by Bec McMaster
The Last True Hero
Bec McMaster
Lochaber Press
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
COMING 2017
Also by Bec McMaster
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Last True Hero: A Burned Lands Novel
Copyright 2017 (c) Bec McMaster
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This novel is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations are entirely coincidental.
Edited and proofread by: Hot Tree Editing
Cover Art (c) Damonza.com
Created with Vellum
Sometimes the monsters aren't so easy to see...
In the drought-stricken wastelands that arose out of an apocalypse, Adam McClain never thought himself the hero. Kicked out of the town he created, and shunned by his friends when they discovered what he was, he's managed to find work as a bounty hunter. After all, who best to hunt the wargs and reivers that haunt the Badlands, than one of the monsters themselves?
She's the one woman he can't have...
Mia Grey learned the hard way that men can't be trusted, and when McClain strides into her bar she knows trouble just walked in. The rugged bounty hunter is her greatest weakness, but he's hiding something and the last time a man kept secrets from her, she got her fingers burned. Tempting as he is, Mia's staying far away.
But when a horde of reivers captures her sister, the only person Mia can turn to is the one man who tempts her to break all of her rules. Together they might be able to rescue her sister, but what will happen when Mia learns of the secret McClain is hiding? And when the man who broke Mia's heart in the first place discovers the same secret, will McClain survive?
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Prologue
Wastelands, 2139
THE FIRST TIME Adam McClain put the gun in his mouth, he couldn't pull the trigger.
He'd found a nice, lonely spot out in the Wastelands, far enough away from his sister that she wouldn't find his body, and one with a beautiful view over the Great Divide, which split the continent in half.
Thou shalt not suffer a warg to live.
That was the first law he'd ever learned at the knee of his stern bounty hunter father. Adam had followed in his footsteps, hunting the wargs and shadow-cats that lurked in the gloom of the wastelands. He'd seen the massacres firsthand, blood sprayed across timber floors as he walked slowly through a homestead, and broken bodies scattered and torn as he searched room after room, looking for the perpetrator.
One particular memory sprang to mind.
"I didn't mean it," the man whispered, his hands covered in blood and his eyes filled with utter horror at what he'd found when the sun finally rose and he returned to himself. "I didn't want to hurt them."
But the warg inside him made him do it, and Adam lifted the gun and shot him. He'd always considered it mercy.
It was only now that he recognized the irony.
He knew what he was facing. The barely knitted wounds across his abdomen still ached, but he could feel the maliciousness that worked its way within him. Two nights ago a warg buried its claws in his gut and tore his future away from him, and now it was he who had to deliver mercy to himself.
And he couldn't do it.
Adam took the coward's way out. He pulled the gun out of his mouth and dropped it to the ground, gasping hard. Night was slowly falling and with it came the heat in his blood, the moon's curse. He could feel it whispering through his veins as the monster within fought to free itself. The partner he'd once ridden with, Luc Wade, would be staring at the same sky, feeling the same rush of blood through his veins that Adam felt as the moon became a glint on the horizon.
And it was because of Adam that Luc shared the same fate.
As muscle ripped and bones tore themselves in half and re-formed, he screamed his rage and shame into the empty night. It was the first time he'd shifted and the agony of it was blinding. Soon there was nothing more than a monster remaining, and the man that Adam was lay buried deep inside the brutish beast's heart.
When the sun rose in the morning, he found himself a man again, naked and panting on the blistering sands of the desert floor with blood on his hands and the taste of it in his mouth. The sight of the deer—or what remained of it—made him vomit. It was a long walk back to where he'd been, his feet healing even as the harsh rocky floor tore them apart.
Adam put the gun in his mouth again. This time he knew the bone-deep truth of what he'd become. His hands shook. His sister, Eden, flashed into his mind. Eden, who would be wondering where he was...
“Promise me, you'll watch over her, boy,” his father's voice whispered in his mind, from a long time ago when his father had ridden out that last time.
Adam always kept his promises, even if he'd had to stab his best friend in the back to do so. His hands were shaking so hard when he pulled the gun out of his mouth the second time that he actually crushed the hand piece. Without him there to protect her, Eden would be forced to find her feet in this harsh world.
He didn't know what to do.
A wink of pewter caught his eye from the bag he'd brought with him. Adam stared at it for a long time, knowing he didn't deserve it. The medallion was a promise. A dream of another life. He'd taken it from Bartholomew Cane, the warg who'd changed him into... this. Cane wore one himself, as did his partner, Johnny Colton. Though Adam wanted both their heads, he wanted what the medallion represented more.
A way to keep the beast at bay. A way to hide what he was in a crowd of humans. A means to pretend that nothing had changed, that he was still the man he'd always been. He'd worn it last night and managed to escape the change.
Until now.
Luc Wade had promised them all vengeance. That was the only thing that kept his once-partner sane after what had happened between them. But Adam had something else to live for.
Atonement.
So he dressed himself in the spare clothes he'd brought with him—perhaps he'd known he couldn't really do it—and then he started back toward the beaten-up old motorcycle that had brought him here.
Eden would be wondering where he was, and Adam had promises to keep.
One
Nine years later....
"ANOTHER," ADAM MCCLAIN slurred, shoving the empty tumbler across the counter.
The woman behind the bar arched a brow and stayed where she was, polishing a glass. Then she pointed to the white line that had been painted across the timber floors.
Adam stared at her. Mia stared back. This was one argument he had no hope in hell of winning, despite the fact she barely reached his shoulder.
If there was one thing that drove him utterly crazy, it was hardheaded women.
Scraping the chair back, he stood and crossed to the start of the line. Holding his arms out, he walked swiftly along the line and then turned with his hands held wide in a somewhat mocking salute.
Mia's dark eyes narrowed, but she poured him another whiskey. That was her rule. Walk the line and you got another drink. But she had to be wondering how he'd downed nearly two bottles of the stuff and wasn't even staggering.
Casual slipups like that might get him caught. He was just drunk enough not to care.
"Any particular reason you're trying to drown yourself in my good whiskey?" She slid the full glass toward him then held it there, her gaze a challenge.
"Nothing I'd like to share."
"You missing that kid that was riding with you? Where'd he go, anyway?"
Adam sighed. Cole had insisted on following him over the past year, ever since Luc Wade clawed the boy up and turned him into a warg. But he'd grown tired of Adam's lack of motivation, and finally decided he was going home to see his family.
There'd be no home for him there. Adam could have told him that. Nobody in the Wastelands welcomed a warg back into their familial embrace.
But some things you had to learn for yourself.
"Kid's gone home. And he's welcome to it." Adam threw the glass back, and the fiery liquid burned all the way down. Within half an hour his body would have burned through it, so he had to drink fast to stay drunk these days. Not that getting drunk made the world any rosier.
"If you wanted to talk about it, McClain," Mia picked her words carefully, "I'm a good listener."
"Why? You want to make it all better?" He leaned closer. "We don't need to talk for that."
Those dark eyes narrowed again, the thick lashes doing nothing to obscure the heat in them. It seemed to be her favorite expression. "Now I know you're drunk." She screwed the cap back on the whiskey bottle. "No more."
Frustration lanced through him but he tipped his head to her. Mia Gray reminded him of another woman he'd once known. Sometimes he wondered if that was why he'd lingered here in this tiny shitforsaken town for over a month. Oh, she looked nothing like Riley, and she had far more tact than Riley had ever had, but Mia's favorite word was also no.
Tracing a puddle of amber liquid on the timber counter, he wondered what Riley would be doing right now. He'd lost his chance with her over a year ago—or maybe he'd stepped aside when it became clear that she was the only person who could find Luc Wade's heart, let alone cause it to beat—but Adam still thought of her now and then.
Of what could have been.
He felt so lost now. At least after he'd first become a warg, he'd had a plan. He'd been driven then, searching for his own redemption, building a town, gathering people together where he could protect them and striving to create a life for himself. He'd thought he'd found redemption, but it was all gone the second his people discovered they had a warg in their midst. Who was he now? A clapped-out bounty hunter who spent more time in bars than hunting?
A brutal lesson to learn. No matter what he tried to make of himself, to everyone else's eyes he was still just a monster.
"That looks like woman trouble in your eyes," Mia noted.
She swiped a rag through the sticky puddle he'd been fingering, then lifted his wrist and cleaned his finger too. Her touch was cool; her bronze-colored skin wasn't as warm as his. The fever burn in his veins promised that the full moon was only three days away.
He could always feel it now.
The full moon was the hardest to ignore, despite the burning cold of the amulet against his chest that kept the monster at bay. And the feel of Mia's skin on his awoke all manner of longing. Before he knew what he was doing, he'd turned his wrist, capturing her own in his strong fingers, his thumb rasping over the sweet kick of her veins. Just a faint caress, but from the sudden shocked flash of her eyes, she felt the burn too.
They stayed like that as the clock ticked out long seconds.
"No women," he said, "but plenty of trouble."
Adam's gaze lowered to her mouth; that dangerous mouth that liked telling him no. He wanted it to say yes. He wanted to capture the word on her lips and steal it deep inside. Mia's mouth parted... but the word never came.
Heat simmered in her cheeks and Mia turned away quickly, rubbing at her wrist. "I'm not the answer to your problems."
"I know." He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back a little in his chair. "I'm not looking for an answer, but maybe I'm looking for a distraction. Maybe we both want the same thing."
"What's that?" Her eyes met his in the mirror.
"Something uncomplicated."
Those broad shoulders straightened and she tilted her head to the side, as if thinking. Her entire outfit was no-nonsense: tight denim jeans that showcased a fine ass, a white cotton tank, and only a pair of pretty jade earrings to hint at femininity, though she had that in spades. The tank clung to her rounded curves, and though he'd rarely seen her without her black hair knotted back or in a tight braid, little tendrils of it constantly escaped. The effect was immediate. And effortless. He'd be surprised if she even knew how often men's gazes lingered on her, though they rarely pushed for more than that. The sharp tongue had its own ball-tightening effect, but it scared off most of the locals, he'd noticed.
More fool them.
"Turn around," he said. "As much as I enjoy looking at your ass, I much prefer your pretty face."
Mia leveled a force-one glare upon him. "Sometimes, McClain, you just shouldn't open your mouth."
"My mouth does wonderful things, or so I've heard. Maybe you should teach me to put it to better use."
"I run my own bar. I'm a respected woman who can earn her own way, and I do not need a man for anything. Even something uncomplicated. So don't go looking at me as a means to scratch that itch you've got. Why don't you go visit Jade?"
"Jade's never going to scratch this itch," he replied. "This itch has got a mean mouth, the prettiest pair of eyes north of the borderlands, and skin that just begs to be licked. Why else do you think I drink here? The service with a smile?"
"I thought it had something to do with the best whiskey this side of the Divide." Mia crossed her arms over her chest. "Christ, McClain. Is that what the women fall for up in the Wastelands?"
"How'd you know I come from the north?"
"I've got a gift for dialect. We get all sorts wander through here; bounty hunters, Nomads, sometimes even Confederate enforcers.”
"Hmm." He considered her. "One night. That's all I want." Then he could burn the yearning for her out of his system and move on.
"Why me?"
A tricky question. "You remind me of someone...."
"Oh, hell no." Mia bristled. "You want to switch off the lights, and pretend I'm—"
"No, I didn't mean it like that." With a scowl, he raked his hands through his hair. It was getting long, the ends of it faintly curling. He needed to razor it again. "You're the type of woman that catches my eye."
Mia leaned back against the bar, slightly mollified. "And what type of woman is that?"
"The strong-willed, determined, take-no-prisoners type," he growled. "The type that I can't have. Usually."
Mia considered it, chewing on her lower lip. Then she shook her head. "You're the type of man I stay far, far away from, McClain. I don't need to know your story to see the shadows in your eyes. You're trouble. You don't know what you want, nor do you know how to get there. You're a man without a map or a compass. A hero without a cause to fight for. And," she said, with the faintest smile, "you're far too pretty for your own good."
; "I'm not a hero."
I'm the monster every Wastelander fears.
"Interesting." Mia poured them both another shot of whiskey. She nudged one toward him with a curious glint in her eyes. "You protest that, but you don't protest the part about you looking pretty."
This time, Adam was the one trying not to flush. She had a way about her that struck him straight to the gut. He lifted his glass of whiskey. "Here's to what could have been."
"Cheers," she said, lifting her own glass and bumping it against his. Her voice grew a little husky. "It's not just you, McClain. You're not the only one who's a little lost. I'd be bad for you and I know enough to know you'd be bad for me." She took a deep breath. "Here's to finding our way." She threw the whiskey back, her long, smooth throat working. He watched her for another long moment, fighting the urge to touch her, then threw his own back.
Both glasses hit the counter.
"You moving on soon?"
Adam nodded. There was his answer, right there. "No other reason to stay."
Mia looked troubled again. "You know, sometimes you say things that make me want to smack you upside the head. And sometimes... sometimes you know just the right thing to say."
"I—" Adam shut his mouth, hearing bootheels ringing on the front porch. Company by the sounds of it.
Mia followed his gaze toward the door. "What?"
Three seconds later a pair of hands hit the doors, sending them swinging inward. A man appeared, wearing a long trench and a black Stetson he dragged from his head. There were small weathered lines at the sides of his eyes, a Kevlar vest shielding his chest and a pair of guns at his hips. Adam's gut clenched hard. A bounty hunter by the look of it, just like him. If anyone could recognize the signs of a warg in human clothing, this stranger would be it.
Mia sucked in a sharp little breath as if hit.