Shifter Alpha Claim 1-6 Omnibus

by Tamara Rose Blodgett

  Is that even good?

  I crane my neck, trying to locate Narah. I witness Drake being hauled by two, bad-ass looking vampires.

  I remember my prejudice against the fanged ones from just a couple of weeks ago. Like everyone else when they found out about vampires, I was leery—prejudiced.

  That'd all bled out the instant I was thrown into their world. Or—the world I knew about.

  Now I know that we've been carefully “fed” the illusion that vampires are the only species besides humans. If humanity only knew what lurks around? It'd be chaos.

  We're not ready. I'm not ready. Not that my emotional well-being matters. I am one now. Acceptance and belief aren't relevant.

  I try not to think about Pooky—my office. Patients that need me—now what—shuffled to a partner who doesn't understand their history?

  While I screw a werewolf and let a dragon lick me.

  I'm the one needing to be committed.

  “I smell your frustration, Talyn.”

  I can only nod. I'm frustrated alright. About many things. Things that make me gnash my teeth because I'm not in control of my own life's path.

  And these Mutable guys can't take no for a damn answer.

  *

  “Looks like we missed them.”

  I gaze around the ransacked Final Enforcement office and tip my head back, letting it fall where it may. A stiff metal cross bar supports me and I'm fine with it. Just don't move me.

  “Talyn?”

  “What?” I say to the ceiling.

  “Drake's going to be fine.”

  I still don't move my head, rolling my eyes to the sprawled dragon. Thankfully, that skilled tongue of his is currently inside his mouth. I don't really need to be thinking about where it's been at the moment.

  I shut my eyes. All this is my fault.

  Enforcer Adrienne walks over, her face looming into my line of sight. “This isn't your fault.”

  My eyes snap open. Telepathy?

  Her luminous silvery-grayish eyes hold mine. Tears run down my cheeks, and all I can do is shrug.

  Nah, just empathy. Maybe one in the same.

  “Listen,” she sinks to her haunches, giving a look to the other vampire enforcer who's still here that clearly says, don't say anything. She pats me on my arm.

  “You're not the best at this comfort thing,” I comment in a dry voice.

  She smiles. “Yeah, but I like to give it a shot.” Her eyes shift away then come back to mine. “Like I said before, penis plus penis plus vagina equals problems.”

  My laugh chases away the tears.

  Adrienne smiles. “See? You need to look at it with more simplicity instead of taking this entire hybrid thing on as something you could have avoided through decisions or choice. There just isn't any.”

  “Speaking from personal experience?” I ask.

  She gives a grave nod, her tattered braids swinging forward. “Absolutely. And it sucked. I wish I'd had someone who told me what was what.”

  “Narah?” the vamp calls.

  Adrienne narrows her eyes. “What? Can't you see I'm trying to—”

  “Make things worse?” the vamp asks.

  I come to her defense, “She's okay...”

  “Murphy,” he supplies.

  “I just need to know that Drake will be okay, Murphy. And I'd like to go home, and see my cat—figure out my job.” I twist my hands together, hanging on by a thread. Just mentioning all those things that were familiar and comfortable puts a golfball-sized lump in my throat.

  Adrienne's hand squeezes my arm and I wince.

  She gives me an apologetic expression. “Sorry, keep forgetting my own strength. There will be time for that. The cat's at my place.”

  “I'm sure those mates of yours love the feline,” Murphy says.

  Narah gives him another look of borderline dislike, and he tosses his palms up in mock surrender. “Jesus, girl—relax.”

  “You have Pooky?” I ask, biting my lip.

  She turns back to me and nods, snuffing out the ghost of a smile. “Yes—Pooky is fine.” She sends another dirty look to Murphy. “And for the record, your job will be there. But we need to agree that humans aren't ready for the rest of the supernatural world. I can barely keep up on the illegal humans. However much I'd like to personally toss the information out there anyway. I say let the humans figure it out. I'm fucking tired of keeping secrets regulated from the top from people who don't understand it.” She sighs. “Honestly,” she stands, pacing a few steps away, “I almost said no to your case. It was your hybrid status—which we won't be able to keep under wraps much longer—that made me say yes.”

  “And now you wish you'd said no.”

  The enforcer dips her head and gives a single nod. “Sort of, can't lie—it's been a bitch. But if we can pull the dragon through, and your Lycan here,” she jabs a thumb at the silent Merck, standing by the window in apparent guard-mode, “and can get you somewhere safe, my services won't be needed and I can close this case.”

  “A relief for all,” Murphy mutters in the background.

  My brows pull together, and I gather myself together, sitting up. “What's keeping it open?”

  Narah gives a pointed look to my borrowed and ruined guy wardrobe. “You're not safe. You're being pursued. That Jamie Duncan moron is behind a lot of it. Now, if someone could give me answers about why a partially mated hybrid Lycan female is still being sought—I'd love that. Because it doesn't make sense.”

  “Arden could have,” I reply softly, and I can't stop the quaking of my lip this time. His death is too new, too fresh. His absence is a void like a wound that won't close. Drake was the vehicle for his death but Arden was the driver. Wrong place and wrong time for him were inevitable.

  Those facts don't make it any easier for me to cope with his loss.

  Narah studies my expression. “I know he was—killed. We had the best cleaner on that thing. Can't have the human police catching wind of an entire hive of Mutables.”

  Unmarked grave. I jerk my face up, fighting weeping. “They refer to themselves as a colony.”

  Adrienne shrugs a shoulder, flipping her charred braids behind her shoulder. I notice the abrasions along her arm that make it look like chewed hamburger and swallow my gorge. “We use hive for those guys.”

  “Drake isn't a Mutable,” I whisper.

  “He was trying to pass—see if he could sniff out a prehistoric female before a Mutable could use her,” Merck adds, never taking his eyes off the glass and the window he looks through.

  “I need to get out of here, Narah,” Murphy says anxiously.

  Narah sighs, rubbing her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Yeah.”

  “Where are the two other vampires?” I ask.

  “They went home. Dawn is coming.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “You don't have to?”

  “I don't go to ground. I'm actually human enough to withstand sunlight.”

  “I am not, however,” Murphy raises a brow.

  Adrienne purses her lips. “Use the basement Murphy.”

  He wrinkles his nose. “I loathe the smell.”

  She stares, Murphy lowers his eyes. It is the strangest interaction I've ever witnessed. This tiny woman ordering around the huge male vampire.

  “What's your relationship with Murphy?” I ask, and immediately understand censoring my curiosity would have been more polite.

  Adrienne doesn't care about polite, apparently. She folds her arms, planting her boot clad feet wide apart. “I'm his sire. He was almost killed, I turned him by accident.”

  That gets Merck swiveling to stare at them. “That's painful.”

  “You have no idea,” Murphy comments with frozen neutrality.

  Adrienne waves it away. “It is what it is.” Her voice is low, tender, and I give her a swift searching look, but her eyes are for him. “I didn't want to live without ya, Murph. So I guess that was in my mind when I sunk fangs. Can't take it back now,” she q
uietly recites.

  She looks away as though uncomfortable with the confession, and Murphy comes to her, wrapping his arms around her. “You're a porcupine, love, but I do adore you.”

  Adrienne wraps her hands around his huge biceps and they stand there for a few moments, hugging. His dark head bent over her platinum dread lock braids.

  Merck and I look at each other across the room, over Drake's healing sleeping body.

  He turns back to guard the window, and the street beyond without another word.

  4

  Duncan

  I shake Alex by his long ears.

  His braying howls are truly satisfying.

  I speak through my teeth. “What part of blowing up the competition didn't you understand?”

  He manages a gurgling cough and I drop him, dusting the small, nearly invisible stabbing hairs of his half-form's coat off my fingers. Where is the damn soap when you need it?

  My exhale is pure disgust.

  “We need Talyn Phisher. She is Lanarre, and even the Lycan doesn't appreciate what that can mean to certain species.” My eyebrows rise with the significance of that fact.

  Alex gazes up at me out of those ridiculously soulful eyes, blinking rapidly. “I hate being a donkey!”

  My fists clench. “If you bray one more time, I'll kick those yellow cubes you call teeth down your throat.” I rake my hair back into place, and wrap it in a hair tie. “As I've explained half a dozen times, Talyn is key.” I wrap my hand in a fist. “She is what will make every form you have as relevant as your primary.”

  “I know!” Alex wails miserably. “I didn't know Drake wasn't a Mutable.”

  Neither did any of us.

  “Yes,” I seethe. I whirl and he cringes, expecting another shake and bake. “We move. Now. While the vampires are asnooze in their coffins, the diminutive enforcer and Lycan are the only obstacles in our way. It's war.”

  “What about the prehistoric?” Alex asks from the ground.

  I finger my chin, deliberating the ancient shifter sect. “I can't account for his presence.”

  “Those prehistoric bastards give a shit about preserving the fairer sex.” Alex spits. He certainly isn't a fan of females. Only of their unique equipment.

  I nod in response, but dismiss them as a threat. “The prehistorics are too few in number. He must have stumbled along, happening upon the location. And Drake?” I smile, joy swelling my chest like a beautiful peacock. Fairly soon, I will be able to keep that form as well.

  Any form.

  Perhaps even prehistoric. The Lanarre werewolf is a chameleon. Not she herself, but a carrier of a very rare gene that can be passed on to those she is intimate with. We keep Talyn Phisher under lock and key, and Mutables take turns getting what they need.

  It's really perfect.

  And if a few prehistoric or vampires get in our way, then so be it. I turn my attention to Alex, still sprawled on the floor. “I have Mutables from the Pacific Northwest colony coming.”

  “What about Drake?” Alex asks.

  I shake my head. “He didn't look very lively from where I stood.” My eyes slim on Alex like razors. “However, he'd be much less so if the grenade had taken out the competition rather than our own kind.” Each word is enunciated to wound and maim.

  The donkey flinches with each word.

  Satisfying again. Yet, I can't waste any more time on theatrics. I have Mutables to meet.

  I have a dragon, Lycan and vampire to kill.

  *

  Noah

  “If our healer puts a stitch in, your coat-of-steel will cover it within hours.” I slap Jacob's back and shrug.

  He sighs, his tusks melting back into his face. When they're nubs of pale ivory they suddenly vanish. I've seen a lot of prehistorics shift but some of the rarer of us always startles.

  “Weird, huh?” Jac muses.

  I nod.

  I lean my ass against the narrow desk that serves as work station, eatery, sleeping platform—and sometimes—though hardly enough, sex surface. I cock my head, looking at Jac. “What happened—besides the obvious?”

  Jac will heal, though much of his body was burned by the blast and his tusks were charred, losing the tips. One of his eyes was half-detached.

  Prehistorics are the fastest healers of all shifter species. Still, Jac sustained enough damage to give me pause.

  “The fucking Mutable—”

  “—the donkey?” I ask.

  Jac chuckles. “Yeah. He pulled the pin.” He mimes a bomb exploding, his hands flying apart.

  My eyebrows pop. “A grenade?” I whistle.

  “Hard to acquire, right?” Jac shakes his head, pacing the room.

  I spin, facing him. “Yes. Very.”

  I can't believe a Mutable and a few of his buddies would be willing to bring that kind of fire power and exposure. Though the human news had covered it, saying the explosion was a gas leak.

  Right. And I have a tail and horns growing. No—there's something more. Something behind the scenes in play here. “Drake?” I ask.

  Jac shakes his head. “Not sure. Too much going on for me to get a clear look.”

  “What kind of look did you get?”

  He doesn't speak for a few seconds but his face tells me. “Doesn't look good, Noah.”

  “Alright.” I straighten from my perch against the desk. “The Mutables will try again, and Drake needs us.”

  “Forget Drake. If he's bred the female that's great. But if he's gone—we need to protect her.”

  “For ourselves,” I ask Jac, testing him.

  He meets my eyes. “Hell yes for us. I don't know which one of us, but if Drake isn't her mate, and she's prehistoric—and I got that she was,” he pauses, letting his words sink in, “then we're honor-bound to assist.”

  I nod and he continues, “She's already partially claimed,” Jac says.

  “That's not good—it's the loosest of strings.”

  “Agreed,” Jac acknowledges gravely. “So, the sooner the better.”

  I nod. “Let's do it during the day when the vamps are nighty-night. I don't want to have to consider them.”

  “What about that enforcer?” I ask.

  “The female hybrid I keep hearing about on pulsevision?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is she a hindrance or help?”

  Jacob appears to consider. “She was acting like a protector from the little I saw.” His face gains a crooked smile. “That is, before her mate tossed her into the hall, and out of harm's way.”

  “Ouch,” I say, scrubbing my face.

  “Yeah, enforcer with a level ten proficient.”

  I whistle for the second time.

  “And pregnant too.”

  My gaze snaps to his. “Really?”

  He nods. “And the mates are in agreement with her working?” I scoff.

  He shakes his head. “They may not know of the youngling.”

  What a mess.

  I walk to Jac, squeeze his shoulder. “The enforcer is ally or not. What is really important is she remains with Talyn, and surrounded by enforcers of near caliber so we must use—”

  “Caution.”

  I clap Jac on the back. “Exactly. Let's get our soldiers. Not too many.”

  A slow smile curves Jac's lips. “I thought you'd never ask. That donkey pissed me off, he and his friends. I told you about the deer, right?”

  My lips twitch. “I wouldn't tell anyone else if you don't want to spend the rest of your natural life living it down.”

  Jac scowls, and I grin.

  I contact the others to save Talyn Phisher—and Drake.

  If it's not already too late.

  5

  Talyn

  Beautiful peridot gemstones blink up at me as I take his hand. “Hey,” I say through my tears.

  Drake's finally awake. This dragon that saved me from Duncan—from Donkey. I give a shaky laugh at the imagery, and realize my nervousness has no place to go but out.


  “Let's get him in the van,” Adrienne says.

  I remember she asked me to call her Narah, instead of Enforcer Adrienne. I blink, feeling like my thoughts are being sucked into the quicksand of my brain. “Okay.”

  “Wait,” Drake says from his makeshift bed on the floor of the office of Final Enforcement. “Come here.”

  I bend over him, and he pulls me against his body. It's no longer hard with scales, but merely firm with flesh covered steel.

  That tongue—it splits the seam of my mouth and only an agitated exhale from Merck keeps me grounded in the present.

  Even for all my uncertainty, I feel the pull to finish what's between me and the dragon in my arms.

  It's not rational. It's not the choice that the old Talyn Phisher would have made, but the impulse beats between us anyway.

  “Okay lovebirds, let's shift the dragon inside here.”

  I stand, moving away from Drake. My face burns with embarrassment as Narah and Merck count to three, hands fisting the blanket underneath Drake as they heave him on the final count inside a nondescript utility van.

  Drake groans at the movement and my frightened eyes meet Narah's. She just shakes her head. “Let's get you guys to my favorite hidey-hole, and then we'll talk about the next move.”

  Merck waits for me to get in and be seated. Narah hops in last, slapping the top of the van as our driver takes off.

  Somewhere safe, she insists.

  Hope flees, and in its place realism slides in.

  *

  It seems safe.

  “Where are we?” I'd been blindfolded—Merck too, while Drake slept off his healing injuries. It felt like days to arrive. Narah says it's only been hours.

  “The Hills.”

  I hadn't been born and raised in Sioux Falls. I'd thought to pass through, appease my internship requirements when I first arrived. But then the place had bitten me and not let go. “Black Hills?”

  Narah cocks an eyebrow. She's a hard case. Moving her jaw toward a small cabin nestled in a stand of fragrant pine trees she says, “Bunk down here. We'll figure out the rest.”

  “Where will you be?” I ask.