The Warrior and the Snow Leopard (The Shifter Games Book 4) Read online

  Whisper cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why wouldn’t I be okay? You’re the one who has a difficult anniversary to deal with today.”

  “True. But you’re the one who is scowling at every mug of beer you pour like it’s going to be used to poison your firstborn child.”

  Whisper blinked, looking from Axel to the beer mug in her hand. “I’m not scowling.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re doing it right now.”

  Whisper felt her cheeks heating up slightly. She definitely hadn’t realized that she was scowling, and she hoped Axel hadn’t realized that the scowling was related to him. “Um…I’m just tired I guess. I haven’t been sleeping well lately with all the Gilt Hollow raids going on.”

  Axel narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re sure that’s all it is?”

  Whisper snorted. “Yes. In case you hadn’t noticed, the Gilt Hollow raids are pretty horrible.”

  “I’m not gonna argue with that. But the raids have been going on for months. It seems odd to me that they would all of a sudden be causing you sleepless nights. You’ve been fine before now.”

  Whisper shrugged. “I guess it’s all just catching up with me. Sorry. I’ll try harder to smile instead of scowl.”

  Axel sighed, ignoring for the moment the growing requests from patrons for refills. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Whisper. I’m not trying to reprimand you or anything. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

  The worry in his tone tore Whisper’s heart in two. She didn’t deserve his concern. She’d been over here, fuming because he was laughing at another woman, which he had every right to do. Meanwhile, he was worrying that something was seriously bothering her. And all on the day that she should have been worrying about whether he was okay.

  “I’m fine, really,” she said, her own words sounding pathetic to her ears. “Just a lot on my mind I guess. But—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, she heard the sound of the front door swinging open a little too loudly. Axel’s eyes turned toward the door a split-second before hers, and she saw the same worry in them that she felt gripping her own heart. She’d heard the door swinging with that much force a little too often lately, and if it meant what she thought it did, then everyone’s night was about to get a whole lot worse.

  “Shit,” Axel said when his gaze fell on the front door. All Whisper could do was grunt in agreement. She set down the beer mug she’d been holding and wiped her hands off on the black pants she was wearing. Her palms were already covered in sweat, and even though she tried to keep a calm expression on her face, she was pretty sure she looked terrified.

  Across the room, the shifters slowly fell silent. The music and dancing in the far corner stopped, as did the calls for more beers. Conversations stopped as the words died in people’s throats. Every eye in the room turned to look at the bar’s newest visitors. Four Gilt Hollow soldiers had just sauntered into the room, swaggering as though they owned the place.

  “Well, well, well,” the tallest one said. “It’s awfully quiet in here for a pub. I thought you guys all came here to have fun and blow off steam. Did you run out of steam already?”

  The soldiers all laughed, their obnoxious chuckles filling the otherwise quiet room. From the corner of her right eye, Whisper saw Axel’s jaw clenching up, along with his fists. Whisper had often thought that one of these days he was going to completely lose his cool and run to attack the Gilt Hollow soldiers, even though the consequence for that was certain death. The Gilt Hollow soldiers were authorized by the Gilt Hollow Emperor to use deadly force on shifters whenever necessary, no questions asked. They weren’t afraid to make use of that authorization, and Whisper tried not to think about the number of shifters who had died for no reason, just because they ticked off the wrong Gilt Hollow soldier.

  “Easy, Axel. It’s not worth your life,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than her breathing. He didn’t unclench his fists, but he did relax his shoulders a bit. She took that as a good sign. Of all the days for the soldiers to barge in here, they had to do so on the anniversary of Axel’s father’s death. That didn’t make it easy for Axel to remain calm, she knew.

  In truth, it was getting harder for everyone to remain calm. The Gilt Hollow soldiers had always made a practice of barging in on the Bear Hollow shifters occasionally. But lately it had been happening so frequently that it was a wonder there was anyone in town left who didn’t have a face bruised or scraped up from the soldiers’ roughhousing. The soldiers came to the bar now and then, like tonight, but often they went straight for people’s homes, banging on the doors and demanding to be let in so they could search for contraband. The soldiers loosely defined the word “contraband,” and if they wanted something one of the shifters had, they called it contraband and took it. Then they beat up anyone in the house for good measure. Several shifter faces across the bar had the telltale bruises and scrapes.

  What are they after this time? Whisper wondered. She hoped they only wanted to come in here and talk shit for a few minutes before heading off to raid whatever houses they were going to raid tonight. Not that Whisper wanted anyone’s houses to get raided, but she already knew that was going to happen. It would be better if the bastards didn’t rough up half the bar patrons on top of that.

  “You’re probably all wondering why we’re here,” sneered one of the soldiers. “As you might suspect, this isn’t a social call. Humans don’t make social calls on animals.”

  The soldier let out a long, evil-sounding laugh. Axel bristled beside Whisper, and this time she bristled too. It wasn’t easy to stay calm when the soldiers started with the animal insults. The full humans of Gilt Hollow thought that the shifters weren’t truly human, since shifters also had the ability to morph into an animal form. Half of the insults the soldiers made revolved around this belief, probably because it was such an effective insult. It was hard for any of the shifters to stand by silently when the insults about animals started flying.

  Tonight of course, was no exception. Whisper kept a stoic outward appearance, but groaned inwardly as one of the bear shifters near the door stood up and lunged for the soldier who had made the insult.

  “We’re not animals,” the shifter growled out. The Gilt Hollow soldiers laughed with delight, happy for the easy excuse to beat up one of the shifters. The soldier who had been speaking turned his gun around and rammed the butt of it into the shifter’s face as hard as he could. The shifter yelped in pain and fell to the floor as he lost his balance. He immediately tried to get back up, swinging his giant fists as he did. But it was no use. The soldiers had all crowded around him now, and were kicking at him as hard as they could. One of them had produced a wooden club from god-knows-where, and was trying to beat at the shifter’s head.

  But despite the beating he was taking, and the possibility of death if the Gilt Hollow soldiers felt like killing him, the shifter never slowed down with his insults. He yelled at the soldiers and even spat in their faces. This happened every time there was a raid. One or more shifters would lose their patience and decide that the pain of rebelling was worth the satisfaction of saying a few choice words to the soldiers.

  Axel was tensing up beside Whisper again, and for a moment Whisper feared that he was going to jump in and try to stop the fight. But before Axel could lose his temper, a dramatic screech came from the other side of the bar. Whisper turned in surprise, as did most of the bar, just in time to see a petite, dark-haired figure falling out of a barstool.

  “Violet!” Axel shrieked, bounding toward the other end of the bar without a second thought. Whisper felt her own heart clenching up. Even though Whisper was insanely jealous of Violet and the way the woman had been flirting with Axel all night, fear and anger rose within her as she saw a crowd of shifters surrounding Violet. Why had she fallen? Had one of the soldiers gotten off a shot at her? But no, everyone would have heard the pop of gunfire. So what had happened?

  “Give her some air,” Axel’s voice called from the midd
le of the chaos. “Everyone step back and give her some air!”

  Whisper strained her neck, trying to see whether there was any blood over by where Violet had fallen. The crowd was too thick, though, and she couldn’t see anything.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Whisper asked aloud. She hadn’t directed the question to anyone in particular, and she hadn’t really expected an answer. But a crotchety old wolf shifter answered her nonetheless.

  “The girl fainted,” the man remarked. “Not surprising though, considering it was Violet Nowell. That girl is always passing out at the slightest little thing gone wrong.”

  “She fainted?” Whisper asked, her eyes widening in shock. She’d heard plenty of stories about people fainting before, but she’d never actually seen anyone faint. That’s because the only people she’d ever heard of fainting were Gilt Hollow women. But apparently this wasn’t Violet’s first time losing consciousness, and Whisper felt a slight pang of disgust. Shifters shouldn’t freak out over every little thing. They needed to remain strong and stoic no matter what. That was the only advantage they really had over the Gilt Hollow citizens.

  But the small pang of disgust barely had time to register in Whisper’s mind before the worry for Violet took over again. The barstools weren’t exactly short, so she’d fallen far. Was she okay? Had she hit her head?

  And was Axel going to get in trouble for helping her? Whisper wouldn’t be able to bear it if she saw the soldiers attacking Axel. She’d probably break her own rule about holding back and jump in to defend him. Maybe she’d be lucky and the soldiers would go easy on her since she was a woman. They seemed to prefer beating up men.

  Luckily, she didn’t have to worry about helping Axel. Violet’s little fainting spell actually seemed to have broken some tension in the room, and the soldiers stopped beating up the bear shifter who’d attacked them. They left him in a bloody, groaning heap on the floor and came to the center of the room, where the soldier who had first started speaking spoke up again.

  “Where was I? Ah, yes. You all must be wondering why we’re here. Well, we’ve all been discussing in Gilt Hollow how unfortunate the closing of the shifter market has been.”

  Whisper narrowed her eyes. She hadn’t expected to hear about the shifter market anymore. It had been months since the market fiasco—a fiasco caused by a group of rogue Gilt Hollow soldiers, no less—had resulted in the shifter market being shut down completely. This had been hard on many of the shifters who’d made their living by selling things at the market, and it had stirred up a lot of anger in Bear Hollow. But, as usual, the anger slowly faded. What could the shifters do but grin and bear it? Even the Gilt Hollow soldiers had mostly moved on from talking about the shifter market.

  Or so Whisper had thought. She looked across the bar and met Axel’s eyes, her own eyes full of questions. He gave a slight shrug. He had no idea what this was about, either.

  “As you know, the loss of the shifter market caused a great loss for Gilt Hollow. We used to get plenty of cash every week as taxes on the sales the shifters merchants made. But now, that income has gone away completely, and we’re not happy about it.”

  Whisper glanced at Axel again, and she saw the anger in his eyes—anger mirrored in her own eyes. She could suddenly see exactly where this was going. For the last several weeks, the Gilt Hollow soldiers had been arbitrarily demanding payment of extra taxes. They could do that because they were part of the Gilt Hollow regime. And the Gilt Hollow regime had no qualms about taking money at random from the shifters. Even though the shifters had barely enough resources to survive on. Even though all of the Gilt Hollow citizens had more money than they knew what to do with. The anger bubbling in Whisper’s core was threatening to spill over, but she told herself to remain calm. Now was not the time or place to protest. The soldiers were too powerful, and they had the upper hand here.

  “We’ve come up with a fabulous solution,” the soldier continued. “We’re going to charge a ‘market-closing’ tax to every shifter in town. And we’re going to start tonight, so I hope you all brought your wallets with you.”

  Whisper herself managed to remain calm, but there was no holding back the collective anger of the crowd in the bar. Roars of anger rose from the shifters, and within a matter of seconds several had leapt to their feet and were charging toward the soldiers. One of the soldiers shot a warning bullet through the ceiling of the bar, and Whisper winced at the sound. The next bullet they fired would very likely be sent through a shifter. There would be more deaths here tonight, and for what? Stupid money that the Gilt Hollow soldiers didn’t even need, and the Bear Hollow shifters didn’t have?

  “Come on!”

  Whisper’s thoughts were interrupted by a familiar strong hand grabbing her upper arm. She turned to find Axel beside her, his eyes filled with a calm, unsettling rage.

  “This is madness,” Whisper said to him. There was no need to keep her voice down anymore. Roars and screams filled the bar as the fight against the soldiers escalated even further out of control.

  “It is madness, and I want you out of here.” Axel used his grip on her arm to push her toward the back exit.

  “But what if the soldiers start vandalizing the bar? I can’t just leave. You might need help!”

  “Forget the bar. It can be repaired if they destroy it, and it’s not worth losing your life over. I’m leaving, too. I’m not sticking around for this mess.”

  Whisper bit her lower lip and nodded. She hated to leave the bar, but Axel was right. This riot was bad, and not something she wanted to get caught up in. It made her feel better that Axel was leaving, too. She would have been horribly worried about him if she’d left him behind here.

  But as she stepped toward the back exit, he suddenly turned around and went back toward the bar.

  “What the…Axel? I thought you said you were coming too!”

  “I am. Just a sec,” he called after her.

  She waited by the door, watching as he hopped over the bar and bent down to pick something up. Or rather, to pick someone up. He’d scooped up Violet, who had passed out again, in his arms.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Whisper said to herself as she watched. “She fainted again?”

  The shifter at the bar who had said she passed out all the time hadn’t been kidding.

  “I’m not leaving an unconscious woman behind in his mess,” Axel said in explanation as he approached the back exit door again. “It’s bad enough that I’m leaving conscious women alone in this mess, but I don’t have time to rescue them all. Hopefully some of the other guys will step up and get their wives, girlfriends, and sisters out of here.”

  Whisper nodded and turned to jog toward the exit. The noise from the bar was getting louder, and if they were going to escape, now was the time to do it. She didn’t even want to think about what condition the bar was going to be in tomorrow morning.

  She also didn’t want to think about whether it meant anything that Axel had gone back to get Violet. She admired the fact that Axel had taken care of the woman. That was very gentlemanly of him. But she was also filled with a roaring jealousy at the thought that perhaps he had rescued Violet because he was developing feelings for her. That thought prickled insistently at Whisper’s mind, no matter how hard she tried to push it away.

  Get a grip! she told herself. It doesn’t matter who Axel has feelings for. He’s only a friend. Besides, there are more important things to worry about right now than romance!

  But no matter how many times Whisper told herself to get over it, she couldn’t help but feel another pang of jealousy as she bid goodbye to Axel and watched him take off into the night carrying Violet to the safety of her home.

  “Maybe I should try passing out next time there’s a soldier raid,” Whisper muttered under her breath. But even as she spoke the words, she knew she would never do something like that. She had always been a strong woman, and able to take care of herself. After her own parents had died, her brother had ma
de sure she knew how to fight and generally toughened her up—just in case anything ever happened to him, too. Whisper was no damsel in distress, and she never would be. If that’s what Axel wanted in a woman, he was definitely going to have to look elsewhere. Besides, Whisper didn’t really want a romance with Axel. She only felt jealous because Axel was a good friend and she worried that if he had a girlfriend it would change their friendship. That was all this jealousy was about.

  Or was it? Whisper gritted her teeth and refused to think about it anymore, running as fast as she could through the dark night toward her home.

  Chapter Three

  “Order! Order, please!” A tall, lanky panther shifter was standing on the bar, trying to get the excited crowd to calm down. Axel rolled his eyes. This guy was being too nice. The way this was going, the meeting was never going to get started.

  Axel jumped on the bar, cupped his hands around his mouth to make his voice louder, and yelled at the top of his lungs. “Everybody shut up!”

  The crowd fell silent almost immediately, and Axel hopped off the bar. “You’re welcome,” he said to the panther shifter.

  “Um, er, yeah. Thanks,” the panther replied. “So, all of you probably know me, but just in case, my name is Danny. I called this meeting, along with a bunch of the other shifters who were involved in that bar brawl with the Gilt Hollow soldiers last night, because enough is enough. We can’t keep living with these constant raids and arbitrary demands for taxes. Enough is enough. I’ve never exactly been the fighting type. Many of you are much better at standing up to bullies than I am. But the time has come for all of us to stand up. The oppression from Gilt Hollow has gotten to be too much.”

  Loud murmurs started going through the crowd, and Axel could see that Danny was about to lose control of the crowd again.