by Kaye Draper
She stood and waddled over into my space, her hands on her hips. “Do you know my role in all this?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. And I didn’t really care. “Breeder?” I asked with a smirk.
She stomped one delicate foot and narrowed her eyes at me. “I know how I look, Sam. How I sound. You aren’t the only one who thinks femininity is weak. But that just makes it easy to do my job while everyone overlooks me.” She smirked at me. “Sure, I’m just Theo’s relative. I probably just hang on his coat tails and make him tea, right?” She huffed a laugh. “I’m his eyes and ears, idiot. I see and hear things that would never reach him otherwise. And I tell him when he’s being a stupid ass, so he’ll make better decisions.”
I arched a brow at her. “I still don’t care.”
She huffed. “I’m about to have a baby, Sam. I’ve only just been reunited with my exiled husband. I’ll have a child to look after. I’m done playing politics. And Theo will need someone with him who has his back.”
I laughed and turned away to finish packing up stuff for my trip out to see Josie. “Good luck finding someone to put up with his naïve, arrogant ass.”
She sighed. “Sam. What he’s asking of you and what I do are completely different things. But in some ways, they’re the same. You would take over some of my role. You know about life outside of the entitled, aristocratic circles most politicians move in. You can advise him on real-world things—things to do with the day-to-day life of fiends and curs, with how humans interact with them in the streets and businesses that keep this town running.” She rolled her eyes heavenward as if asking for assistance from a higher power—whether to help her deal with Theo, or deal with me, I wasn’t quite sure. “He’s going to be unpopular. He’s going to be the target of a lot of anger and fear. He’ll need someone with him who knows how to protect him. Someone who has no problem getting their hands dirty and being his weapon when needed. Jules and his personal guard can do a lot—but they aren’t you. They don’t have Theo’s attention in quite the same way you do. And they don’t have your brand of blunt, brutal honesty or your complete disrespect for rules when things get rough.”
I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath. Sure, part of me wondered what that would be like—to work in a nice, clean, comfortable mansion most of my days, rather than haunting the hot, barren, monster-filled wastes. To be able to communicate to someone in power about all the injustices that I’d experienced my entire life simply because of the DNA I was born with. Maybe I could make a difference, serve some actual purpose. I laughed bitterly to myself. Right. Now I sounded exactly as naive and delusional as Theo.
“You’re barking up the wrong tree, lady,” I told Ada, retrieving my knife sheath from the workbench and strapping it on. You could never be too careful with my damned shifter kin.
Ada sighed. “You’re sure I can’t change your mind? He needs you, Sam. And as annoying as he can be, Theo’s a good man. He’ll do great things for this city.”
I ignored the weird pressure in my chest and shook my head. “Go find some other hunter to proposition. I couldn’t give a fuck less if this city burns to the ground. All I want to do is kill monsters and get paid.”
She deflated. “We both know that’s not true. But I suppose I can’t force you. Even though we both know I’m right.” She turned away to shuffle the papers back into the folder and bind it all back up with that blood red elastic. “Take care of yourself, Sam.” Then she waddled to the door and out of my life. Thank fuck.
“Humans are so stupid,” I muttered to myself.
But curs who passed up the opportunity to prove to the human rulers that we weren’t all monsters? They might be even stupider….
Chapter 3
Ada had barely left, and I was just opening the door to climb behind the wheel of the Jeep, when the wards chimed, and the knocking started up again.
I gave serious consideration to installing some land mines by the front door.
Getting out of the Jeep, I went to glare at the monitors. A teenage girl with the badge of a city courier emblazoned on her bland uniform shirt stood there, checking her watch and looking impatient. Since the rift, cell phones were unreliable and ungodly expensive. Landlines were only good for calls between residents, and getting them serviced when there was a problem was a pain in the ass, so not everyone bothered with them. I didn’t like having my contact information listed where just anyone could find it, and I just didn’t see the need for a phone. The city had couriers to relay any urgent messages—usually from government entities, the hunter association, the police, or hospitals. The courier standing at my front door couldn’t mean anything good.
I strode over and unlocked the door, hoping it was just an urgent call for hunters because of some dangerous fiend sighting. Of course, I knew better. My life was never that easy.
The courier nodded to me, bouncing on her toes, clearly impatient to get going so she could deliver the rest of the letters she had stuffed in the big messenger bag that was slung over her shoulder. “Samantha Forrest?” She asked, chomping on a big wad of bubble gum. Where she got the stuff, I had no idea. Maybe the courier division paid their young employees in candy.
“That’s me,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
She gave me a sympathetic look. No one liked couriers. Mostly because they usually came bearing bad news—like your city taxes were overdue, or the police needed a word with you about a dead body or something. She was probably used to getting attitude from everyone she met.
She passed me an envelope and pulled out an old, battered tablet device that only the government could possibly afford to maintain. Tapping the screen, she read in a bored tone. “Letter delivered from Westhold community hospital. Please sign here to acknowledge you’ve received the document.” She held out the tablet for my signature.
I looked at the envelope to make sure the address matched. “Sure.” Then I awkwardly signed the tablet screen with my finger.
The courier stuffed the device back in her bag. “Tips are optional,” she reminded me, pausing to blow a bubble with her gum.
I arched a brow at her. “Okay. Here’s a tip.” I smiled sarcastically, showing her my fangs. “For all you know, I eat little girls like you for lunch.” I nodded at the taser on her belt. “Keep that in your hand when you’re working. By the time you know there’s trouble, you’d never be able to get to it in time.”
Her eyebrows went up to her hairline and she held out a hand.
I narrowed my eyes and she shrugged. “Worth a try.”
I shook my head and shut the door as she bounced away to her next delivery. Human kids were so…weirdly cheery, even in their snarkiness. What would it be like to grow up in a place where your only worry was finishing up your boring delivery job, getting a few tips, and blowing your paycheck on lip gloss or cheap hand-printed comics? My childhood certainly hadn’t been that easy. When I was her age, I was trying my best not to get beaten or molested on a daily basis, and I think I’d already killed a few fiends with my bare hands.
And…all of this stupid reflection was just a way to distract myself from the fact that I was holding an urgent message from the hospital. I sighed. Someone was hurt or dead. And I knew very few people who would list me as their emergency contact.
Taking a bracing breath, I extended one short claw and slipped it inside the envelop flap, slitting the cheap paper open. My eyes skimmed the letter and I swore. “Just fucking great.”
My heart had leapt up into my throat when I saw Josie’s name. But it calmed again when I realized she was okay. She’d had a fall and broke her leg. She had managed to get to the hospital somehow—probably bribed someone in the forest to bring her. But she needed me to come pick her up and make sure she got home oaky.
And pay her bill.
I stared at the letter for a minute before I crumpled it up and threw it into a garbage bin in the corner of the garage. So much for all the money I’d earned by being Theo’s err
and boy. I had put a lot of that into paying rent for me and Josie and stocking us up with food, gasoline, and necessities. What I had left in my savings was about to go to fucking Westhold community hospital. The greedy fuckers. They were probably charging Josie twice what they would for a human.
I sighed and got in the Jeep. I guess once I got Josie settled, I’d be headed to the association to see if there were any high-level (and therefore high-paying) contracts available. It was stupid of me to look forward to something like time off anyway. I had to hunt just to stay afloat. That was the way it had always been. It was the way it would always be. That was just how things were.
Navigating the biased hospital system and paying off Josie’s balance was a real treat, let me tell you. By the time I was done with that, I had used up every last bit of my very limited patience.
I crossed my arms and glared down at Josie, who was reclining in a narrow hospital bed in a shared room, looking old and pale, one leg stuck out at an odd angle so she wouldn’t disrupt the healing of the damned metal rod they’d had to implant in her femur. “What happened?” I demanded.
She huffed. “I tripped going down the back stairs. Getting clumsy in my old age.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Why did you trip?”
She shrugged and looked away. “Uneven step.”
I snorted. “No, Josie. It wasn’t an uneven fucking step, you stubborn old cow. You can’t see! You fucking tripped and broke your hip because you’re going blind!”
I regretted my frustrated outburst the moment the words left my mouth. I was right—I knew it, and Josie knew it. But she had been in denial about her vision and her need for help for a long time now. Me throwing it in her face wasn’t going to magically make her see the light. In fact, it would probably have the opposite effect.
She gave me a mutinous look. “Oh go to hell, you know-it-all kitten.”
I didn’t relent with the glare, even when I realized her eyes were a little shinier than usual as she fought back tears. “Maybe now you’ll listen to me, you senile old cat.”
She shifted awkwardly, sliding to the edge of the bed and gripping the walker that had been provided to help her keep weight off her healing leg. “I’m fine. I just need a ride home.”
I rolled my eyes and went to help her stand, gripping the waistband of her pants to keep her from tipping over. “Right. And who’s gonna to take care of you once you get home? When are you going to just come live with me? We can build you a little room of your own off the garage. You’ll be warm and safe. No stairs required.” Maybe it was a good thing I couldn’t seem to get up the nerve to ask Fin and Em to move in.
Josie had taken care of me all my life. It only made sense that I’d take care of her too. Except she was a shifter. She might not be able to shift, but she didn’t have my human genes. Even if she was an outcast from the pack, she was still determined to stay with her kind, rather than try to get by in a human city.
“Athena will stay with me until I can get around better. Stop fussing, Sam.”
Like I needed a reminder that the old coot had taken Angel’s mother for a lover. I grumbled about stubborn, stupid, hard-headed shifters with bad tastes as I bustled her out of the hospital and into the Jeep. At least she was at Westhold Community. It was the crappier of the two hospitals in town, but they served curs. I’d gotten Josie a special license years ago that allowed her to get services in town. It had been a pain in the ass trying to convince the human officials that she was a cur. But she was so defective she was practically a cur. In the end I’d won out. I could be more than a bit stubborn when it came to the one person I considered family.
A little voice in the back of my head told me that Theo might listen, if I told him about how hard it was for regular, harmless curs and the odd humanoid fiend to get access to basic medical care. Hell, he’d offered to take care of Josie for me numerous times, if I’d come work for him. But I shoved that damned voice down and locked it away. Theo was human. He might want to make a difference, but I doubted he was going to get very far with his aspirations, and I was sure the rights of curs and fiends would get pushed to the bottom of his agenda as soon as he took office. Plus, having him take care of Josie would make us both dependent on him. And I didn’t depend on other people. Especially humans.
When we reached the cabin, I pulled a protesting Josie into my arms and carried her up the front steps. “I’m not some damned baby!” she groused, her weathered face flushing as she looped her arms around my neck in a bridal carry.
I snorted, hefting her up higher in my arms to illustrate my point. “You don’t have to tell me that. If I wasn’t half shifter, your fat ass would just have to live outside until you could climb the steps.”
She snarled at me, but it was all bluster. I was perfectly strong enough to carry her, and she was likely to bust her other hip trying to get up the steps on her own. I set her down and reached for the door, pausing when I saw there was a letter shoved into the doorjamb. I yanked the paper free and glanced at it, dancing away from Josie when she tried to take it from me.
My brows pulled together. My fucking day just got better and better. I wadded up the paper and threw it over my shoulder, where it landed on the other side of the road, near the edge of the forest. Then I opened the door and got Josie her walker.
“What did they want?” she demanded as she shuffled inside, slowly maneuvering the walker over the uneven wood floors and around the tight spaces of her little cabin. Her eyesight might be failing, but she didn’t need to read the letter to know who it was from. The only communication Josie ever got was from the pack. Usually when it was time to pay “rent” to allow the defective shifter to continue to live on their land.
I shrugged. “Alpha Baghinder just wants his face rearranged. I’ll handle it.”
Josie sighed, and for once she looked her age, slightly bent over her walker, her shoulders drooping. “It’s the money, isn’t it? I knew when we paid the rent up front, they’d get greedy.”
I pointed her to a chair. “I’ll handle it. But this is just one more reason you need to leave the pack lands, Josie. They’ll never see you as one of them. You’re just a handy source of income for them. And they’ll eventually raise the extortion price so high you can’t pay it. Then what? You know they’ll probably use the excuse to cull you.”
Sure, she was a handy source of income. But the shifter pack was a bunch of bloodthirsty animals at heart. They’d eventually give up the money for a nice, bloody public hunt.
I sighed. “I brought out a chainsaw. I’ll go get some wood cut. Then I’m going to have a word with your damned alpha.” Maybe I’d take the chainsaw with me for that too.
Josie turned her sad eyes on me. “Don’t get yourself killed over me, Sam. And don’t you dare let them make you beg. Your days of doing that are over.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “Trust me,” I said darkly. “No one knows that better than me.”
Chapter 4
Alpha Baghinder’s bright shifter eyes watched me like the predator he was. I met his gaze, refusing to cower or look away the way many of the lesser cats here would in his presence. The big alpha made no attempt to pretend to be human. Thick twists of ropey muscle were visible all across his naked, inhumanly white torso, and the black tiger stripes tattooed on his skin at his coming of age rippled in his arms and chest. He tilted his head, movements filled with the slow grace of a stalking monster. “Samantha,” he growled, those glowing eyes raking over my body from head to toe and back again. “The old cat has returned to her burrow, then.”
Burrow. Like a rabbit’s burrow. Because Josie wasn’t a shifter. She was prey.
I forced myself to keep my arms loose at my sides, my shoulders down and relaxed, even though tension crawled through me like a hundred hungry parasites. I could feel the eyes of the rest of the monsters on me. Most of the alpha’s cronies were here, lounging indolently as they feasted on the meat and produce they hoarded from the pack lands. The best o
f everything went to the strongest in the pack. Everyone else got scraps. And outcasts like Josie? They got nothing. Except maybe permission to live.
I kept my spine straight, refusing to bow under the poisonous glares that burned into me.
“You raised the rent again,” I said in a flat, even tone, my eyes still on Baghinder.
The big shifter lifted a leg bone of some sort and tore off a mouthful of meat. His glowing eyes never left mine as he chewed. “The hag is lucky she hasn’t been culled.” One corner of his mouth curled upward in a sneer as he wiped grease off his white and black stubbled face with the back of his hand. “Especially with all she’s cost this pack.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “She costs you nothing.” I gestured at the platters of food that covered the long, rough-hewn wood table, the fire that burned in the big hearth of the pack meeting hall, and the exposed timbers that arched overhead, holding up the roof. “You give her nothing. She doesn’t eat your food, or use your resources. She maintains her own home. And yet you try to fucking bleed her dry.” I crossed my arms over my chest and planted my feet, lifting my chin in challenge. “Are you so desperate to prove your strength that you pick on defenseless old females?”
A low growl rumbled from the big man’s chest and he shoved his plate aside, leaning forward to glare at me across the table. “It’s the bitch’s bad decisions that cost us so much,” he said in a low voice. “It’s her insistence on sheltering you that put her in this position, cur.”
I clenched my teeth. They were punishing Josie because of me. Of course they were.
“It’s not Josie’s fault she had to do what no one else in this damned pack had the balls to do. That she’s the only one with a fucking shred of decency.”
Someone off to the side scoffed, laughing at the idea of a fiend shifter caring about something like decency. Baghinder just smiled, slow and mean. “No. Your queen did exactly as she should have. She tried to rid the pack of the drain that her stupidity in mating with a human would cost us. Josie was selfish to interfere with the natural order of things.”