I nod, not shocked, but definitely unsettled. If the Lions can find our house in Pembrook, what’s to stop them from finding my dad in Europe? I touch the tin box in my coat pocket.

“Are you sensitive to motion?” Ash says, bringing me back into the present. He pushes a couple more buttons and pulls back a lever.

“Not that I know of,” I say, but we’re already bumping across the dark field, picking up speed, and heading right for the forest. “Oh no…,” I whisper to myself.

Ash only smiles as we sail full-speed toward the stand of trees. I grip the arms of my chair and squeeze my eyes shut. Please don’t let me have survived all of this just to die in a plane crash on Moody Farms. When I manage to open them again, we’re in the air and clear of the trees, not impaled on a maple like I feared. It takes my body a beat to catch up to the fact that the immediate danger has passed.

I let my breath out in one audible huff. And as the sky opens up in front of us, the ground dotted with the glow of white lights in the rising dawn, a silence descends. My thoughts drift to the tin in my pocket. I was so desperate to get to the tree to see if my dad left me something, but now that I know he did, I’m equally terrified to read his note.

“Ash, what do you know about the head of the Lions?” I ask, avoiding the inevitable.

“Jag,” he says, and I recall Ash telling me in the Academy library about Jag’s tyrannical rule before I had any idea that I, too, was a Lion.

“I can’t believe I never asked this, but Jag is short for Jaguar, right?” I say, even though I know why I never asked—I still believed that I could walk away from this whole experience and from the Strategia world in general, and I didn’t want to think about Jag or my vicious relatives any more than necessary.

Ash nods. “A nickname from his childhood.”

Jaguar…an obvious play on the big-cat theme in the Lion Family. And if it developed in his childhood, it’s always possible it’s a reflection on his personality. Jaguars are known for their temperamental nature—solitary, opportunistic creatures that stalk and ambush their prey.

“What do you know about him?” I ask.

“I’ve never met him, but much of my Family has,” Ash says. “They claim that on an average day he’s pleasant, but that he has a short fuse and a brutal streak.” Ash looks in my direction. “Was there anything in particular you wanted to know about your—” He stops short. “About Jag and the Lion Family? It’s a broad topic.”