by Bella Falls
The one Dash called Trey struggled to be set free and gasped out his words. “Let…me go.” With a twist and a grunt, he planted his foot against Dash’s torso and kicked, breaking free. He held up his hands in front of him to stop another attack. “Give me a chance to answer.”
The dark figure on the other side of the dumpster rose with a rolling growl. He shook himself off and cursed at Dash, promising to end his life. I looked around me for anything I could use to beat him with. A stick or broken bottle at least. Unfortunately, Lucky was too fussy of a leprechaun to allow much mess around his bar. My magic would have to be enough, but the second I used it on either one of the guys, I would become a target for the other.
“Cool it, Butch, and keep your wolf in check,” Trey demanded. “No point in making a scene. Let me talk to Dash first. Go back inside and finish your beer.”
The hulking shadow in front of me curled his hands into fists. “He has no right to give us orders. He ain’t our alpha. We ain’t got one anymore, remember?”
So they were both shifters like Dash? A smart girl would avoid trouble and run from the scene to get help. But I wanted to know more. Needed to hear what this Trey had to say and why Dash knew him. I kept my spell phone at the ready just in case but stayed hidden to listen.
Trey’s eyes flashed a color similar to Dash’s. “Maybe not now. But he used to be mine, and I owe him. I’ll be fine.”
“I can’t leave you here alone with him,” complained Butch.
Dash lifted the corner of his lips with another snarl. “What if I promise not to harm a hair on his pretty head until he’s done talkin’? Alpha’s honor.”
Trey waved his friend off. “Beat it, Butch. I’ll come get you when I’m done.”
The big guy turned in my direction to leave, and my stomach dropped. I suppressed the scream of alarm building in my throat as hard as I could.
“Not that way, you idiot.” Trey pointed to the side door. “Go to the bathroom and wipe off any blood first. We don’t need anyone else gettin’ any ideas.”
Butch stomped off away from me, complaining under his breath and shooting another warning that he’d be coming back out to kick Dash’s behind if Trey wasn’t inside in the next fifteen minutes, whole and pristine. The side door to the bar closed shut with a clang, and the two men left in the alley faced off.
Trey scoffed. “You might wanna be careful about sayin’ anything about being an alpha or having an ounce of honor to promise. You’re the one that left us behind, deserter.”
Dash rushed at him, knocking him back into the brick wall and pinning him with his arm that looked far too furry. “Call me that again, and I will end you.” Light glistened off the string of saliva that dripped from his elongating fangs.
“The truth hurts, doesn’t it,” Trey managed, staying calm in contrast to Dash, fighting to keep his animal at bay.
“I did what I had to,” protested Dash.
Trey pushed him off and got in his face. “Which was what? To take a functioning pack and gut it? Do you know what happened after you left us? Do you know who sits as alpha of the Red Ridge pack right now?” He stepped close enough that his nose almost touched Dash’s. “Do you even want to know? Or are you having too good of a time hiding away in this tiny town to care?”
Dash growled and pushed Trey away, but his head hung low. Panting, he gritted his teeth. “Tell me.”
“Only out of the debt from when you saved my life all those years ago when we were young pups, and not because the man that stands in front of me has earned crap.” Trey crossed his arms. “It’s your brother running the pack now.”
Dash huffed. “I know. I made sure to leave Davis in charge before I left. So what’s the problem? My youngest brother should be running a clean pack.”
Trey’s wry grin the light from the end of the alley highlighted sent shivers down my back. “Wrong brother.”
A string of curses flew into the night air, and Dash screamed long and loud until he ran out of breath, ending in a pained howl.
Trey continued without giving Dash a break. “Cash turned the entire pack into his personal ATM. He forces all of the members to make money any way they can. Turns out, he has a real head for business.” Trey spat on the ground.
“Of the darker variety, I’d bet.” Dash swore again. “He always had a thing for booze, drugs, and unsavory women.”
“Hey, when everyone longs for the days when your father was alpha, you know they all feel the hot flames from down below lickin’ at their furry butts.” Trey ran his hand through his hair. “Look, man. I get why you left. Survival and all that. And you’d been through enough, tryin’ to fix the pack after what happened to your mom.”
My mind raced, attempting to swim against the flood of information. The little I knew about pack politics came from Dash, and I knew he had no love for his family except the unconditional devotion to his mother. The darkness he’d warned me about time and again—maybe I should have listened. The man I’d wrapped my arms around on the motorcycle with unabashed trust rode off into the distance, far away from the one with the haunted shadow on his face, standing in front of me.
“So why are you here in Honeysuckle? Is the pack makin’ moves out this far?” Dash asked.
Trey sighed. “No. I went rogue, like you. Had to find a way to make my own money to keep my family safe, and maybe give them a chance to leave, too. Dina’s in her second year at Red Ridge State, and I’ll do anything to keep her future clean.”
“Your little sister’s old enough to be in college?”
Trey’s shoulder’s relaxed. “Can you believe it?”
“I’ll bet she’s a looker,” ventured Dash, earning him a light punch against his arm. Their shared past brought a temporary peace between the two shifters.
“Better than me, if you can believe such beauty exists,” chuckled Trey. He took a deep breath and blew it out. “Look, if my being here is a problem for you, Butch and I will leave. He’ll give me a bunch of grief, but it’s nothin’ I can’t handle.”
After a long pause, Dash nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”
Trey clapped him on the shoulder. “You know, you still hit like a female pup,” he joked.
“I dominated you the whole time,” bantered Dash. “Just like the old days.” He walked forward and opened the side door to the bar.
I couldn’t make out the underlying emotion underneath the glance Trey shot him from behind, but the hairs on the back of my arms stood on end. “Yeah. Like the old days.”
Dash held the door open for him. “I’ll be with you in a sec. Have to check on somethin’ first.” His head swiveled in my direction.
Pixie poop. I ducked back down, hiding behind the edge of the dumpster. Listening for the metal side door to shut, I held my breath. It clanked into place, and I thanked my luck, standing up to leave.
“You have a serious problem.” Dash’s muscled frame took up all the air around me.
“You’re bleeding,” I replied, unable to come up with a different response. I reached out to wipe the blood from the corner of his lip, and he flinched away. My heart sank with the sudden move.
“I’ll heal. What were you thinkin’ hanging around three fighting shifters, Charli?”
“I…I heard the commotion, and then I thought I could help you,” I offered.
He snorted. “Exactly how? By shooting one of your sparking hexes at them? You could have done more harm than good.”
“I could have done something,” I complained.
“But you didn’t. You sat there, watching and listening. Hearing things that should never have followed me here.” He cast his eyes down with a frown and shook his head. “It’s done now.”
I swallowed hard, not knowing what he was declaring over. I wanted to understand the stories behind Trey’s words, to get to know Dash’s history. Even if it meant I had to be exposed to darkness, maybe I could offer him some light.
“Go home, Charli.” Dash refused to look at me.
“Not until I know you’re okay.” I touched his arm. “Talk to me, Dash. Let me help.”
A smile spread across his lips, but it held no joy. His eyes flashed, and his teeth sharpened into fangs, his nose appearing to grow a bit longer. A low noise rumbled in his chest, vibrating so hard that it shook through me. The animal in him threatened me with a growl, and I jumped. With a little effort, he hid his other half again.
“Finally. The right response to me. I know that you think Honeysuckle is a safe place as you skip to your grandmother’s house on a regular basis. But, dammit, you’re not Little Red Riding Hood, and this ain’t a fairy tale.” He glared at me like a predator, his eyes burning in the dark. “When are you gonna get that I am the big bad wolf, and eventually, I will hurt you. Go. Home.”
Quick anger boiled my blood and adrenaline rushed through me. I burst forward and grabbed his arm, yanking as hard as I could to turn him to face me. “Fine. You don’t want me by your side, then let me ask you a couple of important questions. What are you doing fighting with them in the first place? Is this a shifter territory thing? And why are you just letting them go? I don’t think you pressed hard enough about why they were here in the first place.”
Dash looked down at my hand grasping his bicep. He flexed once, making the muscle too big to hold on to, and my grip slipped. “First, I don’t have a territory. Nothing here that I care enough to protect from others.”
His words stung, and I rubbed the spot over my heart. I thought I caught him wince as he watched me.
“Second,” he continued, “I’ve known Trey most of my life. If there were something wrong, he would have told me there at the end. He’s promised to go, and that’s good enough. So, go home, Charli.”
“No.” I stomped my foot.
His eyebrow quirked up. “Did you just stomp your foot at me? Like a small child?”
I stared him down. “I was expressing my unwillingness to be told what to do.”
“Like a bratty little girl.” He sneered. “You are a head case. They should lock you up, not crazy old women. Whenever someone yells fire, you run straight into the flames. You have to stop putting yourself in the path of danger. And tonight, any number of times you could have gotten hurt. For the last time, go home, Charli.”
“Stop telling me what to do. You’re not my alpha.” Hearing the words I uttered, I covered my mouth, horrified at the ammunition I’d launched at him. “Oh, Dash. I didn’t mean that.”
He took a step away from me into a patch of darkness, hiding again. “No matter what you heard, you still know nothing,” he gritted.
“Because you won’t tell me. No one keeps a secret as well and as long as you do. You give me glimpses in the sun only to dive into the shadows the second you open up.” I stepped forward, unwilling to give up on the hurting man. “Stop running. Explain to me what you think I heard, in your own words. Help me understand. Let me be here, supporting you.”
Tension crackled between us. I left the choice up to him, either to let me ride with him as his partner or to leave me behind. When the silence stretched, I closed my eyes and repeated my desires to myself.
Soft lips kissed the top of my head, and with a curse under his breath, Dash wrapped his strong arms around me. I breathed in his scent of sweat, blood, and him. His beard tickled the back of my neck as he squeezed me tighter.
Too soon, he let me go, and I bit my lip, readying myself to break through his barriers once and for all. To be let in to see all of him—the good and the bad. When I searched his eyes for acceptance, all hope drained out of me.
His hands dropped to his side, curling in and out of fists. “I’m no good for you, Charli.” His stern countenance softened for a second with sadness.
With caution, I lifted my hand to his face and caressed his cheek. “Why don’t you let me make that decision?” My voice came out so soft that I couldn’t be sure he heard me.
He closed his eyes, and for a brief moment, he nuzzled into my touch. “Because I’m the fire that burns down everything that matters and turns it into ashes.” With an aching sigh, he placed his hand over mine and removed it. “Go home, Charli.”
I backed off with quick feet so he wouldn’t notice the tears pooling in my eyes. Turning, I walked away, knowing he watched every step I took. Counting on his superior shifter hearing, I stopped and shot one last bullet at him. “Dash, you know when you said you would hurt me?”
“Yeah,” he replied.
“You just did.”
Chapter Eighteen
I woke up in my bed, covered in my favorite quilt. The last thing I remembered was rocking on the porch alone. At some point, I must have fallen asleep, and someone had carried me upstairs. For now, I wallowed in my bad mood, replaying my failures like a broken record. Unable to face the bright new morning, I pulled the quilt over my head, wondering who had changed me out of my clothes and into a long T-shirt.
A light knock on my bedroom door interrupted my dedicated boohoo bash. “Birdy. You still in bed? Get up. TJ has already made you breakfast and is out mucking stalls while your lazy bones sleep.” Matt waited for a response. When he didn’t get one, he rapped his knuckle on the wood a little harder. “Come on, Charli.”
“Go away,” I managed with a voice as dry as a desert. Smacking my lips, I marveled at my dragon breath and how parched I was. Probably due to the dehydration from expelling all the water inside of me through my eyes last night.
My brother switched to rapid pounding, beating an annoying rhythm. “I can do this all day,” he threatened.
Throwing off my quilt, I pulled on a pair of shorts and switched out of the oversized shirt into a simple tank top. I yanked the door open and caught Matt off guard, about to knock again. “You stink like a pound of unicorn manure.” I narrowed my one open eye at him.
He sniffed his shirt in jest. “I don’t think so. No unicorns out in the barn yet. Only horses, and TJ still won’t let me help her. Nice hair, by the way.” He reached out and messed it up even more. “Fix yourself up into somethin’ presentable and come downstairs, please. We need to talk.”
I ran a brush through my hair and squirted toothpaste in my mouth, swishing it around to get rid of the stench, not caring enough to do more. When I finished in the bathroom, I plodded my way to the kitchen. My stomach rumbled at the feast waiting for me. If I couldn’t ignore the day and spend it under my quilt, I could eat my depression away. With messy scoops, I filled my plate.
Matt poured both of us a cup of coffee, even taking the time to fix mine exactly how I liked it with a little sugar and milk. He sat across from me, sipping on his drink and saying nothing. I ignored him, digging into the cheesy grits with crumbled bacon on top mixed, mixing in a bite of scrambled eggs. My stomach remembered it was hungry, and I couldn’t get enough to eat, scarfing down all of the savory contents.
The back door opened, and Beau walked in. “Oh, excuse me. At this late hour, I didn’t expect to find anyone in here.”
“Where’ve you been? Don’t tell me you were at the retirement home.” I regarded his guilty face. “You know you’re not supposed to go there.”
My roommate joined as at the table, picking up a piece of bacon. He sniffed it first before eating it in two crunches. “Mm. I know we vampires don’t have to eat regular food, but there is something magical about the parts of a pig.”
“Don’t change the subject. Where did you go last night?” Matt pressed.
Beau glanced between my brother and me. “I visited the Widow Macintosh at her house after I got Charli here all tucked up in bed. Don’t worry. I haven’t been back to the home.”
Matt switched his gaze to me. “Why did he have to help you up to bed?”
“I think the bigger question is how in the world you can romance so many women, Beau,” I deflected, changing the focus.
“I told you before, I understand loneliness. Not everything is about passion. It’s about knowing how to pay someone attention, making them feel im
portant because they are.”
“So you don’t do that vampire hypnotizing thing I’ve heard about?” Matt joked.
Beau stood up in a huff. “I see I’m going to have to educate you in the same manner I tried to earlier with Charli. Let me put it in a way that the two of you can better understand. Do you both consider yourselves brother and sister?”
“Of course,” I answered.
Matt spoke up at the same time, “Yes.”
“And yet, you don’t share the same blood. You don’t have the same magical abilities, and I’m sure you have different strengths. It’s much the same with vampires. We are different beings with differing lives. Our abilities can be similar, but they can also be vastly distinct from one another.” He poofed into a bat and back again. “I can transform myself like that, but others cannot. Some can function at a higher acceleration than others, making them look like they have super speed, appearing here and there without being noticed.
“I get it. I need to stop generalizing,” I said.
Beau cut me off from speaking. “I’m not finished. The ability you’re talking about, holding another being in a vampire’s thrall, is not seen as an acceptable talent to use. It is extremely difficult for both the vampire and the subject. The vampire must stay close by to control whomever they have enthralled. And those poor souls…well, their stories don’t tend to end well. Add all of those factors up, and you piece together a problem for our kind. The threat of being discovered, hated, and hunted again.”
Matt processed the information. “I may never look at Raif the same again.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about him. It’s not something he can do, plus, he’s too concerned about what others think about him to ruin his reputation.” My roommate stole another piece of bacon, his lesson finished.
“So he wouldn’t try anything like that on the whole town, just to win the election, right?” I asked.
Beau swallowed and shook his head. “No way. He may be…well, him. But he follows the rules to a fault. Okay, you two, I’m off to get some beauty sleep. Sorry I interrupted your meal.”