Chapter Twenty

Two weeks later

It was the biggest scandal Harp had ever seen. Hell, it was very possibly the only scandal of any note. Harp wasn’t a perfect society. There was no such thing in human or any other history. But it was a small planet with a population that had fought together for generations just to survive. The idea of selling each other out simply didn’t compute.

Guy Wolfrum’s plot to capture shifters for experimentation, and then his desperate attack on the pregnant Amanda, had drawn a great deal of attention from the Shifters Guild, which was understandable. But the mountain clans, who typically ignored what was going on in the city, were also deeply involved this time. Not only because Aidan was one of their own, but because it was Rhodry’s pregnant wife who’d been attacked. Rhodry was the de Mendoza clan chief, which made him overall leader of the mountain clans. His sons were the future leaders of de Mendoza, and his people were taking Wolfrum’s attack very personally. There were more Devlins, de Mendozas, and every other kind of clansman in the city than anyone had ever seen at once, all there to support their leader.

They’d had to wait two weeks so Wolfrum could heal from the damage Rhodry had done in defending his family. It wouldn’t do for him to face Harp justice with a bad leg, after all. But the time had finally come, and Cristobal had decided to hold the hearing in the palace’s grand ballroom, so that all interested parties could attend. A room which normally saw elegant parties with ladies in gorgeous gowns and men in formalwear was now filled with row after row of people who’d never seen the inside of the Ardrigh’s palace before today, unless it had been as part of a children’s tour when they’d been in primary school.

Aidan stood in the back with Rachel and most of the Devlin cousins. There were chairs up front, but he was too tense to sit. It was everything he could do not to pace back and forth liked the caged animal that Wolfrum and his cohorts had tried to make of him. Rachel slid her fingers into his at the same moment that Rhodry’s heavy hand fell on his shoulder. His cousin was standing next to him, with Amanda sitting in the last row, right in front of them.

“Don’t worry, cuz,” Rhodry murmured close to his ear. “We’ll have justice one way or another.”

Aidan had never doubted that was true. He believed Cristobal would come through, that Wolfrum would be punished in a way that fit his crime, with no regard for fleet or any laws other than Harp’s. But he knew with a certainty born of shared blood that if the clans didn’t like Cristobal’s justice, then they would simply take their own.

The crowd settled as Cristobal entered the room with his son, Fionn, as well as his wife and daughter. Several advisors entered at the same time, but Cristobal climbed the short dais alone. The Ardrigh had the sole power to pass judgment.

There was a stir to one side as Wolfrum was brought in flanked by two of Cristobal’s shifter guards. Wolfrum wasn’t a small man by any measure, but the two shifters dwarfed him as they strode into the room, escorting him between them. Wolfrum entered with his head held high and nose in the air, seeming unaware of the mood of the crowd.

“Guy Wolfrum,” Cristobal said, addressing the prisoner. “We all know why you’re here. But to be fair, do you require a listing of your crimes?”

Wolfrum glared first at Cristobal and then at the assembled Harpers. Aidan was reminded that this was a man accustomed to power, that he’d held a high rank in fleet, and been honored as one of Earth’s most esteemed scientists.

“Let’s not waste time, Cristobal,” Wolfrum rasped, ignoring the Ardrigh’s title. “I have rights as an officer of United Earth Fleet, as a ranking member of the Earth Science Academy, and as a citizen of Earth, all of which have been violated by my illegal detention. There’s a shuttle leaving tomorrow, and I intend to be on it.”

Cristobal’s mouth curved into a faint smile. “While I hesitate to remind someone with your lofty accomplishments of such basic facts,” he said in a tone which made it clear that he didn’t mind it at all. “You must surely recall that you swore an oath as a citizen of Harp. That oath confers both privilege and obligation, including the observance of Harp law, which prohibits kidnapping, enslavement, assault, attempted murder, and, of course, treason.”

“Treason!” Wolfrum shouted. “I never—”

“You conspired with a member of the fleet science center—a man who is scheduled to leave on that shuttle tomorrow, under the arrest of fleet authorities—to facilitate the invasion by not one but two hostile forces. That is treason against Harp.”

Aidan could hardly withhold his snicker at Cristobal’s careful wording regarding the science tech’s departure. Yes, he was scheduled to depart. But he wouldn’t be on that shuttle. No one who’d had a part in the plot could be allowed to leave. Poor lad was going to make a break for it tonight, never to be seen again. The Green was such a dangerous place for the uninitiated.

The clan’s only disappointment, a sense of justice delayed, had to do with Wolfrum’s employer. The one who’d hired him to capture shifters, in the first place. Whoever it was had gotten wind of the mission’s utter failure, along with Wolfrum’s capture, and had made no attempt to contact him, much less send a rescue mission. It wasn’t difficult to figure out how they’d found out, especially not once fleet started asking questions about the laser weapon fired by the second ship. The laser’s energy signal, magnified and distorted by Harp’s odd magnetic field, had been picked up by a passing fleet armada. They’d rushed to Harp, expecting to find some cataclysmic event had occurred and prepared to render aid, only to discover Wolfrum’s crime and the collusion of one of their own.

Unfortunately, their timely response had scared off the corporate conspirator before Wolfrum could be forced to send a rescue request to them, and well before they could become curious. That part was frustrating, but shifters had long memories. They’d discover the truth eventually, and when they did, they would act according to their own laws. But in the meantime, they had Guy Wolfrum, whose crimes were heinous enough.

Wolfrum was speechless in response to Cristobal’s litany of charges, but only for a moment. “Then, as a citizen of Harp, I assert my right to Ardrigh’s justice,” he said arrogantly.

Aidan couldn’t believe his ears. And from the reaction of the crowd, neither could anyone else. He glanced over at Rhodry and found his cousin giving him a predator’s grin of victory.

“Very well,” Cristobal said mildly, ignoring the crowd. “I’ve heard testimony from many of those who witnessed or were injured by your actions, including Dr. Rachel Fortier whom you yourself hired to assist in your monstrous scheme, albeit without her knowledge, and who witnessed the capture and torture of Aidan Devlin. I also received and considered your own statement as to the facts. However, there is one more citizen who has asked to address this public hearing.” He looked over and nodded to his left, where a young woman stepped into the room from a side door. She was pretty, with the fair hair and golden skin which was so common on Harp, a combination of the Spanish and Irish heritage of the original colonists.

Aidan had no idea who she was, but Rhodry leaned over and murmured, “Wolfrum’s wife.”

Aidan was shocked. Why would this pretty, young thing have married a zillah like Wolfrum? Rachel buried her face against the back of his shoulder, and he could feel her body shaking with laughter. Either she’d had the same reaction, or she was laughing because his reaction was so obvious.

Up front, Cristobal was saying, “Whenever you’re ready, Julia.”

Wolfrum was regarding his wife with a smug confidence that was clearly misplaced, since Julia was very carefully avoiding looking back at him. If Aidan’s woman had refused to look him in the face, he’d have known something was wrong.

Turning her back, literally, on Wolfrum, Julia faced the crowd and told everyone what she knew. How Wolfrum had kept pushing her for information on shifters, and how he’d begun keeping secrets, followed by promises of great wealth once they left Harp.

“But you see, my lord.” Julia turned to face Cristobal and continued in her soft voice. “He never asked me if I wanted to leave. I have family here, and friends. Why would I want to go anywhere else?”

“Julia!” Wolfrum snapped her name like a command, but it also revealed shock. Was is that she’d spoken against him? Or that she didn’t want to leave Harp, with or without him?

“If you wish mercy for your husband, I will take your feelings into consideration,” Cristobal said kindly.

She drew a deep breath and said, “I have no husband.” And then she walked out the same door she’d come in.

The ballroom filled with the hum of conversation as those present speculated about what it all meant for Wolfrum. And probably a good deal of that speculation was about the state of Wolfrum’s marriage, both before and after he’d hatched his scheme. The fact that Julia herself wasn’t on trial meant that Cristobal had already taken her testimony and was satisfied that she’d known nothing of the plot. Aidan didn’t envy her future, however. Harp was a small place, full of gossip. There’d be nowhere she could escape her past.

He looked up when Cristobal stood. The crowd quieted expectantly.

“The facts in this case aren’t in question. Guy Wolfrum doesn’t deny what he did or what motivated him. But, in any case, the number of eyewitnesses, myself included, are too numerous for any meaningful defense on his part.

“The only question, therefore, is what constitutes justice and who has the right to make that decision.” He raised his gaze to look over the crowd, finally settling on Rhodry. “The initial crime happened in clan territory and it was the clans who were the most injured. First, the imprisonment and torture of Aidan Devlin, and then, the unforgivable attack on Amanda Sumner de Mendoza and her unborn children. Therefore, it is right that clan law prevail, and that clan justice determine Guy Wolfrum’s punishment.”

The room went perfectly still. Everyone there knew what clan justice required in this, or any other case. The person injured had the right to confront the guilty party one-on-one, a fight to his choice of first blood or death. Even Wolfrum seemed to understand what this meant for him. His face, which had paled when Cristobal had made his judgment clear, now looked as if every drop of blood had left his body. He would have fallen if the guards hadn’t been holding him up.

And why not? Rhodry, who’d been half slouched against the wall like a big, lazy cat, had straightened to his full height and now stood, legs braced, staring at Wolfrum with golden eyes gone half cat and gleaming, his teeth bared in a vicious grin. When he spoke, his voice was little more than a growl.

“The clans accept your judgment, Ardrigh, and thank you for this opportunity to avenge the wrongs done our people.” He took a moment to scan the assembled crowd. “The only question before me, as leader of the clans, is who among the many clansmen and women injured by this criminal should have the right to confront him in the circle of justice?”

His look turned sly as he stared at Wolfrum over the heads of the crowd. “I could do it myself. After all, I represent every clansman, and it was my wife the coward tried to kill, my sons he thought to kidnap and take off-planet—” His voice dropped to an even lower register, the words barely understandable for the deep snarl surrounding them. “—to be experimented on, their lives spent in cages.

“Or,” he continued speculatively, “I could let my wife, Amanda, fight for herself.”

Wolfrum’s expression brightened with hope, which showed just what fool he was. It might gain him a few months’ reprieve while Amanda carried to term and recovered. But in the end, Amanda would tear him apart. Forget the attacks on her or even Aidan, the man had threatened her children.

But Rhodry wasn’t finished. He looked straight at Wolfrum and said, “But, no. As he was the first injured, first justice goes to my cousin Aidan.”

Aidan’s eyes blazed as gold as his cousin’s as he stared at Wolfrum, and there was nothing but death in his gaze.

Wolfrum tried to run. Fool. His shifter guards didn’t even bother trying to catch him. The crowd drew back as Aidan leaped over people and chairs, snagging the Earther before he’d gone ten feet. He tried to grab a knife from someone in the crowd, but Aidan batted it aside with ease and began circling his prey.

“If you please, Aidan,” Cristobal called. “Could we take this outside? Blood is such a bother on the floors.”

Aidan laughed and gave a mock bow, before jerking his head at the shifter guards. They grabbed their prisoner once again and dragged him outside to the wide dirt courtyard where the guards practiced their fighting skills almost daily.

Wolfrum fought their hold, twisting and screaming. To no avail, of course. It was a waste of energy that he should have been conserving to fight for his own life. But reason seemed to have fled the esteemed scientist.

“For a guy who tried to kidnap shifters, he sure doesn’t seem to have learned much about them,” Rachel said, her breast soft against his arm as she leaned up to speak into his ear.

Aidan started to reply, but Wolfrum claimed his attention. The man had finally recovered some semblance of pride as he pulled away from his guards and stood tall, tugging at his clothing as if to straighten it.

“Is this justice?” he demanded. “A shifter animal against a human?”

There were growls all around at his description, but Rhodry held up a hand and they quieted.

“I have rights, too,” Wolfrum continued. “The fight should be a fair one.”

That wasn’t true, but Aidan was curious enough to let the fool keep talking.

“He has to remain in his human form.”

Aidan waited for something more, some ridiculous demand that the idiot might think would make a difference. One hand tied behind his back, maybe, or blindfolded. But, no. Wolfrum’s only demand was that Aidan fight in his human form. He joined the laughter that rippled through the crowd. It was mostly shifters in the courtyard, with norms lining the balconies, away from the blood and violence that was sure to come.

Aidan stepped forward. “I accept,” he said, and then took it a step further, stripping away his belt knife, and tugging his shirt over his head to prove he carried no weapons. Handing both to Rachel, he pulled her in for a kiss. “For luck,” he told her, winking.

“Wolfrum’s fleet,” she reminded him seriously. “He’ll have at least some skill in hand-to-hand, and don’t trust his honor. He doesn’t have any.”

He nodded and turned to face his opponent.

Wolfrum went into a defensive crouch, looking very smug. Rachel had been right about his training, but it wouldn’t make any difference. Aidan was a shifter in the prime of his life. And he was Guild, the elite, even among shifters. He fought and defeated more deadly creatures every week than Wolfrum would in his entire life.

He faced his opponent without fear, but even a coward like Wolfrum could score a deadly blow under the right circumstances. So Aidan stood ready to defend himself—knees bent, weight distributed, arms loose at his sides.

Wolfrum circled, looking for a weakness, more disciplined than Aidan would have credited. But in the end, impatience won the day, as Wolfrum took a quick step closer and launched a sidekick that, had it connected, might have knocked Aidan back. But Aidan saw the attack coming and countered it, grabbing Wolfrum’s leg and jerking him closer still, putting him off balance while Aidan’s fist swung up and smashed into the Earther’s jaw. Even then, he held his punch, not wanting the fight to be over too quickly. The match might be uneven, but he still needed his vengeance. Needed blood and pain.

Wolfrum reeled back, but managed to recover, steadying himself at a safe distance, his eyes wary. He probably knew Aidan hadn’t struck with his full strength and was looking for a sneak attack, a cheat of some kind, because that’s what he would have done.

When Aidan held out his bare hands, as if to ask what was next, Wolfrum bared his teeth in a triumphant grin. Slipping his own hand into a deep pocket inside his tunic, he pulled out a small pen-like instrument and pointed it at Aidan.

“You remember this, shifter? I took you down once. I can do it again.” He squeezed the narrow cylinder.

Aidan moved faster than the human eye could follow. Before Wolfrum could trigger the small tranq gun, Aidan was across the ring, his fingers breaking the man’s wrist, crushing the bones into shards as Wolfrum screamed.

“I remember your tranq guns, Earther, and I learned,” he growled, squeezing harder, feeling the shards turn into pebbles of bone. “And it wasn’t you who took me down. Not then, and not now.” He threw the shrieking man across the ring to land at Rhodry’s feet. “I’m done with him, cousin. What say we let the Green have its justice next?”

…

Rachel hadn’t known what to expect. Oh, she’d known that Aidan would wipe the floor with Wolfrum. Her only fear had been that the coward might do something sneaky and inflict some damage, though she’d expected a knife, not a tranq gun. After the fight was over, she’d examined the one Wolfrum had tried to use. It held only one charge, but the dosage was heavy, clearly gauged for a shifter’s metabolism. She didn’t know what effect it would have had, and she never would. Nor would anyone else. She’d crushed both pen and tranq cartridge beneath her boot, grinding it to dust, much the way Aidan had Wolfrum’s wrist.

Was it wrong that she’d taken pleasure in the man’s screams of pain? She’d asked Aidan that same question, but he’d only grinned and said, “Nah, it only proves you’re the perfect woman for me.”

“As if you needed proof,” she’d teased lightly.

But now, they were headed into the Green, dragging along a whimpering Wolfrum who remained unresisting other than constant complaints about his wrist, which had been bandaged and braced. He’d also been given a numbing shot for the injury, which was more than she’d have done for him. In fact, she found it curious. Wasn’t the point of this exercise to make him pay for his crimes?

“Why tend to his wrist?” she finally asked Aidan as their much smaller group traveled deep into the Green. The courtyard had been accessible to anyone who wanted to watch, but this was something new. No one except shifters ever went this deep into the Green. Well, shifters and her and Amanda, anyway.

“So we don’t have to listen to him scream all the way here,” Aidan said, his gaze on the trees overhead which were filled with shifters, moving silently from branch to branch.

“Go ahead and shift,” she told him. “I know you want to.”

He looked down at her and grinned. “Later. First, you’ll climb with me for the finale.”

She frowned. Finale? He deserved to be staked to an ant hill and covered with honey like in the ancient Earth stories, she thought facetiously. “What will they do to him?”

“You’ll see,” Aidan said mysteriously. “The Green has its ways.”

Well, that sounded ominous—for Wolfrum.

As if by silent agreement, the group stopped in a small clearing where the loam was deep and soft beneath their feet, every inch of it covered with green, from slender trees to low bushes and even lower moss and vines that crawled over everything in sight. The clearing was dominated by one of the huge trees the shifters called grandfather trees. She’d assumed it simply meant old, but she was beginning to think there was more to it.

“Here we go,” Aidan said softly and began shedding his clothes, along with just about every other shifter. Even Wolfrum’s guards had thrown him at the base of the giant tree and were now stripping naked and shifting.

“Climb, love,” Aidan said, indicating a good-sized tree directly opposite the grandfather. No one was climbing that one, she noticed.

She turned to study the tree he indicated. It was old enough that its trunk was craggy with hand and footholds. “How high?” she asked as she drew on her gloves and started climbing.

“Follow me.” A moment later he was shifted and twenty feet up into the tree. Damn him.

“Follow me,” she muttered cynically, focusing on the next place for her fingers, her booted foot. The last thing she wanted was to topple backward, embarrassing herself and Aidan.

He was waiting for her—a beautiful, golden beast, head on his front paws, purring like a motor, his cat eyes somehow managing to look innocent. She snorted. Yeah, right. Innocent.

When he didn’t shift back to human, she simply settled in next to him with one arm around his thick neck and stared down into the clearing, just as every other shifter was doing now. She noticed Amanda lower down in the next tree, one with plenty of low branches, making for an easier ascent in consideration of her pregnancy, probably with Rhodry’s considerable help. She leaned against his huge, black form, while cats high and low faced the grandfather in a three-quarter circle.

Wolfrum struggled to gain his feet, looking around as if suddenly aware he was free, ready to make a break for it. But no matter how hard he tried, his feet and hands kept sinking into the loam, and he couldn’t seem to gain enough traction to push to his feet. Finally, he crawled to the grandfather and clung to its trunk, getting one foot beneath him. But he’d no sooner started to rise, than a whip-thin root came out of nowhere, tripping him up and slamming him back to the ground. He fought to free himself from its grip, but with every root he disentangled, another two surfaced to grab hold and pull him even deeper. He was screaming now—incoherently, frantically—as he struggled to escape a tangle of roots that became first a cage and then a straitjacket, until finally a thick band wrapped around his throat and turned his screams into choked shrieks of terror that she could still hear, even after he’d been sucked down and completely disappeared beneath the moss-covered forest floor.

Rachel stared, horrified.

“His crime was against the Green and its creatures first,” Aidan said from right next to her. She’d been so caught up in the terror of Wolfrum’s death that she hadn’t noticed him shifting. “And the Green always takes care of its own. Now you know why the colonists needed shifters back then, and still needs them now.”

She nodded wordlessly, her mouth dry. It wasn’t that she thought Wolfrum didn’t deserve what he’d gotten. He’d deserved that and more. But…what a nightmarish way to die.

“Don’t worry,” Aidan said, putting his arm around her later. “You’re safe.”

“I know,” she said faintly. They walked a little way together, taking their time. Just a stroll in the beautiful Green…which also happened to eat people it didn’t like.

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, not really. I mean, yeah, I’m a little freaked out, but…if you tell me I don’t have to worry about being eaten alive, I’ll believe you.”

He chuckled. “What you saw out there is extremely rare. In fact, it’s never happened before in my lifetime. That wasn’t true of those first colonists, though. The planet saw them as invaders and fought back. It’s why they were so desperate to create shifters.”

She cocked her head curiously. “But why shifters?” she mused, half to herself. “I mean, I can see why they’d want to include some Harp DNA in the next generation, but why shifters, specifically?”

He seemed reluctant to answer, and it occurred to Rachel that this might be another one of Harp’s secrets. The ones she wasn’t allowed to know.

But then he said thoughtfully, “I’d say we were a fluke rather than a plan. I don’t think they meant to create what they did. Shifters, that is.”

Rachel nodded. Now that made sense. Although she’d love to learn more. Even if they didn’t have records, they had oral histories. And medical records, although from what she’d seen, it didn’t seem shifters had much need of a hospital. Unfortunately, she wasn’t going to be around to explore any of that.

“Why so sad, love?”

She shrugged, her shoulders moving under the warm weight of his arm. “The shuttle arrives tomorrow.”

He stopped dead, which meant she did, too. “What’s that got to do with you?”

“Well… I’ll be on it, won’t I? I mean, I didn’t exactly arrive here legally, and—”

“Do you want to leave Harp?” he asked, and there was a note of vulnerability to his question that she’d never heard from him before. Aidan Devlin didn’t do vulnerable. He was big and tough and able to handle whatever life threw his way.

Her heart was a flutter of trepidation clogging her throat, so that she had to swallow before she could answer his question. She met his eyes, once again human blue with no more than sparks of gold. “No,” she breathed, daring to hope. “I don’t want to leave. I mean, there’s so much to explore here, so much I could study.”

He regarded her in bemusement. “That’s the only reason?”

“Well. Shifters, of course.”

“All of us?”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look. Was he laughing at her? “Fine,” she admitted. “You. You’re the reason I want to stay. Happy now?”

He grinned. “Almost. You want to study me, sweetheart?” His lips nibbled at her ear, his voice a sinful purr that lifted the hairs on her neck.

“Yes,” she said breathlessly.

“Much easier to do if you stay close.” He slid both arms around her, holding her flush against his body so that she could feel the defined muscles of his chest and arms, the firm thickness of his thighs, and the hard length of his erection. Desire shivered over her body.

“I love you,” she whispered, then pinched her lips and slammed her eyes shut. She shouldn’t have said that. She meant it, but she shouldn’t have said it. She waited for the inevitable rejection. Waited for him to pull away and make an awkward joke.

“I love you, too,” he said, so softly that she wasn’t sure he’d meant her to hear.

She had to swallow again, but it wasn’t fear clogging her throat this time. “Okay.” It was the only word she could squeeze out.

He stroked the back of his knuckles over her cheeks, wiping away tears. “Okay?” he said, smiling. “That’s it?”

She laughed, half sobbing with emotion. “I guess I’m staying.”

“There you go, love.” He slung an arm over her shoulders and turned them back onto the path to the city.