by R. A. Boyd
The Shifter’s Fight
The Ghost Shifters Series, Book 4
R. A. Boyd
Contents
Other Books in this series
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Up next in the Ghost Shifters Series
New Release Newsletter Sign-up
A note from the author
Other works by R.A. Boyd
More of the Ghost Shifters?
The Shifter’s Salvation
Copyright© 2019
By R.A. Boyd
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locations is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.
ASIN: B07NWPZ1HJ
Text copyright ©2019 R.A. Boyd
All Rights Reserved
Other Books in this series
The Shifter's Wish, Book 1
The Shifter's Dream, Book 2
The Shifter's Salvation, Book 3
To Belles. I’m so happy you know just awes awesome you are.
Chapter 1
“I’m leaving. And I just want you to know that I hate every single one of you. You have no respect for the people around you.”
Aiden stomped off toward his house to pack a bag. He was really leaving this time. At least twice a week he threatened to go, but what he’d just witnessed was the cherry on top of the five-tiered fondant cake. And he fucking hated fondant icing.
The squelching of Riley’s footsteps through the mud as she followed behind him brought a smile to his face. She hated wet, sticky stuff on her shoes and feet, especially mud. Inside, she was probably dying just a little, and that thought turned his smile into a sorrowful grimace. He shouldn’t be happy she was uncomfortable, but damn-it he was really uncomfortable. In his mind, he could still see her large breasts moving up and down as she humped Teague’s face. And damn-it, Aiden bet he would still see Teague fiddling with his dick as he ate her in his nightmares every night until the day he died.
Was it possible to barf up memories, because if so he would shove his entire fist down his throat to purge his brain of that horrific scene.
Maybe Willow could give him a potion to make him forget the last five minutes. She was a talented witch. This should be right up her alley.
“Aiden. Aiden, I’m so sorry.” Riley pleaded as she chased after him. “We didn’t hear you. Please don’t hate me.”
That did it. Aiden rounded on her to tell her how inconsiderate she and Teague were, but he lost all his fight as soon as his eyes met hers.
Her doe-brown eyes glistened with unshed tears and her bottom lip quivered. At least she’d managed to put her shirt on.
“Damn-it, Riley,” Aiden said, taking a few steps back onto the dry pavement so she could put her feet on something not wet. “I don’t hate you. I fucking hate him,” he said, pointing over Riley’s shoulder at his brother, her mate Teague.
Teague, the smug bastard, smiled as he walked up behind Riley and put his arm around her shoulders. Aiden knew Teague had seen him run by. Their eyes met for just a few seconds before Aiden was blinded by what he’d seen. There had been confusion and horror there in Teague’s stupid eyes.
Calm as the summer days are long, Cass came walking toward them with a bag of trail mix in her hand. “What’s going on? Aiden, why are you bleeding?”
Bleeding? He didn’t know he was bleeding. He looked down at his muddy sweatpants and tee-shirt but didn’t see any blood. Cass reached up and wiped at the sweat that was cooling on his forehead, and when she brought her hand back it was covered in blood.
“Thanks,” Aiden said to Teague and Riley, sarcasm dripping from his voice. “I fell when I saw…” Closing his eyes to ward away the craptastic memory, his whole body shivered as he tried to measure his words carefully. He didn’t want to hurt Riley’s feelings any more than he already had. “We need ground rules around here, Cass. This is the second time I’ve caught them screwing up against a tree in the woods and had to endure hot pokers through my eyeballs. And last week was the second time I walked up on Audra and Zeke playing some kinky fucking game in the woods where she had on angel wings and a baseball cap turned backward, and he had on a weird mask with a dick on the chin!”
This wasn’t some free for all brothel where people could have sex all over the place. At least it hadn’t been. It was their home. Their community. He was happy that his brothers and sister had found their mates. They’d been waiting for them. But he hadn’t found his mate, and neither had Jace and Simon. He wouldn’t even include the group of Ghost douche bags that left to live in some secluded commune to avoid finding mates.
That might not be a bad idea. At least he wouldn’t run into anyone having sex in the woods while he was trying to jog and enjoy the scenery.
Aiden reached up and grabbed two handfuls of his hair. Well, he tried to. To give himself something to do a few nights ago, he shaved off most of his hair while he was trimming his beard. Aiden was going stir-crazy.
With the Rogue clan members growing in numbers, Aiden and his people had come back home to keep their community safe. They were now free from the curse the Creator had put on them at the end of the Great War in Heaven, and now the Ghost shifter clan members were starting to find their mates.
But he wasn’t used to so many women in their community. He was happy his brothers and sister found their mates, but they needed to keep their sexual acts in the house where he couldn’t see.
Aiden’s job at the loading dock in Baltimore had always kept him busy. It worked him hard enough to keep his shifter energy at bay. Staying here at home and wondering what the Rogue clan who were hunting them had planned next was driving him insane. He’d have to go back to work soon or he just might throttle and maim one of his brethren.
“Okay. We’ll figure this out.” Cass reached into her pocket and pulled out a napkin. Aiden tried to take it from her but she slapped his hand and started cleaning the blood from his face. “Aiden jogs between eight and ten in the morning,” she said, still tending to his forehead.
Aiden screwed up his face. “How did you know that?” He didn’t even know what time he jogged. He just left when the mood hit him.
“I pay attention to our clan.” Cass looked at him like she couldn’t believe he didn’t know how thorough she was with keeping tabs on their people. “Everyone, let’s try not to have sex outside between those times. And you usually stay south and southwest of the community when you run, so just in case Aiden wants to switch up his time for jogging everyone will keep their outdoor sex-escapades to the north. We’re all adults and we should be considerate of one another.”
And that’s why Cass was freaking awesome. Less than a year ago she’d been human, and now she was a badass saber-tooth cat shifter in the Alpha Triad of his clan. She always managed to keep the peace between them. Forceful and dominant like their Alpha, Jax, yet cool and level-headed like their Omega, Damon. She was also the main reason the Ghost shifters were now pairing up and getting their beasts back. And to top it off, she was fucking deadly.
“That sounds fair,” Riley said, pulling Aiden from his thoughts. “I really am sorry.”
Aiden made a clicking sound in the bac
k of his throat. He did that when he was trying to keep calm. “You don’t have to apologize, Riley.” He gently punched her on the arm and then cut his eyes to Cass. She was still fussing over the cut on his forehead. “I’m good, Cass.”
Everyone was on edge here. The idea that they were slowly getting their saber-tooth beasts back after millennia of being cursed made them all wonder who was next to find their mate and regain their beast. The fact that they were now being targeted by the Rogues because they were getting their beasts back didn’t help. To top that off, the Rogues were being led by the fallen archangel, Samiyah. Or Jophiel. Whatever the hell he was calling himself now.
“We’ll be fine,” Cass said as if reading Aiden’s thoughts.
He nodded his head and let out a slow breath, but it did little to calm him. “Look, it’s been a few months. I need to go back to work or I’m going to lose it. Jogging isn’t doing it.”
Everyone here had something that kept them busy. Working at the loading dock in Baltimore was his thing. He’d tried working with his brothers, and even helping out around Audra’s restaurant, but he needed real physical work that tired him and his dormant beast out.
Riley sighed and shifted from one bare foot to the other. “It’s just so far away. What if something happened to you? The Rogues have a base near the harbor where you work and—”
“I know,” Aiden interrupted. “It’s only an hour away.”
Teague punched him on the arm hard enough to knock him back a few steps. “You have to do what’s good for you. Just do me a favor. Wait for Jax and Damon to get home before you go back to Baltimore, yeah?”
He could do that. “Yeah. I can do that.”
Maybe he was just jealous of watching his brothers and sister be so freaking happy. They’d been waiting for this forever, and now they were finding the ones who would return their grace back to them. And what was an angel, even a fallen one, without their grace? Is that what he wanted?
Nope. Fuck that. He was happy being alone and working odd hours, not having to answer to anyone about what time he was getting off work. He could come home from a long day at the docks, take off his clothes, and sit his unwashed ass on his couch. Not that it was something he did that often, but if he wanted to the option was there.
“Then it’s settled. You’ll stay close to New Rose and everyone is safe. Thanks, Aiden,” Cass said, turning to go back to where she and her mates lived.
Aiden ran his hand over his short, dark hair and was about to go back to the woods to continue his jog when Audra and Zeke came walking out of their house. Zeke was carrying a black duffle bag while Audra held a pair of blue and pink fairy wings in one hand and was turning her baseball cap backward with the other. Zeke slapped her on the ass and Audra made a hissing sound like a pissed off cat.
“Fuck this,” Aiden said, walking toward his house. “I’m staying at the inn in New Rose for a few days.”
Chapter 2
Stay calm and stick as close to the truth as possible. That mantra played over and over in Paige’s head as she watched the people, mostly shifters, make their way around Melinda Bale’s Bar and Pub. This was the place were supporters of the New Rose Ghost Shifter clan came to gather before they met at the Town Hall in support of the Ghosts. Tonight would be her first time attending.
Out of paranoia and force of habit, she checked her back pocket for the keycard to her room at the New Rose Inn. She’d already lost the key once and would not pay the ten dollar fee to have it replaced. The nice lady at the front desk let her slide the first time, but warned her that she would have to cough up the fee if she lost it again.
“Why didn’t I bring my purse?” Paige chastised herself as she sipped on a hot cup of apple cider. She blew out a raspberry. “’Cause you’d lose it, genius.”
Paige was always forgetting stuff. She’d been like that since her mom and dad died when she was ten, and her godfather took custody of her. Poppa Sam— that’s what she called her godfather— was nice enough, telling her that it was a coping mechanism for having her mom and dad die during her formative years.
After she had moved in with him she’d asked him to give her a potion to make her more confident in herself, make her not be so forgetful. He would shake his head, and with the kindest smile he would tell her to embrace who she was. If this is who you are then this is who you are, he would say. It was a nice thought, but now she was an adult and still hated being around too many people.
Smiling as she thought of her mother, she reached up and rubbed the acorn pendant that had belonged to her. It was the only thing she never forgot to bring with her. Its silvery, blue shine reflected off of everything. Poppa Sam said her mother had kept it locked away because she didn’t want to lose it, but he’d attached it to a gold chain and made her promise never to take it off lest she lose that too.
He cared about Paige and always wanted her to be safe, so he let her keep to herself without forcing her to be around people. But she would do this for him. Someone he’d loved had died at the hands of one of the Ghost shifters. They weren’t natural.
A shifter was a shifter, but a fallen angel shifter… Paige decided long ago that she would shove her insecurities aside and help bring down the Ghosts. Even now they were powerful, but after they’d found their mates and gotten their beasts back they would be unstoppable. Only a few were paired up. They were running out of time.
A hefty man with dark hair sticking from under a too tight skullcap sat down next to her at the bar and pushed her arm hard enough to send droplets of cider onto her hand. She took a deep breath to calm herself. He smelled like fur and his breasts were larger than hers.
“Sorry, ma’am.” His raspy voice grated on her ears. If he wasn’t a shifter she would have sworn that he had a smoker’s cough.
“It’s fine,” she said, grabbing her napkin and dipping it into her glass of water. She wiped off her hand to make sure her fingers didn’t get sticky.
God, she would rather be sitting at a booth by herself and reading her new favorite book on her phone. Better yet, she’d rather be in her room eating in front of her window. But she had promised Poppa Sam that she would get to know the shifters here and find out the lies the abominations were spreading about themselves.
Everyone here just freaking loved the Ghost shifters. If only they knew how horrible and blasphemous they really were.
“You smell like regret and sadness,” skullcap man said as he looked down at her. His brown eyes were probing. Did he know her secret? “Want to talk about it?”
Paige crossed her arms over her full chest and sniffed. “How perceptive of you. And you smell like beef jerky and fish fingers. You want a cookie?”
Dang-it. No! No, no. She was supposed to be nice to the shifters who supported the Ghosts so they would trust her. Sarcasm had been Paige’s main line of defense growing up. When she got nervous, she got snarky. Or she high-tailed it back home and hid in her flat. Sarcasm was better. It made her seem less weak than she really was.
“Sir.” Paige shook her head and turned slightly to face him. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m new in New Rose and don’t know anyone.”
His eyebrows shot up and almost disappeared under his cap. “It’s all right. I shouldn’t snoop. You got a clan out here?”
Rude. He didn’t even know her. Why the heck would he ask her something like that?
“No,” she said, turning back to face her cider. “Never been part of a clan. Just me and my Poppa.”
“Rogue?” he asked.
A wave of guilt slashed across her chest. Just as she was about to start explaining herself, she remembered not every ‘rogue’ was associated with the big bad Rogue clan that had been formed to stand against the Ghosts.
“Kind of.” Her words were too fast and she had to remind herself to slow down. “My parents died when I was younger. My godfather took me in but he’s not a shifter. So, no clan to speak of. Just Poppa Sam.”
That was the truth. Poppa Sam alw
ays said he didn’t feel comfortable being the only human in a group of shifters, so instead of staying with the Six Stripe Clan her parents had belonged to, he took her and moved. And moved. And moved some more. They traveled together. Being around shifters was new to her. They’d traveled so much that Paige didn’t have too many friends, and Poppa Sam tended to stay away from shifters. He said they were territorial. That’s why he kept her on the move. She was a shifter and they would try to force her to join their packs or clans. No thank you.
Privately, she also thought it was because he was so prideful and wanted to be better than everyone he encountered. Most of the time, he was better. But shifters made him uneasy. He was a witch, and shifters liked to use witches to make their clans stronger. Poppa Sam said no one would use him for anything.
“Well,” the man sitting beside her said as he reached out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Benjamin Hills. New Rose is a good place for shifters, whether you’re in a clan or not. You just have to not be an asshole.”
Paige snorted. He said asshole. He was nice and reminded her of someone. “Well, as far as I know, I’m not one of those.” Mostly. “I just came here to learn about the Ghosts. I never believed they were real and now here they are, fighting for their lives.” Good.
He nodded and adjusted in his seat. “Yep. They’re real, all right. They’ve been good to the people of New Rose as long as anyone can remember. They’re fighting for their lives and we’re here to fight with them.”