“What happened to your arm?” Kai asked as I threw another punch. I’d skipped the gloves, but what were skinned knuckles compared to torn flesh, bruised hearts, and everything else my fellow cats were suffering upstairs?
I swiped my good arm across my sweaty forehead without looking at him. “I broke it.” And that reminder sucked up what little joy remained in my useless punching, so I shifted my weight onto my left foot and let my right leg fly. I hit the heavy bag hard enough to make it swing sluggishly, and the blow radiated into my knee and beyond. A tiny spark of triumph shot through me. Kicking was better. There was nothing wrong with my legs.
“How did you break it?” Kai asked, obviously unbothered by my pointedly short answers.
I steadied the bag with my good hand and faced him, hoping I looked fierce in spite of the scribbled-on cast. “I broke it dispatching of the bastards who tried to kill several of my Pride mates.”
I expected Kai to flinch, or laugh, or show obvious skepticism. Instead, he only nodded solemnly. Almost respectfully. “So you understand our need for vengeance.”
“No.” I whirled again and grunted as my left leg hit the bag. “We deal in justice.”
“Justice and vengeance are the same.”
“Now you’re just lying to yourself to validate blood thirst.” I kicked again, and the bag swung harder. “Justice is for the victim.” Kick. “Vengeance is for the survivor.” Kick. I stopped to steady the bag again and glanced at the bird now watching me in fascination. “You’re not doing this for Finn.” I threw a left jab and had to stop myself from following it with a right out of habit. “You’re doing it for yourselves, and that’s anything but honorable.” Contempt dripped from my voice, and blood smeared the bag when my knuckles split open with the next punch.
“We punish the guilty as a warning to future aggressors,” Kai insisted, and I turned to see him scowling, small dark eyes flashing in the dim light from the dusty fixture overhead.
“There was no aggression!” I threw my hands into the air. “Your boy tried to take a werecat’s kill. That’s fucking suicide. Don’t you harpies have any instinct? Or common sense?”
Kai drew himself straighter, taller, though the movement must have stung in every untreated gash spanning his chiseled stomach. “We are birds of prey, but carrion will suffice in a pinch. The kill was abandoned in our hunting grounds. Finn had every right to a share.”
“It wasn’t abandoned. The hunter—” I was careful not to give out Lance’s name “—just went to tell the group he’d brought down dinner. And for the record, a werecat is only obligated to share his meal with higher-ranking toms and his own wife and children, should he have them. Our custom says nothing about donating to any vulture who swoops out of the sky.”
“He wasn’t in werecat territory.”
Okay, technically Kai had a point, but that was only by chance. In many cases, territories of different species often overlap, mostly because what few other species have outlasted werewolves exist in such small numbers as to be inconsequential to us.
Or so we’d thought.
“You know what? None of that matters.” Frowning, I kicked a boxing glove across the floor and crossed my arms over my chest, annoyed that they didn’t fit there, thanks to the cast. “The cat who killed Finn wasn’t one of ours. If he had been, your bird would have died in our territory. But you just said he didn’t.”
Kai’s scowl deepened, and his good hand tightened around the bar until his knuckles went white, the muscles of his thick hands straining against his skin. “If your people are innocent, where is your proof?”
Incensed now, I stomped across the gritty concrete into the weak light from the fixture overhead, careful to stay well back from the bars. “Our proof was murdered this afternoon. By your honorable informant.”
The bird only stared at me, probably trying to judge the truth by my eyes. But I couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t tell whether he believed me, or even cared one way or the other. “You need new proof.”
“No shit, Tweety.” I turned my back on him and stalked across the floor, then over the thick blue sparring mat to the half bath on the back wall. “Do you even care that while you guys are out here slaughtering innocent toms, the man you’re after is hundreds of miles away, laughing his ass off?”
Okay, Lance probably wasn’t laughing, but he had to be at least a little relieved that he wasn’t the one being dropped from thirty feet in the air by a vengeful, overgrown bird.
I squatted and dug beneath the small, dingy sink until I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a gallon-size bag of gauze squares and medical tape. We had hydrogen peroxide, but frankly, I wanted the walking eight-piece dinner to sting in every single cut.
“Here.” Back on the mat, I tossed the alcohol underhanded. It landed a little harder than I’d intended, then slid until it hit the bars, evidently undamaged. “I can’t do anything for your arm, but maybe this’ll prevent gangrene. Or whatever.” While Kai stared at the bottle, obviously confused by my compassion, I tossed the bag of bandages, which smacked the bars then fell to the ground.
Kai bent awkwardly—and hopefully painfully—to pull the bottle through two bars. His gaze shifted from me to the alcohol, then back again, and his head tilted sharply to the side—a decidedly avian motion, which implied a very detached curiosity. “Why do you care?”
I swiped my good arm across my sweaty forehead without looking at him. “I broke it.” And that reminder sucked up what little joy remained in my useless punching, so I shifted my weight onto my left foot and let my right leg fly. I hit the heavy bag hard enough to make it swing sluggishly, and the blow radiated into my knee and beyond. A tiny spark of triumph shot through me. Kicking was better. There was nothing wrong with my legs.
“How did you break it?” Kai asked, obviously unbothered by my pointedly short answers.
I steadied the bag with my good hand and faced him, hoping I looked fierce in spite of the scribbled-on cast. “I broke it dispatching of the bastards who tried to kill several of my Pride mates.”
I expected Kai to flinch, or laugh, or show obvious skepticism. Instead, he only nodded solemnly. Almost respectfully. “So you understand our need for vengeance.”
“No.” I whirled again and grunted as my left leg hit the bag. “We deal in justice.”
“Justice and vengeance are the same.”
“Now you’re just lying to yourself to validate blood thirst.” I kicked again, and the bag swung harder. “Justice is for the victim.” Kick. “Vengeance is for the survivor.” Kick. I stopped to steady the bag again and glanced at the bird now watching me in fascination. “You’re not doing this for Finn.” I threw a left jab and had to stop myself from following it with a right out of habit. “You’re doing it for yourselves, and that’s anything but honorable.” Contempt dripped from my voice, and blood smeared the bag when my knuckles split open with the next punch.
“We punish the guilty as a warning to future aggressors,” Kai insisted, and I turned to see him scowling, small dark eyes flashing in the dim light from the dusty fixture overhead.
“There was no aggression!” I threw my hands into the air. “Your boy tried to take a werecat’s kill. That’s fucking suicide. Don’t you harpies have any instinct? Or common sense?”
Kai drew himself straighter, taller, though the movement must have stung in every untreated gash spanning his chiseled stomach. “We are birds of prey, but carrion will suffice in a pinch. The kill was abandoned in our hunting grounds. Finn had every right to a share.”
“It wasn’t abandoned. The hunter—” I was careful not to give out Lance’s name “—just went to tell the group he’d brought down dinner. And for the record, a werecat is only obligated to share his meal with higher-ranking toms and his own wife and children, should he have them. Our custom says nothing about donating to any vulture who swoops out of the sky.”
“He wasn’t in werecat territory.”
Okay, technically Kai had a point, but that was only by chance. In many cases, territories of different species often overlap, mostly because what few other species have outlasted werewolves exist in such small numbers as to be inconsequential to us.
Or so we’d thought.
“You know what? None of that matters.” Frowning, I kicked a boxing glove across the floor and crossed my arms over my chest, annoyed that they didn’t fit there, thanks to the cast. “The cat who killed Finn wasn’t one of ours. If he had been, your bird would have died in our territory. But you just said he didn’t.”
Kai’s scowl deepened, and his good hand tightened around the bar until his knuckles went white, the muscles of his thick hands straining against his skin. “If your people are innocent, where is your proof?”
Incensed now, I stomped across the gritty concrete into the weak light from the fixture overhead, careful to stay well back from the bars. “Our proof was murdered this afternoon. By your honorable informant.”
The bird only stared at me, probably trying to judge the truth by my eyes. But I couldn’t read his expression. Couldn’t tell whether he believed me, or even cared one way or the other. “You need new proof.”
“No shit, Tweety.” I turned my back on him and stalked across the floor, then over the thick blue sparring mat to the half bath on the back wall. “Do you even care that while you guys are out here slaughtering innocent toms, the man you’re after is hundreds of miles away, laughing his ass off?”
Okay, Lance probably wasn’t laughing, but he had to be at least a little relieved that he wasn’t the one being dropped from thirty feet in the air by a vengeful, overgrown bird.
I squatted and dug beneath the small, dingy sink until I found a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a gallon-size bag of gauze squares and medical tape. We had hydrogen peroxide, but frankly, I wanted the walking eight-piece dinner to sting in every single cut.
“Here.” Back on the mat, I tossed the alcohol underhanded. It landed a little harder than I’d intended, then slid until it hit the bars, evidently undamaged. “I can’t do anything for your arm, but maybe this’ll prevent gangrene. Or whatever.” While Kai stared at the bottle, obviously confused by my compassion, I tossed the bag of bandages, which smacked the bars then fell to the ground.
Kai bent awkwardly—and hopefully painfully—to pull the bottle through two bars. His gaze shifted from me to the alcohol, then back again, and his head tilted sharply to the side—a decidedly avian motion, which implied a very detached curiosity. “Why do you care?”
