by J. K Harper
Lucky moved in silence behind the shifters, stopping only when he was inches away. He raised his guns to point at Jordan’s head and at the big bear woman’s head and then he drew back the hammers with a sound like fate knocking on a coffin’s lid.
“Don’t anyone move,” Lucky drawled. “These are silver bullets, rune-etched by the hand of Olivous himself to be pure anathema to any creature unlucky enough to catch one. They are mighty expensive, so please don’t go giving me a reason to use them.” He may have said he didn’t want to use them, but the hungry smile and the shine in his eyes sang a different song. Lucky was a killer, through and through. Sebastian hadn’t seen it until now, but it was unmistakable. He’d kept it locked down real tight in town, but here on the lawless edge of the world, Lucky’s truth shone like a beacon.
The man wanted to kill something.
The big bear woman growled loudly, shaking the floorboards and rattling the glass door and windows.
The hippie wolf chick froze, her back to Lucky and her eyes wide with terror. She was a seer—Sebastian would have bet money on that fact. But she hadn’t seen Lucky coming and that had terrified her.
Jordan—Lady Nothing—closed her eyes and turned to Lucky. “You don’t need to shoot, guy. I’m sure we can work this out. This job,” she nodded at the hole in the floor, “has a pretty big price tag. We can cut you in.”
Lucky narrowed his eyes. “You think I’m a thief? Or some low-down Pinkerton who’ll turn his back for money? I have honor, woman. And you have just besmirched it.”
Sebastian’s heart beat nine million times a second. One of the problems with inhabiting a mouse form, he realized, was that mice responded very poorly to stress. They have such tiny, quick pulses. They aren’t fighters—the mouse emergency preparedness bag had only two things in it: running away very fast; and squeaking. Neither of which seemed very useful at the moment.
But, he remembered, he wasn’t a mouse. He could be anything. The trick would be to change in a way that wouldn’t surprise Lucky and make him pop off a shot.
Sebastian focused and chose an unassuming form—a house fly. The world became a kaleidoscopic jumble, but he pushed on, crawled to the edge of the step and flew up over the pit, over the big bear lady’s head, landing lightly on Jordan’s shoulder.
Behind Lucky, out the glass door, a huge golden-blonde she-bear was watching them. Had it followed Lucky? What was it waiting for?
“Fucking. Cowboys,” the woman with the shaved head growled. “Always playing with their toys.”
Lucky’s index fingers stroked the triggers, like he couldn’t wait to pull them.
“Y’know, maybe I should just shoot you all and let the Alpha sort it out.”
“Marcus isn’t even here, numbnuts,” Jordan sighed. “Are you going to leave our bodies in this hole until he gets home? Our people will come looking for us.”
Lucky laughed. “People? You don’t have any people. I know your type. Orphan pack. Barely scraping by. I used to be like you, back in the day. Always running. Always looking for a way to fill my belly and for a soft patch of dirt to sleep on.”
“You’re nothing like us,” Jordan said.
“That’s right. Because I’m the one with the guns.”
“Not for long,” Jordan laughed.
Time slowed down for Sebastian then as several things happened at once. His fly eyes caught every moment of it with ten thousand separate lenses.
The blonde she-bear crashed through the window, charging at Lucky full steam. While the hippie werewolf dove to the ground, the woman with the shaved head knocked the gun pointed at her out of Lucky’s hand. And Lucky fired a bullet, straight at Jordan’s heart.
The sound of the hammer falling, of the propellant igniting, of the bullet exiting the chamber was impossibly loud in the basement room. It deafened Sebastian even as he threw himself at the bullet, to save Jordan’s life. In the space between seconds he changed his skin again, leaving the form of the fly and falling into the shape of a man.
He reached out for the bullet with his hand but missed it, catching it instead with his belly. If it had been a normal bullet it would have bounced off him, ricocheting away to lodge in the ceiling or floor. But it was magic and it ripped into him with a terrible heat, like he was being cooked from the inside out.
He’d saved Jordan’s life, which amazed him, but he’d sacrificed his own, which kind of sucked.
Behind Lucky, the blonde she-bear crashed into him like a rockslide, hurling Lucky into Jordan and Jordan into Sebastian and all three of them into the pit.
Chapter 5
“What the hell were you thinking?” Jordan roared from the bottom of the pit. Above her the blonde she-bear shimmered and turned back into Alexandra.
“I was saving your ass. If your head was still in the game, that cowboy dude would never have sneaked up on you.” Alexandra rolled her eyes and picked up the two guns from where the cowboy dropped them. She cocked back the hammers and aimed them down into the pit at the men. “Nobody move and nobody gets hurt,” she sneered.
“Careful,” Duchess growled. “Magic bullets.”
Alexandra’s eyes went wide. “What? Really? I thought this guy was just some weirdo.”
From the bottom of the pit, Jordan screamed in rage. “I could have been killed!” My baby could have been killed, she added silently.
Everything around her was a jumble. The steamer trunk had cracked open when she and the two guys had fallen on it. Sebastian was holding his belly and whimpering and the cowboy dude was out cold. Getting clocked in the back of the head by a bear will do that to you.
“Why?” Sebastian asked. He lifted his hands away from his naked belly and there was blood everywhere. The stink of it hit Jordan like a fist. It smelled wrong. She’d smelled shifter blood all her life. She was intimately aware of it. She knew how it smelled when someone was injured, when they were giving birth, when they were menstruating. The scent of blood could tell you everything about a shifter. And Sebastian’s blood smelled poisoned. It was syrupy and acrid, like bad molasses.
Jordan couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eyes. He was the father of her baby—timing wise it couldn’t be anyone else—and he was dying because of her.
“Since when are you a shifter?” she asked, fighting back tears. She touched his chest with trembling fingers and he was cold. Too cold.
“It’s a long story.”
“You’ll have to tell it to me later.” Jordan bent down and kissed his forehead, but she still couldn’t look at him. What if she did and saw hatred in his eyes? What if she saw loathing or disappointment or that unfocused confused look that heralded the end? No, she couldn’t look. Better to not know.
“This...this doesn’t feel like I’ll have a later,” Sebastian said, then broke down in a fit of coughs.
From above, Alexandra shouted. “What’s the hold up? Get the thing and let’s get out of here.”
Mazzy leaned over the edge, her arms dangling down into the hole. “So many things broken today. A boy, a girl, a secret, and a box. All shattered.”
“We need to help him. We can’t just let him die,” Jordan growled.
“What’s he to us? We’ve left people to die before,” Alexandra sneered.
“He’s a shifter. Like us. We don’t do this to our kind.”
“He doesn’t smell like a shifter to me,” Alexandra said and then shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Let’s get the thing and get gone. We can call an ambulance after we leave and they can get him medical attention.”
Jordan took a breath and summoned her strength, putting it all into her voice. “I’m your Alpha,” she growled. “And you will do as I say.”
But it didn’t work. She had no focus. Her heart wasn’t in the fight, it was with her unborn child, and it was with Sebastian.
Alexandra narrowed her eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t be Alpha anymore.”
Duchess sighed and walked away from the pit. “Not now. Later.
Fight later.”
Mazzy laughed from deep in her chest. “So much changes, but the war never does. An Alpha must lead. A Beta must follow. But not forever, no. We have no kings. We have no gods. We have but each other and the lives we choose and the lives we grow inside us.”
“What the hell is she talking about?” Alexandra crossed her arms impatiently.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter. Just take these guys out of here. We’ll bring them with us. Our buyer knows things. Maybe he can help?”
“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea and when it blows up in your face, I am going to officially challenge you for Alpha.”
Jordan nodded. “And when everything works out okay in the end, you are going to apologize and get off your high horse. Now get down here and help me lift these guys up.”
* * *
Blaine was a high-end fence. He dealt with mortals when he had to, buying and selling jewelry and art, because it paid the mortgage and it gave him a semi-legitimate front. But also he seemed to genuinely like meeting new people. Blaine had a positivity that Jordan found welcoming, especially as Alexandra grew more and more sour. Had she been spending too much time with him? Had she been neglecting her pack to see her wealthy, sunny, hot boyfriend? Probably.
She’d kept their relationship a secret this whole time. The pack thought he was just another contact, just another pretty face with a job for them to do. But he was so much more. Blaine cooked her delicious food. He rubbed her feet. He listened to her stories. And he’d go down on her for hours if she let him. He was very orally fixated, which was fun at first.
Were their bumps? Of course. But what relationship didn’t have bumps? Blaine didn’t like to talk about himself. He kept his business secret, even from her. His pillow talk was all plans for the future and stupid jokes that made Jordan roll her eyes. He didn’t like to eat around her. He had a thing about food, but he loved to watch her eat. He said he was on a strict paleo protein diet and drank bone marrow smoothies that left a terrible stink in his kitchen.
But the real problem was that she didn’t love him.
Jordan didn’t want to think about her lack of love as they drove to Blaine’s place, but with Sebastian bleeding out in the back of the van and the new life growing inside her, it was hard not to.
“Doesn’t he usually live in L.A.?” Little Katie asked. She was driving and still somehow soaking wet. Her fox gifts let her find the fastest routes between places, but they were rarely the safest paths to travel.
“He was excited about this job,” Jordan said. “He wanted to be near so he could get his hands on the object as soon as possible.” She was in the passenger seat, with the object cradled in her lap. It was a drinking vessel, carved from obsidian and standing roughly two feet tall. It had two handles on either side that were thin and strong. Strange runes were etched in the sides of the container, covering every inch of the surface like spider webs. Holding it made Jordan feel cold and hungry, but she didn’t trust it with anyone else.
“What’s it say, Mazz?” Duchess asked from the back of the van. She was holding the cowboy’s guns and keeping watch with a scary intensity.
Mazzy shook her head. “The language is old and bloody and the spirits shriek when they see it. It is evil, whatever it is. It does not belong in this world. But what to do with it? If we hurled it into the sea, it would poison the waters. If it was buried in the wet cement of a new building, it would crack the foundation and topple the house. It is not meant for this world.”
Sebastian’s head was in Mazzy’s lap. Her long, thin fingers stroked his pretty face, smoothing his hair over and over again. He was unconscious, mercifully so. Jordan couldn’t bear to look at him. If he died, what would she tell her baby? If he survived, what could she tell him? “I’m sorry you almost died, but I really needed to rob your house so I could afford an OBGYN and a place to raise my kid.” No, no. That would never work. She’d get him patched up with Blaine’s magical knowledge and send him back home and stay the hell away from Bearfield for ever and ever.
“It might not be meant for this world, but it’s worth a million each, ladies. Let’s not lose sight of the prize.” Alexandra was eerily chipper, probably because she was looking forward to wrestling the Alpha position away from Jordan. Or maybe it was the payday she was looking forward to.
“What are you going to spend your share on?” Jordan asked, trying to keep the conversation as far from death and doom as possible.
“My grandmama,” Duchess rumbled. “She needs a new home. She deserves comfort. She’s a mortal and only has a few years left.”
“The spirits have some investment advice for me,” Mazzy laughed and no one could tell if she was joking or not.
“I think I’ll buy something awesome,” Little Katie squealed. “Like a really fast red car or the world’s coolest treehouse.”
“Picture me,” Alexandra said in a theatrical voice, “on a beach, in Mexico. One of those resorts with hot guys in shorts and unlimited drinks served in pineapples. Just taking in the sun, reading trashy novels, getting laid whenever I want. Just doing that until I get bored or until Winter is over.”
“Okay,” Katie interrupted. “I want in on that plan. Drinks? Boys? Pools? I am so there.”
The van’s tires squealed as they took the coastal road too fast. The sky was clear and cold. The moonlight sparkled off falling snow.
“How is there snow?” Jordan asked. “This is California.”
“A deal was struck with the Witch of the Winter,” Mazzy said. “She brings snow to Bearfield every Christmas and Bearfield brings her joy and warmth for one night.”
Jordan glanced at the dashboard clock. “It’s after midnight. It’s Christmas now.” She switched on the radio and a choir sang Silent Night as she fought back tears.
“What about you, boss?” Duchess asked. “You never said what you’d do with the money.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Mazzy said. “She’ll take care of her baby.”
Katie nearly drove off the road.
Duchess did a double take.
Mazzy looked around, surprised that no one else had realized Jordan was pregnant.
And in the mirror, Alexandra gloated.
Jordan closed her eyes, waiting for the attack to come.
“Pregnant? So that’s why you pulled this risky big score. One last job, huh? One last job and then you ditch your pack and go off to raise your cub in some shithole small town like the one you grew up in?”
“No. Never like that,” Jordan said. “My cub deserves better than Mercy Springs.”
“Were you ever going to tell us? Or were you just going to ghost?” Alexandra asked.
“After the score. Maybe. I hadn’t decided yet.”
“Well, you can’t be Alpha. Not anymore. You aren’t putting pack first, you’re putting your baby first. That’s no way to lead.” Alexandra raised one hand, like she was getting the attention of a teacher in class. “I hereby declare myself Alpha.”
“No, you don’t,” Jordan growled. “After the job—after we get paid—I’ll step aside. The four of you can decide then who is Alpha.”
“Oh, oh!” Katie laughed. “Can it be me? I have so many awesome ideas for jobs we can pull and like only a third of them involve candy stores this time.”
“You can’t just leave,” Alexandra growled back. “You’re pack. When there’s a new Alpha, you’ll do what the Alpha says. You and your cub.”
“Back the fuck off,” Jordan said, meeting Alexandra’s gaze in the rearview mirror. “Don’t grab too hard, you thirsty bitch, or it’ll all break in your grasp.”
Fire flashed in Alexandra’s eyes and for a moment Jordan thought she was going to bear out right there in the van. But Katie pulled into a coastal hotel’s parking lot at seventy miles an hour, breaking hard and spinning the van up onto two wheels before hurling it into a parking space. When she set the break and turned off the engine, the van almost seemed to weep with relief.
Chapter 6
A baby. That’s what she said. A baby. And in his gut, bullet-riddled as it may have been, Sebastian knew it was his.
He was conscious, if only just. His body desperately wanted to shift into something that could escape the pain but he had to resist. Lucky’s bullet was still inside him and if he changed his skin, there was every likelihood the bullet would stay inside him, ripping him up more. Maybe if he changed into something truly enormous it wouldn’t be a problem. Could one little bullet kill a blue whale? But there was no room to try and there was every likelihood that yes, one little bullet could kill a whale, if that bullet was silver and the whale was a shifter and the bullet was dipped in crazy cowboy magic.
A baby. He was going to be a father. How would that even work? It didn’t matter, if he survived the night he would do whatever it took to take care of the kid. And Jordan. He’d leave Bearfield if she wanted to. He’d go on the run, go into hiding. He didn’t want to live the outlaw life, but if it meant being close to her and being able to see his child, he’d do it. He’d do anything.
Life came into immediate sharp focus for Sebastian.
Would the kid be a shifter? Would it be mortal? Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it inherit Jordan’s gorgeous skin or Sebastian’s height? He wanted to scream with joy. He wanted to call his father and give him the good news.
They were at the edge of Bearfield territory, at one of the rinky dink travel lodges on the coast and Sebastian wanted to tell the whole world how lucky he was, which is when he passed out.
* * *
When he awoke, it was in a darkened hotel room. Jordan was speaking to a man. The man had his hands on her hips in a not professional way. Boyfriend, Sebastian immediately understood.
“Can we turn the lights on? You know how I feel about the dark,” she was saying.
“Sure, of course, my dear,” the man said, and Sebastian hated him. Even before the lights came on and he saw the guy’s expensive suit and perfect hair and perfect teeth and perfect skin, he hated him. It was only worse when the lights came on. He was tall and handsome and slick and rich and had every advantage that Sebastian didn’t. If this was his competition for Jordan’s heart, he was going to lose.