“Asshole!”
Another pair of shoes sailed through an open second floor window. The carefully manicured lawn in front of the sprawling mansion she had called home for the last five years was strewn with clothing, shoes, framed pictures, artwork, jewelry—anything and everything that lying son of a bitch had ever bought for her.
Everything that reminded her of what an idiot she’d been to fall for his...
“Bullshit!”
More clothes flew out the window and floated gently down to drape across a meticulously pruned hedge.
Everything in Texas was brown, except for the lawns and gardens in Tanglewood Estates and she hated every blade of grass, every leaf on the fucking box hedges that lined the paths and sidewalks.
She was going to burn it all. The clothes, the shoes, the fucking Mercedes he’d bought for her birthday...
All of it.
*** 12 HOURS EARLIER ***
“Danika, you’re not thinking straight!”
Her phone almost vibrated on the passenger seat as her best friend shouted at her.
“Seriously? This is the straightest I’ve thought in almost five years. FIVE YEARS, Tessa. FIVE. What the fuck have I been doing?”
“You’ve been in love, ‘Nikka. Don’t throw that all away!”
Danika punched the air angrily and stomped on the gas pedal. “Throw what away? Are you even listening to me?”
She’d been angry before, but that was child’s play compared to the inferno of rage that spiraled in her chest.
“You just need to calm down! You and Gideon just need to talk—”
“Don’t even fucking SAY his name to me!” Danika shouted.
“Nikka, please... just come over to my house. I’ll make you a margarita and we can talk about it.”
Danika shook her head furiously. “No. No more margaritas, no more mimosas, no more of this bullshit. I’m DONE!”
She stabbed her finger into her phone screen and ended the call before Tessa could say anything else. She and Tessa had been presented to the Quickthorn Pack at the same mating ceremony, and they had been inseparable ever since. Danika always thought she’d been lucky to find Tessa. It was easier to navigate the transition from her old life with someone who was going through the same uncertainty. It was even better that they had more in common than any other friend she’d had growing up.
But now she wasn’t so sure.
Everything had changed so fast.
Danika blew through a STOP sign and turned her white Mercedes into the gated community of Tanglewood Estates. Quickthorn Pack’s elders hadn’t been stupid with their money. While other packs had gone into industry, Quickthorn had invested in real estate. Every house in Tanglewood Estates was a masterpiece and each member of the pack was the proud owner of a mansion fit for the pages of Architectural Digest.
This community used to make her feel safe and accepted. She used to punch the code for the gate into the keypad with a sense of pride. Now when she pushed those buttons she just felt sick.
Her cell phone vibrated on the passenger seat and Danika glanced down long enough to see the goofy selfie that Tessa had uploaded to her phone just a few days ago.
She narrowed her eyes and sped through the quiet streets of the gated community. She had a lot to do in a very short amount of time, and Tessa was only going to make things harder.
Danika pulled into the driveway at 783 Tanglewood Lane and tried not to think about how she had felt when Gideon first brought her there. Tessa called again, and Danica punched the reject button as hard as she could.
She knew Tessa well enough to know that her best friend wouldn’t waste any time in calling in the cavalry.
She had to act fast.
There was protocol in place to handle members of the pack who went rogue—mates were another story.
But she wasn’t one of those, either.
Danika launched herself out of the car and slammed the door hard before stomping along the path toward the front door. It wasn’t locked. Nothing needed to be locked here.
She stood in the doorway and looked up at the chandelier that tinkled softly above the grand staircase that swept up to the second floor bedrooms. This house had always been too big. Too ostentatious. She had always hated it and never knew how to tell Gideon that she didn’t feel like she belonged there.
Now she knew it was true.
She didn’t belong there.
There was always someone watching your back in Tanglewood. That’s what being part of the pack was all about.
That thought made her freeze in the marble-tiled foyer of the mansion.
Someone was always watching here. People who wouldn’t hesitate to call the elders if they saw anything out of the ordinary. Everything she had done today was out of the ordinary...
People who wouldn’t hesitate to call Gideon to tell them his mate was acting strangely. But Tessa had probably done that already.
At least that bastard was in New York on ‘pack business,’ whatever that meant.
Danika let out a furious breath and closed the massive front door as gently as she could. It was a Tuesday afternoon, so most people would be at work... Hopefully.
She could allow herself to hope that she had some time.
Chapter 1 - Danika
Danika had never ridden a bus in her life, but if that was the only way to get north and avoid the pack’s notice, it would have to do.
The old man at the ticket window looked as though he was inches away from calcifying, but his pale green eyes were kind as he stared at her through the glass barrier. He had thick glasses with oddly slender frames, and he blinked at her slowly as she tried to explain what she wanted.
“Destination?” he said for the third time.
“North,” Danika blurted out. “I just need to go north.”
“North I get,” he replied. “Pretty much everything is north of here, Miss.”
“Right,” she murmured. There was a line forming behind her, and she gnawed on her lip as she looked at the map that was pinned to the wall next to the booth.
Seattle wasn’t far enough.
Vancouver was too Canadian.
“Alaska,” she said hastily.
“Oh... We don’t go to Alaska,” the man said thoughtfully. “Last Greyhound rolled out of Whitehorse back in 2018—”
Danika’s shoulders slumped. “You don’t go to Alaska?”
“No one does,” he said simply. He must have noticed how disappointed she was and she saw his expression soften. “Look. I can get you to Seattle and you can hop a plane to Alaska. It won’t cost ya much.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said with a quick smile. “Seattle it is. Get me on whatever’s leaving soonest.”
“Bus leaves in an hour,” he said.
She nodded, shoved some bills toward him, and looked away as the sound of the ticket printer echoed in her ears. She was really doing this. She was really going to be free. The cash she’d wiped off Gideon’s credit card was heavy in her pocket.
She could buy her plane ticket with cash and hope that the pack would be too preoccupied with looking for her in Dallas to even think that she’d gone anywhere else. She didn’t even think Gideon would care that she was gone. Why the hell would he?
She took her ticket with an absent smile and headed out to the bus platform with her backpack slung over one shoulder. The bus she was looking for was idling at the curb and she boarded it without hesitation.
The bus might have been fast, but it was still two days to Seattle, and Danika had never felt the absence of her phone more keenly. But that had gone into the fire along with everything else Gideon had bought her. It was worth it to be blind to what was happening back in Dallas. Even if it meant losing her Candy Crush score.
To keep her mind as distracted from reality as much as possible, Danika bought trashy romance novels every time the bus stopped. She knew in her gut that true love wasn’t real. She definitely knew that fated mates weren’t real.<
br />
But sometimes it was nice to pretend that such a thing could actually exist.
Passengers came and went, but Danika ignored them all. Even though she had dropped all of the things that had marked her as a mate to other humans into the bonfire she’d left on Gideon’s lawn, the shifters could still smell the wolf on her. The shifters knew she was property, and they knew to stay away.
The brown of Texas’s desert highways gave way reluctantly to green forests and towering redwoods as the bus traveled farther north.
The air smelled different in every town, and she allowed herself to smile just a little when she felt salt spray on her face in California. She had never seen the ocean—or snow. And she was headed where there would be enough of both to make her hate winter forever.
When the bus finally hit SeaTac airport, Danika was more than ready to be done with travel,but she wasn’t far enough away. Not yet.
She bought her ticket to Anchorage with the cash in her pocket and while she could have used a shower, she had to make do with a change of clothes, wet wipes, and a spritz of drug store perfume instead. She settled herself into a seat in the departure area, opened one of her dog-eared novels, and ignored the stares of the shifters around her.
In a few hours, she would be half a world away from Dallas, and her life could actually start.
For real, this time.
Chapter 2 - Bracken
The sound of a cell phone vibrating against metal cut through the noise of his tattoo machine and Bracken Quinn felt his shoulders tighten.
“You okay, man?” the guy in the chair asked. Bracken nodded without looking up and started the machine again. His client was old enough for a tattoo, but they seemed to be getting younger every year. Or, maybe he was just getting older.
When he’d started tattooing, he’d see eighteen-year-old kids coming in for their first tattoos. A zodiac sign for the humans, a clan sigil for the shifters—now they were coming in for full sleeves or chest pieces. He couldn’t keep up with this shit.
The phone buzzed on his station again and he gritted his teeth.
He couldn’t keep up with his family’s shit, either.
“Do you need to get that?” the guy in the chair asked.
“Do you ever want this to be done?” Bracken replied dryly.
The guy shut his mouth and Bracken bent his head over the tattoo again. But the vibration of his phone kept cutting through the steady buzz of the tattoo gun.
Bracken sighed heavily and rolled his eyes toward the shop ceiling. He lifted his foot off the machine’s pedal and straightened up on his stool.
“Time for a break,” he said reluctantly as he set down the tattoo gun.
The client smiled with a hint of relief and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket as he slid off the chair. He shook it meaningfully. “You want one?”
Bracken shook his head. It was bad enough that he could smell everything, he didn’t need to make it worse.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “I want to get that finished up today.”
The kid looked down at his half-inked arm and smiled. “Yeah, fifteen minutes.” Bracken watched him walk around the counter to the front of the shop, then stripped off his gloves and turned his stool around to reach for his phone.
“What the fuck,” he said aloud.
Twenty messages.
He unlocked his phone and scrolled through the texts.
His mother. His sister. His brother.
Everyone.
Seeing all of those messages put his bear on edge. Bracken had done his best to remove himself from his past, but that didn’t make being reminded of it any easier.
“What the fuck,” he whispered.
The first message he opened was from his sister Sibyl.
I miss you little brother, you should come and stay...
You need a break from the city!
The dogs miss you!
He smiled just a little. It had been a long time since he had gone home to Sitka, but that was purposeful.
His mother’s messages were similar.
I miss my baby boy!
You should come and see my garden!
The onions you hate are blooming like anything!
He wrinkled his nose at the photo of the garden she had sent. The damned onions were huge. He could almost smell them through the phone and even his bear recoiled.
“Fucking onions,” he muttered.
His older brother, Amos, was more direct.
Mom won’t stop bitching about how long you’ve been away from home.
Sybill is making my life hell.
Get your shit together and come home.
Bracken shook his head and put his phone on airplane mode. He got up from his station and stretched.
The girl at the front counter yawned as she flipped through an old tattoo magazine. “Cassie, you can go home,” he called out.
She looked up briefly. “Are you sure? That guy is still out there...”
“Yeah, I know, can you send him back in? His break is over.”
“Sure, hun.”
Cassie tossed her long blue braid over her shoulder and hopped off her stool. The bell over the door chimed as she leaned out. “Get your ass back in here, you’re not done yet!” she shouted.
“Classy,” Bracken muttered.
“I do what I can, Boss,” Cassie said with a wink as she flounced back to the counter.
“Yeah, yeah.”
Cassie had been working that counter since the day he’d opened the doors on the shop, and as big of a pain in the ass as she was, he depended on her to keep his schedule straight, and handle the clients.
SHE DIDN’T CARE THAT he was a shifter, and he didn’t care that she was a human.
They got along just fine and Animal Instinct Tattoo had been humming along for the last eight years without any problems. At least, none that kept him up at night.
The young guy came back through the door with a sheepish look on his face.“Sorry, man. I got a text from my girl—”
Bracken fought to keep from smiling. A break in the middle of a session was a surefire way to make a client realize just how much they were hurting. Some toughed it out, but most gave in and scheduled more time.
“Sure, man,” he said. “Come on back and I’ll clean you up. Cassie’ll give you a call about our next session.”
“Thanks,” the guy said gratefully.
Bracken wiped him down, bandaged him up, and rattled off care instructions that he knew would be ignored. It was just a habit now. “If you have any questions, just check the website, ok?”
The guy nodded absently and checked his phone. “Yeah. Just like last time.”
“Just like last time.”
The guy slipped a twenty dollar bill into Bracken’s hand and grinned. Bracken just nodded.
The bell over the door jangled as his client walked out of the shop. “At least he didn’t go for a high-five,” Cassie snarked from across the room.
“Thank fuck for that,” Bracken replied.
“You’re really not good at the whole ‘people skills’ thing,” she said as she slung her messenger bag over her shoulder.
“Good thing I’m not ‘people,’” he snarked back.
“You’ll never find a mate with that attitude,” Cassie laughed.
“What makes you think I want one of those?”
Cassie leaned against the door and buttoned her oversized sweater. “I dunno. Maybe they could take my job so I could have a day off once in a while.”
“My dog could do your job.”
“You don’t have a dog, smartass. But if you did, I’d like to see him try,” Cassie replied indignantly. “See you tomorrow, Boss.”
Bracken waved as she slammed the door and made a face at him through the glass. He chuckled. Cassie might have been human, but she may as well have been his younger sister. He knew his mother would adopt Cassie in a heartbeat... then he’d never be rid of her.
Cassie hadn
’t asked him much about his family, and he hadn’t asked about hers, either. If his only full time employee wanted to avoid her past, he wasn’t going to complain;the past was just a mess of things that couldn’t be fixed. It was better to look ahead. Better for everyone.
He unlocked his phone and hesitated over turning off airplane mode. He’d have to respond to the messages sooner or later. Sibyl wouldn’t stop, Amos would start texting in capitals, and his mother would flood him with the emojis she’d just discovered how to use.
“Later,” he muttered. He set down his phone and slapped at Cassie’s bluetooth speaker to turn it on. He wasn’t much for technology, but at least this thing was easy enough to navigate. Turn it on, play music. Simple. Just the way he liked things.
Cassie had the speaker hooked up to the shop iPad that she used to keep track of bookings and as soon as the music started, it blared in his face.
He stabbed a finger into the iPad screen with a scowl and selected something a little less... Cassie.
Classical music rippled through the shop and he sighed gratefully.
During the day Cassie played whatever music she wanted. Between the noise of the tattoo machine and his clients’ conversations, he could easily tune it out. After-hours was a different story.
He went back into the shop and focused on breaking down his station, but his mind kept wandering back to all of the text messages he’d received, and his bear’s reaction to them. His shifter side had been quiet lately, but now the big ice bear in his head was pacing with agitation.
Why now? Why all at once? Did they know something he didn’t?
His mother had been frantic when he’d announced that he was moving up to Anchorage, but that was more than ten years ago, and there was nothing she could have said or done to stop it. Sitka was just...
Not enough.
“Fuck!”
The sound of the bell above the shop door had startled him enough to make him fumble with the bottle of ink he was wiping down. A bright splash of green ink spread across the dark tiled floor.
Bound to Change: A Limited Edition Spring Shifter Romance Collection Page 52