Shattered: The Sundance Series

by Rider, C. P.

  He cupped the side of my face, kissed me. "I want you. Every inch. Every molecule. I want you any way I can get you."

  That was better. "I feel the same way about you."

  "Then you should ask me to marry you. Spoiler alert, I'll definitely say yes. I've been saving myself for this marriage, you know." He batted his eyelashes at me.

  "Saving yourself?" I cocked a brow at him. "You mean there are things you can do that I haven't seen yet?"

  "Of course. I'm an angel in the streets and a devil in the sheets." His whiskey eyes glimmered with humor.

  "You are not an angel on any street, Lucas Blacke." I slid my fingers over the chiseled line of his jaw. "Thank goddess for that."

  He gently batted my hand away. "Stop trying to seduce me before marriage, Neely Costa MacLeod. I'm a respectable man."

  I returned my attention to my laptop and clicked on a full-length Sarcosuchus documentary. "See if you can keep that chastity belt in place after I show you my wicked documentary skills."

  "You dirty talker. Vixen. Temptress."

  We watched the host of the documentary dramatically illustrate the bite strength of the giant crocodile.

  "So, did Carter ever approach you with any ideas about rebranding the town?" I asked.

  "Yes. The guy is amazing. We lucked out when he ended up here."

  "Maybe it was fate."

  "Maybe." Lucas played with my knee. "Do you believe in fate?"

  "I'm starting to," I said.

  We tuned back into the documentary. The host was now standing in the middle of a well-lit natural history museum in front of an enormous crocodile mandible.

  "If you ever want to join my group, you have only to ask. I will do anything to keep you alive, Neely. There's no price I won't pay. It's not about power for me or for my group. It's about you and it's about me, and it's because I love you."

  Neither of us looked at the other and I didn't respond.

  "I know you don't trust easily and, after spending time with your dad, I see why. I get it, I do. So, this isn't me pressuring you. This is just me putting it out there, so you know you have a place with the Blacke group if you want it."

  I reached over and threaded my fingers through his. "Thank you."

  * * *

  After we watched the documentary, which Lucas ended up snoring through, I headed into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Lucas had offered to scrub my back for me when I got into the shower, but he never showed. That was not like him at all.

  When I emerged from the shower, my apartment was empty.

  "Lucas?"

  I heard voices downstairs. Two males. One belonged to Lucas and the other was …

  Dan freaking Winters.

  Wasn't he supposed to be gone already?

  "…tearing the group apart. I'm not the only one who feels this way."

  Dan's voice floated up to me as I threw on my pajamas and padded down the stairs in my socks. Fuzzy socks and a bra under a flannel nightgown. Neely armor.

  "By all means, make a list of everyone in my group who feels this way. Send it to me so I can deal with them. Or take them with you. Start your own group of small-minded specist pricks who only allow their kind to join—just take it a long way from me, or I will consider it an act of war and respond accordingly."

  "Alpha, it's not my intention to make an enemy of you."

  "For your sake, I hope not."

  "Why can't you see that I am truly trying to help? You're looking at a coup in the works. Distrust in leadership brews discontent among your people. And your people don't trust you to put the group before the spiker."

  As Lucas settled his voice, his speech patterns began to sound more formal. "Do not make the mistake of thinking I appreciate your counsel. After your betrayal, you have nothing to offer me except your absence."

  Dan's next words were low and ominous, underlaid with a growl. "There was a time I would have died for you, Alpha Blacke."

  "And I you, ex-third."

  "Things don't have to change. I mean, they do, but—I can change. If you consent to my remaining in Sundance, I—"

  "When you allowed Neely to be taken, it was my intention to kill you." Lucas's voice was whisper soft and I could barely make out the words. "Did you know that, Winters?"

  I crept closer to my kitchen worktable so I could better see and hear the two of them. I'd have to be a fool to think Lucas didn't know I was there.

  Dan swallowed so hard I could hear it from where I was. "You were going to challenge me?"

  "No, I was not going to challenge you, I was going to kill you." Alpha energy weaved through his words. "I was going to hold you down and rip your limbs off one by one, culminating in the removal of your head from your neck."

  Another loud swallow. "Why didn't you?"

  "Several reasons. Among which were: it wouldn't have been a fair fight, your impending fatherhood, and the good of the group. Not that you were fair to Neely when you betrayed us both, but I have to consider that she is not a member of the Blacke group—"

  That stung. Lucas knew my reservations about his being my alpha.

  "—and that while my shifters would likely understand the murder, they would end up feeling fearful and insecure. That's how Xavier Malcolm ran his pack. Fear was the flavor of the day, every day. I will not allow someone like you to turn me into him."

  "That was never my intention, Alpha."

  "I am no longer your alpha."

  Dan whined. Actually let out a little animal cry. "Sir, please. If I apologize to the spiker, if I promise to work on trusting her, would you—"

  "You're finished here. Start over somewhere else and take the Blacke shifters who want to go with you. There will be no retaliation. I don't hold my paranormals against their will. They are free to go anytime—they are not, however, free to return without an invitation, and that goes doubly for you."

  "You would give up half your group for her?" Dan stepped into a ray of moonlight streaming through the window, reminding me that I'd forgotten to close the blinds. His face was slicked with sweat, his eyes wild, his teeth clamped together as he raised one half-furred arm and pointed in my direction.

  Lucas's shadowed silhouette came into focus as he stepped between Dan and me. I knew he was aware of me in the kitchen. "There is nothing in this world I would not give up for her. Not one single thing."

  "That's insane. You must see that. You'd give up your power for her?"

  "Yes." He meant it. A rush of love cascaded through me as I felt the emotion behind his words. "That you have to question me about it makes me feel sorry for Farrah."

  Dan threw his shoulders back. "I love my wife. But I am not her fool."

  "Then you don't really love her. Because I've thought I was in love a time or two before, but now I know that's not true because I felt the same way about them that you do about Farrah. I cared for them, but I would not allow them to make a fool of me."

  "But you'll let her turn you into a powerless fool." Dan lowered his arm, but kept the disdain in his voice.

  "Yes."

  This man was everything—my soul, my world, my life. He had a way of demonstrating his powerlessness against the way he loved me without showing weakness, and it arrowed straight to my heart. My mate—yes, my mate—stood tall and proud in his vulnerability, wore it as if it were a badge of honor.

  Apparently sensing that Lucas wasn't budging, Dan decided to appeal directly to me. "You're ruining him, spiker. He can't continue to lead his group with a mate who disrespects him by not becoming a part of it. You are an albatross around his neck, and you will drag him down. If you loved him the way you say you do, you'd leave—"

  Lucas drew back a clenched human fist and punched Dan in the face. The other man's head snapped back, bones crunched, and blood poured from his mouth and nose. He then gripped Dan by the throat, pulling the man off his feet. Lucas shifted to hybrid form as he did this, clothes tearing from his body as muscled limbs flexed and grew, as sandy fur brist
led over his flesh.

  This was not Lucas's Bengal tiger. This was his Smilodon form. This was proof that Alpha Blacke of the Sundance paranormal group was finished fucking around.

  Dan's feet dangled a foot from the ground. He remained in human form, which I assumed was because Lucas would view him changing into coyote form as a challenge to his authority in his territory, in which Dan was evidently no longer welcome.

  "Do not speak to my mate again. If I see, hear, or even think for one second that you have caused any pain to her, I will murder you, Daniel Winters. I will tear you apart the way I have wanted to for months. And there is nothing my group, my friends, or even my own conscience will be able to do to stop me."

  Dan gurgled a response that sounded like a yes, sir.

  "My final suggestion to you is that you find a home far away, perhaps even outside this country and the two that border it, and never mention my mate or her ability to a single person for as long as you live. Because if you do, you will die."

  Lucas shook off the remnants of his shoes and clothing and stomped across the bakery to the door. He tried to open it, and upon finding it locked, kicked the thing off its hinges. I wasn't worried—if that was the price I had to pay to see Dan punched in the face, I was okay with it. Chandra might have something to say, since she was the one who'd have to fix my security system, but I had a feeling she'd take it in stride.

  Farrah Winters was across the street, leaning on the bumper of Dan's car, a few shifters gathered around her. "Alpha?"

  "Not yours. Not his." Lucas walked down the sidewalk and across the street. He dropped the coyote shifter's body at her feet and stared into her shocked face. "Leave my town now. Take nothing you don't have on you. You have both forfeited the right to your possessions by disrespecting my group, my mate, and me."

  Farrah's eyes were huge. "Alpha, we meant no—"

  "Shut your trash mouth," Lucas roared. "If you were not with child, your face would resemble your husband's right now. What you did to my mate in my house will not be tolerated." He stared into the face of every shifter standing on the street next to her in turn.

  I was surprised to see that there were only six of them. Either the other dissenters were late, or there weren't nearly as many as Dan had intimated.

  "The rest of you, go home, gather your possessions, and leave my town tonight. I will not come for you. I will not stop you. But you are not welcome to return. In fact, your presence here at any point in the future will be viewed as a direct challenge to my authority."

  Alpha energy powered out of him in a wave, thrusting his intention into the bodies of every paranormal in the vicinity—me included.

  "Tomorrow morning, we begin a new era in the Blacke group. Anyone who acts against my mate, Neely Costa MacLeod, acts against the group and will be punished."

  The shifters present lowered their heads, one by one. Up and down the street, people filed out of homes and vehicles, and even the Dusty Cactus Saloon, and gathered at the place where Lucas stood, tall and magnificent in his prehistoric Smilodon form.

  As they drew close, each paranormal bowed their head. The Cortez women, Earp, Chandra, and Amir walked silently toward Lucas. Margaret Lentz, Tellis Malone, the Reid family, and Diego Flores jogged up the street to join them. The sixty-foot neon Sundance Auto sign with the enormous cactus and the words Open 24 hours, 7 days a week, went dark like it nearly never did, and King Jones emerged from the silent gas station, making his way to Lucas.

  Cars and trucks, and two Jeeps, pulled up, Blacke group shifters in human and hybrid forms spilling out of the vehicles. Several of the wolves howled; King let out a lion roar; Chandra whooped; Earp clicked; Amir screeched. Dozens of eyes glowed gold. The street beneath my feet thrummed with moon magic and alpha power.

  The Blacke group's call to assembly was like nothing I'd ever seen. It was diverse and untamed, a sign of unity and power, and a show of force to anyone who stood in the way of the group and its alpha.

  Chin tucked to her chest, Farrah pushed Dan into the back seat of the car and quickly got behind the wheel. The paranormals parted, allowing her to drive her husband down the street, where she made a right, another right, and took the exit straight out of town.

  The six shifters who had been instructed to leave went to their knees in front of Lucas and twisted their heads to show as much throat as they could. They wanted to stay. Still in hybrid Smilodon form, Lucas towered over the submissive shifters, silently judging them, until he lowered his enormous head and, one by one, gripped their throats with his teeth, which I assumed was his way of giving them a second chance.

  When he was finished, blood ran down their necks. Puncture wounds. A couple of them were crying, but not in pain, in gratitude. Lucas could have ripped their throats out—would have been justified by their treasonous behavior—and he'd shown mercy instead.

  He'd shown control.

  Every shifter and paranormal assembled moved closer to Lucas and went to one knee, heads bowed. Lucas's shoulders drooped a little. I knew what he was thinking. He was worried that he'd handled the situation the way Xavier Malcolm would have. He saw himself from the outside in, ruthless and feared, and it wasn't sitting well with him even though he knew it was necessary. His shifters would not sense his pain, but I knew he was hurting because I knew this man, inside and out.

  I knew him.

  He would never betray me. He would never use force with me. He would never hurt me.

  I could put my trust in him.

  As I surveyed the lowered heads and absorbed the power vibrating through the gathered crowd, even now, as more paranormals arrived and joined the others, I understood what it was to belong to something bigger than myself. Everything fell perfectly into place, and I realized that the strength of a shifter group had nothing to do with control. It was about protection, it was about connection, and it was about love.

  And I wanted it.

  "Alpha Blacke?" My voice was lowered in deference to his position, but I held my head high.

  Lucas peered at me over his shoulder. His voice was deep, heavy with power. "Yes?"

  "If the offer is still open, I would be honored to join the Blacke group."

  Also by C. P. Rider

  SPIKED

  SUMMONED

  EARP & CHANDRA (novella)

  SABOTAGED

  EXPIRED (March 2021)

  SHIFTED (July 2021)

  DEAD END with Alex Pitones (February 2021)

  * * *

  Thanks for reading SHATTERED!

  If you liked this book, please consider leaving a review on the retailer site where you found it. I’d really appreciate it.

  For a FREE short story from Lucas Blacke’s point of view, a witch story, and updates on new releases, sign up for my mailing list at www.cprider.com

  I promise to keep your information private and I won’t overload your mailbox.

  Thanks again for picking up SHATTERED.

  C.P.R.

  Acknowledgments

  A big thank you and lots of grateful hugs to:

  Alexandra Pitones and Coralie Tate, for being the best beta readers in the galaxy.

  Sarita Pitones, for giving me her zesty take on the opening of this book.

  My café sisters, for being a constant source of positivity and support.

  Sue Brown-Moore, for her guidance and amazing editing skills.

  Laurel Kriegler for always finding space for me in her busy schedule. You're the best!

  The Fairfield Witches' Interdimensional Watering Hole Facebook group. Thanks for the support. If I could, I'd treat you all to a prickly pear margarita and a mantecada.

  About the Author

  C.P. Rider writes paranormal and urban fantasy romance. You can find her at www.cprider.com and on Facebook and Instagram.

 

 

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