“Take them off or turn on a light. Fight me straight up.”
“Why?” Lachlan said. “I want to win. Shifters fight dirty all the time, so don’t give me any crap about honor.”
“I won’t,” Kendrick said. “I just want to see your face when I rip off the other half of it.”
“Fine.” Kendrick heard a rustle and then lights flashed on.
Kendrick quickly dropped his gaze to the floor, blinking to adjust to the sudden glare. Lachlan discarded his goggles on an empty table.
He straightened and faced Kendrick, neither his jeans nor T-shirt showing the telltale bulge of a gun. That didn’t mean Lachlan didn’t have one holstered somewhere else about his person, though Kendrick smelled no metal or gunpowder.
“It’s going to take your new friends time to open the door,” Lachlan said. “We might as well discuss a few things.”
“No, I’m just going to kill you.” Kendrick drew his sword. “I’m guessing there’s another way out—you weren’t in here when we came in.”
“Of course there’s another way out. The last leader of this Shiftertown must have been one paranoid son of a bitch. There are tunnels and shafts all over the place, some not rising to the surface for miles. Sounds like a place you’d love. You always liked multiple exits and contingency plans.”
“For good reason,” Kendrick said. The sword’s hilt felt good in his hand. “It’s not safe to be a Shifter these days.”
“Not when you weigh yourself down with clingy Shifters who can’t make a go of it on their own,” Lachlan sneered. “You should have cut them loose, let humans round them up and slap Collars on them. Saved us a lot of bother.”
Kendrick’s heart burned with rekindled anger. “I believed you when you said you wanted to keep Shifters free. I didn’t realize you meant only select Shifters you chose.”
“The strongest, yes. Shifters will only prevail if we band together and attack our captors. Like the Shifters did the Fae—we need to become the Battle Beasts again, but for ourselves.”
“Meanwhile, all those cubs and less dominant Shifters should be rounded up and shocked, experimented on, confined, barely allowed to live?”
“Some of them like it,” Lachlan said, with a laugh of disbelief. “They think it makes them stronger. Trust me, when I was trying to build a group from the Shiftertowns around here, I ran into that screwed-up way of thinking time and again. Shiftertowns made us a community, gave our cubs a safe place to grow up. We’re getting stronger. Goddess, they reminded me of you.”
Kendrick held his sword steadily but at the same time watched every twitch Lachlan made. The moment the timing was exactly right, Kendrick would be on him.
“We are getting stronger,” Kendrick said. “Having more cubs. What I’m proving is that we don’t need human controlled Shiftertowns and shock Collars to do it. What did you do with all the goods in this room? The treasure of this particular Shifter clan?”
“Stole it,” Lachlan said. “We need it for bribes to get the Fae gold.”
“Fae gold?” The statement caught Kendrick off guard.
Lachlan made a noise of disgust. “It’s the secret to getting Shifters safely out of Collars. Didn’t Dylan share that with you? My reward to Shifters who follow me is to rid them of their Collars. No waiting their turn or until the Shiftertown leaders think it’s safe or any of that bullshit. Every Shifter who follows me will be out of his or her Collar, and I’ll lead them to victory.”
“But only the strong ones, right?” Kendrick finished. “All the others are SOL?”