Dark: A Dark Paranormal Romance (Blood Moon, Texas Shifters Book 1)

by Kat Kinney

  Dallas fumbled the tongs. “No worries, bro. Got your plate coming up.”

  “Sweet. Just chicken.”

  Which he might have remembered if he hadn’t been drinking. Dallas had hundreds of recipes memorized. Hell, he ran a restaurant he started from a freaking food trailer, one that had just been featured in Texas Monthly, but ask him to remember the restricted diet August had to follow, and suddenly he had his head up his ass.

  “Chill the hell out,” Lacey muttered.

  Crap. Maybe I’d said that last part out loud.

  “Like this is any of your business,” I snapped.

  Ellie shot Hayden a look. Brody raised an eyebrow. I clenched my teeth.

  “E, c’mon.” August inserted himself between me and Dallas. “You’re worse than Dad.”

  “For real,” muttered Dallas, taking a pull from his beer.

  Lacey snorted.

  “Enough,” growled Brody, infusing his voice with power. “You know the rules. We hang that shit at the door on Sundays.”

  The yard fell silent. I ground my teeth but took my plate to the table. Brody had been acting Alpha for just over a year, ever since Ben left. Cal was serving as second after Brody’s original choice bailed, and let’s just say no one was doing particularly well with the transition.

  Ellie grabbed Hayden’s sleeve, a freaky telepathic eye fight taking place while everyone else dug into their potato salad like whoever reached their plate first would find the winning Powerball numbers. Ellie dropped her plate, scattering Nilla wafers across the flagstones. A tail ghosted beneath the table.

  “Major!” Brody barked.

  Sulking, the dog reemerged.

  “This is bullshit,” Ellie snapped.

  Hayden glared. “Can we not do this here?”

  “No. I’m through pretending everything is fine. First there was the mugging. Now you’re telling me that the fever, the discoloration in your eyes was because someone tried to poison you? And you still won’t take this seriously?”

  “Newsflash: I am taking it seriously. And I need you to trust me.”

  “Why should I? All you do lately is lie. And now they’re after both of us. We have to go to the police. We can’t just sit here—”

  “We’ve been over this,” Brody cut in. “I’ve been gathering intel on this gang for years—”

  “Oh, but you can’t even tell me their name? Because that’s so believable.” Ellie rolled her eyes.

  “I’ve told you everything I’m allowed to disclose. This organization is brutal, well-connected, and the last thing you want is for them to put a hit out on you and your sister because then there won’t be a damn thing I can do to protect either of you.”

  And… cue the crickets.

  Tears flooded Ellie’s eyes. Gripping her hand, Hayden sliced a glare Brody’s way.

  “Please can we just go?” Ellie said in a low voice. “Just walk out the front door with me right now, no questions asked, and I’ll never ask you for anything again.”

  Hayden looked away, eyes bright and glassy.

  I frowned. “Ellie—”

  “Don’t.” She stood, the few curls that had sprung loose from the knot on top of her head shaking with rage. “Every time you come around my sister, she winds up getting hurt. If you want to help, stay away from both of us.”

  The words twisted in my gut like a knife.

  Brody cleared his throat. “Need you to trust me on this. I’m going to have a plainclothes deputy, someone I know is clean, watching you and your sister at all times until we catch this guy. You’ll be protected—”

  “I don’t want anything from your family. You own half this county and think it entitles you to do anything you want. I’m calling someone to come pick me up.” Tossing her plate into the trash, Ellie slammed the door, Hayden close on her heels.

  Brody leaned forward. “Let’s do this quick. West?”

  My brother whipped out his phone. “Grabbed the video off the camera we installed in her car. There isn’t much, but we got a couple of shots.”

  He passed his phone over to Brody, everyone on their side of the table clustering around to see. After a minute, Brody handed it off to me. Cal and August leaned in as I swiped through grainy images of a rail-thin man in a canvas jacket that looked like it had gone a few rounds with a hay baler. Matted hanks of dark hair hung down into his face, months of unkempt beard growth pretty much holding up a flashing neon sign that screamed Feral.

  “Not much to go on.” Cal passed back the phone. “Looks twenty to thirty if we’re talking human years.”

  Which didn’t tell us anything. Shifters aged at a rate comparable to humans until our twenties, after which things slowed down considerably. Ben used to color his hair silver at the temples so his age would match his driver’s license. Others stayed off the grid entirely, relying on less than savory methods of bringing in funds. Those who wanted to live a normal life were typically forced to pack up and resettle every few decades under new identities. And with advancements in digital technology and facial recognition software, that was growing increasingly hard to do.

  Brody steepled his fingers. “Cal, get over to the campgrounds tonight and do some sniffing around. Cell tower pinged this guy in Austin, but we’ve tracked him through town the past few days on foot. Could be he’s staying somewhere local.”

  “Send the pictures to me,” I told West. “It’s a long shot, but Hayden might recognize him.”

  Brody turned. “Dallas?”

  My brother cut his eyes over to me but shook his head.

  “Lacey?”

  She poked a piece of crust around her plate. “Look, no one wants to say it, so I will. Having Hayden here is putting us all in danger.”

  I let my head fall back. “Are you serious?”

  Dallas locked eyes with me across the table. “Shut the hell up. She’s got the floor.”

  “This isn’t our problem. She wasn’t bitten in our territory, and now she’s got a pack of Ferals after her. We’re in this now, and there’s no going back, but this should have been brought up for discussion before we were asked to put ourselves and our families at risk.”

  I stabbed a finger into the table. “This pack doesn’t turn people away. Mom and Ben took you in when you had no place else to go.”

  Lacey bared her teeth. “That was more of a homegrown problem, in case you’ve forgotten. And I wasn’t putting the pack in danger with trouble I dragged here from Austin.”

  “Enough.” Brody got to his feet.

  “So you’d kick Hayden out on the street, all because you’re so jealous we’re together you can’t see straight?”

  Dallas hurled his beer over my head, sending it crashing against the side of the house. “Enough of that shit.”

  “I said lock it up.”

  The table fell silent. Tucking tail, the dog slinked over to the back door, no doubt looking for Ellie and her pocketful of cookies. Brody ran meetings differently now that he was in charge. A lot of the younger, more progressive pack leaders were allowing for a more democratic pack structure involving discussion and debate rather than the outdated models ruled by ranking, power and challenges. More voices being given agency allowed for a greater sense of community, even if Alphas still presided over the pack as a whole. It was different as hell from growing up under Ben’s roof. And we were all still experiencing a learning curve.

  West sopped a slice of bread through his barbeque sauce and loaded it up with brisket. “Even if we ID the Feral responsible for changing Hayden, it doesn’t get us anywhere. Deadline’s up, as far as the Council’s concerned. They find out we’ve been harboring her and didn’t call it in—"

  “Council’s been informed,” Brody cut in.

  I whirled on him. “The hell—?”

  “It was time. This is over our heads. I made the call.”

  “They’ll kill her.”

  “She’s under the pack’s protection,” Brody countered calmly.

  “And w
e’re just supposed to take their word on that? She’s unsired. You know damn well how they’ve been handling loose ends ever since the leak got out.”

  “Can’t be helped.”

  Screw that. “I claim her. Formally. I’ll call the Council.”

  Now you really could have heard a pin drop. All eyes zeroed in on me.

  “Once you declare, there’s no takesies backsies,” Dallas warned. “You change your mind—”

  “This isn’t fucking Oprah and I’m not asking anyone’s opinion.”

  Rolling her eyes, Lacey twirled her fork through a lake of whipped cream.

  Brody looked down, measuring his words. “We’re locked into this now. These guys decide to start recruiting or leaving waves of Unsired’s infected in our territory, we’re going to have to answer for it. I get it being Hayden makes things personal for you, but we make decisions as a group.”

  My wolf roared to the surface. “You would put Hayden’s life up to a vote?”

  “E, c’mon.” August rubbed his temples and I felt a pang of guilt. “Sit the hell down.”

  “This isn’t about choosing sides.” Cal casted a pointed look at Brody. “Think we all might need to take a breather.”

  “Like you’ve ever chosen us.” Wrenching the cap off a fresh beer, Dallas slammed back half of it in one swallow.

  “Bro, c’mon,” West muttered. “You’ve had too much.”

  “No. He shouldn’t get to call in a favor like this, carte blanche. Not when this family has never meant crap to him.”

  “Enough,” barked Brody. “I’m not warning either of you again.”

  “That’s not true,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Yeah?” Hard blue eyes held mine. “So how come I’ve never heard you call Dad anything but Ben?”

  There was a collective shout when I flipped the table. Chairs screeched back across the flagstones, beer and barbeque shelling the patio. West and Cal launched in like they were going to try to pull us apart, but Dally’s knuckles were flying for my face, and then we were down on the ground, pummeling each other.

  I slammed a fist into Dallas’ eye. He ducked, jabbing two quick shots into my ribs. Pain exploded through my chest. I gasped, vision spotting, unable to draw in air. Kneeing him hard in the gut, I rolled out of the way.

  Dallas came screaming down on top of me like the motherfucking Hulk, and I hurled a handful of dirt in his eyes. He cursed. I ducked, watching his fist plow into the ground where my face had been seconds before. We traded blows. Jabbing. Punching. Blocking. He caught me in a right hook that hurt like holy hell. Spitting blood, I grabbed him in a headlock and squeezed until he tucked and threw me off.

  “Give it up now, Emo.”

  “That your best pickup line?”

  Growling, he lunged for me. We traded more blows. Dallas clocked me in the jaw. I jabbed him with a knife hand strike to the throat, then tucked and rolled, crushing what smelled suspiciously like a mound of thyme.

  Crap. Not the thyme. Ben was going to kill me.

  I staggered up, nose bleeding, left eye so swollen I could barely see. Blood streamed down Dally’s neck, clods of grass stuck to his shirt. We were lunging for each other again when the icy spray of the garden hose hit us at full blast.

  I shouted. Dallas jumped back, t-shirt soaked through. He glanced over to the patio and did a double take at the sight of the grill lying smashed in pieces off in the grass, the Father’s Day gift he’d presented to Ben that last weekend we were all together.

  My stomach dropped, instantly sucked back to that day, a year and a half ago, to the call that had come in through Lindley County Dispatch, radioing in for backup. The scream we’d all felt through the pack bond. Brody the one who’d found Ben’s cruiser abandoned on the side of the highway, door hanging ajar, lights still flashing.

  “Get your asses over here,” my oldest brother snapped, stamping out a pile of hot embers.

  I glanced around the yard. Hayden and Cal were shoveling hot coals and ash into a bucket. August was manning the hose. Ellie had the Furnado by the collar and was glaring at me with a look that could have rivaled my former juvie officer’s.

  And then Brody was in my face. “You think Dad would be proud of this? Fighting?” He turned on Dallas. “Drunk?” Grabbing his keys, he threw them to Lacey. “Take him home.”

  And then my brother lowered his voice so only he and I could hear. “I need to know if this is going to be a problem.”

  I didn’t look at him. “I’m good.”

  “Make sure it stays that way.”

  He stalked back towards the house.

  A knot formed in my chest. If I lost control again, with my history, Brody would have the grounds to force me back into some sort of treatment program under the argument I was a danger to the community. Silver. Restrictions. Monitoring. If I refused, he could banish me from the pack. And that couldn’t happen.

  I watched from across the yard as August and West righted the table, my younger brother’s face pale and drawn.

  The shifter community had few medical specialists. The handful of doctors who had examined August over the years suspected his condition was some sort of autoimmune disorder, that just like with lupus or MS, his body attacked itself, in his case causing nerve damage, seizures, disorientation, and a host of other symptoms. August’s attacks came in phases, and yeah, like any other shifter, he healed in between, but there was no rhyme or reason to it, no pattern we could identify. All we knew was that for the past year, the interval between the flare-ups had been gradually shrinking. And no one could figure out why.

  Fingers brushed my cheek. I jerked.

  Hayden frowned up at me, eyes shadowed with concern. “We should go.”

  She was counting on me to protect her. And hell if I was going to fail her again. I stared down at the cuff clamped around my wrist, thinking back to the day almost two decades before when Ben had forced me to choose. His methods of compliance and control.

  Or my little brother.

  8

  Hayden

  WEDNESDAY MORNINGS WERE ALWAYS a dumpster fire. Think long lines. Snarky commuters. Add in this week’s special—Devil’s Ghoul Mochas—a chocoholic’s fantasy topped with whip, sprinkles, and a ridiculously cute Cool Whip ghost made by yours truly, and I was baring my teeth by eight a.m. Which of course, was when my phone buzzed with an incoming text.

  Two frozen ghosts careened to the floor. Quickly sliding an iced chai tea latte to the girl across the counter, I pulled my phone from my back pocket. A hand clamped around my wrist.

  Cursing, I whirled. “That’s it. No more American Horror Story until we catch this guy.”

  Ethan tugged me to him by the front pocket of my skinny jeans, leaning me up against the counter for a quick kiss. “Maybe I like the way you insist you aren’t scared then strangle me so tight I can’t breathe.”

  I briefly lost my train of thought as Ethan nipped along the underside of my jaw. “Please. We all know who wakes up wrapped around me in the blankets like we’re making freaky werewolf crepes.”

  “Didn’t hear any complaints a few minutes later.”

  “You’re scaring off the customers.”

  “PSL. No whip,” Ethan called, dropping the cinnamon shaker on the counter. “Let’s go in back.”

  “We’re slammed.”

  “He’s texted you twice in the last twenty-four hours, once from here in town. If this is another one—”

  Grabbing him by the hand, I led the way over to the supply closet. The door shut behind us with a thump, locking us in the dark.

  “Well. This is interesting.”

  I pinched his side.

  “Ow.”

  “Seriously? Right now?”

  “I can be quiet if you can.”

  Snorting, I pulled up the text. “Try to focus.”

  Meera: You know I’ll come get you any time. Day or night. No questions asked.

  It was followed by the number for a domestic abus
e hotline. And then an image. I shut down the screen, but not fast enough to miss the blizzard of balled-up tissues next to my sister’s pillow or the clothes she’d clearly slept in.

  Ethan cursed under his breath.

  “Okay, wow,” I whispered. “Things you wish you could unsee for $200, Alex?”

  With every lie, I pushed Ellie further away. Worse was the knowledge that if she ever found out the truth, ever discovered the monster I’d become, I’d lose her forever. And that might just destroy me.

  “Right now distance is the best way to keep her safe.”

  “So why do I hate myself?”

  He frowned. “You say stuff like that, and I don’t know how to take it. If you’re just blowing off steam, I get it, but—"

  “Sorry. I’m okay. I promise. This just… sucks.”

  He pulled me into his chest. I slipped my arms around his middle, letting him draw me in for a brief, tight hug. Ellie was back east with my aunts touring medical schools. My phone buzzed around the clock with disapproving texts, creepy messages from my stalker, and radio silence from my sister. I was being hunted, and it felt like every move we made, the person hunting me stayed one step ahead.

  “We have to get back out there.” I tugged at Ethan’s apron strings, leaning up on my toes to kiss that spot just behind his ear that made him shivery.

  “Not yet.”

  His fingers slipped beneath the hem of my Killers tee, stroking the bare skin at my waist. I felt my back hit the storage shelves, one of his knees parting mine.

  Ethan and I were together, seeing each other even if the relationship wasn’t yet entirely defined. Things were finally working. Which was why I told myself it was nothing, as we straightened our clothes a few minutes later in the dim light provided by my phone, when I caught a tremor in his hands.

  I emerged from the employee bathroom, scarf looped around my neck, and stopped short. West was leaning against the front counter, messenger bag slung over one shoulder. He dropped a brown paper sack on the counter between us.

  I folded my arms. “For real? Doughnuts are so not going to work.”

  “They’re chocolate.”