The Shifter King (The Kings Book 10)

by Heather Killough-Walden

  The Shifter King

  Book 10 in the Big Bad Wolf spinoff series, The Kings

  by Heather Killough-Walden

  Copyright 2016 Heather Killough-Walden

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  Heather Killough-Walden Reading List

  The Lost Angels series:

  Always Angel (eBook-only introductory novella)

  Avenger's Angel

  Messenger's Angel

  Death's Angel

  Warrior's Angel

  Samael

  The October Trilogy:

  Sam I Am

  Secretly Sam

  Suddenly Sam

  Neverland Series:

  Forever Neverland

  Beyond Neverland

  The Big Bad Wolf series:

  The Heat

  The Strip

  The Spell

  The Hunt

  The Big Bad Wolf Romance Compilation (all four books together, in proper chronological order)

  The Kings - A Big Bad Wolf spinoff series:

  (in proper order so far)

  The Vampire King

  The Phantom King

  The Warlock King

  The Goblin King

  The Seelie King

  The Unseelie King

  The Shadow King

  The Winter King

  The Demon King

  The Shifter King

  (future The Kings books TBA; 13 total)

  The Chosen Soul Trilogy:

  The Chosen Soul

  Drake of Tanith

  Queen of Abaddon

  Redeemer (stand-alone)

  Hell Bent (stand-alone)

  Vampire, Vampire (stand-alone)

  A Sinister Game (stand-alone)

  The Third Kiss: Dorian's Dream (stand-alone)

  Note: The Lost Angels series (not including Always Angel, Warrior’s Angel and Samael) and the Big Bad Wolf series are available in print and eBook format. All other HKW books are currently eBook-only.

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  “Chess is a sport. A violent sport.”

  - Marcel Duchamp

  Acknowledgements

  This is long overdue. There are some people I continually turn to in my life, and for some (stupid) reason, I usually neglect to bring attention to the help they give. It deserves credit – a lot of it – and so do they.

  So here goes.

  Viviana, I seriously don’t know what I would do without you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything you do for me. You do it selflessly. You do it without expectation. You do it because – well, honestly, I just have no idea why the hell you do it. I think because you’re just a genuinely good person. A rare entity worth more than platinum. And I just love you for it. Thank you.

  Cherie, you are my guardian angel. You always have my back. You’re like the secret beautiful monster standing behind me giving people the stink eye: “You wanna hurt Heather?” you smile, just before you change. “Just know you’ll deal with me right afterwards,” comes the threatening growl. LOL Thank you for being there and being beautiful and then scary, and for being wonderful.

  Mary, few in my life have managed to get past my mile-high walls and ten-foot-thick barriers of self-doubt in order to plant seeds of hope in my mind when I’ve turned it into a hopeless drought of perceived worthlessness. But you’re one of those people. Precious. I honestly would have given up several times by now if not for your encouragement. Thank you.

  Ivy, thank you for being my smile. Every dark day has a ray of moonlight (so much better than sunlight) in it thanks to you. It’s friendships like ours that make me wish transport magic was a real thing.

  Sarah, I have never been able to print your name before. But now I am going to say it. I am going to write it. I am going to scream it from mountaintops. You are my reason. Your hugs are my lighthouse in the storm, your laughter the foghorn. You guide me to sanity, to fruition. Thank you so much for being you. I love you more than life. And I always will.

  Eric, same goes for you. You great big lug. xoxo

  “Never run from the beast. He’ll only follow faster.”

  - proverb taught to shifter children

  Introduction

  He’d known what she was the moment he’d caught her scent all those years ago. It was that sweet something that not only no human has, but that no other kind of shifter possesses either. It’s so very different from everything else, it’s like water to chocolate – which just happened to be the movie his Spanish teacher was making the class watch that fateful, life-changing day. Como Agua Para Chocolate, that was the one.

  He may have been the only student in his senior Spanish class who could smell the hangover on their teacher’s breath, but he knew he wasn’t the only person sitting in the room who guessed Mrs. Moreno was making them watch the movie because she couldn’t bear to talk. That pain was written all over her face. It was an expression that the years had honed him to recognize even in the slightest, but it so happened that human beings were pretty good at recognizing it too. It was a survival trait.

  The movie rambled on in the background of his mind and he paid very little attention to it. He’d seen it before, after all. He also spoke fluent Spanish. Not that he would let his teacher or the class in on that secret. As far as Mrs. Moreno and the entirety of the school and its officials were concerned, Jack Colton was an eighteen year old boy born in Chicago but transplanted to and raised in a smaller town at a very young age. He was fairly good at math, exceedingly good at history, and passable at everything else.

  In reality? He was a hell of a lot more.

  Which was something he was pondering passively as that movie played on and the students around him either doodled or passed notes or whatever it was they did before smart phones.

  He remembered that at that moment, he’d been considering moving on. The school visit had been unfruitful. What he was looking for wasn’t there. And he may have been long-lived, but he wasn’t immortal. He’d felt he was wasting time. Young time. Young time was worth so much more than old time, and the ironic thing was, it normally went unappreciated until a person was too old to possess it any longer – when a person was well into their old time.

  Jack wouldn’t be young forever. And neither would she. So he’d decided he would “check out” of the school that night and move on to another town, another school, keep looking and keep hoping.

  And then, so suddenly he thought he was imagining it, that scent wafted in, faint and sweet and absolutely, positively perfect.

  Colton recalled that he’d been startled. Shocked might have been a better description of his reaction. He remembered that he’d straightened in his desk and his head had jerked up and his eyes had zeroed in with unnatural ability as a young girl passed nervously by the open door of the classroom.

  He felt his pupils expand as if he were honing in on prey. And that was exactly what he was doing.

  He fought the urge to get up then and there and run after her.
This was the chance he’d been waiting for. She was what he’d been waiting for. She was why he’d moved from city to city to town to town and crossed an entire ocean.

  He had to do this right. He couldn’t screw this up. He was only going to get one chance to meet her for the first time, and first impressions were everything, weren’t they?

  She was alone in the hall and he’d never seen her before, so obviously she was new to the school. Even newer than he was. He could use that to his advantage. It might give him the leverage he needed to get in close. This might actually work – if he could keep his head around her.

  Which was something Colton remembered thinking he might not be able to do. Because even long after she’d passed by, her scent wafted into the classroom and wound around him like tendrils of cool silk or soft hair. They may as well have been steel chains wrapped in velvet for the way they captured him. He could almost feel their weight slide around his wrists and ankles, taking him prisoner.

  The man who went by Jack Colton now ran his hand over his face at that distant memory. His fingers brushed past the eye patch he’d worn for the last twenty years. Leather, hard, black and cold. It was a permanent fixture on his handsome face.

  It didn’t seem to bother women any. Amazing creatures capable of seeing past scars, they kept him company in his bed regardless of the fact that he had but one ice blue eye. And yet Colton left them every morning and moved out into the streets and the waiting world they connected – and continued the hunt he’d been on for the last two decades.

  He’d almost had her once. But she slipped away… and took his eye with her.

  Strange that it hadn’t hampered his resolve, but hardened it. Colton would not cease looking, would not stop hunting – until he found her again.

  Strengthened in this resolve, his mind focused on possible, sweeter futures, the tall, handsome man with the single ice blue eye moved past the gated entrance to his apartment complex and stepped out into the steaming exhaust of a taxi cab on a busy street in downtown Chicago in the middle of a cold autumn night.

  Prologue

  Diary entry, Friday August 23, 1991

  New School. Smaller than the last one. Everyone knows everyone else and there are cliques everywhere. It’s nothing I’m not used to, but….

  You know that feeling you get when you look up and they’re watching you and you know they’re judging you and it’s like dry ice on the skin? And then you think, “Fuck you. Fuck all of you. You don’t know me. You don’t know where I’m from or what I’ve been through and if you did, you’d probably find a way to make fun of me for it instead of understanding. Maybe I should just do it. Maybe I should just show you my fangs and then you’d be scared and you would have a reason for judging me.”

  Okay, maybe you don’t think that last bit. Maybe that’s only me. Because of what I am.

  I guess if you’re just a human, you might think something similar though. Something like, “Maybe I should just show you my .38, and then you’d be scared.” I bet a lot of human people think things like that. After a point. When they start to break.

  Human people. That’s redundant, isn’t it? Oh well. It’s my diary.

  *****

  Diary entry, Monday August 26, 1991

  I miss mom and dad. Mostly dad. In my dreams, I keep smelling smoke and I wake up and I’m scared the house is on fire, but Aunt Faye says it’s just post traumatic stress disorder… The weekend was boring except for that. Oh, and one other thing. Saturday night, I caught a glimpse of him across the park from the new house. Does he live around me? I wondered that all weekend after I saw him. Would the fates actually take it upon themselves to smile on me that way for once?

  See, there’s this guy at the new school. His name is Colton, or at least that’s what everyone calls him. I’ve literally been too afraid to ask anyone what his whole name is, and I don’t have him in any of my classes because he’s a senior and I’m a sophomore. I don’t know anyone well enough to ask anyway.

  He’s lanky. I think that’s the “author’s” term for a body like his. Tall and thin, but sort of wiry, like he’d be really strong if he got into a fight. He’s got these eyes that look like God ran out of paint when he was working on Colton’s face. They’re blue, but blue like ice. You can tell when he’s upset, because his pupils get small, just like everyone’s do. But with him, you can really see it because of all that light blue. It looks intense. I think he must be upset a lot; he always looks serious, like he’s thinking really hard. I wonder what about?

  I’ve only been at Marwick High two days, but it was long enough for me to figure out that we pass each other in the halls between fourth and fifth period. I kind of want to just hang out against the lockers and wait for him to pass so I can get a better look at him, but we only have five minutes to get to our lockers, put our books away, get our new ones out, and get across the school to our next period. There’s no time. School’s way of controlling us.

  Besides, watching him would make me a stalker, right? It’s bad enough I am what I am. A monster who also stalks people would be the icing on the creep cake.

  *****

  Diary entry, Thursday August 29, 1991

  I’m wondering if I really saw what I think I saw this afternoon. I could be wrong. Maybe it was wishful thinking. But during passing period, like usual, I walked by Colton as we made our separate ways to class. But this time, he looked up and our eyes met.

  I watched his pupils expand. It was so fast. They just got so big, as if they were zeroing in on me and he was only seeing me – just me, in the whole universe. Or at least the whole school.

  I know how I sound. But why would I brag to my own diary? I’m telling you… he noticed me. Me. Short, not stick-thin, plain brown haired, plain brown eyed me.

  I wonder why?

  *****

  Diary entry, Saturday August 31, 1991

  He was there again. In fact, yep. I just peeked out from behind my curtains and there he still is. I don’t think he can see me seeing him.

  When I saw him earlier, I was taking out the trash. He was skateboarding by and didn’t appear to notice me. But now he’s watching the house.

  I feel funny inside. My stomach feels strange.

  *****

  Diary entry, Wednesday September 4, 1991

  Okay, I’m thinking it’s no longer my imagination. I’ve seen him too much in the last few days. He’s always there. I’m not just dreaming, am I? Am I crazy and just acting out some kind of sick fantasy?

  No. I just peeked out my window. I kept the slats almost completely closed and squinted between them. He’s standing on the other side of the park across the street from my house. I recognize his outline, but it’s more than that. I can feel him there too.

  Ever since we locked eyes last week, it’s like I know when he’s around. I can sense it. And he’s around all the time. We only used to pass between fourth and fifth, but now I see him between first and second… second and third. I’m not kidding. I don’t know.

  Why does this bother me? Why am I making such a big deal about it? He hasn’t talked to me or anything. He hasn’t even smiled at me.

  I think anyone else in my position would be thrilled or excited. And maybe they wouldn’t be as awkward about it as me. Maybe he’s trying to get up the courage to talk to me or something and I’m sending horrid “go away” signals. After all, I haven’t smiled at him either. I don’t like smiling. I’m always afraid my fangs will be out and I won’t remember it or realize it and I won’t hide them in time… and people will see.

  And then we’ll have to move again.

  Anyway it’s not that I’m not excited, it’s just that the weird feeling I had before is still there. That strange uneasiness in my stomach. I feel unsettled. And the more I see him, the more I feel that way.

  Ugh. I just rolled my eyes. I’m so stupid. It’s probably adolescent hormones or something. Aunt Faye is always talking about those. She wonders if my kind get them worse than
other people even. She and my uncle aren’t like my parents… they’re not shifters. So maybe I do. Maybe I am. I’m probably making all of this up. Colton is probably still way out of my league and I’m dreaming.

  *****

  Diary Entry, Friday September 6, 1991

  Oh God, what… what am I going to do?

  I just fucking ran away. I actually ran away! Oh my God!

  I took everything that means anything to me and ran. I have my dad’s jacket and my mom’s locket and my diary. I packed two changes of undies. I’m lucky that what I’m wearing changes with me when I change. I shifted and my backpack shifted with me. I went as fast as my new body would take me. I just ran with everything I had. I should still be running probably. I feel like I’m in a nightmare, one of those where you can never get far enough away. Turn after turn, block after block, and you would have lost the bad guy for sure in real life. But in the nightmare, they wind up in front of you and you run right into them.

  I feel like that now. I’m scared that’s going to happen. And it doesn’t make any sense.

  I think I’m several towns away from Marefield, because I don’t recognize this place, and my hands hurt. They’re scraped up. It’s harder to hold my pen. I covered too much ground when I was running. Hours and hours, I just went. I’m going to feel this tomorrow.

  I’m sitting on a bench in a park now and the sun is just coming up. There’s a homeless woman sitting across from me. They make these benches uncomfortable to lay down on so homeless people won’t sleep on them. But she just set up camp a few feet away.

  She’s eating sugar packets and giving a lecture on etymology. At least, that’s what it sounds like.

  I just had to skip all those lines above this in the diary because they’re smeared and wet. My pen will blur if I write on them. I can’t stop crying. I’m shaking now too. I’d be surprised if I can read this later.