The Hyena's Hope

by Emilia Hartley

  Table of Contents

  THE HYENA’S HOPE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Thank you!

  THE HYENA’S HOPE

  Emilia Hartley

  © Copyright 2018 by Blues Publishing. - All rights reserved.

  The contents of this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Legal Notice:

  This book is copyright protected. This is only for personal use. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Chapter One

  Lily’s friends made it sound like a simple night on the town. Her heart wasn’t into it. It’d only been four days since she’d broken up with Brock. She should have been wrapped in blankets and crying into a pint of ice-cream, yet she’d let her girlfriends talk her into going to a bar.

  They picked out what she would wear, settling on a little black dress that had sheer panels in the waist and near the hem of the very short skirt. Lily had stared at it for roughly five minutes before throwing caution to the wind. She thought the dress would make her feel more daring.

  If anything, Lily felt like an imposter. The dress couldn’t hide the bags under her eyes. She dabbed concealer over them, but that didn’t make her feel any different. When her friends burst into the room and dragged her out into the night, she faked a happy smile.

  Love wasn’t like it was in the books. There would be no dangerous lover to sweep in through her open window to set a spell over her. He would not take her on wild adventures, keeping her safe the whole time. All she had was six years with her college sweetheart. Six years that swirled down the drain when she found him doing naked yoga with the gym’s fitness instructor.

  It’d taken her by surprise. When she opened the door on them, her brain could barely make sense of the limbs before her. They’d been a jumble of skin tones and disappointment. Mostly Lily’s disappointment.

  Her girlfriend grabbed Lily’s arm and leaned in close. “Trust me. You won’t think about that loser once tonight! Not where we’re going.”

  Lily’s brows furrowed. She glanced out the window to see that they were no longer in town. All the bars were on the main street. Only when they pulled up outside the long, red building, did Lily realize where they were.

  “I can’t believe you!” Her stomach was on the floor as she stared blankly at the shifter bar.

  Everyone in town knew shifters existed, men and women who could shift between human and animal. Those with two or more brain cells did their best to avoid the shifters. In turn, the shifters avoided them and set up their own establishments. Like the bar.

  “Whose idea was this?” she hissed at her friends.

  Her gaze settled on Vivian. The cute blonde with the spiked haircut only grinned, looking more like a shark than a girl. Of course, Vivian would drag them all out to the most dangerous place in town.

  Lily should have gotten back into the car, but her heart thumped with intrepid excitement. This was kind of like the books she read, only the men on the pages were vampires and not shifters. The thought of meeting a devilish man who might sweep her off her feet and make her forget about the pain she’d only recently endured was all too enticing.

  It meant that she let her friends drag her forward. They ordered an Amaretto sour for her and shoved it into her hand. Lily thought they would grab a table and lay low while they checked out the patrons, but in a matter of minutes, her friends had scattered like leaves in the wind.

  Vivi was sitting on the bar, legs crossed as she regaled a gaggle of besotted men with one story or another. Haylee and Nicole had challenged a pair of burly looking dudes to a game of pool at the back. Frida was kicking the clearly broken juke box off to the side.

  Lily was left on her own. She slunk away from the crowds until a wall hit her back. Something broke, the snap ringing through the air. A fight had broken out. The blond man behind the counter vaulted over it and jumped into the fight. He broke it up with ease, clearly experienced in the matter.

  Another man stepped forward to help, his skin the color of bark and curls trying to flow over his forehead. He grabbed a man in a biker vest by his ponytail and led him toward the door. Lily covered her laugh with the back of her hand.

  There was no way the curly haired man could have heard the sound she made, but he turned toward her, their eyes meeting across the room. He looked dumbstruck. Like a deer in the headlights, he stilled. A searing heat flashed over his eyes.

  Lily’s stomach hit the floor. He was a shifter. She immediately diverted her attention, chilly adrenaline crashing through her veins. Turns out she wasn’t quite ready for any kind of adventure with an inhuman man. The idea was best left on the pages of a book.

  She searched for somewhere to hide. Her friends had the best intentions, but the worst execution. Leaving her to her own devices was not working. As Lily drifted toward a table in the far corner, her mind turned back to Brock. She missed his presence. Had he been with her, she wouldn’t have felt so awkward. She could have hid in his shadow and let him field all the stray glances that turned in her direction.

  But he had to go and ruin six years of her life. She didn’t think it’d been all that bad. She wasn’t the nagging sort, quietly picking up after him when he came up in his time off from classes. He worked hard enough in med school. The least she could do was let him relax whenever he visited.

  A chill crept up her spine. Was she boring? Had she stayed long past her expiration date, weighing on him like a stone? When she imagined their future, she envisioned vacations to the far reaches of the world. Photos full of smiles and stories to go along with them. That wasn’t boring. Was it?

  Lily couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong.

  And it was killing her. She turned over the years they’d spent together, trying to find the fault in them, the place where she began to push him away. Though she couldn’t find the moment where things changed, she knew it had to exist. Why else would Brock cheat on her like that?

  A shadow moved across the table. Lily looked up, expecting Vivian or Frida to pull her out of the alcove. Her heart flipped inside her chest at the sight of the curly-haired shifter. He offered her a sweet smile as he leaned forward.

  Lily jumped back out of instinct. There was a flash of hurt that flickered over his features. It left a darkness over her eyes, shielding them until she could no longer read what he was feeling. When she looked down at the table, there was another drink.

  “If you need anything,” the man told her, his voice low, “call for me. I’m Rodrigo.�
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  Before she could thank him for the drink, he was already walking away. She looked between the pink drink and the man’s back, wondering if it was even safe. He could have put something in the cup. She heard horror stories about that kind of thing on the news. It happened to unsuspecting women all the time.

  But the man never once looked back at her to see if she drank it. He went on with his night as she watched. At some point, she put her chin in her hand and began stirring the drink while she watched him break up another fight. This time, the pack alpha stepped out of the shadows to help.

  Word around town was that Dante Oberon had been tamed by a human woman. A single mother. The thought was exhilarating as she watched Dante move around the bar with a grin plastered on his face. Was he thinking of the woman he would go home to? Did she fill him with fluttering feelings and a sense of protection?

  Lily desperately wanted something like that, but she worried it was all in her head. No relationship could feel like that. No man would ever be so in love with a woman that his every thought revolved around her. Not in the way that Lily’s every thought had once revolved around Brock.

  She never bought anything she thought he would sneer at. She kept her hair the length he preferred and wore skater dresses and cardigans, even if she yearned for more manageable hair and high waisted shorts. Even when Brock wasn’t around, she thought of what he would want.

  Now, without him, her world was wide open, and it only made her feel adrift. There was too much before her. Her friends said there were plenty of other fish in the ocean, but what could she do when the ocean waves were drowning her?

  Lily didn’t think anything of the chime over the door. She didn’t even look up. People came and went all the time. She grabbed her free drink and wove her way through the crowds toward one of the side-exits, oblivious to who had just entered the bar.

  Outside, she wrapped her arms around herself. The sky above glittered with silver stars and the golden summer moon, but the wind was still chill. The dress and its sheer panels provided little warmth, but she gulped down the fresh air. It cleansed her of all thoughts of Brock. All she could think of was the cold air around her legs.

  “You should be careful out here,” someone said.

  She let out a startled yelp, but it was only the curly-haired shifter. He kept his distance, though she could feel the heat radiating off him and was tempted to inch closer just to be spared from the chill air.

  “Dressed like that, you’re going to get carried off by some idiot,” the shifter said.

  “Well, it’s good that I have someone watching over me, then.” She tried to offer a smile, but only felt tired. Tired of her life and the time that she’d lost, devoting herself to a man who never actually cared.

  Had Brock slept with other women? He lived on campus, and if he met with other women there, Lily would never know. The realization felt like someone had shoved a blunt knife into her chest. Her lungs constricted and her gut clenched.

  The shifter closed the space between them, his hand on her shoulder. “Are you alright?” There was a hint of panic in his voice, true concern.

  Lily shook her head. “Just choked on air. Really silly of me. Right?”

  He gave her a look like he didn’t actually believe her, but she wasn’t about to spill all of her woes to a shifter. She barely knew the guy. He might have bought her a drink, but that didn’t mean he was entitled to anything.

  He leaned back, rocking on his heels as he took her in. “You don’t seem like the type to come here. Human women who come to this bar are usually looking for something very specific.”

  Lily laughed. “You mean Vivian?”

  “Is she a friend of yours?”

  “We met in college. She was my first roommate. Bit of an enabler. We once went out to get iced coffee and when the line was too long, she drove over the grassy hill between the parking lots and nearly hit the drive thru speaker of the other place. The coffee there was horrible, but she managed to get the car off the ground for a split second and was really proud of it.”

  He laughed, a hearty sound, and shook his head. “Vivian has told a lot of stories, but I don’t think she’s ever shared that one.”

  “I’m sure she cherry picks the ones that make her look courageous and fearless. If she tries to tell any stories about skydiving, just know that she’s never actually gone skydiving. The closest she came was a wind tunnel upstate, and an assistant held her by the waist the entire time.”

  His brows arched and his lips were pursed with held back laughter. “Did you need an assistant?”

  Lily’s smile died. She hadn’t needed an assistant because Brock hadn’t wanted her in the wind tunnel. He’d told her that the suit the business offered was too revealing and that she didn’t need to show herself off for attention like Vivian. While visiting the wind tunnel had been Lily’s idea, she hadn’t even been able to get inside.

  Lily was in mourning for her long-term relationship with Brock, but after that, she was beginning to wonder how many times he’d held her back. She knew she deferred to his word too often. It was a bad habit of hers, one she’d created to make him happy. Seeing him happy had meant more than her own happiness.

  Standing outside with a stranger, she wondered where that idea had ever come from. How much of the past six years had she missed out on because she’d let Brock lead her with a bag over her head?

  “Hello? Are you okay?”

  Lily shook herself, returning to the present. “I’m so sorry. My head is a bit of a mess. I just…” She couldn’t say it. For some reason, she was afraid that admitting she’d gotten out of a relationship would drive this guy away. Maybe she did need time to heal, but she also needed someone to listen. “Rodrigo, right? I’m Lily.”

  He kept his hands to himself and took a step back. “It’s nice to meet you Lily.”

  The way he was retreating made her wonder if she smelled. She would never fart in front of anyone, let alone a stranger. Vivian made sure that she showered before they left. What had Lily done to drive him away?

  ***

  Rodrigo was ashamed to admit that he’d followed her outside. His beast was attracted to her, nearly obsessed in the way it tracked her scent through the side door. He’d found her huddled in the dark and wondered what kind of spring creature he’d found.

  He couldn’t help the thoughts of Hades and Persephone that crept into the back of his mind, but he shut them down. There was no way he was going to enter this woman’s life and spread the plague that was his rotten mind. The beast tried to fight him on the subject, but Rodrigo left her alone before the creature could take total control.

  Lily. The delicate spring flower, just like the ones that used to grow around his mailbox as a child. His mom had loved those flowers. He wondered, as he made his way back inside, if those flowers were still there. He hadn’t visited his family since he’d been changed.

  Thankfully, there was another fight going on. He leapt into the fray, throwing fists and elbows until he subdued the rowdy shifters. Using his body pulled his attention away from the thoughts swirling in his mind. He didn’t think of the lonely girl outside or his far-away family while he was busting his knuckles on a wolf shifter’s face.

  If Rodrigo wanted, he could work his way up to third in command. He had the strength for it, if only he had any mental stability. But the creature inside him was wild and reckless. It fought to be free all the time. The cruel thing wanted to rip and tear. It wanted to feel a life fade between its clenched teeth.

  Those desires frightened Rodrigo. He didn’t know if they would ever go away. How could he move on with his life if those thoughts always hung near the edges of his mind? He didn’t want to look at everyone and wonder what it would feel like to snap their neck. He didn’t want to imagine the taste of blood when someone spoke to him.

  Over and over, he wished he’d never been cursed with this creature. The demon that lurked inside him was insidious, and he feared he would never
tame it. Dante tried to tell him that it would come in time, but he didn’t think Dante heard the crunch of bones when children laughed.

  The only time the nightmare subsided had been when Lily spoke. She’d laughed about mundane things, like careless driving. He missed those days, the ache of yearning filling his chest while she spoke.

  Rodrigo didn’t know if that yearning was for his own college days, or if it was for the small woman standing before him. She grinned up at him, that smile so sly until it faded and was replaced by confusion.

  That look had killed him. His beast had roared and surged forward, looking for someone to tear apart limb by limb. He’d been close to losing control and knew it was time to leave. He couldn’t be around the woman if she invoked reactions like that. He would only hurt her.

  Rodrigo was tired of hurting those around him. Those who didn’t deserve it, at least.

  He met the gaze of a rowdy shifter and raised his brows in challenge. If the shifter wanted to keep fighting, then Rodrigo could, too. Unfortunately, Van had made him install new carpet and it would no longer hide the bloodstains of their usual fights. He could feel Van’s hot glare on the back of his neck, challenging him to make a mess on the new carpet.

  Van would drag him down to the lockbox himself.

  That was what they were calling the reinforced room downstairs. The cages were gone, much to Rodrigo’s relief. In their place was a nearly impossible to destroy room with locks on either side of the door. A shifter could lock himself in, or Dante could lock someone inside. Van had tested it the first day it’d been finished by locking Rodrigo inside.

  There was now a dent of a fist in the door, but the door had stayed on its hinges, so he guessed it was a good trial run.

  While he was distracted, Rodrigo took a punch to the chin. Stars danced in his vision. Blood filled his mouth, coppery and sweet. He was about to throw the next punch when Dante stepped out of the shadows.

  While the man had found himself a mate, it didn’t mean he’d gotten any softer. His punishments were just as cruel as they used to be. Instead of putting them in cages, he made them do construction. The bar was looking really nice for once, though.