“I’ll never muscle up like Richard, no matter how much I lift.”

“But you’ve got more muscles than most women, and a hell of a lot more than Envy.”

“Why is it that most of the golden tigers learned to be good in bed and with fighting, but Envy and a few other men, and women, didn’t?”

“Even among our clan not everyone is great at athletics, so we let people play to their strengths. Adam is an amazing lawyer, but I wouldn’t trust his fighting skills. For some of the females of our clan, the legend says a new Master of Tigers, not a new mistress. I think Envy believed that just being a beautiful woman would win her points with the new master.”

“What if he’d been gay?” I asked.

“I’m not the only one of our males who thinks men are cool.”

I nodded.

The power was beginning to fade; we just couldn’t hold it.

“Whatever we’re going to do with this power, we need to do it, Jean-Claude. I think Dev’s being tired is helping it fade.”

“I know what I wanted to do with it,” Dev said, “but I don’t think I’m up to what I wanted to do earlier.” He gripped our arms tight and looked up at all three of us. “But I still want us to raise the power and have sex later; I haven’t changed my mind.”

“We’d have to negotiate what you mean by sex between the two of us,” Micah said.

Dev nodded. “I know, but if I can bring this kind of power to the table I want to have a serious shot at being the tiger you commit to.”

“I understand that.”

Jean-Claude looked at Micah. “You made your vote very clear earlier, mon chat, and it was not for Mephistopheles.”

“For this kind of power, my vote could change.”

“Such a very practical cat.”

Micah nodded. “Usually.”

“I’m sleeping with all of you, so sex with all of us would work, but we’re talking about a lot more than just sex.”

“That is true, ma petite; are you saying you have reservations about him joining us?”

“Nothing personal to Dev, but Micah expressed serious reservations just a little bit ago. I don’t understand why he changed his mind this quickly.”

“Power,” Micah said.

I looked into his face and saw only certainty. “The power changed your mind?”

“The next time an animal group calls us to help them solve a problem, I might be able to do rapid shifting between forms and not have to fight, or seduce, or anything but show them that I’m more than just leopard. That’s rare. It might be enough of a show of strength that there wouldn’t need to be anything else.”

The Coalition only traveled into other people’s territory when they were called in by either the police or the shapeshifters themselves. Sometimes Micah was able to negotiate a peace between everyone, but more often the lycanthropes would handle things in private away from human eyes, and that usually involved a fight. Sometimes sex, but most of the time blood, injury, or death had to happen before the problem was solved, like with the lion pride on the West Coast that thought it could take over the local cougar group. Their feeble excuse had been They’re mountain lions, and all lions belong to us. Forget explaining the biology that made cougars much closer to leopards evolutionarily, because it would turn out to be a love affair gone horribly wrong between the dominant female of the cougars and the Rex of the pride. Micah risked his life with every fight, and risked the females thinking the political seduction was actual seduction. One group’s queen had tried to make Micah her long-distance relationship and even made noises about threatening me. If a little sex would keep him from having to fight shapeshifters twice his size I’d have been okay with it, but after that incident he’d been more reluctant to use sex as a bargaining chip.

If just changing shape like this could stop the fighting and the need for seduction, then . . . “The fights have been more serious than you’ve let me know, haven’t they?”

“You and I are the same size, Anita. Speed, surprise, and utter ruthlessness are our advantages, but my reputation as a fighter has gotten around. They know most of my tricks and they usually outweigh me by a body weight. That wouldn’t be so bad, but they’re as trained as I am, or more trained, in fighting. No one wins every fight, Anita.”

“So far, you have.”

“So far,” he said.

We gave each other some very serious eye contact, and he let me feel what he hadn’t before, that he’d begun to worry about the fights, the same way Rafael the rat king was worrying. He gently closed that line of reasoning down, so I couldn’t read his thoughts anymore. If I’d tried that I’d have shut down all the power flowing through us, but Micah was able to shut down parts without shutting off the whole. Only Jean-Claude was better at it. “That was Rafael’s secret; please don’t bring it up unless he tells you.”

I hesitated and then nodded. “Okay.”

“I won’t tell either,” Dev said.

We looked at him and realized that he was sitting there quietly, and probably peeking inside every thought we shared. The fact that neither of us had thought about that meant either we were more power drunk than we thought, or the power liked Dev so much it was smooth and didn’t alert us.

“What of Asher?” Jean-Claude asked.

“Are you king?” Dev asked.

Jean-Claude went very still for a moment as if his whole body held its breath, and then he said, “Yes.”

“Then be king,” Micah said.

“Ma petite,” he said, looking at me.

“When we raise the power again, touch us and see what happens. See if you can control it. See if you can control us.”

“How could any man resist such a delicious challenge?”

“Don’t resist,” Dev said.

He gazed down at the man. “You must be very angry with Asher to suggest such revenge.”

“Can’t I just want to sleep with you?”

“Oui, but there is no one you could sleep with that would hurt Asher more than me.”

The power was fading fast, but the flash of anger in Dev gave it one last boost, so that we were bathed in that invisible fire again. “You and Micah get more power than ever before, and Asher suffers the way he’s made both of us suffer. It’s a win-win.”

“You cannot win such games with Asher, mon tigre, I know this for a sad fact. You can either be with him and tolerate him playing such games, or walk away; there is no middle ground with him.”

“Besides, revenge sex is always a bad idea,” I said.

Dev looked at me and put some of that heat into his eyes, so I got not just the power but a wave of his physical need. It made both Micah and me gasp. “I’ll make it good for both of you, I promise.”

He turned and looked at Jean-Claude. “For all three of you.”

“You know, we might already have the power without needing to cement it with sex,” I said.

Dev’s hands gripped us so hard, it was just this side of hurting. “No, no, I won’t be just tolerated on the edges of someone’s life. We try, really try, and then if Micah can’t deal with me that’s one thing, but I won’t be cast out without really trying first.”