Warriors of Poseidon 02.5 - Shifter's Lady

of your pride if they so much as twitch.”
     
    Marie spoke up from where she knelt on the ground. “Is this your idea of justice and fair alpha challenge? Even I, who am new to your ways, know better.”
     
    Travis raised his hand into a fist and started toward her, and Ethan charged him. But before he could reach her, Marie rose fluidly, lifting her hands into the air. “You will never strike me again,” she said, and a wall of water sparkled into the air surrounding her, appearing from nowhere, and burst outward in all directions, throwing the two thugs backward and to the ground and knocking Travis back a half-dozen feet.
     
    Travis regained his footing quickly, though, as the sounds of fighting overwhelmed the circle. Ethan‟s pride-brothers had taken advantage of the momentary distraction to turn on the interlopers and disarm many of them. A few scattered gunshots split the night air, but screams and snarls predominated.
     
    Shifter’s Lady – Warriors of Poseidon 2.5

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    Ethan leapt to Marie and pulled her into his arms, relief swamping him. “I think you might be alpha, ocean girl,” he said, keeping an eye on Travis to make sure he didn‟t pull any guns from hidden pockets.
     
    Before she could answer, Jack was there next to them. “I‟m guessing you have some unfinished business over there. I‟ll watch out for your woman.”
     
    In an instant, Jack shimmered into his tiger shape and curved his giant form around Marie.
     
    “Stay with the tiger, Marie. This won‟t take long,” Ethan promised. Every instinct he had demanded he stay with her, but honor and tradition forced him to finish it.
     
    “You demanded an alpha challenge,” he called out to Travis, who was clearly preparing to run away. “Now that we‟re back to even odds, you‟ve got one.”
     
    Travis stopped and stared at him, suspicion twisting his face. “It‟s a trick. Why would you agree to the challenge after this?”
     
    Ethan stripped off his shirt. “Because those ancient traditions you corrupted actually mean something to me.”
     
    “Fool! All that stupid honor. Fallon always said it would get you killed,” Travis taunted him, circling around, looking for an opening.
     
    “We‟ll see, won‟t we?” Ethan waited for the challenger‟s leap and followed it, shifting in midair, as Travis did the same. They were well-matched, he observed with a coldly detached corner of his mind. But then he didn‟t have time to think anything else, because the battle was on.
     
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    Marie watched, awestruck, as the two mighty cats met in a resounding clash of sound and fury. Ethan‟s tawny panther was slightly longer than Travis‟s red cat, but they were closely comparable in breadth and muscle. Terror for Ethan paralyzed her even with the tiger preventing her from moving.
     
    She gasped as the two panthers rolled over and over across the circle, biting with deadly fangs and tearing with lethal claws, until both of them were bloodied and torn.
    Travis smashed a paw across Ethan‟s face, and Marie‟s legs moved as if to take her to them, but she found her way blocked by a quarter ton of snarling tiger. For a moment, her heart leapt into her throat, but Jack looked up at her out of the tiger‟s eyes, and she calmed.
     
    Somehow the sounds of fighting from outside the circle didn‟t register with her enough even to make her fear stray bullets. Every ounce of her consciousness was fixed on the life-or-death battle taking place in the circle before her.
     
    The red panther screamed again and managed to escape from underneath his golden foe, and Travis started running, trying to escape. Ethan chased him down and pounced, and again the battle was joined as the two tried to literally rip each others‟ throats out.
    Claws flashed silver and ivory in the moonlight, and blood stained the cats‟ fur with black shadows.
     
    Marie raised her hands to call water again, unable to stand idly by and watch Ethan die, but the tiger butted against her legs with its huge head. As much as she hated to acknowledge it, she understood what Jack was trying to tell her. For her to interfere would be just as wrong as it had been for Travis‟s villains to do the same.
     
    “But he‟d better finish this quickly, Jack, or I‟m going to do what I can. I‟m past caring about ancient rules,” she said, not knowing if the tiger could even hear or understand her.