“Are…we allowed to stay after having a bar fight?” I asked hesitantly.
“They were at fault, not you,” he said, pushing the Coors forward. “You didn’t mess up anything in the bar. Except for the floor, but blood comes right up. This isn’t the first time we’ve had a challenge over a mate. This was a lot more entertaining, though, I’ll say that. Unique. Still, I coulda done without the painful magic.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “It served a purpose.”
“Yeah, no doubt. No doubt.” He flared his eyebrows and blew out a breath. “Now I see why an alpha of his caliber is messing around with a creature like you. Makes sense.”
“Careful how you speak about her,” Austin growled, and a shiver of pleasure ran through me.
Oliver put up his hands. “No offense meant. You want a fresh one?” He pushed Austin’s bourbon forward. “The ice is a little melted.”
Austin took the coat from Broken Sue and draped it around my shoulders before pulling it closed at the front. He started to answer Oliver, but a commotion at the front and side doors had him looking up. His body immediately tensed, and power gushed out of him before he moved me behind him.
Hard-eyed shifters I didn’t know entered, their bodies stacked with muscle. I recognized them as part of the pack’s defenses, the peacekeepers of the town. There was no telling how many people from this bar had called them, all trapped and desperate to get out.
Broken Sue leisurely walked to the other side of Austin, stepping back even with me. Jasper and Ulric helped box me in, but were then moved aside by Phil, who clearly wanted in on the action no matter what the action was.
“Austin.” A woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun led the team from the side door.
“Can’t say I’m surprised to see you in the middle of a bar fight over a girl. Looks like you’re falling into old habits, huh?”
Our shifters pushed forward from the back wall.
“He has no blame in this,” one of them said, “and if you had any sense or trust in this pack, you’d know it.”
“Well, looky here,” the woman said. “Alpha Kingsley dropped you off at his baby brother’s new territory in the middle of a Dick town. You chose to stay, yet you still had the balls to show up here?
We all knew you had no pride, you didn’t have to try so hard to prove it.”
“We showed up here to save your ass, Wanda,” another of ours, Cody, said, with the ringlets and cute dimples.
Wanda gave Broken Sue a once-over before her gaze flickered to Phil. She resumed looking at Austin. “The one true alpha is on the way. I assume he’s going to bail you out like usual. Family, and all that.”
“The one true alpha?” Broken Sue said with power radiating around him and humor in his tone.
“What is this, Lord of the Rings? One alpha to rule them all? No other alphas can exist in your world.
Just the one, and he is god.”
“In this territory, yes, you bet your ass he is,” Wanda said, stepping closer.
“My goodness, you’re easily rattled,” Broken Sue replied in a low, aggressive tone, humor still weaving through his voice. “You must be nervous about the power staring you down. You’d hate to make a mistake and challenge someone your one true alpha couldn’t handle.”
A tense beat passed before Austin put his hand in front of Broken Sue to calm things down. The conflicted emotions through the bonds said he had kinda wanted to turn Broken Sue loose. If they’d been anywhere else but his brother’s bar and/or territory, he surely would’ve.
“My mate received a challenge to her claim on me,” he finally said, and then briefly went over the steps leading up to the altercation. If I’d felt any guilt before, I wouldn’t have after the explanation.
Based on shifter code, I’d had a right to kill them. Not doing so was an act of mercy.
“The challengers rolled the dice,” he concluded. “They lost.”
“I bear witness,” Oliver said, his arms crossed over his chest. “There could be no doubt of their mutual claim. Those girls didn’t come over until Ironheart went to the loo. It’s as he says. They even brought in a healer to patch the girls up. That’s sportsmanship.”
“I’m doing it slowly,” Indigo called from the front door. “Really slowly. I’m leaving the pain, too.
They really did deserve it. Jessie and Austin are very cute together. Who would want to come between that?”
“She’s going to fit right in with us,” Ulric murmured. “If we’d had any doubt.”
“You were taunting, then, huh?” Wanda said, not backing down. “You were taunting the girls so you could cause a problem, just like this big bruiser is trying to taunt me into a challenge? That how you guys played it?”
“Jesus, Wanda, give it a rest,” someone said in annoyance. “It’s not Austin Steele’s fault. Let it go.”
“Austin Steele?” Wanda said, but a strange twang in my middle grabbed my focus.
I turned quickly and shut my eyes, recognizing the feeling as one of the connections. Broken Sue bumped into my side and Phil’s hand covered a shoulder, but my attention was fixed inward.
The twang turned into a vibration, and I felt cautiousness radiate from the connection.
I shoved against a hairy side to get more space, opening my eyes but not seeing anything. The vibration continued, a sense of stealth wiggling into it. The gargoyle was working his way closer to whatever had grabbed his attention in the southeastern part of the territory. There was a cover there, trees in addition to the usual river and brush.
“Alpha,” Austin said, drawing my attention.
Kingsley entered the front door of the bar, immediately taking in the scene. His gaze stalled on the drinks at the end of the bar, and then everyone gathered around me. Closer still and he saw the blood
where the large rodent shifter had lain. Either Indigo had moved her, or she’d moved herself.
“A claim challenge?” he asked as the vibration in my middle increased in frequency.
I breathed faster, adrenaline starting to pick up.
“Shoot, where’s my phone?” I tapped the coat pockets as though it would magically appear there.
Then looked along the ground. It would’ve been in my back pocket or…
I spied it on the edge of the bar, belatedly remembering that I’d set it down before heading off to the bathroom. I always worried about dropping it into the toilet.
“Yes. Two women,” Austin said. “She handled them both. I didn’t touch either of the women. She managed her control incredibly well, better than you or I would have.”
“Yes, I saw her control the other night.” Kingsley looked around the bar as I grabbed my phone, my hands shaking. “Witnesses? Oliver?”
“Yes, Tristan,” I whispered into the phone after tapping his name. “I’m getting a strong caution and stealth feeling from the southeast border. Could be something. Could be nothing.”
“What’d you say?”