Serpentine

by J. Kearston

  Serpentine

  © 2021 J. Kearston

  All rights reserved

  No part of this work may be duplicated, reproduced, or transferred by any means, without the written approval of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual people (living or dead), places, or events is purely coincidental. This book contains graphic scenes and situations recommended for ages 18+.

  *Cover by Nichole Witholder at Rainy Day Artwork*

  Table of Contents

  Disclaimer

  Serpentine

  Chapter 1 | Risa

  Chapter 2 | Stryker

  Chapter 3 | Bane

  Chapter 4 | Risa

  Chapter 5 | Risa

  Chapter 6 | Mason

  Chapter 7 | Risa

  Chapter 8 | Stryker

  Chapter 9 | Risa

  Chapter 10 | Risa

  Chapter 11 | Bane

  Chapter 12 | Mason

  Chapter 13 | Risa

  Chapter 14 | Risa

  Chapter 15 | Stryker

  Chapter 16 | Risa

  Chapter 17 | Risa

  Chapter 18 | Mason

  Chapter 19 | Risa

  Chapter 20 | Bane

  Chapter 21 | Risa

  Chapter 22 | Stryker

  Chapter 23 | Risa

  Chapter 24 | Risa

  Chapter 25 | Risa

  Chapter 26 | Risa

  Chapter 27 | Risa

  Chapter 28 | Risa

  Chapter 29 | Risa

  Thank you so much for reading! | For more magical, steamy goodness, check out my completed series with my monstrous twist on fae- | mybook.to/DiscordJKearston | Or sign up for my newsletter here- | https://landing.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/j0u7n4

  Serpentine

  Chapter 1

  Risa

  Trying not to hyperventilate, I focus on kicking out the tail light. When it finally shatters, a sob wrenches from my throat, muffled by the duct tape. With my wrists bound behind my back, I can’t even stick a hand out to try and get someone’s attention, but I’m praying a foot will work.

  While the wind threatens to tear my shoe off, I fumble around awkwardly, trying to find anything that I can rub my wrists against to break through the tape. But the trunk’s completely empty, cleared out because whether or not he was actually after me in particular, this sick son of a bitch planned to grab someone from the running trail.

  Tears track down my face when minutes pass and nothing, but it’s really not a surprise. When your entire plan revolves around a stranger actually giving a damn, you’re going to be let down. Nobody fucking cares unless it affects them.

  My head suddenly slams against the side of the trunk hard enough that my vision wavers, though I quickly wish it’d been enough to knock me out. Shards tear into my leg as I’m flung back, the metal collapsing around me. Whoever t-boned the car was going fast enough that there’s no way both vehicles aren’t completely totaled, and I send up a silent thanks that we weren’t rear-ended.

  Jagged pieces of metal pierced through my stomach, my leg. With my arms pinned behind me, I can’t even utilize the twisted blessing to saw the tape from my wrists. I’m simply stuck trying not to break down and panic, to suck air through my nose and keep from passing out.

  Okay, this is actually good. Someone will call the cops, and there’s no way that he’s driving out of here like this. He tries to drag me on foot, I’m bleeding enough to leave a trail. It’s going to be okay, I’m going to be okay.

  I’m not sure where we’re at, but wherever it is, the road must be narrow. Not two minutes later, another jarring impact sends the shrapnel cutting into my stomach even deeper. My legs are crushed beneath the contorted metal, locking me in place worse than before as the car lurches, skidding before slamming into something else. Blood fills my mouth that I can’t cough up with the tape or bring myself to swallow, and it slowly trickles down my cheek, forcing a small path free to loosen a corner.

  Every shallow breath I manage to pull in through my nose sends pain lancing throughout my entire body, tears running rivers over my face as the panic I tried so hard to hold at bay sets in. Claustrophobia like I’ve never known has me picturing being buried alive, lying trapped here for days as I slowly bleed out, dying alone and forgotten.

  It hurts, so goddamn much, and every sob just makes it worse, choking on blood that I can’t cough up or spit out fast enough. Far too soon, the shock begins to wear off. What I thought merely hurt before is absolutely agonizing now. When I finally start getting light headed, it’s a blessing, and I lean into the pull instead of fighting it.

  At least if I die here, I’ll never have to find out what would have happened if we’d made it to wherever that bastard was taking me.

  Chapter 2

  Stryker

  “Fuck, man. That looks bad.”

  Bane pulls off onto the side of the road a short way past the three car pileup so we don’t end up causing another accident. The bend in the road here’s a death trap, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that some idiot was flying around the curve and didn’t see the crash until it was too late and couldn’t stop, sending the lot of them skidding off the road and into the nearest tree.

  Pulling out my phone, I call the police, since I doubt anyone in that mess will have been able to. Bane, Mason, and I jog over, bracing ourselves for the corpses we’re likely to find. One of the cars is wrapped around a tree, t-boned by another, and then that one was rear-ended.

  I quickly rattle off our location and a description of what they’ll be working with when they get here before I lose the small signal I managed to pick up. By the short pause on the other side of the phone, it’s clear the emergency operator’s head is where mine’s at, already mentally preparing herself to deal with yet another pointless tragedy.

  The call drops as we split up, the signal always spotty in this area, but worse the closer to the forest you get. We each take a different car to check for survivors, Bane’s eyes meeting mine a few moments later, resignation in their golden depths. He shakes his head as he withdraws his fingers from the driver’s neck. Mine, I don’t even need to touch, but I do so just to be one hundred percent sure. Miracles happen, but with the way this man’s head is hanging, I’m not expecting him to survive a broken neck this severe. I wait an extra minute, trying to will a pulse to life that isn’t there, but Mason’s voice has my own start sprinting.

  “I’ve got a live one!” Bane reaches them first, trying to decide if it’s better to pull him out or leave him until the medics arrive.

  Rounding from the other side, my steps slow until stopping completely. “Guys.” My voice is a breathless whisper as I eye the trickle of blood dripping out of the broken tail light. “Guys!”

  Though I ran down here expecting death, I lock up with momentary fear. Whatever’s inside that trunk, I’m sure it’ll be an image that will haunt me until the day I die, something that will star in my nightmares for years to come. I don’t want to see, don’t want to know, yet I can’t bring myself to look away from the droplet of blood as it splashes onto the small puddle in the dirt below.

  “Fuck,” Mason curses on a whisper beside me, but recovers faster, smacking my shoulder to snap me out of it and get me away from the back. “Go pop the trunk.”

  Nodding quickly, I head over to the driver’s seat, eyeing the unconscious survivor with more caution than before. For a few seconds, we were thrilled to find anyone alive. But of everyone here, it’s looking like he’s the one that really should have died in this crash.

  Popping the trunk, I hear the resulting silence as if it were a scream, realizing where this is going. The trunk won’t unlatch with all of the damage, but with the tail light busted, one of us can get in
to see if they’re still alive, if there’s any hope.

  “I’ll go,” Bane offers, but I shake my head, already stripping off my shirt.

  “No, I’ll do it.” I swallow. “Gotta face our fears eventually, right?” The attempt falls flat, and I watch them share a nervous look, though neither of them stops me as I undo my jeans.

  With a slow breath, dark purple scales start to coat my body as it shrinks down to just a few feet. Slithering across the forest floor, I head towards Mason’s outstretched hand as he crouches down. He picks me up, bright blue eyes wary and giving me ample time to change my mind. When I don’t, he reluctantly helps me slide into the hole in the trunk, careful of the sharp edges.

  It’s a mangled mess, but in this form, it isn’t hard to navigate through. It’s the onslaught of claustrophobia that threatens to drown me, that I won’t be able to get back out, but I push that fear away in favor of the one I’m about to find. As I brush against her body, I’m just sighing in relief that it isn’t a kid. There are some traumatic things that you can’t let go of no matter how much you try, and that would have been one of them for me.

  She’s still warm, but that means little if the wreck was recent. Her faint heartbeat, though? It’s music to my ears; well, body. It’s more a sensation of feeling vibrations in this form, and as I slither over her body, attempting to ignore all of the blood now coating my scales, I try to find a position to shift back in so that I can kick the trunk open without hurting her even more.

  Her shallow breathing grows more labored, and I still as her faint heartbeat falters. A spike of fear has me moving before I can think about all of the ways this is going to blow up in my face. Coiled on top of her chest, I rear back as much as I’m able to in here, striking quickly and sinking my teeth into her neck.

  The venom that I pump into her bloodstream isn’t the same one I use to kill; it’s the one we use to turn humans. Shifters are mostly born in this day and age, but turning isn’t unheard of, it’s just frowned upon because of the complications. Sometimes their bodies aren’t able to accept the change, and many of them can’t mentally handle it, end up either killing themselves or having to be put down to keep us from being exposed.

  What makes matters worse is the randomness of it all. A shifter’s bite only triggers the change, activates the dormant gene in their blood if they have it, but doesn’t necessarily determine what the person will become. A pack of wolves might try to turn a human they want to take as their mate, only for her to become a rabbit.

  It also means that for better or worse, this woman became my responsibility the second I sunk my fangs into her.

  The trunk is torn open, Bane standing there with a crowbar in hand, golden eyes now wide. “Stryker, what the hell did you do?”

  Carefully withdrawing my fangs, I slither out of the trunk and shift back, yanking on my clothes before gently starting to extract her from the wreckage. Removing the duct tape on her mouth before touching anything else, blood pours from her mouth, though she’s still unconscious.

  “I could feel her dying, Bane.” Mason cuts the bindings on her wrists as I get her torso out, and Bane helps free her legs until I manage to finally pull her from the trunk. Carefully cradled in my arms, I don’t dare remove the shards of jagged metal jutting from her body when she’s already lost so much blood. “And I couldn’t just sit by and watch it happen.”

  He runs a hand through his dark hair nervously, but one look at the woman in my arms and his gaze softens. “I’d have done the same thing. Come on, we don’t have much time before people show up; we need to get her out of here.”

  “Hold on,” Mason demands, and I turn to see him looking positively furious. “We take her, that fucking bastard gets off scot-free.”

  Without waiting for a vote, he storms over to the driver’s seat. Stabbing the airbag so that it deflates, he grips the back of the man’s head and slams it forward so hard that there’s an audible crack. Wiping his palms on his jeans, he catches up with us as we head back to the car as quickly as possible without jostling her too much.

  I slide into the backseat with her and Mason, Bane getting us out of here just as we hear sirens approaching. My thumb strokes a soothing, steady path over her cheek, stained with dried blood and tears.

  “Stay with me, baby, we’ve got you now. Nobody’s going to hurt you anymore.” Running a gentle hand through her tangled mess of dark brown hair to get it off of her face, I lean down to kiss her forehead. “And if they try, I’ll kill them.”

  Chapter 3

  Bane

  “Stryker, you need to get some sleep, man.”

  He swipes his shaggy, dark hair out of his face, just so he can narrow bleary, hostile green eyes on my face. “I’m fine. She’s going to freak out when she wakes up; she shouldn’t be alone.”

  I sigh, gazing down at my oldest friend with pity as he pulls his wrist away from the girl's mouth. He’s completely torn up about turning her, not that Mason or I are upset at him in the slightest. Yeah, it changes shit for all of us, but either of us would have done the same damn thing if we’d been there when her heart was giving out. Yet Stryker’s trying to take all of the responsibility onto his shoulders, considers her his burden to bear, for better or worse.

  Three days. It’s been three agonizingly long days waiting for her to wake up, and he hasn’t slept. The change clearly took or she’d be dead at this point. But never have we heard of it taking someone so long to heal after they’ve been bitten, even returning from the brink of death.

  “She won’t be alone." Waiting until he's done brushing a stray droplet of blood from her lips, I offer him a hand to help him up out of the chair he pulled beside the bed that she’s currently lying in. “I’ll keep watch for a night while you crash.” We both cringe at my word choice before I backpedal. “Get a decent night's sleep. You think looking that manic, you won’t freak her out even worse than she’ll already be? She’s not just your responsibility, Stryker, she’s all of ours. Let us help.”

  He holds my stare, looking absolutely wrecked. I understand, not that he sees that right now. Not only was she clearly kidnapped and in pain for gods know how long before we found her on the verge of death, but she was trapped in that trunk as the walls caved in around her. After the way Stryker grew up, it makes sense that he’d develop an instant connection with her over that, even if he’s never said a single word to the girl.

  But where no one came to save him, he managed to save her.

  Eventually he sighs, taking my hand and getting to his feet. “She wakes up, you’ll get me?”

  I clap him on the back as he passes, taking my bed for the night while I take up his post in the chair. “You have my word.”

  Nodding to himself, he scrubs a hand down his exhausted face, leaving the room. There isn’t a door in the frame; hasn’t been since the day he moved in. With a clear view of the hall, Mason not being particularly discreet as he finds any excuse to pass by and peek in on her progress, I sit down and settle in for the night. The chair’s not comfortable in the slightest, stolen from the dining room with a wooden back and arms, but at least it has a cushion.

  I pull out my phone, checking the delivery status of Stryker’s new one since we destroyed his. 9-1-1 can trace calls, and seeing as this woman’s blood was all over the scene, yet without a body to show for it, we needed to sever every possible connection that we could. It’s the hardest part of being a shifter, the discretion that it requires simply to exist. Whether born or turned, the same rules apply. You can court a human, but can’t reveal yourself until the moment you try to turn them, when it’s too late for them to back out and blab without giving themselves away as well, or winding up dead if the change doesn’t take.

  Yet no matter how much I try to distract myself with emails or games, my gaze keeps getting pulled back to our mystery woman. Stryker carefully and meticulously cleaned her up without undressing her to throw her in the tub, which I agree was the best call. By the shorts and sports b
ra, I’d wager that the asshole that kidnapped her snatched her while she was out running, and the fact that she was abducted and is going to wake up in a strange place? If we changed her clothes, even to tend to her wounds, she’d no doubt lose her shit, and with good reason.

  She must have been terrified. How long was she trapped inside that trunk, imagining what that man would do to her when he stopped driving? Did she pass out during the first crash, or the second?

  Why hasn’t she woken up yet?

  That’s the hardest part, I think; all of the unknowns. We don’t know what she’ll be able to shift into, what happened to her, or hell, even the name of the woman that’s become the center of our lives. Everything’s changed, and none of us really know where to put that fact because we don’t even know who we changed everything for.

  Her dark brown hair is brushed straight, hanging past her shoulders. Bright red lips are a sharp contrast to her skin, now paler than the sun kissed tan she had when we brought her here, like she’s fading away trapped in the house. A thin blanket is tucked around her despite the summer heat, Stryker attempting to offer her whatever coverage and security that he could. Tentatively, I press the back of my hand against her forehead to be sure she isn’t overheating, not really knowing what else to do.

  Shifters don’t get sick. The twenty-four hours of the turned ones’ transitions sometimes results in a fever or tossing and turning, but she’s just been so still, not so much as a twitch these past three days. There aren’t any supernatural hospitals because they aren’t necessary, and it’s not like we can exactly ask the humans for help. Her wounds are healed now that the shrapnel has been removed, not so much as a scar left behind to remember the horrific event. She’s clearly changed, so there should be no reason she hasn’t woken up.

  Unless Stryker didn’t use enough venom, pulled out too early.

  It’s a stupid thought, but once it pops up in my head, it takes root until I can’t ignore it. I just keep looking at this woman, desperate to help, and my gums ache as the urge to bite her takes over all common sense.