He moved closer to Ezra, touching the flank of the cat where he saw the darkening of blood. "Come on, bro. Back up over here so I can look at your wound."

Ezra's teeth were still locked on Crowe and Eli watched the grisly sight, feeling the same deep grief he'd felt when they were back in the Sierra Leone rain forest, staring down at what they'd both done to Acacia and her guards.

"Come on, let's go," he said again, as both he and Nivea rubbed their palms along the cat's heaving body.

There was another roar as Ezra finally released his hold, Crowe's body slumping in the pool of blood beneath it. With both his arms around the cat, Eli guided his brother back into the ballroom. He didn't have to push past people this time, because nobody wanted to be near a large adult male jaguar that had just killed a man in plain sight.

"You did good," Eli told Ezra when they were finally in the ballroom, the cat lying on its side against the wall.

Its flanks heaved up and down as if it was the hardest thing it ever had to do.

"You're going to be fine," Nivea told Ezra. "Just fine. As soon as the team gets here they'll take you back to Havenway and Ary will fix you right up."

There was a hitch in her last words and Eli rubbed his hand down his brother's head. "Yeah, he's strong. He'll be fine."

Five guards came running into the room, stopping when they saw Ezra's cat lying on the floor. They looked grim, barely constraining their anger.

Eli stood, directing them immediately. "Get him back to Havenway, now! Radio someone there to tell them he's coming and to be ready."

There was a nod and then the shifters were moving, lifting the cat together as if it weighed no more than a child. They moved fast across the ballroom floor over the broken glass and overturned furniture, bursting through the exit door and disappearing as quickly as they'd come.

"We have to go," Nivea said, touching a hand to Eli's back.

Eli nodded.

"Rome and Nick are heading to the garage to help Bas there," she continued.

He nodded again, his body trembling with rage, his teeth clenching to keep the cat at bay.

"Pull back! Pull back!" They both heard blaring through their com links from the Assembly Leader. "Reporters are here, humans are dying. Pull back!"

Rome was calling them off, commanding them all to stand down and head back to Havenway. They'd been exposed and there was nothing any of them could do about it. Around him Eli heard the sirens of law officials and ambulances, he heard the screams of humans both afraid and wounded, and the unmistakable roaring of big cats enraged and hunting. The two worlds mixed, human and shifter, and it was nothing like the Assembly Leader had envisioned, nothing at all.

"Eli?" Nivea said more urgently. "We must go now!"

He turned to her then, staring directly into her glowing cat's eyes. "Boden is here."

CHAPTER 24.

Eli was moving quickly and Nivea was struggling to stay behind him. He reached for her and she extended her hand to grasp his. He pulled her along, while people were everywhere, yelling and screaming and crying. The acidic stench of blood permeated her senses as she looked over and upward to see a cheetah jumping from its perch on a counter into the crowd, biting down on whomever it landed on. Her chest clenched at the sight, her ears ringing with every cry she heard.

Each way she turned it was the same thing, a big cat, or one of those horrid hybrids, mowing through the crowd with force and destruction in their eyes. They were killing and pillaging like some prehistoric scene come horribly to life. Her chest heaved as her cat roared inside, ready at any moment to break free, to defend and protect.

Something or someone slammed into her back and pain radiated up her left side. She yelled out, turning her head back to see what it was and completely froze as she looked pure evil directly in the eye.

It happened so quickly she wouldn't have been able to stop it even if she could. In the next seconds she was wrenched through the crowd, lifted above everyone, and carried over a huge shoulder. The rogue that had her moved fast, leaping over people and slamming her into an elevator. Nivea fell to the floor and pain soared up her side. Looking down, she saw that she'd been cut. The sonofabitch had sunk his claws into her side, no doubt to cut down on her fighting back. It obviously had no idea who the hell it was dealing with.

She quickly came to her feet and faced her attacker the moment the elevator doors closed and prayed for once in her life that everything she'd learned, everything she knew would see her through this moment. She could not die, that was not an option. Not only was she more than ready to live her life with her mate, but she knew unequivocally that Eli would carry her death as his third strike of guilt over females. After seeing his brother wounded this would destroy him, and Nivea was determined not to let that happen.

Fists clenching at her sides, she was more than prepared to fight when the elevator doors opened and the rogue stepped out. It shifted into a cheetah and ran immediately to her left.

"What the" she began to say, looking down the hall to the cheetah leaving the scene.

She was just about to turn back and get onto the elevator so she could head back down to where Eli was, but a familiar scent stopped her. Standing still for a moment, Nivea cursed under her breath. She had been looking down toward the elevator buttons, but slowly lifted her head, turning in the opposite direction from where the cheetah had gone, frowning when she saw his smiling face.

"It always boils down to you and me." Richard Cannon spoke slowly, his hands clasped in front of him as he stood at the end of the hall near a bank of windows.

"There is no you and me," Nivea told him, noting the elevator doors closing, leaving her alone with him, once again.

He walked toward her and Nivea felt no fear at all. Richard hadn't shifted into a jaguar in years, he had no training at all, in fact, he was absolutely no threat to her. Not anymore.

So she walked in his direction, determined to show him how little she thought of his presence here and all that he'd done to her and to others in his miserable lifetime.

"You didn't think I was smart enough to get away from those shifters you love so much," Richard said to her.

They stood about ten feet apart now. He was dressed in khakis and a plaid shirt, his leather tie-ups shined, gold watch on his left wrist gleaming. He looked much older to her now, his hairline receding and the mustache he'd always worn sprinkled with gray hairs.

"Actually," she told him, "I think that's just another dumb thing you've done to be added to the long list you've been working on."

"Still so fucking smart," he snapped. "You still think you're going to win. Look around you, Nivea, you and your Shadows are going down! You're never going to make it out of here alive." He laughed at that, looking toward the windows where lights from police cars and ambulances flashed against the night sky.

"That's where you are wrong again, Richard." She said his name with all the contempt she felt for him. "Boden has been using you all along. He has no use for you now, you've done everything he required. You are the one that's not going to leave here alive."

"You have no idea what you're talking about, little girl. No idea what's been going on right under your nose."

"I know that you've been a liar and a pretender all your life and that the moment I threatened all by simply questioning you and what you believed, you felt like you had to shut me up, to keep me down so far that I'd never look up and see who and what you truly were. Well, you were wrong!" she shouted and dodged out of his way the moment Richard lunged for her.

He fell face-first to the floor as she turned to see him cursing and turning to get back up. Nivea moved quickly, until she was standing over him, her foot at his neck. He looked up to her then, that appalling grin spreading across his face.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, no, he taunted her. "Are you really going to kill your father, Nivea? Are you that much of a savage, an animal?"

At her sides, Nivea's claws extended, her teeth lengthening sharp and lethal as a ferocious growl escaped her throat.

"That's right, Nivea, kill the bastard that raped you. Take his miserable life so that none of us will have to see him again."

Nivea heard the deep voice behind her and didn't have to turn to verify who it was. His scent was powerful, almost overwhelming with contempt, hate, and disgustingly, lust.

From the floor Richard laughed. "She won't kill me. She can't."

To prove him wrong, Nivea leaned in, her foot pressing harder against his throat until he choked at her efforts. He lifted his hands, grabbing her ankle in an effort to push her away, but she was much stronger than him. With two quick swings of her arms, her claws swiped at his arms until he tried to yell with the pain of the deep slashes now in both his arms. The sound was a muted growl and she pushed her foot with more force, watching as his face reddened, his eyes bulging.

"Kill him!" Boden yelled from behind her. "Kill him!"

Nivea could do it. Despite what Richard said, what he obviously thought of her, the contempt he'd had for her all her life, she knew she could kill him. She should kill him, the miserable bastard.

But what would that make her if she did? How would it help or even justify all the counseling she'd endured, all of the training as a guard, the woman that she'd fought so hard to become?

Even as her claws retracted, her foot was easing off Richard's windpipe, her cat pulling back from its prey. She'd just taken two steps away from Richard's body when from behind her a huge white lion leaped into the air, landing on top of Richard's body where it immediately bit into his head, crushing his skull.

He couldn't find her.

One second he felt her right there with him, her hand in his, her cat running alongside his own. They were headed up to where he instinctively knew Boden would be hiding.

And then she was gone.

For the second time tonight Eli felt as if his soul was being yanked from his body. This time the sensation was much more powerful, ripping the breath from his lungs so that he made some awfully painful sound the second he turned around in the stairwell and found himself alone. Almost dislocating his shoulder, he wrenched the door open to hurry back out to find Nivea. The second he was in that hallway again he knew she wasn't there.

The scent, the one that had attempted to cocoon him since the moment he'd first sank deep inside of her, was gone. He looked back and forth, inhaling deeply but could not find her. His body began to vibrate with rage, his cat roaring inside pressing persistently against the human. It wanted release so it could go and find its mate, to kill if need be to save her. But Eli stood still, he closed his eyes and ears to everything around him and waited. Shaking all over with impatience, he continued to wait for seconds that seemed like hours. On the next inhale he picked up a scenttheir companheiro calor. When his long sharp teeth pricked his lips, his nostrils flaring, clawed fingers wiggling at his sides, Eli knew exactly where she was and who she was with.

He went back into the stairway, running up and up, his lungs filling with air, and after a few flights he found the scent he'd searched for. With renewed vigor Eli burst through doorway after doorway, hearing the chaos going on around him and not giving a damn. The shifters had been exposed; humans were at this very moment recording everything that was going on at this resort. The killing, the animalistic nature of the beasts, the fearit was all being documented and come tomorrow morning, nobody knew what would happen. But at this moment Eli didn't give a damn. All he wanted was to find his mate.

When he opened the next door and was attempting to step into the hallway, he was knocked back by a foot to his chest. His body fell against the door, cracking the hinges, before his weight slammed to the floor. Looking up, he stared into the glowing blue eyes of a Lormenian shifter.

With a vicious roar Eli propelled himself upward, grabbing the Lormenian by the ankle and turning it until the bone cracked, the shifter roaring in pain. Eli released him, moving past quickly as it fell to the floor behind him. Another one charged him, claws and teeth bared. Eli ducked its first blow, slamming his clawed hand into its stomach. Pulling his hand away as the shifter bent over clutching his wound, Eli swung his hand backward, his claws slashing over the back of the shifter's neck without him even looking back to see the damage.

He kept moving, her scent stronger, and his heart pounding louder. They came at him like ants, another Lormenian that Eli ran up to and punched in the face, and when the shifter fell back onto the floor, he stomped into its chest until it struggled for oxygen. A cheetah jumped at him from behind but Eli heard its breathing, saw its approach in his peripheral vision, and turned in just enough time to wrap his strong arms around the cheetah's neck, choking it until it crumpled to the floor. When he turned again it was to see the cat slowly approaching.

"Your turn, motherfucker!" he yelled, running in his human form straight toward the cat. When the cat opened its mouth and came up on its hind legs to attack him, Eli jumped, twisting his body in the air and coming down into a backflip that pushed him past the cat. Landing on his feet, he jumped on the tiger's back, his hands reaching around to grab its opened jaws and with all his strength, pulled until his head literally ripped apart.

Coming back to his feet, the tiger lying on the floor in front of him, Eli's breath came in quick pants. And then he heard it. Laughter. Sick and demented laughter that could only come from one person, one shifter.

"Where's your twin?" the almost seven-foot-tall man standing at the end of the hallway asked. "I know how you two like to double-team when fighting ... and fucking."

Eli had already turned around and now stared into the cat's eyes of the most sadistic and feared Shadow Shifter ever to walk the earth. Boden looked like a god standing there dressed in a black suit, white shirt, and red tie. His body was built, strength fairly oozing from him as he stood in all his glory as a force to be reckoned with. Eli knew his story, he knew the resilience of this shifter, the tenacity that kept him alive when others condemned him to death. His head was wide, round, void of hair on top, but his eyebrows were thick and bushy, his mustache trimmed.

Beside him was Nivea, on her knees and wearing a necklace very similar to the one Eli had back at Havenway, the one that Boden had designed for Acacia.

"Let her go," Eli said as he approached. "This is between you and me."

Boden tossed back his head and laughed again, his entire body vibrating with the sound.

"Poor misguided Shadow," Boden told him. "You still do not have a clue."

"I know that I'm going to rip your fucking head off and I'd rather not get your tainted blood on my mate," Eli told him, continuing to draw closer, moving slowly in case more of Boden's minions came for him.

Boden reached down, petting Nivea on the head. Her cat's teeth were extended as her mouth opened wide and she roared, nipping at his hand. There was another stronger chain around her neck with enough give to also clamp around her wrists. Eli couldn't see behind her but he was sure her ankles had also been shackled, or she would have definitely stood up from that subservient position.

"Your mate," Boden taunted him. "She's a feisty little beast. Couldn't bring herself to kill the wretched man that was her father, but that's okay. I took care of that for her." He shrugged. "I like being generous sometimes."

He again ran his hand down Nivea's head, wrapping her hair around his wrist then yanking back until her throat was bared. Nivea did not scream the way Boden was probably expecting. Instead she looked directly at Eli.

That's right, baby, focus on me, Eli told her mentally. His cat reaching out to hers, the two mated animals linking in a way that only Shadow Shifters could. Focus on me and know that I will kill this sonofabitch for both of us.

She didn't nod her response, couldn't. But Eli heard her cat loud and clear. Take his ass down, now!

"You planned this from the beginning, didn't you?" Eli asked Boden instead. "All this time you wanted revenge against the Shadows for sentencing you to death. Against me and Ezra for taking your woman." He purposely did not say "mate." His goal was to goad the lethal shifter, to enrage him so much that he came for him, thus releasing Nivea. Saying the word "mate" while Boden held his so close might go wrong, quickly, and that would not be good for anybody here.

"I am a man of many plans," was Boden's response.

"You are a Shadow Shifter betrayed by one tribe and cast out by another. You don't belong anywhere because nobody wants you."

"You are going to be a pleasure to kill!" Boden hissed.

Eli shrugged. "I am a pleasure at so many things. Isn't that correct, my love?"

Nivea sighed her answer. "Yes, my love. You certainly are."

Her voice had deepened to a sexy moan that infiltrated the hallway, oozing over Boden so that his gaze instantly fell to her. In that second Nivea shifted, the gorgeous jaguar that she was breaking the chains at her neck and lunging at the very shocked shifter.

But Boden was not to be discounted; he was a trained warrior who fought by his own rules. He grabbed the cat by its neck before it could sink its teeth into him, tossing it across the floor. Unfortunately, that motion had called for his back to be turned to Eli. Big mistake.

Eli shifted next, jumping onto Boden's back and sinking his teeth instantly into the man's skull. As he did so, all the darkness that had been heightened in him by that shaman's smoke filled Eli completely, emptying from him as he clamped down on Boden's skull. All that anger, all that darkness seeping out like poison, should have killed the shifter, should have taken him down instantly.

But it did not.

Boden was somehow able to shake Eli off, turning with blood dripping from the back of its head.

"You can't kill me, you little shit! Not one of you stupid shifters can kill me!"

With that the man shifted into his cat. Eli had never seen a larger, deadlier-looking jaguar. And one that was so right, it would take two shifters to kill him.

In seconds both he and Nivea charged the cat, jumping at it from both sides. Boden reared up on his hind legs, roaring so that the windows around them shook. Nivea's bite went into Boden's flanks while Eli swiped at its head with powerful paws. Boden roared again and this time glass shattered, sprinkling all around them.

When the bigger jaguar came back down to his feet, Eli leapt onto its back, sinking his teeth into the top portion of its head. Boden swiped at Nivea but she wasn't to be dissuaded, she latched onto the side of his neck, biting down with almost as much strength as Eli. Boden continued to roar and buck beneath them, trying to throw them off, and yet, moving closer and closer to the open window.

In a flash Eli saw Boden in his cat form, attacking Nivea's cat in the rain forest, jumping at her again through the hut where she'd lay in that bed beside Eli wearing Acacia's necklace. Boden had always been the threat to Eli's mate. With another blink he saw Boden picking up Crowe's battered body from that house in Arizona where Ezra had thought he'd killed the human. He saw Boden and Bianca in a truck with Crowe and then Boden and Bianca sitting in the corporate office of the Cannon Group. Boden had been the archenemy of the shifters from that first day he was exiled from the Gungi.

Blinking back to reality, Eli's teeth sank deeper, he tasted the jaguar's blood at the back of his cat's throat. When Boden moved again, taking steps even with Eli and Nivea, a combined total of more than four hundred pounds hanging onto him, Eli knew where the cat would go, what he would do. He hated to do this, hated the choice he'd been given, but Eli relinquished his hold on Boden, swiping his paws over Nivea's head until her grip on the jaguar broke free as well. She turned to him instantly, growling and hissing as Boden, bleeding from multiple locations, his golden fur stained with red until it almost covered him completely, stumbled a few more steps. Eli ran toward him then, roaring with every ounce of rage, shaman's poison, and Seer's power he had in his cat, bumping the wounded jaguar with his large head until it staggered the next couple of steps before toppling over the windowsill, falling into the night.

Cats normally land on their feet and for a minute Eli worried that Boden in all his sadistic rage would somehow manage to survive that fall from eighteen floors up. But the sound of rapid gunfire and the loud roaring of other cats in the area indicated that that had not happened. Boden Estevez was dead. Finally.

The two jaguars made their way down the stairs, crossing the walkway into the garage but not before looking out to see that chaos still reigned.

Lights flashed from police cars, ambulances, and news cameras. There were people everywhere, police attempting to form perimeter blocks, yellow tape going up around bodies stretched out on the ground. When gunshots sounded from somewhere higher up, Eli pushed his cat against Nivea's, keeping her shielded as they picked up the pace. There had been guard SUVs parked throughout the garage in anticipation of the shifters needing to make quick getaways. Keys were taped behind the front wheels so that it didn't matter which vehicle was taken by what shifter.

They ran until Eli stopped at one he knew to be a guard vehicle. He came along its side and shifted back into his human form. Hurriedly going down on one knee, he snatched the key from its hiding place and opened the back door, going straight for the duffle bags the shifters kept filled with clothes. Nivea had shifted as well and was now at his side. It was as he tossed her sweatpants and a T-shirt he thought she could fit into that he noticed her hissing. Turning toward her, he scented her blood and was ready to roar again.

Instead he touched her shoulder, turning her and seeing the blood oozing from several angry gashes at her side.