“And you were going to tell us when?”

I heard him take in a deep breath and then let it out, and I had that moment to sense how much hotter his energy could be than most vampires’. His energy could hold a warmer edge of his animal to call than any other master I’d ever met. “I feel her outside your door; just let her in. I helped shop for women I thought you might actually get along with, and women that Jean-Claude might actually like.”

“You mean like-like?” I asked.

“Jean-Claude is more Belle’s child than I am, Anita. Her power over her animals all came through sex. Let him try some of the cats and see if he gains the ability to call them. It would make him much more powerful, and it would mean he could help you control all the cat-based animal groups.”

“Did you talk to him about this?”

“My word of honor that it will be as big a surprise to Jean-Claude as it is to you.”

“Don’t go all Machiavelli on me, Auggie, I don’t like it.”

“This isn’t Machiavelli, more Cupid. Put Jean-Claude on and go tame your kittens before someone gets hurt.”

“How do I tame him?” I asked.

“Let me fight him,” Nicky growled.

Auggie said, “If you could win the fight it would tame Haven, but he’s good in a fight.”

“I can do it,” Nicky said, rubbing his face against my hair.

“How else?” I asked.

“Sex would be a temporary solution. It would smooth things over tonight.”

“So I reward his bad behavior,” I said.

“What’s your goal for tonight, Anita?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“What do you want to happen with the lions right this moment?”

“I want everyone to survive the night. No one dead.” I thought about it. “I’d like to make us all into a cohesive whole. We need to get our shit in order here, especially after what just happened with Mommie Dearest.”

“Then offer him sex if he sends most of the lions home. He’s Rex, so he’s entitled to keep a couple of bodyguards.”

“You really think sex with me will make him send them home?”

“Remember who’re you’re talking to, Anita. It was all I could do after sex with you and Jean-Claude not to stay in St. Louis like some sort of pet. Trust me, he’ll say yes.”

“That was Jean-Claude in charge of the metaphysical head games, Auggie. Haven won’t go for that.”

“Ask Jean-Claude what he could do to help the head games with hands off Haven. Besides, you completely rolled the other werelion. He’s a fucking Bride of Anita, or I guess Groom, but whatever, you can do this if you get out of your own way.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you feel bad about what you did to the other werelion.”

“I took his free will, Auggie; no one has that right.”

“I won’t argue right and wrong with you, kiddo, but I will point out that if Haven was as enthralled with you as this Nick is, then you wouldn’t have a horde of angry werelions about to storm your battlements.”

I didn’t know what to say to that as Nicky hugged us all tighter.

“Hell, Anita, if you had just taken him as your Rex the way you did your Nimir-Raj, he’d be more manageable. I wouldn’t have sent him to you if I thought you were going to hesitate. He’s too dangerous to keep waffling. You need to either keep him or kill him, Anita.”

“Could I send him back home to you?”

“No, he’s been a Rex; if you send him back my Rex will kill him.” I heard cloth move on the phone as he shifted position. “Now if you want to send him here so we kill him for you, I can get behind that.”

“No.”

“It would be easier on that conscience of yours,” he said.

“If you think that’s true, then you don’t understand my conscience at all, Auggie.”

“It’s been so many centuries since I had one of my own that I don’t quite understand them in anyone.”

“It would not make me feel better to send him home to certain death.”

“Then what will you do?” he asked.

“I do my own killing.”

“Then do it, Anita. Do it before he tears your house apart.”

“I don’t want to kill him.”

“Kill him, fuck him, make him your Rex the way you did Micah, make him your animal to call like Nathaniel, make him your Groom like Nick, but you are going to have to do something.”

Domino’s phone rang again. He turned around to take it, but the set of his shoulders let me know that the news hadn’t improved.

“Thanks for the pep talk, Auggie.”

“You have to help Jean-Claude get his house in order, Anita, like yesterday. You have to do what needs doing or the Mother of All Darkness is going to eat us alive, and undead.”

“That’s pretty much what Bibiana said.”

Domino said, “What do you want us to do? The lions say they’re coming to your rescue. The guards can open the door or they can break it down, but they are coming inside.”

“How many men?” I asked.

“Twenty-five.”

“Shit, he doesn’t have that many soldiers, which means he brought cannon fodder, too.”

“If Jean-Claude has sex with one of the female lions at the same time you’re doing the Rex, he might be able to bridge the powers without touching Haven,” Auggie said.

“I’ll be suspicious later that you and Jean-Claude set this up so he could fuck other women, but right now, I have to think what to tell the lions.”

Auggie said, “I know to talk to you first.”

I looked up at Domino. “Tell Haven we need time to clean up, then we’ll meet him and some of his lions.”

“How many of them you letting inside?” Domino asked.

I turned to look at Jean-Claude, Richard, and Micah near the door. “Jean-Claude, how many lions do you want in here?”

“As few as possible.”

“Which is how many? I’m trying to get a feel for how many is a deal breaker, Jean-Claude.”

He looked at me, head to one side as if he were thinking, then he turned to Domino. “How many guards do we have on hand?”

“You mean how many bodies?” he asked.

“Yes, that is what I mean.”

“Twelve.”

“How soon could we get more? I would like at least a two-to-one ratio.”

“Let me ask Claudia. She knows the wererats’ resources better than I do.”

Asher rolled over in my lap so he could gaze up at Jean-Claude. “We have over a hundred werehyenas that can fight, and twenty-five that I would trust against Haven and his people.”

I said, “I thought you were threatening to take your werehyenas and go play somewhere else.”

He rolled his head and shoulders in my lap so that Nathaniel helped me keep him from sliding off. Asher gave me those pale blue eyes. “The Mother of All Darkness is after us all. I will not divide our strength, but you know why I was leaving, Anita. You know what I needed to stay, and now I have it.” He smiled.

I smiled down at him, because I wasn’t just seeing him through my eyes, but through that glow from decades of memories when Jean-Claude had truly loved him. “Then how long for your werehyenas to get here?”

“A half hour, forty-five minutes, depending on how armed you want them.”

I looked up at Jean-Claude. “How armed do we want them?”

“Are we allowed to slaughter your lions, ma petite?”

I thought about that. “I don’t want them hurt, but if they try to fight us, then they aren’t my lions anymore. They’re just a danger to us.”

“You will miss your Cookie Monster if we slay him.”

I smiled at his using my nickname for Haven, but shook my head. “I miss what he could have been to me, but he was never a boyfriend, barely a lover. Tonight either he toes the line, or he has to go. Auggie says if we send him home, the local Rex will kill him. I won’t let someone else do my dirty work.”

Jean-Claude touched my cheek, then turned me to look up at him. I hadn’t even realized I’d looked down. “If you mean that, then we can finish this tonight before all the bad little vampires must be abed.” Asher reached out, caressing Jean-Claude’s thigh. He moved closer to us, so that Asher could run his hand up the back of his thigh.