by T. S. Joyce
Here, with Nuke, and with this ragtag Crew…she felt valuable.
Ren was smiling at her when she turned around, and her eyes were full of emotion and mushy. “You’re gonna be all right.”
God, it was so nice to hear that. Ren didn’t understand though, and neither did Nuke. Nothing was all right outside of this dilapidated trailer park.
But here?
For today?
For just one tiny little day?
Trina wanted to pretend it was.
Chapter Eight
Today had been perfect.
Well, if she ignored the thirty-two notifications on her phone she’d gotten from not only Manning, but from the rest of his Murder, and even two council members.
The only text that really and truly mattered was one from Tory though. Manning must’ve let her use her phone. All it said was, hurry.
How could one day be filled with such highs and lows?
Caw, caw, caw!
Startled, Trina looked up from the glowing screen of her phone to the trees that lined the edge of the trailer park. A crow with blue eyes sat on a low-hanging pine branch. Ren.
Feeling like she’d been busted, Trina set the phone face-down on the porch stair beside her and waved.
Ren spread her big black wings and dove for her, changing just before she reached Trina. She landed with both feet on the ground in a plume of dark blue smoke.
“You always made that look easy,” Trina said, snuggling deeper into her hoodie.
Ren sat beside her on the stairs and straightened the red tank top that had magically appeared to cover her skin.
“Yeah well, I probably should’ve poofed myself some warmer clothes.” Ren crossed her arms over her chest and stared at the woods beyond. “You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to, Trina.”
“What?”
“Krome and Bron were talking about it earlier. They asked me what I think of you.” Ren nudged her arm with hers. “I told them you are a good one, of course.”
“I…” Words had completely left Trina’s stumbling brain. She wasn’t one of the good ones. She’d tricked Ren. She hadn’t meant to, but she’d tricked her into thinking she was good. Guilt was a canyon, long and wide, and it consumed Trina’s insides.
“I mean, you can’t stay for free. None of the new Crew does. They rent the trailers and have to pay the community bill on water and electricity. You would have to track down a job in town. Krome said this trailer is four hundred and fifteen dollars a month. It’s kind of rough around the edges, but it’s a place you can call home. If you want. You don’t even have to take on a roommate. You can just have your own space. I told them about Manning. About how he treated you. I think it would be good for you to have some space, you know? You could do some healing in this place.”
Trina looked behind her at the cream-colored trailer with the plywood front door that had mold creeping up from the bottom. One of the green shutters was lopsided, and she knew from fifteen minutes of effort last night that the main window beside the front door was painted open, and would let a mighty stiff breeze in when the weather got cold. There had been a house number on it a long time ago, but now only the last two numbers of it remained. 10.
“Anyway. I know you get scared off easy, so I figured I would fly out here and put that little grenade in your brain, and then back away slowly. You’re someone who needs to process, Trina. Maybe come find me when you figure out what a good idea this place is.” Ren grinned and twitched her pink bangs out of her face, then stood and sauntered toward the tree line.
“Krome and Bron weren’t the only ones who asked about you, by the way.” She tossed a grin over her shoulder. “Nuke did, too.” And then in the snap of a finger, Ren’s crow lifted off the ground, beating her wings against the cool evening air. She disappeared into the sky, leaving the blue-hued smoke cloud of her change to dissipate behind her.
Nuke had asked about her?
Trina swallowed hard and looked over toward Nuke’s trailer at the opposite end of the park. All she could see from here was his deck.
She could stay here.
Her phone vibrated beside her, and Trina’s heart dropped to the stairs beneath her.
If Manning didn’t own her, she could stay.
Trina ripped her gaze away from Nuke’s home and picked up the phone. Manning was calling. She’d already missed a dozen of them.
She accepted the call and said low, “I can’t talk.”
“Trina!” Tory sounded terrified.
“Tory? Are you okay?” she whispered, looking around the empty clearing quick.
“Please just do what they asked—” A gasp sounded and Manning growled out into the phone, “When I call, you pick up. When I text, you respond. Pull this shit again and your sister will pay, do I make myself clear.”
She hated him. Hated him.
“Don’t hurt her,” she gritted through clenched teeth.
“Information and I’ll let her eat and go to bed. She can rest. Clam up on me and her night will be fuckin’ miserable. I need you back in line now, Trina.” He wrenched up his voice. “I need you back in line!”
God, he sounded psychotic.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he murmured at a softer volume. His voice sounded off. Too calm, too gentle. “It’s just you’ve had me going crazy today, wondering if you’re okay.”
Lie. She could hear it in his voice. He wasn’t worried about her.
“Do you know what it’s like for me, Trina? You’re my girl. We were supposed to be married by now, but that bitch Ren ruined our wedding. You get that, right? She stole my wedding gift for you, and broke our tradition, and she ruined what was supposed to be a happy time for you and me.”
God, he sounded like such a snake. Such a manipulator. He would’ve made an awful husband. I’m glad Ren stole your amulet. She wished she could utter the words. She wished more than anything that she could, but Tory was at risk for any mistake Trina made.
She hated this feeling of being trapped.
“What are their names,” he gritted out.
“I want your word that you will let her rest. Put her in my room and leave her alone. Please.”
“Trina—”
“Manning! I’m worried to death over her. I’m here trying to do what you’ve asked, and I feel like I’m breaking into a hundred pieces. Give me your word!” She softened her voice and begged, “Please.”
There was a three-second pause before he told her, “You have my word.”
So why did that four-word combination also sound like a lie?
“So far there are just a few new members in the Crew.”
“All shifters?”
“I think so. I’m not sure.”
“Names.”
“Tommy, Amos, and someone named Divar is coming later this week.” She couldn’t force Nuke’s name past her lips. Just couldn’t. Her heart wouldn’t allow it.
“Sounds light, Trina,” Manning ground out. “What are their animals.”
Trina glanced around to make sure the coast was still clear, and then stood and scrambled back inside the trailer. She cupped her hand over the speaker of the phone and whispered, “Ummm, avian shifter and maybe a werewolf? Or a big cat? And I don’t have a guess about Divar, I haven’t met him yet.”
“What else?”
“I…I don’t know anything else.”
“How many trailers are there?”
Chills rippled up her arms. She hadn’t said anything about trailers.
“H-how do you know about those?” she asked.
Manning was quiet. Too quiet. Too quiet, for too long.
“Manning?”
“Pass all of my tests, and Tory might live.” The line went dead.
She wasn’t the only spy here.
“Oy, stop!” Someone yelled. His voice cracked through the entire trailer, and dredged up her animal from where she’d been sitting quietly inside of her for days.
No, no, no, relax.
>
“Stop or you’ll kill him!”
Heart lurching, Trina threw her phone onto the recliner and bolted for the front door. Outside, it was dark, but there was a scuffle in the porch light of Amos’s trailer.
Tommy was out there, trying to pull Nuke off a man he had pinned to the ground.
“That’s my den! I challenge anyone for it!” the man roared from the ground, and then something awful happened.
Time slowed as the man changed under Nuke. Amos tossed a terrified look back at her, and his lips formed the words, “Stop Nuke!”
Her? She couldn’t stop anything. She had no control over a single thing in her life, so how could she control someone else’s decisions?
The man under Nuke didn’t make sense. His body formed something that didn’t exist. It couldn’t. He wasn’t a Bane brother.
A black grizzly bear ripped out of his skin. This was the part where Nuke should back off and concede that he was beat in this form. Only he didn’t. Before the bear shifter could stand up on his back two legs, Nuke grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him back so hard, the grizzly flew across the clearing and into a tree. The tree made a cracking sound on impact and pitched forward toward the trailer park, aimed straight for Nuke’s trailer.
“Tommy!” Amos yelled, pointing to the wobbling tree.
She knew what they needed. They needed power.
She had that. She could help save Nuke’s trailer.
Trina wouldn’t make it in time in this form, so without another thought, she changed. It was safe. No one was paying attention to her. Not with Nuke stalking the bear, and Amos and Tommy rushing toward the tree.
Amos was fast. He shifted to his bald eagle and back just in time to meet Tommy in the middle of where the tree would land. The needed to shove it hard to get it to land in the side yard but the branches wouldn’t make it so simple. Trina stretched her wings and pushed hard against the earth with all four legs, launched herself for a hole in the branches she could see from here. Time was tight. If Amos and Tommy didn’t hit it at the same time, this was going to be really bad.
Don’t think about it.
She beat her wings once and torpedoed to the bare part of the trunk. Milliseconds before she reached it, she changed back and screamed in effort as she shoved it as hard as she could, with every molecule of power she could muster.
The tree splintered at the force of her hands and lurched sideways. The gargantuan pine hit the corner of Nuke’s trailer and landed directly beside it with a tremendous crash.
Panicked, she searched for Tommy and Amos, but they were fine, although they were both staring at her with their mouths hanging open. Probably because her clothes were currently in tatters from her change, and she was standing her naked as the day she was born. Their matching expressions would be funny if a prehistoric rumble didn’t rattle the entire trailer park.
“He can’t change,” Amos said. “If he changes, we’ll all die.”
From behind Amos, Tommy told her, “We’ve already seen you.”
Shhhit.
Okay.
Okay.
Nuke couldn’t change, and maybe she could stop him. Maybe. She didn’t know how the fight had started, but she knew it couldn’t continue or the cost would be too big. The Crew would be blown apart, or worse…killed.
She bunched her muscles and let the animal have her.
For a moment there was freedom. There were wind currents, and dodging the trees in the forest, and not giving a single care who saw her in this skin. When had she ever had that?
She tucked her wings and zigzagged this way and that. The bear was on the run and Nuke was hunting him. God, he was fast, but he was easy to find. She could hear his snarl, and feel his presence. Whatever monster lived in him could fill the entire woods.
Trina pushed upward, above the canopy, and searched frantically for the bear. It was panting loudly, growing tired.
There.
She drew her wings in and dove for the earth.
This could get her killed. Everyone with half a sense knew not to stand between a predator shifter and his prey, but it was Nuke, and he’d showed her kindness.
She just needed him to remember that he could be kind now.
Chapter Nine
He was close.
Nuke’s monster smiled inside of him, fully aware he was about to be released from Nuke’s tight control. He was going to get to kill again. He was going to taste blood again. He’d been waiting for this moment, and oooooh, it was a good hunt.
Something was coming for him. Something in the sky. This felt like before, and he hated it. He was going to kill everything again.
The bear was slowing down. Nuke pushed his legs harder. This was a fun hunt. Start human and then change at the end, watch the defeat settle in the bear’s eyes. Asshole had clocked him across the jaw. Shattered his hand, but it served him right. The bear was limping bad, slowing down, slowing down…
Chills rippled up his spine as something big flew over him, blocking out the moonlight. He could see the shadow drift over the uneven woods he was running through. Big wings.
Fuck. He was so close now. So close to Divar’s bear. The monster could almost taste him.
Time to change and show everyone in these woods who the fuck he was. He pushed his legs faster and bunched his muscles, felt the first crackles of the change, and then something slammed to the ground in front of him, blocking out the woods because its wing span was huge.
He locked his legs and the monster inside of him disappeared. Just…gone. Nuke couldn’t feel anything inside of him but shock.
A black horse stood there, blowing frozen air from her muzzle, dragging a charcoal gray hoof through the dirt. She had wings. She had wings? Huge black wings with feathers the color of a raven. What the fuck, what the fuck?
Confused, Nuke snarled. Get out of my way.
The winged animal reared up and let off a piercing scream before she slammed her hooves back to the ground. She shook her head, and the tresses of long black hair on her mane shook to the other side. The eyes—they quieted him. He’d seen those eyes before. And on the horse’s face was a long, dark-gray mark.
A birthmark.
Shoulders heaving, he asked, “Trina?”
The mare drew her wings against her side and made her way to him, clop, clop, clop, clop. Her hooves sounded so loud in the silence that had fallen over the woods.
Trina wasn’t anything he would’ve guessed. She wasn’t a mouse. She wasn’t submissive, at least in this form.
Her green eyes were clear and trained on him, and held no fear.
She blew out another whinny as she reached him, and when he tried to brush his fingertips on her nose, she flinched back and trotted a tight circle before she returned to him.
Aaah, the animal didn’t like touch. Was her human side the same? That was okay. He dropped his hand to his side and backed away until his shoulder blades hit the thick trunk of a tree.
He’d been seconds from a change. Seconds from killing everyone within miles before he could force the monster back inside of him, and now look. Where was the monster? Stunned into stillness.
Trina. Was. Beautiful.
The bear roared through the woods, but he was far away and no threat to either of them. Nuke would kill him before he was able to get a single hooked claw into Trina’s perfect coat.
Pitch black, her fur shone in the moonlight.
“It’s finished,” he murmured, knowing exactly what she’d done for him.
Nothing else could’ve pulled him off that hunt. Nothing else could’ve saved this forest from his fire.
He sat down and leaned his head back against the rough bark, eyes trained on her.
Long legs, powerful chest, glossy hooves, ears perked up, eyes lightened, wings tucked tightly.
“I’m not supposed to exist,” he murmured. And with a small smile, he said, “You aren’t either.”
And now she had his attention like no one on e
arth ever had before.
Who else could understand a shifter like him?
Who else could understand the monster?
Who else but a Pegasus?
Chapter Ten
“I’m not a Pegasus,” Trina murmured, staring down at her hands as she fidgeted with a straw wrapper she’d found in her pocket. She wrapped it round and round her finger while the Crew stared at her.
Stupid Amos had tattled to Krome and told him she was a Pegasus, but she wasn’t. And now the King had called a stupid Crew meeting, which she didn’t belong at because she wasn’t part of the Crew.
Beside her, Nuke brushed her knee with his knuckle and told her, “It’s okay. We won’t tell anyone.” He glared at each person in turn. “Right?” The last word came out a snarl that electrified the hairs on her forearms.
“Uh, I’m telling everyone,” Amos said. “I’m in a Crew with a Pegasus. And a mother fucking grizzly bear—”
“Yeah, about that,” Divar muttered as he sat on the edge of Nuke’s porch, rubbing his ankle. “I would appreciate y’all keeping that little gem to yourselves, too.”
“I thought the Banes were the last of the bear shifters,” Tommy said in a snarling voice. He stood just at the edge of the porch light, and his eyes were glowing like an animal’s.
“And I would like the world to keep thinking that,” Divar said. He gestured to Nuke. “Sorry for taking a swing at you. Didn’t realize you were the devil himself.”
Nuke said, “Sorry for breaking your face, hunting you down, and trying to kill you.”
Divar dropped his gaze. His nose had been shattered and the blood was drying down his chin.
“Why did you take a swing at him in the first place?” Krome asked.
Divar answered, “He said I couldn’t go in my den.”
Krome frowned. “You already see that trailer as your den?” he asked, pointing to the trailer Trina had been staying in.
“Yeah. I probably looked at that picture you sent of it a hundred times. I let my bear have it. We’ve been nomads for so long, and he’s been wanting a den. Made him easier to control while I was packing up to move here. He’s a little…temperamental.”