I took my hand back and didn’t say anything, but I knew from experience with other people that no one can be a shit unless the other person tolerates it, so it was still Asher’s responsibility to run his relationships better than this.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

“I thought we’d work it out, but Asher only loves one person enough to fight for them and that’s Jean-Claude.”

“And the fact that I do not want Asher to be my primary relationship hurts him,” Jean-Claude said.

Dev nodded. “Yeah.”

“Maybe it’s time to let Asher find a territory where he can be Master of the City away from the rest of us,” Micah said.

I felt Jean-Claude startle, which didn’t happen often; he was too controlled for it. “We have had this discussion. Asher has won the libido, if not the heart, of Narcissus, who controls the St. Louis werehyenas. They have vowed to move with Asher if he goes, and the hyenas are a large part of our guards.”

“Not as much as they were. Rafael, Richard, and I have slowly been working the rats, wolves, and other animal groups up to size and skill set. Give me a few weeks more and the werehyenas can do as they like.”

Jean-Claude, Dev, and I stared at him. Crispin and Domino didn’t. Only three of us at the table hadn’t known this little plan. Domino traveled out of town as security for Micah, but I hadn’t thought he was that close to Crispin, and that was interesting. Richard Zeeman, who was the local Ulfric, wolf king, was usually useless when it came to choosing new wolves for his pack who could actually help us fight better.

“Have you really been plotting to remove Asher from St. Louis, mon chat?”

“He’s proved himself unstable on multiple occasions and used the threat of removing the hyenas from us to emotionally blackmail you and Anita. I thought it was a good idea to take away his leverage and make us strong enough to tell him to go to hell, if he tries it again.”

“I didn’t realize,” I said.

He looked at me. “Realize what?”

“You really don’t like Asher.”

“Not particularly.”

“I am sorry, mon ami, if I have not done more to foster better feelings between you and him.”

“It’s not you who needs to work harder at fostering good relations between Asher and me; that would be his responsibility.”

“Is it totally lame to say that we missed Asher when he was gone for six months?” I asked.

Micah smiled. “Not lame, but we can find you and Nathaniel another dominant to play with; we can’t afford to let Asher’s issues rise and hurt us again.”

“I agree with that last part, but he has been working his issues, or I thought he had.” I glanced at Dev. I wasn’t so sure now.

Micah said, “I know that Asher meets a lot of needs for people here, and he’s happy up to a point here, but beyond that point he still feels jealous of you, and conflicted about Anita, and damn near predatory of any of the men in your life who don’t want to sleep with him.”

“Is he still pushing upon your boundaries, mon chat?”

Micah shrugged. “Nothing I can’t handle, and it’s not personal. Asher doesn’t want me any more than he wants any attractive man, or maybe he wants me to want him, that seems to be the prime thing for Asher. He wants to be desired, and anyone he desires who doesn’t return the favor hits his insecurities, especially if that someone is in your bed, or Anita’s. He’s liked me even less since he found out that Nathaniel and I are intimate, and it’s not just the way Dev and I are with Anita.”

“And what way is that?” Crispin asked. He leaned forward, his long arms clasped on the table in front of him. When I’d met him he’d seemed like just another handsome stripper that I’d managed to accidentally attract, but the press of intelligence in his blue tiger eyes, the demand in his face, the set of his shoulders, showed just how much more there was to him than the body that made it rain money onstage. Domino sitting beside him was shorter, looked a little stockier, but it was the extra muscle from working out with the other bodyguards; with his hair mostly white with only a black curl here and there, he and Crispin looked more alike than normal. You had to look past the tiger eyes the color of flames to see it, but it was there in the bone structure. I realized that I didn’t see the two of them this close together that often. Most of the dancers didn’t hang out with the guards, or hit the gym at the same time for the same kind of workouts. They weren’t technically cousins, because Domino had been an orphan found and adopted by the white tiger clan, but centuries of inbreeding in the clans had left its mark on both of them.

Dev answered, “A lot of straight guys will share a woman with you, but they put rules in place about how much touching of each other you can do, and for Micah that’s no touching. We use Anita like a bridge, or a shield between us.”

“I’m not that into men, it’s nothing personal.”

Dev nodded again, then looked at Micah. “You’ve liked me less since you realized that Nathaniel and I would do things together that you won’t do with him.”

Micah’s face darkened and I felt the first prickle of his beast, which meant what Dev had said was true and had pissed him off.

I stared at one of my other halves. How had I missed this whole thing? I had to have been in the bed when things were happening, because Dev and Micah were never in the same bed without me, but then I realized that Nathaniel mentioning Dev earlier as a potential shared husband might have had more behind it than just their shared bisexuality. Had he and Dev had more alone time than I knew?

“Okay, I’m just going to say it, I’ve missed something big. I’m sorry to everyone, but we need to step back and fill me in.”

“We don’t need to be here for this,” Domino said, and stood up.

“But you do need to be here for the power question,” Micah said. He turned to Dev. “Can we discuss the magic first, and then we can let Crispin and Domino out of the personal business.”

Dev nodded.

Micah turned to the other tigers. “I want to see if the power jumps between Anita, Dev, and me again. If it does, then I’ll have us try it with Crispin. If it happens between the three of us, we’ll try with Domino, and I think that may be a big enough sampling that we’ll just assume it would happen with all the tigers.”

“What if it only happens with Dev?” Crispin asked.

“Then the two of you can go, and we’ll discuss the metaphysics and the personal stuff in private.”

The two of them exchanged a look, then looked back at Micah. “Metaphysics first and then we’ll discuss the personal stuff and whether we want to leave Dev on his own.”

Dev looked at them. “You don’t have to stay for me.”

“It’s not for you,” Crispin said, “it’s for all of us. Anita was supposed to look at all the tigers tonight and here we are in an isolated group, caught up in some new magic. It keeps distracting us from what we say is our goal.”

“And what goal is that?” I asked, and knew my voice wasn’t entirely friendly.

Crispin gave me a look that wasn’t entirely friendly either. “To make sure the Mother of All Darkness does not rise again. It should be everyone’s goal, Anita, not just the clan tigers, and everyone should be dedicated to making certain the prophecy is fulfilled as completely as possible.”