by T. S. Joyce
Already, his eyes were narrowed and his arms were crossed over his chest. Fuckin’ grumpy, half-psychotic Boarlander.
Jax parked by the fire pit and scanned the half circle of trailers behind it. There was another cluster of trailers off to the right, but no one seemed to be home. Usually this place was chaos.
Jax got out. “What the hell are you doing here, old man,” he joked. Clinton always bristled at that. Shifters aged well. He looked thirty-five, forty, tops.
“The fuck you wearin’, boy?”
“I wanted to match,” Jaxon said, waiting at the front of the truck for Annalise to join him. She was walking too gracefully for how much her body was hurting. Yep, She-Devil was a-comin’. She slid her hand into his and waved at Clinton, who narrowed his eyes to bright blue little slits. His nostrils flared as he scented the air.
“Pussy,” he said.
Annalise bristled beside Jax.
Clinton grinned remorselessly and finished, “Cat.”
Jaxon glanced around suspiciously. “Seriously, what are you doing here? And where is everyone?”
“Gray Back Assholes are up at Bear Trap Falls. I’m here beautifying the place in their absence.”
Jaxon threw a quick glance at Clinton’s truck. The tailgate of his white Raptor was lowered, and in the bed were about twenty bags of fragrant fertilizer. “Whyyy?”
Clinton arched his blond brows. “Because last week Creed made a bet that I couldn’t kick his ass in flip-cup, but I did. And then when he was supposed to pay up, he didn’t.”
“What was the bet?”
“He had to dress in one of Gia’s tightest and prettiest dresses, a bright fuckin’ red one, and wear lipstick and high heels and take a picture for me and Jason to post on our pages, but he pussied out.” He gave Annalise a devil-may-care smile. “Not a cat joke. Creed really is a giant, gaping pussy.”
Annalise giggled.
“So then I said I was gonna shit in his front yard if he didn’t pay up,” Clinton continued. “And I was going to, but my mate said I need to have better manners and it wasn’t sanitary, blah blah blah, so this is the compromise. Happy wife, happy life. Wait, I can do better. Happy mate, and I don’t have to masturbate.”
Jaxon eyed the mowed yard in front of Creed and Gia’s perfectly kept trailer. “You’re gonna spread all that manure over Creed’s yard?”
“Yeah. I got the smelly cow kind, too. You wanna help?”
Jax rubbed his jaw to hide his smile. “I would love to, but I have to introduce my lady to the crew.”
“Your lady? You mated, Jax?” Clinton asked.
Jax pulled his snarling little she-hellion against his side proudly. “Sure am. This is Annalise.”
“Mmm,” Clinton said, lifting his chin and glaring down his nose at Annalise. “You’re broke as fuck, aren’t you, pussy cat? You smell sick, sick, sick. It’s okay. I’m sick, too. So are all the Gray Backs you’re about to meet. Eternal fuck-ups, all of them.”
Annalise pursed her lips into an upset little moue, and she smelled upset. She opened her mouth to say something, but Clinton bent smoothly and plucked a yellow weed flower out of the grass, then handed it to her. “Welcome to the C-team.”
Looking utterly baffled, Annalise took the dandelion flower slowly from his hand.
Clinton spun on his heel with a flourish and flipped them off over his shoulder as he announced, “I’ve got shit to do.”
Jaxon chuckled and pulled Annalise by the hand toward the trail in the woods that would lead to Bear Trap Falls.
“Should we…” she asked, her focus behind them where Clinton was unloading bags of fertilizer. “Should we stop him?”
“Nah, Creed has it coming.” He tossed her a grin over his shoulder. “A bet’s a bet, and he didn’t pay up.”
Chapter Thirteen
Annalise couldn’t keep her eyes from the big muscle-man currently ripping into a giant bag of lawn poop. He swiveled his leg and punted an old pink flamingo that had been stabbed into the yard in front of one of the trailers, and it went sailing through the air and landed in the fire pit. Was he singing the “Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit” song?
Jax’s hand was relaxed in hers, but when she tripped over a gnarled tree root and pitched forward, he tightened his grip and supported her.
“Ow,” she muttered, favoring her stubbed toe.
Her pink flip-flops clacked with every step and echoed through the lush, green woods. The trees here were tall with thick trunks and rough bark. The air smelled like pine sap and rich earth. And animals. Lots of different animals.
She-Devil snarled inside of her, and pain blasted through Annalise’s stomach as she fought the urge to Change.
“It’s okay if it happens here,” Jax said fast. “You’re safe.”
Annalise swallowed over and over, trying to keep from retching. Her body hurt so bad. Her legs were stiff, her muscles felt torn to hell, and her joints ached with every movement. She-Devil would give her a slow death like Jax had promised Brody. It was ironic that she would go in the worst way out of the two of them, and she hadn’t done anything wrong other than go on a date with an evil man. Well, and kill him after. Maybe this was Karma speaking.
As the animal scents grew stronger, another wave of pain took her, and she had to stop. “Jax, I’m sorry.”
She could hear his sharp inhale before he turned around and canted his head, arched his dark eyebrow up and leveled her with those serious caramel brown eyes of his. “What did I say about saying sorry for things that aren’t your fault? This ain’t your fault.”
She smiled from where she was bent over, head thrown back so she could look up at him. She couldn’t help herself.
“What’s funny?”
“You said ain’t.”
With a deep, reverberating chuckle, he pulled her up straight again and hugged her to his chest. “I’ll probably say it a lot. That’s how people talk here.”
“Well, then I ain’t sorry for being about to Change uncontrollably and maul everyone.”
Jax snorted and shook his head. “Woman, you can’t hurt anybody here. I keep telling you. They’d welcome the fight. She-Devil can’t scare any of the shifters in these mountains. It’s not like with Red Havoc. You can’t topple a crew here. Damon’s Mountains are fuckin’ concrete at this point. Been through more battles together than anyone would ever believe. You can do your worst, and they’ll just laugh and play swat-the-kitty. Now, I won’t let them hurt you too bad, but She-Devil’s about to learn some tough lessons on proper animal behavior.”
“So that’s why we’re here? To tame She-Devil?”
“No, Anna,” Jax murmured, tone going deadly serious. “We’re here to save you.”
Right. Annalise forced her lips into a tight smile and then followed him as he led her down the trail again. Poor Jax, thinking she could be saved. He didn’t know She-Devil’s thoughts, though. He wasn’t in her head, listening to all the ways she planned on killing things around her. He hadn’t heard She-Devil’s plan to kill the Red Havoc Crew, and then move on to the lions just to sate her thirst for violence.
Thank God she hadn’t been Turned into a dragon because she would’ve burned the world to ashes by now.
Every step was agony as her cells begged to morph into the panther. Chest heaving, she stepped out of the edge of the woods with Jax and winced against the harsh sunlight that shone from between two mountains in the distance. A sudden and piercing headache blasted across the back of her eyes.
The chatter of a crowd made her dizzy, and she swayed on her feet as she scanned the river in front of her.
“Anna,” Jax said. “This is Bear Trap Falls.”
There was indeed a waterfall that a tall man with black hair and dark eyes was diving from. It was one of those graceful ones that belonged to an Olympic diver. She’d only ever been good at belly flops.
“That’s Creed,” Jax said, gesturing to the man who hit the water with barely a splash. “He was my alph
a growing up before I went rogue.”
Further down the sandy beach, there were a couple dozen lawn chairs in neon pinks, oranges, greens, and blues. Tiki torches had been stuck in the ground, and there was a literal giant pulling a pair of beer bottles from an old, scuffed, blue cooler. Sitting in the chairs, there were at lease fifteen people talking and laughing. Some wore bathing suits, some wore cut-off shorts and flipflops like Annalise. The men wore mostly jeans with the rippling muscles of their chest and abs on full display. The pervert in her rejoiced. Across the river a few shirtless men were tossing a football and having a loud, echoing argument about who threw the most like a girl.
In the sky, a falcon circled, and through the woods she could see movement. A massive silverback gorilla walked beside a chestnut-colored grizzly bear, both sets of eyes warily on her as they made their way slowly through the trees.
Beside her, Jax lurched forward as someone shoved him from behind, and Annalise reacted. She snarled and crouched, ready to Change and kill the assailant of her mate, but Jax’s attacker looked shockingly familiar. He had Jax’s face. Same height and build, just different tattoos across his arms, and a single, long scar that zigzagged down his cheekbone.
“Cut it out, fucker,” Jax muttered, locking up with him and wrestling. It was funny watching two grown-ass giant men play-fight like little kids.
“Ma!” his twin yelled as Jax got him in a head lock. “Ma! Ma, Ma, Ma, Ma, M—”
“Holy hell nuggets, what, Jathan?” a tiny woman in a yellow polka dot tankini yelled over her shoulder from where she sat in a bright orange chair. She had brightly dyed red hair and wore sixties-style horn-rimmed sunglasses and a floppy straw hat. In her hand was one delicious-looking purple beverage that Annalise was pretty sure was some type of pomegranate flavored beer.
Jathan twisted and escaped the headlock, then shoved off Jax and straightened up. “Your least favorite son has returned.”
So, that was Willa. Even wracked with waves of pain, Annalise smiled at the way Willa’s face transformed when she laid eyes on her son. She’d never witnessed a bigger smile.
The tiny Second of the Gray Backs screamed and high-kneed it across the sandy beach, her brightly painted red toes digging in with each step until she reached Jax and threw her arms around him.
Jax caught the little wrecking ball and picked her up off the ground with his hug. “Hey, Ma.” He probably had fifteen inches of height over her, but she was squeezing his neck so hard his words had come out strangled.
It was so fucking cute seeing her giant, muscled-up, tatted-up, badass mate rest his cheek on top of his mother’s head and swing her gently. Up until the point Willa wiggled out of his arms and shoved him in the chest. “Village idiot, you can’t pick up your damn phone anymore? I called you three times.”
“You called twenty-four times, like a psychopath, and I wasn’t ready to talk,” Jax said without missing a beat.
Willa narrowed her soft brown eyes, the same color as her son’s, and arched her gaze to Annalise. “Are you her?”
Annalise stood there confused, her body humming with the urge to Change. “Am I who?”
“Are you the one who is gonna fix my boy?”
Annalise shook her head, baffled. “He doesn’t need fixing.”
“Oh, good,” Jathan said with a grin. “Jax found a lunatic. A hot lunatic, though.” He nodded at Jax with a wink. “Good one, bro.”
When Jax shoved him hard in the shoulder, Jathan took two harsh steps backward and flipped him off.
Willa took a step closer, dragging a calculating gaze to Annalise’s neck, right where Jax had bitten her, then back to her eyes. The tiny woman felt much bigger than her frame, though. She was heavy, dangerous, and she was standing too damn close to Jax, and therefore too damn close to She-Devil. Annalise snarled and doubled over. Desperate to hold onto her skin, she put her hand out and pleaded, “Don’t come any closer. I can’t…I can’t stop her.” A panther scream clawed its way up her throat, and this was it. This was the moment that had mortified her to think about. The moment when she would shame Jax in front of his people and show them how broken she’d become.
All she’d wanted was for them to accept her for him. For them to like her. She wanted to fit in and be like everyone else. Even if it was just for one day, or two days, she’d needed the break from the suck so badly. And now She-Devil would ruin everything.
“You gotta beast in you too, girl,” Willa said, squatting in the sand. Her eyes were glowing now, the same bright green as Jax’s when he got worked up.
“Willa?” A tall man layered in muscles with long, horrifying scars all over his torso asked. “What’s happening?”
“Your son brought home a monstah kitty.” But Willa was smiling eerily, and other shifters were starting to gather around them.
Too many bodies. Too many people. Too heavy. The scent of fur and dominance was everywhere, and She-Devil couldn’t be contained anymore. She ripped out of Annalise with a roar, and it hurt so bad for that blinding moment of Change.
Time slowed. She wished it hadn’t because what she witnessed in the three seconds it took for She-Devil to recover from the Change was horrifying.
Willa shifted first into a towering she-grizzly. Jax and Jathan’s bears exploded from them, and behind the trio of monster brown bears, the others, who had been relaxing in chairs, shifted. Bears and boars and gorillas came rushing toward her.
Annalise was too small in this body. She didn’t have control. She barely had a loud enough voice to warn She-Devil. Don’t attack or they’ll kill you.
With another scream, She-Devil charged Willa because she was the dangerous one here. Jathan’s dark chocolate bear was confused and backing away, and Jax’s bear stood there on its hind legs with his eyes locked passively on She-Devil, waiting, but Willa would be a fun fight. She would be a challenge. She would be even more fun to bleed than Barret.
Full of mindless red rage, She-Devil leapt through the air and hit Willa in the chest, but then was promptly tossed into the center of all the monster animals of Damon’s Mountains. She’d just been fed to the bears.
Fine. She would just kill them all.
Annalise was panicking at She-Devil’s stupid plan. This was like all the other times she stole her body. She made the worst decisions for their survival. Stupid panther.
She connected with a blond grizzly and was swatted back down to earth. Pain slashed across her back end as she took a set of vicious claws there. This wasn’t fun. She was losing. Not only losing the Blood Game, but for the first time in her existence, She-Devil realized she had even more to lose. Like her life. There were too many of them, and more were pouring onto the bank from the river. When a pitch-black grizzly charged the circle, She-Devil crouched down on her belly and backed up, almost into Willa, who raked a massive paw right across her backside. It hurt so fucking bad. She-Devil spun and hissed, swatted out a paw, which Willa ducked neatly. The others were closing in, and it would be a dog pile soon. She-Devil flattened her ears and let off a warning growl as the Black grizzly shouldered his way into the circle. His black eyes were full of fury as he barreled down on her. She flattened herself to the ground in terror. His gigantic paws rivaled the size of Jax’s, and he slammed them down on either side of her body and roared in her face.
She-Devil rolled over on her back and lay there, stunned. And bleeding. And angry, hurt, and confused. The black grizzly would kill her now. She could see it in his eyes. They’d gone dead. Alpha. Creed. He was so dominant, like Willa, like Jax.
She wasn’t in Red Havoc territory anymore. She was in Hell! This wasn’t fun anymore, and she wanted out of here.
A deafening roar sounded from the circle, and she hunched at how pissed-off Jax sounded. Even he was scary right now. All of She-Devil’s bravado left her, and then she did something she’d never done before.
She ran.
Not literally, but she shrank and gave Annalise back her skin like a scaredy-cat.
/> Aching all over, Annalise lay between those giant paws with her arms flung over her face, just waiting on the death blow.
Growling with every breath, the bear eased back, though, and left her there. The other animals backed off, too, all except Jax who paced close to her, eyeing the others.
She didn’t know what to do as everyone started shifting back to their human forms and talking low amongst themselves. They’d all been having a good time at the river until she’d come along and ruined it.
“That’s a bad kitty,” a dark headed behemoth said from where he stood by a grill. Apparently he hadn’t felt threatened enough by her to shift with the others. He wore an orange apron that had music notes on it and said let me see the pizza roll. “Shifting here like that will get you spankings. How’s your butt feel?”
Annalise didn’t even want to see the claw marks. They stung so bad, and now they had sand in them. Already she was angled on her side, resting on one hip, trying to give it relief. She’d gotten a public bear spanking? And from the mother of the man she loved. She was blushing from head to toe with mortification. “My butt feels not great,” she admitted.
“Cool,” he said, his dark eyebrows lifting high. “Are you hungry?”
Mostly she was naked, embarrassed, sore, and she had sand in her crack, but okie dokie, her stomach growled at the scent of cheese and meat and dough that wafted her way. “Yes?” she said in a small voice, more question than anything.
“Bash will get you fixed up with food,” a very naked Willa said, holding her hand out to help Annalise up.
Annalise hesitated, not understanding. Willa had just hurt her, and now she was helping her?
Willa huffed a sigh and reached down, grabbed her wrist and yanked her upward with surprising strength. “You’re a violent little beasty.” She cracked a naughty grin. “I like that about you. Plus, I heard a rumor you took Almost Alpha in the Red Havoc Crew.”
“No, just Second.”
“Potato, tomato,” Willa said, shrugging one shoulder up and searching the ground for something.