“She killed herself.”
“I was there. He murdered her. He was a monster.”
“You’re the monster.” Yuri glanced at Rose and snarled. “You mated with a human and produced an abomination that will ruin us all. She must be destroyed.”
“I won’t allow that,” Vlad said, taking a single step toward his brother.
“Then you’ll die, too.”
He charged them so fast Rose blinked and Vlad was no longer there. She spun, keeping Zoe behind her and a hand firmly on her daughter’s arm as she circled to see where Vlad and his brother had landed. She spotted blurs of motion swirling toward the opposite wall, moving too fast for her to distinguish one brother from the other, despite their near opposite coloring.
The fight stopped suddenly with the two men facing each other in a crouch, eyes narrowed, Yuri panting and swearing, Vlad serious and focused.
Rose raised her gun toward Yuri, but the two swirled back together before she could get a shot off. Damn their speed.
Keeping Zoe behind her, she tracked them, gun raised, as she backed to the main door to let in help. Cursing and shouts from the elders echoed in the space, a fight she couldn’t focus on because she didn’t want to take her eyes off Vlad and Yuri. When she bumped against the door, she realized she’d have to either lower her gun or release Zoe to open the damned thing. She pushed Zoe even farther behind her back, boxing her against the wall, then reached for the knob as she stared at the blurs of Vlad and Yuri.
A whispered warning of instinct tightened in her gut just as she turned the knob.
Something big swept past her, knocking her to the floor. The door slammed shut behind her, and Zoe screamed.
“Zoe!” Rose searched the huge room.
To her horror, Lei had her daughter. He’d stopped a few yards from the damaged side door, the way now blocked by the assistant who’d been knocked out by Yuri’s entrance. Lei had one arm around Zoe’s body and another around her throat. One move and he could kill her. The room seemed frozen in that moment, no one daring to move or speak.
Panic broke Rose from her paralysis. She scrambled to her feet and started toward them as something heavy banged against the main door. Fear surged through her. Then a flash of movement swirled between her and Lei. Lei cursed. Rose blinked and realized his arms were empty. She scanned the room. Vlad seemed to materialize out of thin air at the far side of the hall, holding Zoe.
Rose took a shaky breath and turned toward them, keeping her gun aimed at Lei.
Two elders finally moved from behind the dais to take hold of him as he cursed and shouted at her. “She’ll destroy us all. The hybrids will be our downfall! We can’t allow them.”
Another loud bang sounded from the main door, like a large body hitting it. Rose looked toward the noise and only realized in the chaos of the last few seconds that she’d lost track of Yuri when Vlad shouted her name.
She didn’t pause to think or focus. She let her instincts move her, the years of training taking over where her brain would have been too slow.
She stepped back and with her free hand reached across her chest to grab the hand moving toward her throat, then she pivoted and rolled his already rapidly moving body over her shoulder while keeping a grip on his wrist. The move slammed her attacker into the marble floor on his back, his head near her feet. She stepped to the side, pulled his arm up hard and twisted, dislocating his shoulder.
Then she pointed her gun at the center of his body and fired.
The gun clicked twice before she realized she’d spent her last bullet. Only then did she blink and focus on her surroundings, her brain slowly catching up to her actions.
She looked down at Yuri’s prone body, his gut torn open by her tight circle of shots. Blood splattered darkly across the red rug, and when he tried to speak, it bubbled out of his mouth.
She swallowed hard and looked back at the gawking audience. To her relief, Vlad had Zoe’s head tucked against his shoulder, her face safely angled away so she hadn’t had to witness her mother’s attack or the quick, brutal aftermath.
Vlad met her gaze, eyebrows raised.
For long moments, the only sound in the room was the wheezing gurgles of Yuri trying to breathe.
Qiang broke the stunned silence. “She will do well in our community.”
Rose blinked. Elizaveta gave a brief bark of amusement.
Qiang motioned toward the meeting hall’s main door and Rose spun to see Alexis and a silent line of six shifters just standing there staring at her. At Qiang’s gesture, some of the tigers collected Yuri and carried him from the room while all the elders’ assistants swarmed to the dais, hovering around their charges, their murmurs of concern finally filling the hall with noise again.