Roan (Shifters Elite Book 1)

by Ava Benton

  “Thinking what over?” There was a pit in my stomach all of a sudden.

  Sometimes it was like he read my mind. Could he know what I was thinking about earlier? What I had been thinking about throughout our trip?

  “Us. Thinking about us.”

  “Oh.” My heart sank.

  He didn’t sound positive.

  Why would he start something like that while we were in New Mexico? Why couldn’t he wait until we got home?

  “And what was your conclusion?” I asked as my heart raced.

  “That we should get married.”

  I fell back on the bed with a thud. Married? He wanted to get married? He didn’t want to break things off. He wanted to marry me.

  He turned, and the shy smile on his gorgeous face melted me. “I think it only makes sense, don’t you? I can’t live without you. I know that much.”

  “Roan… I… I can’t…” I put a hand over my chest. “I can’t breathe.”

  “Take it easy.” He helped me sit up.

  I leaned forward, head between my knees.

  He rubbed my back while I got control of myself.

  Married. He wanted to marry me.

  “Okay?” he asked after a long time. I nodded, then sat up slowly. My head was spinning but I didn’t feel like I was about to pass out anymore.

  I turned to him. “You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting you to say that.”

  Once it was out there, I could breathe more freely. I had been carrying that hope in my heart for months, ever since we got together.

  “I have to wonder how it’ll work out, though. What are we supposed to do?”

  He frowned. “You mean, living-wise?”

  “Everything-wise. Don’t pretend it’s not a problem.”

  “It’s a challenge. That’s all.” He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “So? What do you think?”

  “I think I’d marry you tomorrow.” I leaped into his lap and covered his face with kisses.

  He laughed. “Tomorrow might be a little soon. What about when we get back? We can work things out then.”

  When I calmed down, he took my face in his hands and looked deep into my eyes.

  As always, I felt a little charge pass from him to me. “For now, let’s just be happy, huh? Let’s just be you and me. Everything else will fall into place.”

  I nodded. “I think I can handle that.”

  Knowing how he felt and that I wasn’t alone in wanting us to be together was enough for the time being. He was enough. More than enough.

  His hands roamed over me and a familiar gleam came into his eyes. “I should shower first,” he murmured before nibbling my neck. “I was gonna suggest you shower with me, but you already have.”

  “I don’t think two showers in one night would kill me,” I murmured before kissing him with all my might.

  I had the feeling I’d fondly remember New Mexico, after all.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Slate!

  Excerpt

  A former Special Forces wolf shifter.

  Slate and his brother and cousins take assignments. Who’d have thought he’d have to save Snow White?

  A desperate hottie in hiding.

  Maggie lived a semi-fairy tale life as Snow White in Disney World. An attack just turned her life into a nightmare.

  What about the sexy hunk that’s just shown up?

  One

  Slate

  “God damn it!” I broke the pool cue over my thigh and threw the pieces to the floor, where they skittered and slid.

  My brother Roan and our cousins Drew and Carter tried unsuccessfully to hide their laughter behind their palms.

  Roan was barely finished laughing when he bent over the table and made the winning shot.

  I watched with a sinking heart as the eight ball sank into the corner pocket.

  “You don’t even live here anymore,” I snarled, glaring at him.

  “I live here part-time,” he argued with a grin. “And I don’t get half as much practice on the table as I used to, but I can still kick your ass. What’s that say?”

  Roan put away his cue and walked barefoot to the couch, where he flopped down with a beer. He was so damn smug.

  I wouldn’t have minded him beating me every damn time we shot pool if he wasn’t so fucking smug about it.

  “Sorry if I have more important things to do than brushing up on my game,” I muttered as I picked up the broken stick.

  “Oh, yeah, your life is nothing but excitement,” Carter laughed, giving me a playful shove as he walked past. “Come on. Play a little Call of Duty?”

  “No, sorry, my life is too exciting for that,” I muttered, rolling my eyes.

  The guys laughed.

  Normally, I could take it. I gave as good as I got, too—nobody was anybody’s victim in our family. One of the prerequisites was having a thick skin and being able to throw insults around. Mealtimes were like “sink or swim.” Either you adapted, or you didn’t.

  So it didn’t make sense that I was in such a shitty mood over a stupid game of pool. Everybody knew how competitive I was and how much I hated to lose—it was a big joke among us—but it didn’t typically really bother me all that much. I usually put on a big front because I knew it made them laugh.

  I wasn’t pretending when I marched down to the lower level of the house we shared, stripped down to my bare skin and jumped headfirst into our heated, Olympic-sized swimming pool. I needed to get rid of the angry, bitter energy flowing through me.

  I swam hard, pumping my arms and kicking my legs, counting off the strokes, turning my head to breathe on every fifth stroke. Back and forth across the length of the pool, on and on. I wasn’t paying attention to the number of laps. I only cared about losing the tension that had been plaguing me for days.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it. Nothing had changed. We still lived together and worked together and hunted together. We were still pretty damn well off, all things considered—not everybody got the luxury of living in what was sort of like a cabin in the woods if that cabin was on steroids.

  Not everybody was able to find sanctuary after their government basically turned its back. We had everything we could ever want, including solitude. Nobody would bother us here. Nobody would wonder about the four almost-supernaturally large men who didn’t need to take guns along when they went hunting.

  I stopped after what was probably a few dozen laps and slowed my strokes, finally rolling over onto my back and letting myself float for a while. It was good to let go and allow the water to do all the work. Even at a slightly warmer temperature than it would’ve been if the pool wasn’t heated, the water felt refreshing.

  I wished it could refresh my mood. I had been just shy of shifting into my wolf form at the drop of a hat for too long. I was half-exhausted just from holding onto my human form.

  Something had to happen. Something needed to change. I was bored. That had to be the issue. We hadn’t had a job in weeks—nothing that took more than a day or two to finish up, at any rate. Nothing interesting. There was such a thing as being too comfortable, I was starting to find.

  But it was more than that.

  There was something deeply, deeply wrong inside that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe it was wondering what the whole point was—would we live together our entire lives, hiding out from the rest of the world just to keep ourselves safe? Getting assignments from Mary whenever somebody or something needed fixing? Living in a luxury prison made of glass and granite and wood, full of all sorts of ways to pass the time that spun on and on, day in and day out, with nothing new ever happening. Nothing long-term.

  I was too old for this life to satisfy me anymore. That was probably the closest to the truth I was ever going to get. It didn’t satisfy me because I wanted more. I needed more.

  Just like Roan had—and Roan got what he wanted, didn’t he? I would never begrudge my brother his happiness, but I couldn’t help wanting a little of that h
appiness for myself. I didn’t think it made me a terrible person to admit that I wanted to be happy.

  Since when did happiness mean a damn thing to me? It wasn’t like I had ever consciously thought about it before. I needed to see it with my own eyes, in somebody I cared about—my brother—to recognize how I was missing it in my life. Before Roan met Hope, happiness hadn’t been a tangible thing. It was just something people talked about in movies, in books, in corny commercials selling things for Valentine’s Day.

  The door at the end of the room opened, and I lifted my head just enough to see Carter appear in the doorway. “Mary’s waiting for us up there. She has a job.”

  “Okay. Be right there.”

  Another new job. Goody. Maybe it would mean a day’s diversion, maybe two.

  I reminded myself as I climbed from the pool and toweled myself off that we would all be royally fucked if it wasn’t for her—and she knew it, and she knew we knew it, and if she caught even a hint of irritation or sarcasm in my voice, she would pick up on it and tell me to screw off.

  She reminded me of an angry librarian sometimes. I would be the kid with the overdue library book.

  “Eh, I’ll give her a thrill,” I smirked to myself as I wrapped the towel around my waist and went upstairs instead of getting dressed again.

  I combed my fingers through my dripping hair, then shook it out on my way up the granite stairs, until little beads of water flew in all directions. Like I would if I were out hunting and got wet. Shaking out my fur.

  Mary’s voice carried through the main level thanks to its open floor plan. I followed the sound until I was back in the recreation room.

  Roan, Drew, and Carter sat in front of the big screen where the guys had probably been playing games until her call came through.

  “Ah, Slate.”

  I looked at the screen in time to see Mary tilt her head down to look at me over the rims of her glasses.

  Another way she reminded me of a librarian, those glasses of hers on a chain around her neck. “I’m glad you take a casual dress code so literally.”

  “You caught me in the middle of workout.” I flexed one bicep for her benefit.

  She pretended to swoon.

  “Put that thing away, or I might forget why I called,” she smirked. Back to business. “I didn’t want to get too deep into the details of this case until you joined us, Slate. As I just told the rest of the team, this is a special situation.”

  My ears practically pricked up.

  “How so?” Roan asked, leaning forward, leaning his forearms on his thighs.

  “Earlier today, I heard from a rather important figure in the shifter world. I don’t know how aware any of you boys are of the Everglade clan, but they’re a pretty big deal throughout the country.”

  “Everglade?” I asked, looking down at the guys as they sat in a row on the sofa.

  All three shrugged.

  Mary rolled her eyes.

  There were times when I could practically hear her wishing she could smack our heads together. “They’re shifters, members of a long-standing clan which stretches back to the days when shifters first moved to the New World from the Old Country, hundreds of years ago. They’re a fairly tight-knit clan, even though there are so many. Thousands, though I have no idea how many thousands.”

  “So they’re like us, but they’re not like us,” Drew smirked.

  “How are they not like you if, like you, they shift into other forms?” she asked.

  “They don’t have to hide,” Carter said. His voice was sharp.

  “You’re right,” she allowed. “But that has more to do with your history than with your genetic makeup. Neither of which is your fault, naturally.”

  “I wasn’t even aware there were so many of us out there,” I mused, staring across the room at nothing in particular.

  It was a strange feeling, knowing we weren’t alone. It didn’t make a difference, of course. We would never be able to join the real world, be part of society.

  “You might be surprised,” Mary replied.

  I wondered why Dad never told us we weren’t alone. He always made what we were sound… shameful. Like we had to hide or else. I guessed it was because he wasn’t born a shifter, the way we were.

  Roan cleared his throat. “What does this person need? The one who contacted you?”

  “His name is Vincent Everglade. He leads the entire Everglade clan. There have been reports of an attack on a human girl somewhere in Florida—his headquarters is in Miami, by the way.”

  “Miami?” I asked. I liked the idea of Miami in winter.

  “Yes. I need the four of you to fly down tonight—the jet will be ready for you in under two hours.”

  “I don’t get it.” Roan stood, arms folded. “What’s he want from us? A human girl got attacked. Does he want us to find the attacker and put him down? I can’t imagine why else you would want us for this—or our skills.”

  “You’ll have to find that out from him. You know I wouldn’t assign you to a case I didn’t know was up your alley. Yes, there’s a chance you’ll have to track down the attacker and probably take him out, but again I don’t know for certain. Frankly, by the time you find him, it may have to be a judgment call on your part.”

  “Got it.” Roan glanced at the rest of us, and we nodded.

  We were all in.

  Especially me—I was itching for something new, and it had landed right in my lap like somebody out in the universe heard me. I should’ve asked for a girlfriend with double-D tits and an ass like Kim Kardashian’s while I was at it.

  “Come on,” I said, standing. “Time to pack.”

  I realized I couldn’t wait to get going. Just the thought of being out of the cold in the middle of a Montana winter was enough to make me jog upstairs to my room.

  It wasn’t until I was halfway through packing that I noticed I was whistling.

  Two

  Slate

  Vincent Everglade was everything his reputation told me he was. Tall, golden-haired, with the sort of posture and confidence powerful men seemed to possess as part of their genetic makeup.

  He walked with his head held high, his shoulders thrown back. He had an almost surprisingly firm handshake—Dad always said the mark of a man was in his handshake, and Vincent wasn’t somebody to screw with.

  He shook our hands in turn and gestured to the long, wide leather sofas which faced each other on either side of a massive fireplace.

  I wondered in the back of my mind how valuable a fireplace was in a city like Miami, but that wasn’t for me to say.

  “Thank you all for making the trip out here,” he said in a strident, confident voice. A deep rumble.

  Some men didn’t need to tell the world in words that they were powerful. They only had to be—to speak or move through a room. They were the truly powerful. Men who had to tell people how powerful they were really had no actual power at all.

  “It was nothing,” Roan lied. “We’re glad to offer any help we can.”

  “Would any of you like a drink?”

  I wanted one. I could tell my cousins did, too.

  Not a good idea, of course.

  The four of us shook our heads, and I watched longingly as Vincent poured himself what smelled like a really, really high-quality Scotch and dropped three ice cubes into the crystal tumbler.

  My mouth watered.

  He took a long sip of the amber liquid and let out a long breath—he was enjoying it as much as I would’ve enjoyed it, which made me envy him even more. I stopped envying him once he started to explain his problem.

  “I don’t know how aware you four are of the regulations in place regarding human and shifter relations. I understand you aren’t, eh, members of any particular clan.”

  “We’re unaffiliated. That’s true,” I said.

  “Do you know of the treaty which is currently in place between humans and creatures like us?”

  We looked at each other and shook our heads.
I, for one, wondered why we had never heard of anything like it.

  I guessed it was probably because we weren’t old blood, the way he was. We weren’t part of the “normal” shifters. Our fathers were created by the frigging government.

  He nodded as he folded his tall body and lowered himself into a chair. His eyes lingered on the ice in the tumbler while he spoke.

  “Our treaty is the only thing keeping peace between the human population and those like us. It wasn’t always a peaceful coexistence—there was constant tension, war, violence on both sides. Now, at least, we’re civil. I wouldn’t say friendly. I don’t think such a thing could ever happen. There’s too much contention and bad blood. Too much history.”

  He looked away from his drink and took turns looking at all of us. “This treaty makes it a crime to attack a human, one punishable by death. If the human authorities were to find out, they would not only push for the sentence to be imposed—they may consider the treaty broken. This isn’t the first time a human attack has been linked to shifters. It could mean the end of our kind, honestly. We don’t possess the weaponry human armies possess, obviously. Claws and fangs will do little good against, say, tanks and bombs.”

  “You think it would come to that? Honestly?” Carter leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “I do. There are human factions who don’t believe there should be a treaty at all. They look for any excuse possible to declare all-out war. Several of my clan members have been attacked, beaten, even dragged behind cars for miles all to prove a point or teach us a lesson or whatever it is they think we deserve.”

  I shuddered.

  It irritated me most of the time that we had to be so cut off from the rest of the world, until I heard something like that. It wasn’t any better on the other side of the fence, even if the grass looked greener from where I stood.

  “So we’re here because a human was attacked and you want us to track her down? Is that correct?” Roan had a way of getting through to the heart of a situation.