Filthy Beast

by Liza Street

Sweet.

  “I think we’ve found our place, guys,” she said over her shoulder. “Who wants first watch?”

  “I’ll take it,” Marcus said quickly.

  She looked at him and smiled. “You’re rather swift to volunteer.”

  “I slept a bit in the van,” he said. “And you have a nice smile.”

  The change in subject was jarring, but she’d had a weird day, and she imagined he had, as well. “Um, thanks. Okay, Kyle, let’s see if we can make a second bed out of the table.”

  Once they figured it out, Lena lay atop her bed, Kyle on his. She couldn’t sleep, so she listened to the roars of dominance coming from the other side of the Junkyard. For fuck’s sake, it almost felt like she’d landed in some kind of Hunger Games scenario. She had allies, and a bunch of her enemies were fighting with each other. Was the Junkyard really an arena? She half expected to find a video camera trained on her. Imagining a camera in the corner by the tiny trailer window, she lifted her hand and flipped it off.

  She woke to Marcus’s hand on her shoulder. Not thinking, she grabbed the fingers and twisted them.

  He yelped. “Lena, it’s me. Sorry. I—it’s your turn for watch.”

  “Right.” She let go of his hand. “Sorry about that. Bed’s all yours.”

  She clambered out and left the camp trailer, leaving Marcus and Kyle behind. She’d been having a bad dream when Marcus woke her. Shaw had been chasing her, his golden eyes cruel and calculating.

  The night air was cool and welcome on her skin, waking her up. The sounds of fighting continued in the distance. These grown men were acting like quarrelsome children. Was it all dominance games with them? She wondered how Barnum fared. The guy with the black eyes—Mollin, too. She hoped they were getting their asses handed to them.

  At the side of the trailer, she found an old folding picnic chair. After brushing some leaves and cobwebs from it, she pressed down on the seat with her hands. It wasn’t super steady, but it would probably hold her weight. She leaned it against the trailer and eased into it.

  Not perfect, but it gave her a place to rest while she listened to the sounds of fighting in the distance and hoped like hell that she, Marcus, and Kyle could get through this first night without taking part in any battles.

  4

  How could they have just left? Carter swung his head back and forth, trying to shake off the stars behind his eyes from that last blow to the face. Fighting Mathers was never a good time, but it usually cleared his brain. Now, however, thoughts of a feisty little cat shifter kept intruding on his thoughts.

  She’d just taken off, those two guys with her. Was one of those guys her mate? Which one? He growled. Something in her bright blue eyes had called to him. He wanted to keep her safe, but if someone else was doing the job, he needed to step the fuck back.

  He growled as Mathers came forward for another attack. Mathers opened his jaws wide and Carter inwardly rolled his eyes. Idiot. It was such a tell with that asshole. The mouth opens, he’s going for the throat. Every. Damn. T—

  A wolf hit Carter from the back. Fucking Alleman again? Carter roared. Alleman had nearly killed him last night, and Carter wasn’t forgetting that anytime soon. He raked his claws over Mathers’s face and then dropped to the ground, falling on top of Alleman’s wolf.

  Alleman yelped and scrambled, trying to get out from under Carter. Sharp teeth ripped into Carter’s shoulder and he bellowed. Struggling to his feet, he spun and faced Alleman.

  He couldn’t use the words clouding his brain: vengeance, blood, protection. But he stared hard at Alleman and watched the wolf’s charcoal eyes widen with recognition. Carter wasn’t fucking around anymore. If Alleman wanted to fight him again, the consequences might be permanent.

  Backing up, Alleman busied himself with going after Buenevista instead.

  Carter walked out of the ring. He wasn’t interested in fighting any of these sorry bastards. His bear hadn’t yet had his fill of blood and violence, but there were three shifters who’d arrived today, and they hadn’t established who they were and where they might fall in the pecking order.

  It was time to track them down and bring out their beasts.

  Tracking them was easy. The Junkyard wasn’t huge, and they hadn’t even tried to disguise their scents. Not that they’d be able to; there was a creek in the south-eastern quadrant, but crossing it would only lead them to a lake, and nobody could swim past a hundred yards into the lake before hitting the invisible wall.

  As he followed their trail, alarm rose within him. They’d gone past his place. He picked up the woman’s feline scent next to his punching bag. Her intrusion didn’t bother him in the slightest, he realized with surprise. He didn’t want to fight her.

  The other two, though? Fuck ’em for even coming near his den.

  He shifted into his human form and grabbed a pair of pants from inside his den. Then he kept walking, sniffing occasionally as he went. The guys were a wolf and a bear. The bear smelled familiar, but he couldn’t figure out why. Didn’t care, either. He needed to know that the woman was all right.

  He wanted to know her name, too. And why she was here.

  The farther he followed her scent, the less he cared about fighting the other two guys. The woman was the only one on his mind.

  Grant’s old trailer was straight ahead, and their scents gathered around it. Carter nodded to himself. It’s where he would stay if he was new here and didn’t know where else to go.

  The woman’s scent filled his nostrils. She was so close. He crept around the rear corner of the trailer, wondering what he was going to do. Would he knock and ask to talk to her? Nah, he’d pound on the door and demand entry. Show this new crew who was boss.

  One more corner, and the faint shhh of rustling pine needles was his only warning. The woman was standing right in front of him, gloriously fierce, her blue eyes flashing in the moonlight.

  Before he could say a word, she punched him in the nose.

  “Ow,” he said, leaping back a step and feeling a trickle of blood on his upper lip. “What da hell?”

  She stood before him, unmoving, her arm poised to strike again. “If you don’t want to get hit, stay away.”

  “I’m here to…” He stopped. He wanted to lie and say he was there to call them all to the ring for a battle of dominance, but she’d know it was a falsehood. Swallowing and then sniffing past the blood leaking from his nose, he said, “I’m here to check on you, I guess. I’m not entirely sure.”

  Her posture softened and she let her arm fall to her side. Squinting at him, she said, “My sister’s dead and I’ve been thrown into a crazy-ass supernatural holding cell. So things mostly suck, to be honest.”

  He nodded. “Makes sense. I’m sorry about your sister.”

  She said nothing. He wondered if he should tell her he’d lost his brother, or if it would sound weird coming right after her confession.

  Fuck it, he already sounded weird to her, especially with his nose clogged with blood. “I lost my brother a couple of years ago.”

  “Then you know how it feels.”

  “I do. It’s really shitty.”

  “Yep.” She looked around at the dark woods. A shout of victory rose up from beyond the trees. Sighing, she moved to the old folding chair Grant used to sit in when he was being a sad dick and staring at his old cabin. She took a seat and gestured to a tree stump next to her. “You can join me if you want. Or you can go back to fighting.”

  Her expression told him she didn’t expect him to stay. He found that he wanted to surprise her, so he plopped down on the stump and tried to get comfortable. They didn’t speak for several minutes. He kind of liked this, the quiet of sitting next to another person.

  “You’re a bear,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “Grizzly?”

  “Yeah. And you’re a kitty cat. Mountain lion?”

  She nodded. Damn, she looked so pretty in the moonlight, her brown hair rippling over her shoulders. There were slight c
urls in her hair, and he wanted to twine strands of it around his fingers.

  Footfalls sounded inside the trailer. Carter was up on his feet in a defensive stance.

  The dark-haired wolf stuck his head out of the door. “Lena? You okay?”

  Lena, that was her name. Carter hadn’t even thought to ask her. He’d been too intent on looking at her, and on talking, dredging up old hurts.

  “I’m fine, Marcus,” she said.

  Marcus continued, “If you hurt her, asshole—”

  “As you can see,” Lena interrupted, gesturing at Carter’s bloody nose, “I took care of myself.”

  Marcus smirked. “Good hit, then.”

  Carter let out a growl of impatience. He wanted this wolf gone so he could have Lena to himself again.

  Marcus took the growl as the threat it was. He leaped out of the trailer, foot raised, and delivered a kick to Carter’s chest.

  Carter fell back. Well, he’d wanted a fight before, and now he was getting one. Marcus advanced. Carter thought of feinting, but he was pissed off enough to attack head-on. He jabbed with his left and swung with his right.

  Marcus, probably groggy from being asleep moments ago, wasn’t fast enough. He took both hits to the face and fell to the ground.

  Carter looked down at him and felt grim satisfaction.

  Until Lena jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “You. Go away.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me…what’s your name?”

  “Carter.”

  “Carter.” She said it like a curse word. “Go away, Carter.”

  He didn’t budge. “But why?”

  “Because I don’t like you.” Truth. He could hear it. “You’re violent. You came here and you hit my friend. So run along, now, and pick a fight somewhere else.”

  Well, this hadn’t gone at all like he wanted. But maybe that was for the best. So why linger? He took a few steps back.

  “Fine,” he said, “all right, kitty cat. See you around.”

  He walked away, risking a last glance at the front of the trailer before he rounded out of sight. Lena was on her knees in the fallen pine needles, helping Marcus stand. Well, Carter didn’t like that at all.

  It would take one helluva hit to the head to make that image disappear from his mind. He wondered if Mathers was still at the ring.

  5

  So his name was Carter, the smug grizzly shifter who’d visited her the first night in the Junkyard. Two days had passed, and he hadn’t tried to speak to her again. She told herself that was just fine, because she didn’t want to be friends with him anyway.

  She didn’t want to be friends with him, but she seemed to want to look at him.

  All the freakin’ time.

  Today, she’d found an excuse to wander over to the dump—the section of the Junkyard that looked like a scrap yard, full of old rusty cars and other machinery, as well as random pieces of furniture. Marcus wasn’t far behind her. She’d told him and Kyle both that she didn’t need constant shadows. She wasn’t helpless. But they both continued to act as informal bodyguards. They were free to do what they wanted, she supposed. As free as any of them could be in this place, anyway.

  It was late afternoon, and a truck had pulled up and parked next to the gravel boundary line. Lena stood by the gaping door of an ancient school bus and squinted to make out shapes through the dirty windows. The truck was one of those giant pick-ups with extra wheels on the back, and the rear looked to be filled with ice chests. Lena’s stomach gave a hopeful rumble.

  Carter was shirtless, lifting presumably empty coolers from a nearby pile and setting them on the ground near the gravel boundary. Then he’d push them across. One guy on the other side was unloading ice chests from the back of the truck and then shoving them over the gravel line. A second guy was hauling the empties back up to the truck.

  Lena wondered how the ice chests were distributed. She assumed they were full of food. Would this be some kind of Lord of the Flies situation? The ruler of a warlike faction would be in charge of who ate meat and who didn’t?

  Were there any rulers here? Lena hadn’t discovered anyone claiming the title of alpha.

  While she watched, Carter finished moving the old coolers across the boundary, then he picked up a new one, balanced it over his shoulder, and walked away. His back muscles rippled as he went, and she couldn’t help noticing his ass. It was, like the rest of him, perfectly formed.

  Mathers approached from around a pile of old, smashed-down cars. Carter stopped walking. Lena held her breath and gripped the bus’s doorway. Would Mathers and Carter fight? They stared each other down, then Mathers walked past, picked up an ice chest, and walked away.

  Carter turned sideways, craning his neck until his gaze met Lena’s.

  She sucked in a breath. He knew she was watching him. How long had he known she was here? Embarrassing. She cursed herself for being caught, then flipped off Carter.

  His shoulders shook with laughter, jostling the ice chest as he walked away.

  Ugh. Lena turned around and leaned her back against the side of the bus, disgusted with herself. From this angle, she could see Marcus looking at her, an inscrutable expression on his face.

  “What?” she asked him.

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “It looks like we can go get an ice chest,” Lena said.

  “Yeah. I was talking to one of the other guys, Jase, yesterday. He said each week there’s a new delivery. Half the guys in the Junkyard hate everyone else, but nobody messes with the food. We each get a cooler.”

  Lena’s stomach rumbled again. She, Marcus, and Kyle had been eating fish caught in the lake. Lena hated fish. She’d been tempted to shift to her mountain lion form and hunt for birds or rabbits. The problem with birds were the feathers. And although she was far from being a vegetarian, seeing dead bunnies made her want to cry.

  “Let’s grab ours,” Lena said.

  Before she moved around the bus, one of the delivery guys at the truck shouted, “Hey, Mathers!”

  Lena stopped moving. Regardless what Marcus had heard about people not messing with the food, she’d wait until Mathers was gone, thank you very much. He seemed built from the same mold as Barnum and Mollin—mean.

  Mathers lumbered out of the pile of cars again and spoke to the delivery guy for a couple of minutes. They were quiet enough that she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Once they were done, Mathers returned to whatever rock he lived under, and Lena and Marcus made their way to the ice chests. They each picked one at random and started toward the camp trailer they shared with Kyle.

  “Hey, hold up!” someone called.

  Lena nearly dropped her cooler. Scrambling for a better grip, she looked up. A tall man with darkly tanned skin approached them.

  “Jase,” Marcus said, nodding.

  “Hey,” Jase said to Marcus. He looked at Lena. “You must be Lena. I’m Jase Englender. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “Thanks, you, too.”

  He scrubbed a hand over his face. “So, I’d like to try something tonight. We’ve got all this food—shipped from Gabe Fournier and the Sierra Pride, so it’s going to be good. Markowicz fixed up an old barbecue. I wanted to see if all the misfits in this godforsaken Junkyard could get together for a meal.”

  “All of us,” Lena said, unable to keep the disbelief from her voice, “eating together?”

  “That’s the idea.” Jase sighed. “It’ll probably explode in my face, but I’m asking everyone who comes to promise not to fight for the duration of dinner. You in?”

  Marcus looked at Lena and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged.

  “Sure,” Marcus said.

  “Bring your own meat for the grill, and a side if you can cobble something together. See you guys around sun-down?”

  “Sounds good.” Lena felt a smile creeping onto her lips.

  It would be nice to create a little community out of this group. Maybe some of the gu
ys would ease up on the nightly battles. Even Marcus had joined in with the fights last night, returning to the camp trailer early this morning with a cut over his eyebrow and quickly-fading bruises on his arms and chest. Dumbass. When Lena had asked him why, he’d shaken his head and said, “That’s just what they do here.”

  As she and Marcus hauled their ice chests across the Junkyard, Lena thought maybe life here didn’t have to be about fighting all the time.

  Dusk had fallen over the Junkyard, casting the trees and their branches black and blue like bruises. Lena tossed a package of ribs up and down. Damn, that Gabe Fournier had gone all out with the food supplies. She’d even found angel food cake, strawberries, and whipped cream in her ice chest, so she was bringing dessert to their Junkyard dinner.

  Marcus dug around in his ice chest and found some ribs, too. He didn’t have strawberries or angel food cake or whipped cream, but he did have some pre-made macaroni salad. He held up the plastic tub for Lena to see. “How about this?”

  “Looks great,” she said. “Where’s Kyle?”

  Kyle had shown up with his ice chest a couple of hours ago, then disappeared. He’d been spending a lot of time by himself the past couple of days, and Lena worried he was getting depressed.

  “He’s going to meet us there.”

  “Okay.” She started forward, ribs in one hand, a canvas shopping bag in the other to hold the dessert fixings.

  They walked side by side toward the dump. A picnic in the dump, Lena mused. Unusual, but she was looking forward to it anyway.

  No one was gathered where she’d expected to find them, by the place the delivery had been made. Instead, she and Marcus followed the sounds of talking and the scents of grilling meat a few hundred yards to the left. There, Lena took in the scene, surprised. Several old cars with gleaming hoods sat arranged in a circle around a bonfire. A table of sheet metal, propped up with old crates, stood to one side, laden with several dishes.

  Lena went over to the table to set out the dessert supplies. She pulled the cakes and whipped cream from her bag, then pulled out the giant container of sliced strawberries. A feeling of warmth spread over the back of her neck. Awareness prickled all through her body.