the people. While Dragos liked putting on a show, he really hated crowds, even when he was the one who instigated the gathering. He clenched his fists and kept a stern hold on his temper, turning his face away when someone pointed a camera at him.
Cuelebre Enterprises’ new head of PR, Talia Aguilar, was already on site and talking with several camera crews in the main lobby area. Talia was a selkie, a seal Wyr, with a sinuous rounded body, golden skin, brown hair and large, soulful eyes that the camera loved. She had been part of Tricks’s staff when Tricks had been Head of PR.
Last summer Pia herself had recommended Talia for the position, after she had briefly considered whether or not she wanted or even could do the job.
“Why her?” Dragos had asked.
“Because not only is Talia qualified, she’s freaking adorable,” Pia told him. “Have you noticed her? People fall over themselves to do things for her. They open doors for her and shit—and she never says shit. And Dragos, as much as I love you I have to say, you need someone who is really adorable in that position.”
“You’re adorable,” he said.
“Really? Aw.” Pleasure sleeked her down. She gave him a creamy smile. “I’m not, you know. But, aw.”
“Why shouldn’t you take the position?” he asked, curious as to her reasoning.
“For one thing, I’m not qualified,” she said.
“So?” He didn’t care if Pia wasn’t qualified. In this instance, he was fully prepared to act in unabashed nepotism. She would learn the job in time if she wanted it, and in the meantime she wouldn’t screw up too badly.
Pia sprawled across his body, her head on his chest. She liked to draw light circles around his nipples with her soft, gentle fingers while they talked. It drove him absolutely crazy. Plus they had just finished making love. At that point he was inclined to give her anything she wanted. He was most amused to note she didn’t seem to be aware of that fact.
“For another thing, you’ve got people on staff who actually are qualified and deserve the promotion, like Talia,” she told him.
He kissed her forehead, almost closing his eyes as he inhaled her beautiful scent. When they were intimate, he always insisted she take off the cloaking spell that hid her full nature from anyone else. Her pearly luminescence filtered through his dark lashes and lit all the dark corners inside of him.
He said, “I’m still at the ‘so?’ part of this conversation.”
She yawned and told him, “Third, I believe it’s a big mistake to take any position that would make me your employee. You’ll just think it gives you that much more right to run roughshod over me.”
He whispered huskily, “Is that what I do when I’m over you?”
Her throaty chuckle was barely audible. It brought to the forefront of his mind fevered images of what they had just done together. What he had done to her. What he would do to her, with her, again soon. “Seriously,” she said. “I may be your lover and your mate . . .”
“That’s not all you are.” He gathered up her left hand and kissed her fingers where the diamond in the ring he had given her gathered all the light in the room and threw it out in a spray of rainbow sparkles. “You’re going to be my wife too, as soon as we have time to do it right.”
She paused, then said, “Okay, I’m a little intimidated by what you mean when you say ‘do it right,’ and I’ll be your wife at some point, but the real point I’m trying to make is that I have no idea how to be your partner. I think that job is the wrong way for us to go.”
“Fair enough,” he said. And that had been that.
Now he strode through the crowded space of the arena, and Talia registered his presence with a quick, smiling glance, but she never stopped speaking to the reporters in front of her, and he maintained his distance. The selkie was all right, he supposed, as he maneuvered through the crowd to the elevators. There was just one big problem with her: she was scared to death of him.
While that might be a reasonable reaction to him, her fear saturated her scent whenever they were within proximity of each other. He didn’t know a single Wyr who would believe anything she had to say when she was in that state, so at the moment they were limited to televised appearances together—and Dragos almost never did televised appearances.
Plus there was another unfortunate consequence. Her fear drove him crazy. Not a tolerant male at the best of times, he felt the urge to smack her upside the head whenever they got in the same room. It made for a poor working dynamic.
When he reached the Cuelebre Enterprises Executive Suite, he surveyed it with satisfaction. It had been customized perfectly to his specific requirements.
The interior would have surprised anybody outside his inner circle. Most suites at the arena were designed for high-end entertaining, either personally or for business clients. Cuelebre Enterprises had taken over the arena’s new “supersuite” that had the capability of entertaining up to three hundred people, with comfortable lounge-style furniture, stylish decor, kitchens, full bars and fireplaces.
For the duration of Dragos’s use, however, the supersuite was curr
ently furnished as a mobile working office, with secure laptop systems that had been personally couriered over by his assistants, office desks and chairs and a lounge area by the windows. It was fully plugged in, with high-speed internet, phones, and fax, print and scan capability. After several months of hard work and negotiations, they were finally at the end stages of some critical business deals. The office would allow Dragos to maintain a presence at the Games without losing a full week of work he could ill afford to lose.
One of his assistants, Kristoff, was already present and hard at work, talking on his phone while he typed on his keyboard. No matter how well dressed Kristoff was, he always appeared to be slightly shaggy and shambling. Kristoff was an ursine Wyr whose untidy, self-effacing demeanor disguised a sharp, quick wit and the kind of sturdy disposition needed to work around Dragos on a daily basis. Not only that, Kris was a Harvard-educated MBA who thrived on aggressive corporate maneuvering. Dragos paid him well for those traits.
Nodding to Kris as he strode in, he went immediately to the window look out over the arena. The sand on the combat floor was pristine, all footsteps raked smooth.
The door slammed open. Dragos looked over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. One of his sentinels exploded into the suite. The harpy Aryal’s furious gray gaze fixed on him and she stormed toward him. In her human form, she was a six-foot-tall, powerfully built woman with dark hair that was tangled more often than not, and she had a strange, gaunt beauty that had nothing to do with dieting. In the harpy’s Wyr form, both strangeness and beauty were accentuated.
Naturally it would be Aryal who dared to storm and seethe around him that day. Chick was crazy, but no doubt that was axiomatic. All harpies were.
Dragos turned back to the arena, which was mostly full and still filling. Fifteen minutes to showtime. He said, “What is it?”