“Stop,” I ordered.
Two shaggy monster heads swiveled toward me.
“What are you going to do, little man?” the smaller wereboar demanded. The other snorted.
I jumped.
I weighed about 60 pounds in my human body. But I weighed 4 times as much in the warrior form.
The wereboar saw me change in mid-air and threw himself to the side. I’d wanted to land on top of him. Instead, I only caught him with my hind foot. My claws ripped through his thick hide, and he squealed in surprise.
I bounced clear, putting myself between them and Ms. Jynx.
The boars stared at me.
I snarled at them. It wasn’t a call for help. It was a challenge. I wasn’t as big as my dad, but I was six feet tall, my claws and teeth were sharp, and I was also a lion. Lions ate boars.
Ms. Jynx jumped up. “You dummy!”
Oh. She’d been pretending.
The bouda cackled next to me. I stood up straight.
The wereboars scoured the ground, digging at it with their hooves.
We moved at the same time. The two wereboars attacked. Ms. Jynx shot forward, and I shot backward, bounced up off the wall, picking up height, and launched myself at them. The larger wereboar screamed as we collided and went down, both of us biting and clawing. We rolled around on the ground of the courtyard, tearing into each other.
He was so strong. I wasn’t going to outmuscle him. But he was big and slow. I remembered my training and decided to switch tactics. I bit his ear. Hot, angry magic sliced my tongue. Ow. I bit down harder. The wereboar squealed, flailed, and I broke free of him.
I rolled to my feet, spat the nasty ear out, and gestured for him to come at me.
The enraged boar charged, and at the last moment I leaped straight up.
Before he could stop, I jumped on his back. I dug all of my claws into him and bit down hard on his neck. Just below the base of his skull.
He tried to shake me off. He threw himself onto the ground, trying to crush me beneath his bulk.
I felt some of my ribs snap. Ouch, it hurt. It hurt!
But I had him now, and I wasn’t letting go.
He thrashed about, panicked now and losing lots of blood. I could feel him getting weaker.
With my teeth still buried in his foul-tasting flesh, I shifted my head more into a lion’s. My teeth got bigger. Slowly I could feel the boar’s muscles tearing and giving away. I put as much pressure as I could on the bones of his neck. I bit down until my jaw ached, trying to crush his throat.
It lasted forever.
His neck crunched.
He spasmed in his death throes, his huge body crushing me.
Suddenly my teeth were free.
His head rolled on his shoulders, hanging on by bits of skin and ruined muscle.
Not yet. It’s not done yet.
I bit through the rest of the neck and pulled the head free.
His dead eyes stared back at me.
I did it!
I kicked free of the body, jumped to my feet, held the head up, and roared louder and longer than I ever had.
The body of my enemy lay at my feet, and I was alive. And strong. Stronger than him. Stronger than anybody.
“SON,” Dad’s voice seemed very far away. “That’s damned impressive but what happened to calling for help?”
Oh. I managed to make my mouth work. “Hey, Dad.”
He was standing just a few feet away, human again and holding the head of the largest minotaur.
Nearby, Ms. Jynx, still in warrior form, leaned on Mr. Keelan. He was speaking softly to her and patting her shoulder. She was covered in blood, little of it hers, and laughing hysterically. She couldn’t seem to stop.
“You seemed busy,” I told Dad and changed back into human form.
“I was a bit.” He hefted the enormous head into his hands.
Mr. Keelan turned toward us and was looking at me and Dad with a strange expression.
“My lord,” he said. “Don’t be too hard on the lad. He fought a hell of a fight against a larger, more experienced foe. Remind you of anyone?”
“Don’t start, Keelan. If his mother finds out about this”—Dad used the minotaur’s horns to point at the bodies of the wereboars—“what happened here tonight will seem like a pleasant dream. I mean it.”
He looked around at everyone else, his eyes a bright, furious gold. “Nobody says a word about this to Kate. Am I clear?”
Everybody said yes at the same time.
Dad turned back to me. “Right now, I need to go and find your mom. I’m sure she’s fine. The guy on the ship is probably not a god but you never know. Conlan, I’m very proud of you. Let’s keep the part about you, her beloved eight-year-old son, killing a giant wereboar and waving its head around, to ourselves. This will be our little secret. This is a shapeshifter thing, and your mom doesn’t always understand shapeshifter things.”
He dropped the minotaur head on the ground.
“I promise,” I told him. Mom loved us, but she also worried a lot.
Mr. Keelan cleared his throat. “If I might make a small suggestion. Troy is a decent medmage. Perhaps it would be good to have him along with you?”
The male jackal spoke up. “I trained under Doolittle. I’m certified to treat shapeshifters and humans.”
“That’s good enough for me,” Dad told him. “I’d be happy to have you come with.”
Dad turned to me again and paused. “Conlan, you’re in charge until we get back. You’ve earned it.”
Dad said I earned it. I stood up straighter.
His eyes flashed gold. “But if Keelan stays a bit, listen to what he has to say.”
“You go and find the Consort, my lord. The boy and I will take care of everything here. Nothing to worry about.”
As I watched Dad and Troy break into a run heading down the road, Mr. Keelan clamped his big hand on my shoulder. “Nothing better than a good fight before breakfast. Still, perhaps we could start by tidying up a bit, eh? We wouldn’t want your mother coming home to a messy house, would we?”
Ms. Jynx exhaled and finally stopped shaking.
“Got a hold of yourself?” Keelan asked.
She nodded. “What I want to know is where the hell did they get the fucking minotaurs?”
“From the Labyrinth,” Troy’s sister said.
“Duh!” Ms. Jynx said. “Seriously, Helen?”
“No, I mean it. For real. Troy and I are Greek. Our uncle knows a lot of people in our community, so when we got stationed here by the Pack, we went to pay our respects. They warned us about the minotaurs. There is the Labyrinth in Crete. It’s a magic space like Unicorn Lane. The minotaurs live there. They are always male, so they have to kidnap women to reproduce.”
That was pretty much what Grandfather had said.
“They’re territorial and they have disputes with each other,” Ms. Helen said. “These three were a father and his sons. They were forced out, so they boarded the first ship they could find and ended up here two years ago. They destroyed the local gangs and built their own.”
Mr. Keelan’s eyes went green. “And you kept it to yourself?”
The werejackal raised her hands. “It never came up?”
“Helen, for future reference, this is the kind of information I need to have as your alpha. Do we understand each other?”
She nodded. “Yes, Alpha.”