Prey & Prejudice: Cougar Falls, Book 7 (20 page)

She shrugged. She loved Quince, but he was a brute. “If the shoe fits… My point is Miles was doing great, but he’s better at business than caring about the details. Yeah, I’m going to delegate. I’m also going to start using more than a handful of the pride to run things. And I think opening up our voting privileges to
everyone
is still a good idea.”

He scowled. Not a fan of giving up power, their Alan. “We tried that. Mass chaos ensued, and we had more pride wars on our hands. Why do you think we invented a senior council, young lady?”

She blew out a breath. “You’re still not listening. I’m talking about a general vote on
some
things. The senior council would still have the ultimate say-so on important crap. Like inviting new pride members, business acquisitions, liaisons with other prides and clans. You know. Like when you went overseas. You should still head up our European faction. Those idiots seem to like you well enough. I didn’t get along with the French lions much. They eat snails. And goat cheese.” She shuddered.

He glanced at her tattoos and the leather halter she wore and sighed. “I can see how your less-than-refined taste may have offended more than a few. But you make a good point. It’s time we had some change. I won’t lie. If you thought
I
was your biggest obstacle with the pride, you are sorely mistaken.”

She knew that. But having Alan in her corner meant a lot. “Yeah, but I’ll have the senior council on my side. And I can just intimidate the rest of them.”

“Wonderful,” he said dryly. “Miles had more charm than you do.”

“He also missed half of what’s going on,” she said bluntly. “I love him, but he’s too arrogant sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

They shared a laugh. Before she could say anything else, Alan’s amusement faded. He looked worriedly over her shoulder.

She spun around, putting herself between the oncoming danger she could sense and the senior judge.

“Don’t do that. I’m not an invalid.”

She ignored him. Seeing Quince, she relaxed but couldn’t altogether shake her unease. “What’s wrong?”

He looked mad enough to chew through steel. “Here. Message from those fuckhead birds. They have Miles.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Alissa Roberto came storming after Quince. “Hold on a minute. I said wait.” She took long strides to catch up but still managed to look as fresh as a daisy.

“
You.
” It took everything Zoe had not to backslap the woman into yesterday. “This is your fucking fault.”

“Excuse me?” Alissa planted her hands on her slender hips and glared.

“You put them up at your hotel. You hid them when you should have—”

“Now hold on. I run one of five hotels. That particular hotel has over four hundred rooms, and approximately sixteen hundred people at any given time. How the hell am I supposed to keep track of which guests are birds? Besides, from what I hear,
you
were the one slumming around with roosters in Baltimore. Now it’s my problem they nabbed Miles?” She huffed.

“Listen, you uppity bitch, I—”

Quince yanked her back before Zoe did something Alissa—not Zoe—would regret.

Alissa scowled at her. “The reason I’m here is that those assholes are using my hotel as their meeting place. I’ve cleared out the grand ballroom for a six o’clock party. And the room is full.”

Zoe frowned. “Full how? The last I checked, only two-dozen raptors had stayed behind. The rest migrated back to Maryland.”

“Well, genius, it appears your intel was way off. The birds, all five hundred strong, are drinking my booze, eating my food and threatening a complete takeover of the Roberto Towers if you don’t show up to deal with them. That and they promised to string Miles up by his designer thumbs.” She sniffed. “So what’s your plan of attack? Well, pride leader? How are you going to make this go away?”

Zoe felt a sense of a panic she immediately quelled. Her first true challenge. The huntress inside her couldn’t wait to handle those who dared encroach on her territory. Threatening
her mate
?

“Do they know he’s mine?” she asked Alissa. That wouldn’t be good. A pride leader was worth a lot, but keeping her mate hostage would ensure they had an even bigger hold over her.

Alissa rolled her eyes. “Not from me, Ms. Love Connection. I’m not stupid. He’s a bargaining chip, as they see it. Our pride leader. Between holding him and my hotel hostage, they’re threatening with some valuable markers. So I ask again, what do you plan to do?”

All eyes fell on her. Her first inclination was to find Lisette and tear out her throat. Then do the same to Brian. Oscar, that wuss, she’d save for last… But a hundred panthers, and actually less than that not counting the incapacitated or young, couldn’t stand against five times as many warring birds and come out the victor.

Unless…

Zoe’s smile grew as she considered the many options she had fighting against the enemy on her home turf. “Alissa, stall them. Tell them I’ll be there at six. But they touch one hair on Miles’s head, and I’ll kill Lisette, Oscar and Brian. And I don’t care who takes me out, but those three won’t live to see their victory.”

“Not bad.” Alissa considered her. “But you’d better have something better up your sleeve than empty threats. They’re not that bright, I grant you, but even they can do the math. Their numbers overwhelm ours without question.”

“Thanks so much for the pep talk, Alissa,” she said sarcastically.

“Whatever. You wanted to be head bitch, you got it. Now fix this mess. I have a business to run.” She turned on her heel and stalked away.

The silence grew.

“You have a plan?” Alan asked slowly.

“Of course she does. She might not look too bright, but she gets her smarts from my mother.” Quince forced a laugh, but she saw his worry.

She smacked him in the back of the head.

“Ow. Damn it. What was that for?”

“For doubting me. Of course I have a plan. Get me the Cotton brothers. I need Sam here now. And bring Jace and Ellis, Rain and the others. The females too, Quince. Dana, Willow and Joy are needed. This isn’t the time to protect, it’s time to take back by force. I need fifty of our strongest here ASAP.”

“Yeah, yeah.” A spark lit his eyes, the need to battle, same as she felt. “Trust me. Joy wouldn’t let me leave her behind. She fights dirty. We can use her.” Quince darted away, dialing madly on his cell phone.

Alan seemed to perk up. “And what would you like me to do?”

“Get all the children and elderly to safety. I want you, Sims, Nettles and my mother watching over our most vulnerable. Take them out to the House and spread out. Make sure the cats are prepared if we have to fight back.”

He nodded. “Been a long time since we’ve trained to fight in an all-out war.”

“And that’s going to change. We need better keepsafes.”

“On that I agree.”

“We’ll be lucky if Hunters don’t get wind of something this big going down. Stupid-ass birds are going to out us all.” Hunters—humans who killed Shifters— were bad for everyone. When she got a hold of Lisette, she planned to wring the woman’s neck.

Alan cleared his throat and clapped her on the back. “Zoe? If I could offer one piece of advice?”

“Yeah?”

“Fuck them up but good.”

She blinked and had a hearty laugh.

Alan raced away, and she hustled back to the main house and cleared some space in the office. She refused to consider anything bad happening to Miles. Fear held no place in her heart. Not now. Purpose and a clear sense of her destiny poured through her animal spirit, and she growled as she reached for the phone.

While she waited for the other line to pick up, she muttered under her breath, “Oh, Lisette. You, honey, are going to pay. Dearly.”

Miles had no idea what to expect. He ran through a list of things in his head, but biding his time in the ballroom of Roberto Towers for hours on end wasn’t one of them. “Can I at least get the financial section?” he asked Oscar, who surprisingly had been the sanest one of the feather heads. Underneath all that fluff sat a man of keen intellect. Too bad he let his wife hold his balls. He would have made a formidable ally if they had been in the middle of negotiating contracts.

“I’m still looking at it, but you can have it as soon as I’m done,” Oscar offered.

“Thanks.” Miles glanced around. He sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by the largest warriors present. Probably golden or bald eagles. As both avian and human, they grew massive. He couldn’t help wondering just what Brian and Lisette thought they were doing.

This many Ac-taw in one place invariably brought Hunters. But in the event that didn’t happen, did the raptors really believe they could take over the city because they had numbers? For that matter, why had their pride not sensed so many raptors so close before now?

We’ve gotten lazy,
his cat admitted.
Too fat and happy doing human things.
Then the cat purred,
But Zoe will change all that.

If she could. What looked like several hundred raptors had crammed into a space with an occupancy limit of three hundred. He knew because he’d hosted several soirees in the Towers’s ballroom. His estimation put them anywhere from four to six hundred, easy.
Shit.

He looked for Brian, who sat at an expansive table to his right, surrounded by sycophants and his sister. A few female groupies tittered and hung on to his every word. They all looked like rejects from an eighties movie, wearing shitty dresses and too much blue eye shadow. He wanted to offer some fashion advice, but he remembered how poorly both Brian and Lisette had taken it.

He sighed and stood. None of the birds around him twitched. Honestly, what could he do, one against however many hundred? Miles approached Brian and put on his perturbed face. His brows touched and he frowned while checking his watch.

“It’s time. Now what?”

Brian turned from one woman baring entirely too much cleavage and sneered, “Why, afraid for your bitch of a leader?”

“I have things to do. My flight was delayed, and I could really use a shower.”

Brian frowned, as did Lisette. “Don’t you care at all that you’re about to be wiped from the city? You’ll be lucky if we let you live.”

Miles arched a brow. “You have met Zoe before, haven’t you? You keep calling her a bitch. So I’m assuming you’ve had extensive interaction. She is very territorial, and if you think she’s going to let you waltz in here and waltz out after all this?” He glanced around him. The birds had demolished several tables and chairs and busted two very expensive chandeliers. Alissa would be livid. “I’m going to sit over with Oscar and hope none of you get blood on my new suit. This is an original, and it cost a pretty penny.” And he looked damn good in it.

He winked at the females now ignoring Brian in favor of him. At least they showed some sense of taste.

Brian stood, but before he could respond, the two main doors at the front of the ballroom opened.
Finally.

Miles strolled back to his seat and took the paper Oscar willingly offered.

“Just remember I was nice to you,” Oscar whispered.

“No problem. I appreciated your take on the Harrelson merger. We’ll have to talk again soon.”

Oscar gave him a shy smile. Poor guy. Burdened with Lisette and Brian. Such uncivilized morons.

Zoe strolled into the room surrounded by her lieutenants, some of the tougher enforcers, and…Sam Cotton? She’d brought maybe two dozen men and women into a party of five or six hundred. Well, she’d always said she had bigger balls than most.

“I’ve been waiting,” he said with bite, wanting to appear vexed and not nervous as hell. He tamped down his fear scent and used anger instead. “Where was my ride at the airport?”

She frowned at him, gave him a subtle once-over, and sneered back. Good. She had her game face on. “Francis is more than upset. You couldn’t have called?”

“I wanted to, but they took my phone.” He nodded at Brian. “No matter. Tell Francis I’m sorry. If we could hurry this up? I missed lunch, and it’s dinnertime. I’m thinking chicken tonight. I’m in the mood for something tangy.” He winked at Oscar, who looked less than impressed with his sense of humor.

Brian didn’t seem to care for it either. He nodded at the giants behind Miles. They grabbed him hard and yanked him to stand by Brian and Lisette. The rest of the raptors gathered around the small group of panthers walking with way too much confidence into enemy camp.

“We do this one of two ways,” Brian said. “You give over your territory, and we let you go. No one has to get hurt. Well, maybe I take a few of Miles’s teeth. He’s annoying.”

“You have no idea,” she said, and several of the cats with her snickered.

“Hey. I’m a hostage,” Miles complained. “Play it up or they might hurt me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. What’s option number two?”

“We kill you all.”

The birds of prey leaned forward as one. Bloodthirsty lot anticipating carnage.

“Are all of you vultures?” Miles asked, curious.

Lisette glared at him. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Nice mouth,” Zoe said with a snort. “Goes with the trampy getup. How about option number three? We have a raptor brawl. Winner takes all.”