“Our egos are not so fragile that they are bruised over every insult,” he insisted. “Malone lied to us, and for that, he has lost all credibility. But in the end, we suffered nothing from his lie. On the contrary, ill-meant though his manipulation was, it afforded us much needed recreation.”

Recreation? Slaughtering members of our Pride was recreation?

But I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. The thunderbirds were hardly our brother-species. More like distant cousins. Once or twice removed. Far removed.

“So, you don’t care that Malone’s just going to get away with this?”

“No.” Kai stepped up to his Flightmate’s side. “Do not bother us with this matter again, or you will find yourself less warmly welcomed.”

Yeah. Their warm reception made my mother’s deep freeze look nice and toasty.

“Faythe…” Marc put a hand on my shoulder, and I nodded without looking at him.

“I get it. They aren’t going to help with the recon,” I mumbled. “Now if they refuse to help rip the living shit out of our enemies, we’ll be oh for two.”

“What’s that?” Kai’s head tilted in interest this time. “You want us to defecate on your enemies? We’re eager to repay what we owe, but we aren’t pigeons, leaving droppings when-and wherever the urge strikes.”

I fought inappropriate laughter at the very idea. “Sorry. My colloquialisms seem to lose clarity in the translation. No defecation. No bodily fluids of any sort, except for blood, hopefully.”

The older female bird spoke up from somewhere to my left, and the crowd parted to reveal her. “You have caught our attention, Faythe Sanders. What blood can we spill for you, to absolve our debt?” Their obvious eagerness looked a little too much like feline bloodlust to me, but so long as it was working for us, rather than against us, I was willing to deal.

But first, a precaution… “So, this is a definite no on the reconnaissance?”

“Unequivocally.” Kai’s feathers had receded, but he opened and closed his wing-claws like fists in anticipation of a fight.

“Fine.” Though it was actually far from fine. But not unexpected. “Then I’m ready to call in your debt. We’ve tried to deal with Malone through political means, and that was a spectacular failure. So we’re going to remove him from power by force…”

“The only proper way…” The crone’s head bobbed eagerly, her beady eyes gleaming.

“… and you’re going to fight on our side.”

“Fight…”

The whispers echoed throughout the cavernous room, accompanied by more rustling of feathers, scratching of talons against the floor, and excited clacking of beaks. And after several seconds of that, the questions came hard and fast.

From above: “To kill or maim?”

“Whichever proves necessary.” I glanced up, but was too late to spot the speaker. “But you can only fight our enemies. Don’t touch our allies.”

From my left: “How will we tell you apart? You all look the same to us in cat form.”

“I don’t know.” I whirled, but again found myself speaking to the entire crowd. “We’ll mark ourselves somehow.” I rubbed my forehead, already overwhelmed by the number of details I hadn’t even considered.

“When do we leave?”

“Can we eat what we kill?”

“No!” I shouted, horrified by the images now forming in my head—birds perched on a field of corpses, tearing furry flesh from broken bones. “Even our worst enemies deserve a decent burial.” Except Luiz. We’d scattered his ashes to be trampled regularly. But that was another story…

Screeched from the back of the room, as I spun again, and Jace reached to steady me: “Will there be enough to go around, or must we compete for our kills?”

“Unfortunately, I suspect there will be plenty, but that really depends on how many of you are willing to come.” And that’s when I lost track of who was speaking. They called out from everywhere, having apparently forgotten I was even there.

“All of us!”

“We will all go…”

“It’s only fair…”

“Someone must stay with the children…”

“Some must stay to hunt…”

“Then we’ll draw quills. Feathers into the pile! The twenty drawn will go and fight!”

“Wait!” I had to shout to be heard. “Don’t you want the details?”

Kai frowned, one of the few birds still paying me any attention. “No. We want the fight, and the feast.”

“No! I said there will be no feasting! It’s a war, not a fucking dinner banquet!” I threw my hands up in exasperation. Mentioning war to a Flight of thunderbirds was evidently like dangling candy in front of a class full of children! Ruthless, deadly children… “Listen, please!” And finally the din began to die as several dozen sets of small, black eyes focused on me.

“I’m glad you’re all so eager.” And even more glad that they’d be fighting on our side. “But there are important details. This isn’t a free-for-all, and I won’t consider your debt paid if you don’t play by the rules.”

“Faythe, I don’t think they’re interested in our rules,” Jace whispered, inches from my ear.

“Well, that’s too damn bad,” I muttered, as the huge crowd of birds reassembled around us. Then I raised my voice to address the crowd. “Okay, here’s the deal. When we’re ready, we’ll give you a time and place. You show up and wait for the signal. Then you attack. You can only attack the enemy—again, we’ll make sure we’re clearly marked—and you cannot eat what you kill.” The fact that I even had to repeat that particular warning gave me chills. “If you’re hungry when it’s all over, pizza’s on me. But no snacking while you work!”