by Lily Cahill
Drew stood perfectly still, his head dipped low and his eyes on Nina. Tentatively, Nina took one step closer, then another. It’d been so long since she’d touched a shifter like this, so long since she’d felt anything but revulsion for what Drew was. But she didn’t feel revolted now, she felt … calm, protected, loved.
Nina’s hand hovered over Drew’s pelt, then she sank her fingers deep into his fur and reveled in his warmth. Drew groaned with happiness and leaned into Nina’s stroking hand. When she pulled away, he nudged his head forward and licked at her arm, asking for more. Nina laughed, but stepped back.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “But can I have Drew back now?”
In an instant, Drew was standing before her in his human form. He enveloped her in a hug, and Nina breathed deeply, taking in the strange, perfect mix of his scent—both man and bear. Wordlessly, they sat together and watched the sunset, Nina nestled against Drew’s body.
“You still want this?” Drew asked quietly, as the sun whispered beneath the horizon and streaked the sky purple.
Nina craned her neck and looked up in Drew’s searching eyes. “Yes, Drew. I love you, all of you.” She drew a deep, shaky breath and nestled into Drew’s enormous chest. She could hear his heart thumping, and felt hers match his beat. “I commit everything to you, Drew. My future, my happiness, my love.”
One of Drew’s fingers lifted Nina’s chin, and the love she saw in his eyes nearly made her cry. She’d never felt more loved int her entire life. “And I to you, Nina Marten. Now and forever.”
The sky was dark purple by the time they turned away to climb back to the car. Above, on the cliff’s edge, Nina thought she caught a flash of a lens, but when she looked again, it was gone.
Chapter Twelve
Drew
PURPLE CLOUDS BROODED AT THE western horizon as Drew put his foot down and flew through the wide-open Texas landscape. The amphitheater was west of Austin, set into low hills and surrounded by stands of cottonwoods and scrubby grasslands.
Drew slammed on his brakes and jumped out of the car. The tour bus had already arrived—probably hours ago. Shit. He’d promised Bret he’d make it in time, and with the news he was about to share, he didn’t want to push it with his brother.
They were playing at an amphitheater on the edge of the rolling Texas prairie, the grand old wooden stage standing tall against the gathering clouds. Drew checked his watch as he raced through the backstage, dodging roadies and venue workers. Out on the stage, they were already doing soundcheck, and the noise of the crowd hit his ears. Drew growled and ran faster. The openers were already done.
“Drew!”
Drew wheeled around to see Emily. She raised her eyebrows and motioned for him.
“Bret is … not happy,” she said, walking fast. Drew followed her without a word and ducked into the small, dark closet of a dressing room.
Chase and Jax were talking quietly in one corner, and Tiff was stretched out on a couch flicking through photos on her big camera. The camera was rested on her heavily-pregnant stomach, and she shifted, one hand pushing at the side of her belly.
“I swear, he’s doing somersaults,” she groaned.
Jax ran to her side, one hand on her belly. “You calm down for your mother,” Jax said to her belly.
Tiff’s face lit in a smile, and she covered Jax’s hand with her own.
Drew watched with his heart in his throat. This was going to be him. God, he couldn’t wait to be able to feel the baby moving inside Nina, couldn’t wait to meet his child. Drew had to look away, too overcome with emotion. For a flash, he could picture it: His son or daughter running through the Montana hills with his cousins, sitting around a campfire and learning the old songs Drew remembered from childhood. Learning the fiddle, and learning about his grandmother.
“Drew?” There was heavy question in Tiff’s voice, and Drew turned to face his family. Tiff smiled. “So …?”
Bret, who Drew hadn’t noticed sitting in the darkened corner, yanked earbuds away from his ears and stalked closer. “Come on, we have a concert to play. Unless you’d all rather stay here and play house.”
“Bret,” Emily started. She shared an exasperated look with Chase. Emily hauled Tiff to her feet so the two women could get back to the hotel, leaving Drew alone just with his brothers. Emily paused at the door and fixed Bret with a look. “Drew’s here just like he promised. No one is going anywhere.”
Drew smarted at the lie, but now wasn’t the time to tell the truth.
“For now,” Bret snarled, his eyes boring into Drew.
Drew stood tall and didn’t look away from Bret. “Let’s get out there and show these people a fucking good time,” he said, his voice rumbling out of his chest.
And it was true—he did want to play, to perform. Being with Nina, filling his heart with happiness, he wanted this. Maybe not as much as he wanted Nina, and their family, and to help lead the Western Clans to a new era of peace, but music would always be a part of him.
Drew started the primal chant, and he was the first out on stage. But Dreary Drew was gone. He jutted his chin and stared out over the crowd and felt their energy crash around him. It filled his mouth and ran through his veins, until he was nearly jumping with it. His bass felt alive under his touch, and his fingers itched to play hard and play long.
The crowd went wild, the lights spotlighted Drew and his three brothers, and they gave the performance of their lives. Drew drank up the love of the crowd, the manic energy, the surging excitement. He pulled it deep and stored it away to remember. To remember this.
The roars were deafening, the stomps demanding an encore reverberated up through his boots and shook his very core. Drew strode back on stage to wild cheers and plucked his fiddle from the stand. He was alone on the stage, alone in the spotlight. He settled the fiddle to his chin, closed his eyes, and played.
He played for Nina, for their baby, for his mother, for himself. Everything he put into the music, he got back tenfold. After a minute, Chase joined him on the drums, then Jax and Bret on guitar and vocals. The old lullaby from their mother grew and morphed into something alive and powerful, and the song built, built, built. It drove through the crowd, pounded at their feet, crashed against bodies. It all swirled together in a soaring culmination that sent goose bumps riding along Drew’s skin.
The strobing lights went out, the song faded to echo, and there was silent for a breath of a second, then the venue roared to life. Drew stood triumphant on stage and welcomed all the love into his heart he could handle—all the while knowing it was nothing to what he and Nina could feel together.
The four Hart brothers filed off the stage as the crowd still screamed and cheered, and Drew knew they were leaving these people with something they’d still be talking about long after the song faded to nothing.
Backstage, Drew jumped back and forth on his feet, energy still jagging through his like a Texas storm. Jax, Chase, and Bret surrounded him, talking over each other and grinning ear to ear.
“Man, that was epic,” Jax said.
“We need to get back in the studio,” Bret said. “I’ve got so many ideas for a new album, so much—”
Drew’s high came crashing back to earth. He couldn’t lie to his brothers.
“Wait,” he said.
Bret froze, and the happiness in his eyes grew hooded and distant.
“I …,” Drew paused. It was hard to find the right words, the right way to say was he needed to say. “I’m going back to Montana. I’m going to fight to be chieftain.”
“What?” Bret said, his tone flat.
“After the tour is over,” Drew said quickly. “But this is my responsibility. I have … I have a family now to think of, and—”
Both Jax’s and Chase’s eyebrows crawled high.
“What the fuck do you mean, a family?” Bret demanded.
“I … Nina … she’s pregnant. We’re having a baby.”
The announcement hung in the air,
then suddenly Drew was crushed between his two brothers, and they were saying a lot of words Drew couldn’t quite hear, but he got the basics. He pulled away, smiling wide.
“Your little cub will have a cousin, Jax.”
Jax grinned. “Tiff will be so damn happy.”
“Em too,” Chase added.
But through the excitement, a blackness pulled at Drew. He looked at Bret and nearly startled at the look of pure hatred on his brother’s face.
“Fuck. This,” Bret snarled.
“Bret, I—”
Bret shoved Drew in the shoulder with one finger. “Save it, brother. You’re leaving us for a woman. You’re breaking up this for what? Fucking nothing.”
“C’mon, Bret, don’t be a dick,” Chase started. “Why are you so jealous of what we’ve found? I promise, when you find your mate—”
Bret rounded on Chase. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, Chase.” Bret held up his hands and backed up a step, and the fury in his face turned to resignation. “You know what? I’m out.”
He backed up another step, shaking his head. “I quit. Good luck without a lead singer.”
Then Bret turned around, and walked away. Drew and his brothers watched him go, at a loss. Drew backed up against one of the old wooden rafters backstage and sat down. He felt Chase and Jax do the same.
Gobsmacked, that’s what he was feeling. And guilt, and anger, a million more emotions he could barely name. He and his brothers sat in silence as the roadies worked around them. They sat in silence until they were the only ones there—the world muted, the venue still. Drew’s heart had gone cold. This was his fault. He’d lost his brother because of his own happiness.
Finally, Drew stumbled forward. He had to go find Bret, to explain. Something was going on with his little brother, and it was Drew’s responsibility to make it right … if he could.
He’d made it two steps when the lights went out.
Drew spun in a circle, but the world was pitch black.
Out of the darkness, someone … something growled.
Then he smelled it: fire. Smoke billowed through the narrow warren of halls and catwalks backstage and choked his mouth, stung his eyes.
“Chase, Jax!” he coughed their names, then felt them at his side.
Chase coughed. “You heard that?”
“The growl … it wasn’t you?” Fear prickled at Drew’s skin, and sudden adrenaline surged through him. “Shift,” he commanded. “Now.”
He was already in his bear form by the time his hands hit the ground, and his advanced shifter eyesight turned the black hallways into murky shapes.
There were yellow eyes in the distance. Drew rumbled a warning, and another growl answered. From behind. He spun just as a wolf sprang at him, wickedly sharp teeth bared. They tumbled to the ground, and Drew flung the smaller creature off his with one powerful swipe of his paw. But the wolf was quick. It wheeled around and launched itself at him again. Drew rammed his shoulder into the animal, and he saw Chase grab the animal by the scruff of its neck and fling it into a wall.
There was a guttural bark, then the second creature lunged for them out of the darkness. The smoke he’d smelled earlier was growing hot and thick, and an eerie orange glow was licking at the edges of his vision from the stage area. They had to get out. They’d succumb to the smoke if they stayed inside much long. Drew caught his brothers eyes and motioned toward the back exit.
With a grunt, he knocked the second wolf out of the way, though the creatures long claws dug painful furrows down his shoulder as it fell. Drew roared and launched himself forward. Escape pulsed through him. They had to get out. They had to.
There was a groaning crack behind them, then an earth-shattering crash. Drew glanced behind to see rafters engulfed in flame, falling to the ground. Chase, at the rear, just made it.
There. The door. Drew rammed into it, but it was lodged shut. There was something holding them in. Disoriented from the smoke, with adrenaline coursing through him, Drew didn’t have time to think clearly, he could only act. He pawed the floorboards as he backed up, then he roared and ran for the door. It cracked under his weight, but didn’t budge. Dammit!
He wouldn’t die here. He wouldn’t do that to Nina, to his child. He had to get out. Drew pulled in a giant breath, steeled his massive muscles. He rammed the door again, and it burst forward, splintering nearly in two. Drew stood back and grunted for Chase and Jax to run through. He was just about to run through himself when he heard screaming.
Screaming from inside the building. Drew swung his head back and forth. Just a foot away was freedom. He could smell the sweet, clear night air, and breathed deeply.
Someone screamed again. He couldn’t let them die. Whatever was happening, it was because of them. These wolves had to be the shifters trying to usurp power from the ruling Alvarez clan. Mac had said it was the Espinosas that were causing trouble in the Southern Clans—and here in Texas, the Hart brothers were smack in the middle of clan territory. And it was only because of his father’s tyranny and violence that the shifter world was at the brink of turmoil.
No, this was Drew’s responsibility to make right. Drew grunted to Chase and Jax and then flicked his eyes back into the flaming theater, where the voice screamed in terror again. Drew tore away into the burning building, sniffing out the trapped person. Smoke stung at his nose and eyes and made it hard to breathe, but he pushed deeper into the building, searching, searching.
There, heaped in a corner. A woman cried out and tried to stand, but she was shaking badly. Drew shifted back to his human form and ran to her.
She screamed in terror.
“Stop!” he called out, as she started stumbling deeper into the building, toward the fire and certain death. He careened to a stop, and she whipped her head around to look up at him, terror in her large, brown eyes. She seemed half-mad with fear and tried to fight Drew off. “I’m trying to help,” Drew shouted over the deep roar of the fire. Heat was rising, making sweat drip into his eyes.
Drew grabbed her arms, and she shrieked. He frowned to see deep gashes down her arm, but he didn’t have time to think about it. Drew took a breath that choked him and hauled the woman up and over his shoulder. She kicked and screamed, but he barreled toward the door. Drew kicked it open and ran toward the side of the building before he sat her back on the ground.
“Run,” he said. “Keep running until you’re safe.”
She blinked up at him, her breath coming in short gasps and her eyes glassy. Over the roar of the fire, sirens screamed in approach.
“Go!”
And she did. Behind him, hidden in the scrubby grassland and dense dark of night, one of his brothers roared, followed by a terrible shriek. Drew bolted toward the sounds of the fight, shifting as he did. He was fairly sure he’d just saved one of the wolf shifters who’d attacked him, but right now, that didn’t matter. She was still human. She still deserved to live. Maybe she’d remember that in the future when faced with the same decision.
Drew darted around sagebrushes and leaped over the rocky, uneven ground, his heart pounding. Suddenly, he burst into a dusty clearing … and into hell. Jax and Chase were in the center of a ring of wolves—there had to be six of them circling his brothers. Light from the distant fire licked at the edges of the clearing, turn everything to a bleed of orange, yellow, and black. Drew roared in anger and attacked, swiping and bashing and clawing and ramming.
It was dirty. It was brutal. But in minutes, it was practically over. The injured wolves had run howling into the night or slunk away in defeat, until only one wolf remained. He was a giant beast, with a deep scar etched into one side of his face that turned his eye milky white. The wolf snarled, his teeth bared. He was heaving, and there was blood dampening his mouth from where he’d sunk his fangs into the meat of Chase’s shoulder.
But he was outnumbered, outweighed. The wolf snarled one last night, then turned tail and ran. Drew and his brothers shifted quickly. Drew ran to Chase
to bandage his shoulder—it was a nasty bite, but looked worse than it was. Chase shoved off any of Drew’s attempts to wrap it with his own shredded shirt.
“What the hell was that?” Chase panted.
“The Espinosa clan, it had to be,” Drew said quietly, every sense still on high alert for their return.
“But why? Why attack us?” That was Jax, wrapping his own arm in a torn shirt then poking at Drew’s shoulder.
Drew hissed. In the adrenaline of the fight, he’d forgotten about the gouges down his shoulder. “Because we’re Harts,” Drew said. “Because what better way to usurp the power of the Alvarez clan than to attack the Western Clans when they’re at their most vulnerable, without a leader.”
Drew yanked his phone out of his pocket and jammed in Mac’s number. The man answered quickly, though his voice was rough with sleep. Drew related what had just happened and heard a weary sigh on the other end.
“The wolf you described, with the scar. I was afraid of this,” Mac said.
“What do you mean?”
Mac was silent for a moment. “There was a breakout at the Southlands Camp, where Derek Craven is housed. He’s gone, along with a number of others, including Tuco Espinosa, a particularly brutal shifter.”
Rage burned through Drew, stronger than the smoke and fire in the building behind him.
“Do authorities know? These wolves just set a whole damn building on fire to get to us.”
“Of course not, Drew. You know it’s better to keep this internal to our world.”
“Not anymore,” Drew said, barely keeping his voice level. “We’re not putting innocent people in harm’s way for this. People could have died back there, Mac. When I’m clan leader—”
A voice boomed out of the darkness. “When you’re clan leader?”
Terror rolled down Drew’s spine and clutched at his chest. No. No, it couldn’t be.
A bit of darkness at the edge of the clearing moved, and light flickered against a tall, broad man, still hiding at the edge of shadows. His face was chewed up with scars, and his hair—once so dark—was ragged and gray. But he was still a strong and menacing. Those hands could still attack, and that thin, angry mouth could still threaten to hurt, to kill.