First Shift

by Alexis Davie

  She smiled to herself as she thought about how far she had really come. She reached out and ran her fingers over the calendar, smiling to herself. I’m really doing this, she thought to herself.

  She picked up her cell phone, ready to call Zane and ask him to come out to the beach with her tonight and be with her when she first turned. She put the cell phone back down, her call not made. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to involve Zane in this, she thought to herself.

  He had been drawn to her because she was different, because she stood her ground and refused to turn. He had called her noble. What if she turned and he thought she was just like everybody else? What if he thought it made her a hypocrite and he stopped wanting her?

  She knew in her heart it would take a lot more than that to break the connection she and Zane shared, but she also knew she needed to do this alone. She would tell Zane about it tomorrow, or the day after, or whenever she felt ready, but she needed this to be something she did just for herself for now.

  She knew it was partly fear that stopped her from calling Zane. Not fear that he would abandon her if she turned; that was just her mind’s defense mechanism giving her a fear she could argue away. Her real fear was deeper than that. She was afraid that she would go down to the beach and change her mind. If Zane was with her, she wasn’t sure she would be strong enough to not turn if she changed her mind. It would be too humiliating to make a big deal out of this and then not do it. She needed to know she was doing this for the right reasons, for herself, not just to save face.

  She nodded to herself, the decision made. Now all she had to do was wait for night to fall and sneak out of the house.

  * * *

  Cleo stood on the sand, shrouded by darkness, the only light coming from the full moon above her. She looked up at the moon, marveling at the beauty of it. She had seen the full moon before and recognized its beauty, but she had never seen it with the intense awareness that she had tonight. She had never noticed how the silvery light danced across the tips of the waves, how the sand reflected the light, twinkling like the stars were beneath her feet as well as above her. And until now, she had never looked up at the full moon and craved the power it could bring to her.

  She had always thought of being a shifter as a curse. Now she knew it didn’t have to be that way. She was ready to embrace the power within herself, ready to embrace who she had always been destined to become.

  She looked up at the moon and cleared her mind, letting her wolf come forward. She had felt her wolf stirring before, but she had never let it come out this far. She had never had this moment where she felt the animal side of herself emerging, where she felt the power and the beauty that filled her now.

  She opened her mouth, a loud howl pouring from her and shattering the silence of the night. She couldn’t help but smile as she howled again, the sound so utterly her that it sent a shiver down her spine.

  Cleo closed her eyes and let her wolf come all of the way out. Instantly, her eyes flew open again as she fell to her knees. Pain engulfed her full body, every joint, every bone screaming. Even her skin hurt as fur began to erupt all over her. She felt as though her wolf was eating its way out of her as her body was consumed by white-hot agony. She felt her bones breaking and the pain became all consuming, the only thing she knew.

  She howled again, a sound filled with torment, and then she blacked out and felt no more pain.

  10

  Zane was in bed when his mom burst into his room, waking him with a start. He glanced groggily at the clock on the cabinet beside his bed.

  “Mom, it’s like six a.m. What are you doing in here?” he asked, his voice thick with sleep.

  “Zane, honey, I have some bad news,” his mom said.

  She sat down on the side of Zane’s bed, and for the first time, he noticed that she had been crying. Instantly, he was fully awake, the daze of being half asleep leaving him.

  “What is it, Mom?” he demanded.

  “It’s your father. Zane, I’m so sorry. He… he’s gone.”

  “Gone? What do you mean gone? Gone where?” Zane demanded.

  He already knew the answer to that, but somehow, he thought if he asked the question, the answer might be different, that his mom would laugh and say, “Well, he’s gone on a trip for business, silly.” It didn’t happen. Of course it didn’t happen.

  “He’s dead, honey,” his mom said gently.

  Zane felt as though the bottom had been pulled out of his world, like someone had set his very existence spinning. His head spun, his heart hammered, and he felt sick. His throat was dry, so dry, he couldn’t swallow.

  “What happened?” he heard himself ask in a croaky voice that didn’t sound like his own.

  It wasn’t like his father could have had a heart attack or something. He was a wolf. Wolves didn’t have heart attacks. They didn’t get high blood pressure, or high cholesterol. They couldn’t get cancer or get killed in a car accident.

  “I don’t have any details yet. Ronnie just called and let me know he found your father. He’s bringing him here now. I thought you might want to be there for…”

  Zane jumped out of bed.

  “Of course I want to be there,” he said.

  His mom nodded and stood up.

  “I’ll let you get dressed,” she said.

  She started toward the door, and suddenly, Zane knew he didn’t want her to leave. He practically sprang at her and as he reached her, he fell into her open arms. Zane and his mom clung to each other, their tears mingling into one salty trail. Zane tried to let himself imagine life without his father for a fleeting second, but he just couldn’t do it. He let the grief pour out of himself for a few minutes, and then he told himself to get a grip.

  With Zane’s father gone, the pack would be looking to him now, he knew. He would be their new alpha. And the first thing he had to do as the new pack alpha was find out what the hell had happened to his father and plot out a course of action dependent on what he found out.

  He slowly disentangled himself from his mom’s embrace. He sniffed loudly and wiped his eyes roughly, angry at himself for losing control like that.

  “Zane…” his mom started gently.

  “It’s okay,” he said, cutting her off. If she tried to offer him words of comfort now, Zane knew the floodgates would open again, and he was scared that if he allowed that to happen, he wouldn’t be able to get them to close again. “I’m going to get dressed and then we’ll just take it one step at a time. We’ll get through this, Mom.”

  “I know, son,” she said.

  She reached out and caressed Zane’s cheek, and then she turned and left the room. He was tempted to smash the room up, to throw things, to punch them, but instead, Zane turned to his wardrobe and pulled out a black suit, one he kept at the back of his wardrobe for such an occasion, but one he never imagined himself having to wear. At least not so soon.

  Zane made sure he looked respectable before he left his bedroom. On some level, it felt wrong fussing with his hair and getting his tie perfectly straight, but the whole time, he could hear his father’s voice in his head, telling him that as pack alpha, he had certain responsibilities and one of those responsibilities was to present himself to the world as calm, groomed, and in control, no matter what the situation was.

  By the time Zane left his room, the moments he had taken to get dressed appropriately had calmed him, and he couldn’t help but wonder if that was why his father had instilled this rule in him. That really, the presentation of the alpha was secondary to having some mundane but seemingly important task to complete to give them a moment to calm themselves.

  He went downstairs and heard his mother in the living room. He went in and saw that Ronnie was there. Ronnie saw Zane and began to get down on one knee, but Zane waved his hand impatiently.

  “We’ll worry about that at the official ceremony. For now, I just want to know what happened to my father,” he said.

  His eyes went to the oak coffin behind Ron
nie as he spoke. The lid was closed and Zane was glad. He thought he would need a minute before he saw his father’s body.

  “I received a call around four from one of the pack. They found him. We went down there and brought him back to my place where I prepared his body, and now, here we are.”

  “But what happened to him?” Zane pressed Ronnie.

  “I think you need to see it for yourself, Zane,” Ronnie said quietly.

  Zane’s head was spinning again as Ronnie led him to the coffin. He pulled the lid back and Zane swallowed hard. Ronnie had cleaned away the blood and made his father look presentable, but nothing could have prepared Zane for the gouge marks across his father’s chest, made by wolf claws. He had to close his eyes for a second as he swayed dizzily when he saw the way teeth had ripped his father’s throat out.

  “He was attacked by a wolf,” Ronnie said, stating the obvious.

  “Who did this, Ronnie?” Zane demanded. “One of our own?”

  “We don’t know. There was no sign of anyone, man or beast, when I got there. I hate to say this, Zane, but as the new alpha, finding out who did this is your first official pack task,” Ronnie said.

  “Ronnie, no,” Zane’s mom said.

  Zane hadn’t even realized she was standing by his side, or that her hand was on his arm, until she spoke up.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I have to do this. I want to do this. Whatever else I do as the pack alpha, this will be the most important thing. I will find my father’s killer and I swear before you both that I will bring him or her to justice,” Zane said fiercely.

  Zane backed away as Ronnie closed the coffin’s lid.

  “I’ll put out the official announcement later on today,” Ronnie said. “You’ll be sworn in as alpha as soon as we get this all ironed out. Take the day to try and get your head around it all. I’ll stay with your mom.”

  Zane looked at his mom, who nodded her head.

  “Ronnie’s right,” she said.

  Zane nodded. He felt bad leaving his mom, but right now, he knew what he needed. Or rather, who he needed. He needed Cleo, more than he had ever needed her before. He slowly walked out of the room without looking back. He went back upstairs to his bedroom and changed into something more fitting for being seen out and about in public, especially before the official announcement of his father’s death was even made.

  He checked the time. It was still early, barely after seven, but he figured Cleo would likely be up. He called her, relieved when he heard her voice.

  “Cleo, something… something happened. Can we talk?” he said.

  “Of course,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ll explain when I see you. Can you be at the fountain in the park in half an hour?”

  “I’ll be there,” Cleo said.

  * * *

  Zane started to feel slightly better the moment he saw Cleo walking toward him. She was wearing jeans and a band T-shirt for some band he had never even heard of, but she couldn’t have looked more stunning even if she were wearing Versace.

  He stood up as she approached and they embraced. Zane held Cleo for a long time, not wanting to ever leave the warmth of her arms. She let him hold her, her hands moving over his back. Finally, she pulled away slightly.

  “Zane, what’s wrong? What happened?” she asked, her face creased with concern.

  “It’s my father. He… he died. Someone killed him,” Zane said.

  Cleo’s mouth dropped open and she pulled Zane to her again.

  “Oh my God, Zane, I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

  He broke away from her embrace before the tears could start again. He took her hand in his and led her to a bench beside the fountain. They sat side by side, neither of them speaking for a moment. Zane stared into the water, watching the way it changed color slightly as the sun came up.

  “I have to find his killer and bring them to justice,” Zane said. “I’m the pack alpha now.”

  “Zane, that’s a lot of responsibility. Isn’t there someone else who can lead the investigation?” Cleo asked. “I mean, under the circumstances and all that.”

  “There is. I could assign a task force to do the job, but I want to do this, Cleo. I have to.”

  “I get it,” Cleo said. “So, do you have any idea what might have happened?”

  “Yes and no,” Zane said. “I know he was killed by a wolf. I don’t know who or why yet. But I guess I’ll start looking where he was found.”

  “Where was that?” Cleo asked.

  “On the beach,” Zane said.

  He opened his mouth to say more, but he stopped when he saw how white Cleo had gone.

  “Cleo? Are you okay?” he said.

  Cleo got to her feet, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry. I have to go,” she said.

  She turned and ran before Zane had a chance to stop her. In that moment, Zane had never felt more utterly alone in the world.

  11

  Cleo ran all of the way home and burst into the house. Her parents had left that morning for a weekend away and her sister was out, which she was glad of. It saved her having to try to explain what had gotten her into such a state. She was annoyed at herself for not being able to hold herself together in front of Zane, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t going to find out the truth about her soon enough anyway.

  What the hell am I going to do? Cleo thought to herself.

  It didn’t matter how she looked at it, she could only see one way out of this. She had to leave town. Right now. Before Zane put it all together and came looking for her. Before she was hauled in front of the pack and executed. Zane would never understand this one. She couldn’t understand it herself.

  All she knew for certain was that she had been right all along. Turning into a wolf had been a bad idea. She had only done it once, and look at the utter clusterfuck she had caused. She had turned into a wolf only once, and that was all it had taken for her rebellious side to really come out in force, because sometime over the course of last night, she had murdered the pack alpha. She had been the one who had killed Zane’s father.

  Cleo ran for the stairs, ready to grab her things and get out of there. She was halfway up when her cell phone rang. Her heart almost broke when she saw Zane’s name on the screen. She so badly wanted to talk to him, to tell him she was sorry. But nothing she could say could undo the damage she had done, and she knew she couldn’t take his call.

  12

  Zane pushed everything aside, all of the emotions that were swirling around inside of him, telling himself he would deal with them later. For now, he had to act. He had thought Cleo would be his rock through all of this, but he had been wrong, and now he had to get the ball rolling to find his father’s murderer, or it was going to start to look like he didn’t care.

  He texted Ronnie and told him to track down any of the pack who had been on or around the beach last night. He told Ronnie if he found anyone who had been, to have them call him. Ronnie replied quickly, telling him to consider it done. Zane thought bitterly that it looked like Ronnie was the only person he could rely on. Cleo certainly wasn’t reliable.

  He told himself that wasn’t fair. He had dropped a major bombshell on Cleo out of nowhere, and she had panicked. That didn’t make her a bad person. Maybe she just didn’t know what to say to him, or maybe she was scared about who would be next. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt and he took his cell phone out again and tried to call her.

  The phone rang and rang but Cleo didn’t pick up, and eventually, the call went to her voicemail. Zane cut off the call in anger, not leaving a message. He was still reeling from losing his father and now it looked like he was losing Cleo too. He had given her the benefit of the doubt, but surely if she had just panicked, she would have taken his call, maybe even apologized for her behavior.

  He shook his head and told himself to forget about Cleo for the moment. Right now, he had a murderer to catch and that had to come before finding out what the hell was going
on with Cleo. It was pretty clear to him what had happened anyway. She had obviously been going to end things between them, and then backed out when he told her what had happened. She might have cared enough not to pile more shit on top of him at this moment, but she hadn’t cared enough to stick around.

  Zane was still sitting on the bench beside the fountain, trying and failing to clear his head, when his cell phone buzzed. He snatched it quickly from his pocket, his heart missing a beat. It had to be Cleo come to her senses.

  It wasn’t Cleo and Zane’s heart sank. It was a cell phone number he didn’t recognize and he almost put his cell phone back away, ignoring the call, but then he remembered his message to Ronnie. It could be someone with some information about his father’s murder. He sighed and pressed the button to take the call.

  “Zane Green,” he said, answering the phone.

  “Hi,” a female voice said. “This is Sarah Sullivan. I’m a part of your pack.”

  Zane vaguely recognized the name Sullivan, but he couldn’t put a face to the name Sarah Sullivan.

  “Umm, I saw a message from Ronnie. I’m sorry about what happened to your father. I don’t know how much help I can be, but I was taking a walk along the beachfront last night. I couldn’t sleep. I think it was around one a.m.,” Sarah went on. “Maybe a little later, I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Did you see my father?” Zane asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “Did you see anyone?” he asked.

  “I only saw two people. One was a man I didn’t recognize. And the other one was that girl. I don’t know her name. The one who refuses to turn?”

  “You saw Cleo?” Zane said. “Are you sure it was her?”

  “The girl who won’t turn? Yeah, I’m sure it was her. She was right down near the water. She was walking away from the town. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but she had her head down, a hood pulled up. The breeze caught her hood and blew it down and she snatched it right back up like she didn’t want to be recognized.”