Unless someone was seriously injured, occasional one-on-one brawls were typically overlooked by those in charge. Sometimes tempers had to be vented to avoid later, more vicious explosions, and honestly, sometimes horsing around just got out of hand. But Marc couldn’t afford to give Malone any reason to kick him out. And Dean damn well knew it.

“What, you’ll share with Jace but not with me?” Dean raised one taunting eyebrow at Marc. “What happened to ‘the more, the merrier’?”

“I should have cut your tongue out when I had the chance,” Jace growled, glaring up at Dean from inches away.

“Yeah.” Dean nodded, grinning. “You should have. Then neither one of you would have to hear how hard her nipple got when I traced it with the tip of my blade. I’m sure she was just cold. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that she liked having my hands on her. Not to mention my knife.” He glanced at me, and my fingers twitched around Marc’s arm as I briefly considered letting him go. I really wanted to see Dean’s face broken again. Or maybe his neck…

“Isn’t that right? You could have stopped me anytime you wanted, which either means you were too proud to beg, or you liked it.” Dean’s focus shifted to Jace again as Marc’s arm tensed beneath my hands and I remembered that we couldn’t afford to take the bait. “You could have stopped it, too, but you let me cut her. What kind of man lets the love of his life get carved up like a fucking turkey while he watches?”

Jace’s fists clenched at his sides, but he kept his mouth shut. I didn’t have that much self-control.

“If you ever come near me with a knife again, I will kill you.” My voice was calm, and clear, and soft, revealing none of my hidden panic at the memory of Dean wielding a blade, yet all of my cold determination to see him dead. I was kind of impressed, and so was Marc. I could tell because he relaxed a bit beneath my grip.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “The rules are changing, and you’re in for a very rude awakening, little puss. I hope you do resist. I hope you have to be broken like a wild horse. And by the time I’m done with you, you’re going to wish I’d slit your throat, instead of your cheek.” He glanced at the window over our heads, smiled coldly, and turned to walk off toward his own cabin, as if he hadn’t a fear in the world.

“If I accomplish nothing else in my life, I will see that bastard bleed out,” Marc breathed.

“He’s mine,” I insisted, as Jace fell in at my side to watch Dean go.

The front door opened on my left, and my father emerged, followed by Di Carlo and his enforcers. “What happened?”

“Just a little fraternizing with the enemy,” Jace said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”

“Dean’s trying to bait us into a fight.” I tucked my arm into my father’s. At least I could accept his comfort without pissing anyone off or making anyone jealous. “What’s up with Malone?” After the official vote, the Alphas had kicked the enforcers out so the new chair could meet with his council for the first time ever. “Is he already plotting to take over the world?”

“One Pride at a time.” My father sighed as we turned toward our cabin, the path lit only by cold, white moonlight. “He came prepared with a list of ideas to ‘restructure’ things.”

“Steal from the poor to feed the rich?” Marc asked from my right, and I could practically taste Jace’s frustration at having lost a place at my side.

“Something like that.” My dad rubbed his forehead with his free hand and lowered his voice. “If his new proposals pass, this is going to get unpleasant very quickly.”

“We were just thinking the same thing.” I glanced from Marc to Jace, and they both nodded for me to continue. “We think it’s time to call in the reserves. If we leave first thing in the morning, we can be in New Mexico by tomorrow night.”

My father stopped and faced us, and Di Carlo and his enforcers fanned out around us all. “You think we should strike here? On the mountain?”

I shrugged, trying to look more confident than I felt. “It’s neutral territory, so Malone doesn’t have home field advantage. And if you call in our men while we’re gone, they could be here by the time we get back with the birds, which means we’ll have Malone vastly outnumbered. It could all be over relatively quickly and easily.” Assuming he didn’t catch wind of what we were doing and bring more of his own men.

My father considered for a moment, then looked to Di Carlo for an opinion. “We’ve never fought on a large scale in neutral territory.” So far, war had always come in the form of a territorial invasion. “If this maneuver didn’t occur to us, it probably won’t occur to him.”

I nodded, eagerness creeping up from my toes to tingle in the rest of my body. “And if we don’t make a move soon, we’re going to lose the opportunity. Malone’ll do everything possible to handicap us, starting with exiling Marc.” One of our very best fighters. “Again.” Or worse.

Di Carlo frowned. “I agree, but are we really ready to go to war this soon?”

“We’ve been ready,” Jace said. “We just need to call in a little favor and get the rest of our men in place.” Only a few enforcers apiece had accompanied the Alphas to the cabin complex.

“I don’t see that we have any choice,” my father said. “Calvin’s already talking about supplementing the council chair’s budget, for operating costs. I have no doubt he’ll spend that money hiring more enforcers. Add his allies’ troops to that, and our chances of a victory decrease with every day that we give them to prepare.”