Hidden Passions (Hidden, #7)(72)

Tony hoped the collision hurt.

"You see how this works," he said. "I can keep this up all night, making you look stupid."

Jonah sped toward him with his claws out.

Tony's ribs were now healed enough. He flipped through the air over the attacking tiger. He was where he wanted then, behind his opponent.

The tiger began to turn around . . .

Tony didn't think he'd ever moved so fast. He couldn't change, but he let his wolf's reflexes merge into his. He didn't even think as he shot his arms over the tiger's shoulders, grasping him by the chin with his fingers locked to form a cup. He yanked hard to tip Jonah's powerful neck backward.


The technique was based on a simple rule. Where the head went, the body followed. Tony swung his rear leg back, twisting his body in the same direction that he was pulling the cat's jaw. His rotation increased the cat's momentum. Tony dragged his forearms downward with all his strength. With his spine off kilter, Jonah's balance began to go. He toppled sideways, and Tony went with him, riding him to the ground so he could control the fall.

This was cop shit. Subdue the perp before he can pull a weapon and get him into cuffs. The cat hadn't experienced anything like it while sparring at his local gym.

Tony didn't waste the advantage. He used one bent shin to pin Jonah's neck to the grass, putting his weight behind it to increase the pain of the compression. A palm squashed flat on Jonah's face ratcheted up the discomfort and muscle strain. Then, to make sure the cat remained discouraged from struggling, he got the one arm Jonah wasn't lying on into a thumb-to-wrist twist-and-lock. That did things to a person's nerves the average person couldn't ignore.

Jonah's gasp of agony told Tony it was new to him.

"Okay," Tony said. "You're done now. I can keep pressing on your neck until you pass out, or you can cry uncle. I really don't care which."

"Fuck . . . you," Jonah gasped, still trying to wriggle free.

Tony increased the pressure on all his pressure points.

Jonah screamed at the grinding pain. Tony wished he hadn't defined a pin as shoulder blades to the ground. He'd had Jonah trapped for more than ten seconds, and he'd have liked this to be over.

He didn't kid himself that the cat was ready to surrender.

Jonah's eyes glowed through his screwed-shut lids, his energy boiling with thwarted rage. Sadly, rage wasn't all the upsurge in his energy signified.

"Fuck," Tony said, noticing a telltale distortion in Jonah's back. Muscles moved there that weren't supposed to. Despite his excruciating pain, despite the rules he'd agreed to, Jonah was trying to shift into his tiger form.

"Don't be an idiot," Tony snapped, twisting Jonah's backward facing wrist harder. "You shift, you lose the challenge. Chris keeps his position, and the instant the barrier falls, every wolf in this place attacks."

Sweat rolled down Jonah's face, all his muscles trembling with effort. "Not . . . before I rip . . . out your throat."

The cat was a damned berserker, unable to back down. Tony didn't let himself hesitate. He lifted his weight a fraction and then plunged it down on the cat's neck again. A soft cracking noise ensued. Jonah's eyes snapped open, white showing around their rims as he finally froze.

"You hear that?" Tony said, fighting an urge to wince. "That's your C5 vertebra fracturing. If you struggle with this pressure on it, you'll be too hurt to change. At the least you'll end up in a wheelchair. I wager you'd hate that worse than dying."

"You wouldn't," Jonah said, only his mouth moving.

"That's where you're wrong. I don't care about you like your beta does. I care about ending this."

Jonah panted and ground his teeth.

"Call 'out,'" Tony said, "and I'll have help for you in seconds."

The tiger wouldn't. Tony read the intransigence in his face. Hoping he didn't actually kill him, Tony set his jaw and pressed harder with his knee. At last, Jonah's eyes rolled back. The instant he was unconscious, the magical walls whooshed down like a silk curtain. Tony leaped off his opponent.

"Call an ambulance," he cried. "He needs medical attention."

Tony had forgotten about Evina's friend Freda. The paramedic rushed over with her bag and knelt beside Jonah. The tiger was still and pale.

"I broke his neck," Tony said, not sure how clearly the watchers had seen through the barrier. "He was trying to change. I didn't know how else to make him give up."

"He's not breathing," Freda said. She bent over his back to listen. "I've got no heartbeat."

Tony cursed. Shifters could heal a lot of damage, but spinal injuries were tricky. Freda whipped a collar around Jonah's neck, rolled him over very gently, and started CPR. Evina ran over to help her.

Intense emotion had caused Tony's eyes to shift. He saw Jonah with supe vision. The cat's energy had contracted to a fist-sized star in the center of his body. Tony had seen auras do this before. Not even once had it been a good sign.

He looked toward the crowd and found Roald watching the cat's aura too.

"Roald," Tony said, too wrought up to call him sir. The pureblood shifted his very calm gaze to him. Tony wished he could predict how the unpredictable fae would answer his request. His race had their own rules for doing or not doing magic in the Pocket. "Can you heal the injury to his spine?"