Tropical Leopard's Longing (Shifting Sands Resort Book 8) Read online

  Breck had drawn up to the platform. “I will challenge,” he repeated, his eyes only for Darla.

  “Are you sure?” Liam asked, pitched just louder than his whisper to Darla.

  Breck’s gaze flickered to his. “I’m sure,” he said firmly. A cocky smile danced at the corner of his mouth.

  “Don’t,” Darla begged quietly. “You know…” All her reasons crowded her mind: the home, Eugene, the resort, her mother’s revenge.

  Breck’s eyes met hers. “I’m sure,” he said, and he smiled at her. “Trust me.”

  He was so confident, so happy.

  So trusting.

  Darla remembered Eugene’s last words to her the night before… his greasy self-assurance that he was going to get everything he wanted.

  But before she could stop him, Liam was saying loudly, “I concede the challenge and her hand.” He held out his wrist, as an afterthought, and the bracelet opened with a loud snap.

  Darla looked down at her own, almost lost amid the jewelry she was wearing, but it was as solid and immovable as ever.

  Liam held his bracelet to Breck, who closed it over his wrist. It gave a flare of light and clamped onto him almost eagerly, fading into an unbroken yellow gold, as Darla’s did the same.

  This invited a wave of speculation from the audience and Breck stepped to Darla as Liam moved back.

  “I never want to let you go again,” he said, taking her hands.

  Darla was watching Breck’s face when Eugene stood and shouted, “I will challenge!”

  Breck’s smile froze in surprise, and he jerked his head to Eugene. “You promised…”

  Then Eugene was shifting, pieces of his clothing shredding from him as he charged forward without further warning.

  “No!” Darla wailed, but Breck was already shifting and twisting away, drawing the fight away from her. She gathered up her skirts, full prepared to wade in and fight next to him, but her mother took an iron grip on her shoulder, holding her back.

  “You can’t interfere,” Jubilee hissed as the contestant circled each other, Breck staying carefully out of reach of Eugene’s big paws. “This is part of the dragon tradition.”

  “I won’t marry him,” Darla said furiously. “I won’t do it.”

  “Madame Nadine foretold this,” Jubilee insisted. “This is how the dragon line continues.”

  Eugene charged at Breck, who skirted the attack and dashed beneath the giant paw to circle behind the bear.

  “I don’t care about the dragon line,” Darla said, watching the fight with her heart in her mouth.

  Jubilee’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t marry by the dragon tradition, and you don’t get the hoard, either,” she reminded Darla. Eugene turned around, growling, to face Breck and charge again.

  “I never wanted the hoard,” Darla declared out loud. The wedding guests were all watching the battle raptly and ignoring the scene on the dais, many of them backing away with their chairs to avoid being caught up in it. “That was all you ever wanted. But I don’t care about the money.”

  “You’ll care about it when you’re living in a ditch with the old people,” Jubilee threatened, only marginally more quietly.

  The retirement home. Darla quavered. Without her inheritance…

  She steeled herself. She’d figure something out. Plenty of people managed harder things without the piles of money she’d grown up on.

  But first… she concentrated on the fight with a sinking heart.

  The leopard was obviously badly outclassed by the bear — out-muscled, out-clawed, and the giant bear had clearly been in battle before. Breck led him on a merry chase, able to slip under his big, heavy swings and out-maneuver his charges, but there was nothing he could do to attack in return. His claws were useless against the thick fur and heavy hide of a bear.

  His luck dodging finally gave out as Eugene struck him with a heavy paw.

  Darla heard a scream she wasn’t sure was hers.

  Chapter 40

  Wrench’s words rang in Breck’s mind as he dodged another swing of Eugene’s giant paw.

  I’m gunna die, he thought, scrambling to the side of a charge and flanking the bear. If sparring with Tex had taught him one thing about bears, it was that they turned slowly. They charged forward surprisingly fast, and were brutally strong, but they cornered like the old resort van.

  He was more outraged than afraid, despite his grim appraisal of the situation. Eugene had given his word.

  And Breck had been dumb enough — or desperate enough, or hopeful enough — to believe it.

  Even knowing it was useless, Breck tried to swipe at the bear’s flank with claws fully outstretched.

  As Tex had warned, he barely got through to skin; he drew blood, but not enough to do anything more than irritate Eugene, who turned to the best of his ability and charged as Breck darted around him again.

  His only real hope was to tire the bear out, to wear him down, then get his jaws in somewhere critical. He went over the vulnerable places they had covered in practice — under the neck, crushing the windpipe or severing an artery... or his eyes. The list was painfully short.

  And he had to do it without getting caught in a death-grip himself, or getting hit with one of Eugene’s giant swinging paws, and he had to do it fast enough that Eugene couldn’t get his jaws around one of the many, many vulnerable places on Breck.

  The bracelet was not helping.

  It was heavy and distracting, and kept catching Breck off-guard with its weight.

  And every time it spun on his leg, Breck found himself thinking about the terror and longing in Darla’s face as Liam snapped it onto him.

  But what he should be thinking about was the bear facing him down, clearly growing more irate by the moment for his inability to put a quick end to the lithe leopard.

  A paw the size of his head with claws like wicked knives sailed overhead as he ducked, and he darted in to claw at Eugene’s nose, mindful of Wrench’s advice.

  Eugene gave a roar of pain, and before Breck could retreat, struck him with his other massive paw.

  Breck tumbled, end over end, as guests shrieked and scrambled back, and knew that the claws had drawn blood. He didn’t have time to figure out where his pain was coming from; Eugene was facing him, and already surging forward into a charge.

  His leopard drove him back to his feet, but there was no time to flank the oncoming beast, so he dashed straight at it, ignoring every bit of the sparring advice he had gotten.

  At the last moment, he sprang, not at the bear, but over it, and his choice was so unexpected that Eugene’s ponderous head lifted and snapped at him too late.

  He landed on the bear’s back, and dug in with all of his claws.

  Eugene bucked and shook, trying to dislodge him, and Breck crouched closer and dug in harder. The bear snapped and tried to twist his head back to bite at him, but his neck was too short to reach.

  With a sudden surge of hope, Breck swapped ends, as only a cat in a narrow space can, and pounced forward for Eugene’s face, raking claws into the sensitive nose from behind and drawing them towards his vulnerable eyes.

  As he dug into Eugene’s face, he realized that he had forgotten one key thing.

  With a roar of pain and fury, Eugene threw himself over on his side, and rolled.

  Bones creaked and snapped under the massive weight of the angry bear, and the breath was forced from Breck’s crushed lungs.

  Darkness was equal parts fur covering everything, and pending unconsciousness.

  Breck! No!

  He could hear Darla’s voice in his head, like the sweet song of an angel.

  Was this what dying felt like? It honestly hurt less than he expected it would; he could feel that his ribs had broken, and that the side of his head was hot and undoubtedly bleeding where he’d been hit by Eugene’s claws, but the pain itself was distant and abstract.

  I love you, he thought at the imaginary voice of Darla.

  His wrist was hot,
and hurt worst of all.

  Chapter 41

  Darla’s wrist was on fire, and she was chucking off her other bracelets, rings, and necklaces as fast as she could.

  “You can’t go out there,” her mother said in shock and horror. “You’ll violate the wedding rules! It’s not custom!”

  “Screw custom,” Darla declared, and then she shifted. The hateful dress tore with a rain of beads, and the remaining clasps snapped, scattering priceless jewels across the dais.

  She leaped forward in her snow leopard shape, snarling and springing to the trampled grass where Eugene had pinned Breck.

  The cave bear was not expecting her attack; his big head was rolled back as he writhed to crush the leopard beneath him. In a single heartbeat, Darla was on him, closing her jaws around his exposed windpipe.

  The temptation was to crush, to kill, to protect her mate at any cost.

  But Darla reined in the urge, and just pierced the skin, holding the windpipe in careful teeth and unmistakable threat. The hot taste of Eugene’s blood was fiery, like alcohol.

  He growled, the vibration rumbling up through her teeth, and Darla bit just a little deeper, growling.

  Eugene whimpered then, and shifted into a man. “I yield!” he choked.

  Darla closed her jaws just a touch further, taking shallow pleasure in the way Eugene choked and squirmed before she released him and stepped back. She shifted back to human and pushed him out of the way without a single second thought for him.

  Breck still lay in his leopard shape, not breathing.

  Blood stained the grass around him; thick scratches along the side of his lolling head were still oozing.

  Breck! No!

  Darla fell beside him, not sure what to safely touch without causing further damage. Her wrist was still on fire, and both of their bracelets were glowing.

  I love you, Darla heard in her head, and she gave a howl of hope and desperation, taking his paw carefully in her hands.

  The bracelet gave an explosive sizzle, and Darla felt like all of the breath and energy was sucked out of her in one swift motion. She heard a weird crack of setting bones, and the sound of Breck taking a labored breath. Her lungs hurt, and the side of her head stung. She closed her eyes against the shock of it, and when she opened them again, there was a human hand in hers.

  Breck was opening confused eyes.

  He coughed, once or twice, and Darla fell, weeping, onto him before remembering that she might hurt him.

  Her chest ached, but when Breck sat up and pulled her into his arms, it didn’t matter.

  “You could have died,” she murmured into his perfect shoulders.

  “You wouldn’t let me,” Breck said, wonderingly. He touched the side of her head and Darla flinched. His injuries were mirrored on her, and halved from what they had been.

  Then Breck stared at his uplifted wrist in astonishment and Darla did the same.

  Their bracelets were gone, replaced by a simple circle of dragonrunes like tattoos around their wrists.

  Before they could speculate, Eugene was getting to his feet. “I won the challenge,” he said, weaving drunkenly as he held onto his bloody throat. His nose was no longer bleeding, but was still striped with angry red scratches. “I won…”

  Darla looked up at him. “I won the challenge, you idiot.” She and Breck struggled up to their feet, clinging to each other. “And if I hadn’t, I still wouldn’t marry you.”

  “You have to!” Jubilee cried from the dais. “It’s dragon custom!”

  Darla lifted her chin. “I’m not a dragon,” she cried in a ringing voice. “I’m a snow leopard, and unlike you, I’m not ashamed of that.”

  The wedding guests had retreated back from the battle, but had begun to cautiously return. Darla’s statement caused a murmur of support; though Jubilee had invited all of the dragon elite that she knew, many of the guests were the more garden varieties of shifters, and most of them had grown tired of the elite dragon attitudes of Jubilee and some of her more arrogant guests.

  “If you don’t marry according to the custom, you won’t get a penny of your inheritance,” Jubilee snarled in warning, voice pitched not to carry to their audience.

  “I hope the hoard rots,” Darla snapped back, as loudly as before. “I don’t want your money, and I don’t want your blessing.”

  Eugene was spitting angry. “You have to marry me,” he roared. “If I can’t have you, no one will. Even both of you can’t win against me.”

  But before he could shift, Liam was stepping forward. “If this is no longer a challenge according to custom, I have no reason to stand back and let you harm my friends,” he cautioned with a frown.

  “Yeah,” another voice added behind them. “We’re going to have to back them up, too.”

  Darla turned. Half the staff of Shifting Sands was ranged behind them, a motley crew in crisp resort uniforms with expressions ranging from amusement to anger. Lydia from the spa was there, arms crossed, and Conall, with Gizelle peering out from behind him.

  Even Eugene was not foolish enough to take all of them on.

  “You’ll be unhappy,” he predicted. “You’ll be poor and miserable.”

  “Did your psychic tell you that?” Breck asked with exaggerated pity. “No wait, did you tell your psychic to tell you that?”

  When Darla gave him a puzzled look, he explained, “He’s been feeding your mother ideas through her pet psychic.”

  “That’s preposterous!” Jubilee said in outrage as Eugene started to sputter.

  “Is it?” Breck asked. “Check his phone. I’m sure you’ll find a familiar number with lots of calls there.”

  “You dropped it when you shifted,” Liam said helpfully, holding the phone in question aloft.

  Eugene leaped up onto the dais and tried to snatch it away from the dragon shifter while Jubilee protested his innocence with obviously increasing doubt. Liam held it away, a glint of mischief in his steely eyes.

  Darla laughed helplessly. “That explains so much. He just had to have Madame Nadine predict something he could then orchestrate, or pretend to see some private bit of information he’d fed her.”

  Jubilee looked absolutely furious, and Eugene tried more desperately to get his phone from Liam, who was still resolute about holding it out of his reach.

  “You’ve played me like a fool,” Jubilee said softly.

  “You are a fool,” Eugene spat, giving up on his phone. “None of this would have been necessary if you had just given me your daughter’s hand when I first asked.”

  “You didn’t want my hand,” Darla said in outrage. “You only wanted to get your hands on the hoard.”

  Eugene gave her an ugly leer. “I would have enjoyed having my hands on you, too, you cold b—”

  Before he could even finish, Breck had leaped up onto the dais, and in one swift move, punched him in the nose.

  Darla’s knuckles stung from the blow.

  Eugene staggered back, nose streaming blood again, and roared in anger and pain.

  An authoritative voice cut through. “As satisfying as I’m sure that was, I think that there has been enough fighting for one wedding. Wrench, Bastian, Eugene appears to need medical attention. Please give it to him elsewhere. Travis, Graham, if you wouldn’t mind cleaning up the brawling pit. Breck, a word. Mr. Trayvor, Mrs. Grant, Darla.”

  Scarlet, despite the chaos around her, looked as if she had just stepped out of the spa… and found something distasteful on her shoe. As Eugene quit the scene in ungraceful capitulation with Wrench and Bastian, Scarlet drew the primary wedding party onto the back of the dais out of easy earshot.

  “I’m sorry,” Breck started. “Eugene promised me he wouldn’t challenge. I really did think that I’d be able to pull this off without risking the resort.”

  Scarlet looked at him sourly. “And I suppose you wouldn’t have challenged if you hadn’t had that assurance.”

  Breck grinned, not at Scarlet, but at Darla, making her heart ri
se in her chest. “Oh, I probably would have had to anyway.”

  Darla shook her head at him hopelessly, smiling despite herself. Then her smile faded. The home. “Mother, about the retirement home…”

  Jubilee knew an opportunity when she saw one. “Marry Liam,” she said firmly. “We can salvage this wedding and you can save your precious nursing home and the hoard will be unlocked for you.”

  Darla shuddered. “Mother, please....”

  “I don’t want to disown you,” Jubilee said threateningly. “Don’t force my hand.”

  Darla felt like she had never known her mother, like this was a woman she had never imagined could exist beneath her society mother’s glossy veneer.

  “I am not marrying Liam,” Darla said without hesitation. “I am marrying my mate. I am marrying him without your blessing, without dragon custom, because I would not want your blessing tainting my union with him. You force my hand, mother. The hoard will be locked forever, and you won’t have it either. I will find another way to save the home, because I have no desire to be beholden to you. Ever.”

  She looked at Liam. “I have some clothing, a little jewelry. It’s mine, and I’ll sell it to protect the retirement home as long as possible.”

  Jubilee took a step backwards at her defiance, confused and shaken. “You’ll regret this,” she promised.

  Darla looked at her curiously. “No, I don’t think I will,” she said thoughtfully. Breck slipped his fingers into hers and squeezed.

  “Well, you will,” Jubilee said, rounding on Scarlet furiously. “This is your fault, your employee who did this. You will regret this. I’ll see this resort in ashes. I will sue you into the earth and see that your resort is smeared in every major shifter publication. No one who is anyone will ever come here again.”

  Chapter 42

  Twice in as many days now, Breck had seen Scarlet get angry.

  It was no less impressive the second time, even if it wasn’t directed at him this time. Her green eyes were hard and brilliant, and her red hair seemed to crackle with energy. The air around them grew thick and hard to breath, and Jubilee, perhaps recognizing her mistake, took a second step backwards.