I crawled backward away from him, and he let me, but I’d forgotten about the other lion. It was too careless for words, but I wasn’t thinking clearly. The lioness was eating what made me me. I understood in that moment that I didn’t have to shift to lose myself. I crawled into Jacob’s legs and started forward, but he reached down, grabbed my arms, and pulled me to my feet. I was suddenly staring into his face from inches away as he bent that tall body down to me. He said, “Oh, God.” It was more a cry for help than a sound of passion.

I felt his other arm move and went to block it without thinking. My hand traced down his arm to find my knife. “Is this really what you want to stick in me, Jacob?”

He swallowed so hard it sounded painful. “Don’t do this.”

“You first,” I whispered.

“What?”

“Call off your cats, don’t earn the second half of Bennington ’s money.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t my queen yet.”

Nicky came behind me, hands sliding over my back. Jacob growled at him, but the younger man said, “We don’t have to fight. She shares just fine.” He ground himself into me from behind, shoving me against Jacob. I was suddenly held between both of them, and they were both hard and ready. I couldn’t help but react to it, writhing between the two of them. It was Jacob who pulled me back from the other man, and said, “I’m Rex of this pride. I don’t share.”

“That’s what destroyed your first pride,” Nicky said. “Didn’t you learn anything from that?”

“I learned that if you are king, then be king.” He kissed me, hard and fierce, so that I had to open my mouth, let him inside, or he’d have cut my lips on my teeth. He was all hands and mouth and need. My lioness didn’t like him. She snarled inside my head. He didn’t share; the pride was all about sharing. My life was all about sharing. The group mattered more than anything else. The group had to survive.

I pushed him back enough to break the kiss. I snarled into his face. “I rule myself! I don’t need another king.”

Something crashed into him, and I had a breath to realize it was Nicky, and then they were rolling on the ground fighting for real. I didn’t stay to watch. Jacob had dropped my big blade. I picked it up and ran for the door that Bennington had gone through. If he died, the job died with him. That worked for me.

A lion roared behind me, and I didn’t look back to see who it was, but I used the speed that my beasts had given me and ran. I had the speed but not all the senses, so I had a second before the door opened and I was staring at a tall, dark-haired man. He smelled like lion. The blade struck out in a blur of silver. Action was so far ahead of thought that I had sliced him from ribs to belt, and was starting to bring the knife back for a second blow, as his fist struck out at me. I was able to move back a little, but the speed was too much, and I was too committed to moving forward. His fist blurred out and hit me in the face. It was like being hit by a baseball bat: pressure, momentum, no pain, just a stop. The inside of my head just stopped like my brain had run into a wall. There wasn’t even time to think, Oh, he hit me. It was just the blow and I was down. The lights went out and so did I.

The first sensation I had was of bare dirt under my hands. The ground was cool against the backs of my thighs through the hose. I could feel walls around me, that enclosed feeling, but there was a thread of wind as if there were a window open somewhere. The wind smelled of trees and grass. The dirt smelled fresh and cool. A few night insects called, sluggish in the unusually cool summer temperatures. I drew in a bigger breath, and smelled soap and af tershave, and under that the nose-tickling scent of lion. That made me open my eyes to the sloping roof of a shed. The window above me was partially broken, and there were plenty of gaps between the boards on the walls, so the wind eased through at will. I heard the wind in tall trees high above us. It was blowing harder higher up. I’d expected whatever werelion was guarding me to say something, but I had to turn my head slowly to find Nicky sitting beside me in the dark. He had his knees drawn up to his chest, hugging them, his cheek resting on them so his good eye could see me. The moon was bright enough through the broken windows to let me see him clearly. The brightness of it reminded me that it was only two days until full moon. That might have been one reason they had so much trouble with my beast. The closer to full moon, the harder it was to control your beast.

Nicky gave a small smile. “Good, you’re not dead.”

“Was I supposed to be?” I asked.

“When Silas hit you and you dropped like that”-he shrugged-“it was a thought.”

“I didn’t even have time to worry about it. He was so fast.”

“You managed to move a little out of the way or he’d have snapped your neck.”

I started to try to get up, but he touched my arm. “Stay down a little longer. Once you get up, then you have to raise the dead.”

“Did you win the fight with Jacob?”

“You nearly dying sort of stopped it.” He grinned, a sudden whiteness in the dark. “And we had to help patch up Silas. You opened him up from”-he sat up so he could use his own body to demonstrate-“here at just under the ribs, across the stomach, to the upper intestine. I got to see his intestines on the outside. That is one sharp blade.”

I heard footsteps rustling the leaves, and the crooked door opened to show a dark shadow that turned out to be Jacob. “It wasn’t just the blade, Nick. She knows how to use a knife.” Apparently he’d heard us, too. He walked across the dirt floor and stood on the other side of me, looming over us both. I didn’t like that, so I tried to sit up.

“Slowly,” Nicky said, “you’ve been mostly dead all night.”

I stopped in midmotion. “Did you just quote Princess Bride?”

“I may not be able to quote books, but movies, those I can do.”

“He’s right, though,” Jacob said, and he reached down to offer a hand, “move slow; there’s no way to tell how much you’ve healed.”

I thought about not taking the hand, but I still needed to get out of this with all my people alive, which meant friendly was still better than unfriendly. His hand closed over mine and it was just a hand. He’d shut down his shields on his power so tight that nothing leaked out. When you’re as powerful as he was, that’s a lot of shielding. The less powerful, or the newbies, will leak faster, and leak more the closer to the full moon it gets. For Jacob it was just hard to hide that much light under your bushel basket. He lifted me gently to a sitting position. The world stayed steady, but a headache started on the right side of my face from jaw to temple, as if it had waited for me to sit up.

Jacob knelt on one knee beside me, still holding my hand. “How does it feel?”

“My head and face hurt, but honestly I’m surprised that it’s not worse. Aspirin would be great.”

“No, just in case you’re bleeding inside your skull you don’t want something that thins your blood.” He took his hand back and I let him. “You seem steady enough. Sit here for a few minutes, and then Nick will help you try standing. I’ll go comfort our client again.” He sounded disgusted, but he walked out, having to lift the crooked door to close it behind him. It still left an outline of moonlight on almost every side of it. The shed was so old that I could have torn out a board from the backside and gotten out; maybe Nicky was in here with me to see that I didn’t do that very thing.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“In an old shed,” he said.

I gave him the look the comment deserved. It made him smile. “You know what I meant, Nicky.”

“I think this used to be the caretaker’s shed, but now it’s a place to hide you out of sight, until you’re well enough to raise the dead.”