~ ZEV ~
With no one else on their feet, Zev and Xar had a clear view of each other as Xar—older than Zev remembered, more rugged, his burnished skin more wrinkled, his forehead taller than it used to be, and his once-brown hair now far more gray—strode toward him in that rolling, catlike stride that always sent ice down Zev's spine. He wore the stole of the Alpha as if it were a formal occasion. Zev would have laid money that the male had the ritual blade shoved into the back of the belt that circled his robes—and revealed the beginning of a pot-belly on the old Alpha.
Though Xar's eyes hadn't hazed at all, they flashed with cunning and intelligence, and the certainty of his dominance.
All the shorthairs on Zev's body stood up in warning, but he forced himself to stand easily, to hold Xar's gaze, and to smile.
