Ranger Knox (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 1)

by Meg Ripley

  Mona worked at a bar that was a popular haunt of the Running Hill Riders for many obvious reasons. She was the owner and bartender; the drinks were half-price for members of the club; the music there was always loud and good. No one ever had to punch the jukebox or pay a waiter to change the song. The aptly named Hog’s Grogs was the riders’ meeting spot, a place to unwind, and more or less, a second home to all of them.

  On the morning of her father’s funeral, she stood behind the bar, doing her best to keep it together while she waited for her friends in the club to arrive.

  The first familiar face to show up was Ryan Kirby. He was a sight for tear-filled eyes. Biting her lip, Mona gave him a smile and a friendly nod. She hadn’t seen Ryan in years. He’d been badly injured in a race about a year ago and had been on the mend ever since. She’d sent flowers and cards to him while he healed. Now that her father was gone, Mona was thinking of making Ryan the new leader of the Running Hill Riders. If it had anything to do with the giant crush she had on him, she was never going to admit that out loud.

  Ryan Kirby was tall and devilishly handsome, with black hair, green-blue eyes and a sharp chin that he liked to keep covered in a close-cut beard. He had dimples when he smiled, so he did his best to never smile when he was in a race, lest people not take him seriously as a competitor. He was thirty-two years old and had been a part of the club for twelve years. Mona had adored him for just about all of those years. He smirked when he came into the Hog’s Grogs and saw her there. “Hey there, gorgeous.”

  Before she could go towards him or say anything, they were interrupted by the arrival of several of the others – including, quite possibly, the worst member of the motorcycle club.

  “Ryan? Ryan Kirby?”

  Ryan had appeared to be all set to hug Mona and console her, but he froze as a man spoke from somewhere behind him.

  He turned toward the voice numbly, clearly holding out hope that he was wrong about the speaker even as his eyes rested upon Lance Olsen — as angular, pale and freckled as ever, but slightly more broad than he’d been the last time they met. Mona’s mind flashed back to the last time the two young men had met up, and she had to suppress a smile; they’d been racing down the city’s smallest hill, and Lance’s bike had stalled unexpectedly, sending him tumbling onto the pavement, his pride more bruised than his knees.

  “Hey, Lance,” Ryan said, trying to keep his voice light. “How are you?”

  Lance grinned, flashing a silver cap on one of his front teeth that glinted under the glowing yellow lights of the bar. “Much better now, especially since I changed up my ride.”

  He nodded his red head toward a cherry colored Harley leaning against a glowing street lamp outside.

  Mona scoffed at him. “You’ve finally upgraded to the big boy bikes, then?”

  Lance’s smug look faded. He was known for being fond of smaller, Japanese models of racing bikes when he joined the club about three years ago. Benny had been reluctant to invite him in; Lance was a cocky jerk. Mona couldn’t deny that. If it had been up to her at the time, she would have denied him entry. But now that Benny was gone, she couldn’t make such a rash change without angering more than just Lance. Her father trusted her to do right by the club. She was its owner now, by rights, but she was no biker. She didn’t know how to go about choosing racers for the team.

  Lance looked from Mona to Ryan and the grin returned. “You up for a practice run later today? Ten bucks towards the club says I can beat you.”

  “We’re a charity racing club, not the kind that just races along residential neighborhoods,” Mona argued.

  He pointed a long index finger at her without looking her in the face again. “You stay out of this, bar wench. The men are talking.”

  Ryan kicked aside a chair. “I’ll never be afraid of racing you, Lance. Ever.”

  Lance’s smile widened, and he lowered himself into a chair at a table by the front door, his muddy brown eyes glinting with malice. “Sure, Ryan. Just come get me when you’re done fluffing up your feathers.”

  Ryan bunched his hand into a fist, seconds away from breaking Lance’s freckled nose—

  “That’s enough, boys!” Mona shouted, hitting her rag against the bar’s countertop. That alone wasn’t threatening but she had banned people from her bar before and was not above banning members of the club if they got too violent in her establishment. “Ryan, don’t forget that you have been arrested for fighting once in your life, peaceful and cool-headed though you may seem.”

  Guiltily regarding the fine, wooden floor of Mona Myers’s bar, Ryan nodded and sat down at the bar. She did her best to contain herself that he’d chosen to sit close to her, though it wasn’t so surprising. Compared to Lance, anyone would want to sit by the level-headed daughter of their late leader.

  Lance was the newest and youngest member of their gaggle of misfits. He was twenty-nine years old, but one wouldn’t know it to look at him or observing him in conversation. Because he was a rather green racer, he took losses hard and far too personally, and the loss of the group’s de facto leader was one he apparently hadn’t learned to deal with.

  Ryan was baffled; his temporary departure from the riding club had gone very smoothly for the most part, but he hadn’t anticipated the flak he eventually caught from some of the younger, lower-ranking members. Most of them settled for making him the butt of ‘friendly’ ribbing that targeted his masculinity or even his dashing good looks, and that he could handle; he was less able to deal with the aggressive, strangely leading questioning that Lance preferred.

  Now that Ryan was back in the motorcycle seat, Mona hoped that he would get everything back in order with the club. Several of the members had been absent lately and many of their charity races had gone with only one or two members racing. Benny’s ideal motorcycle club involved racers who knew their bikes and knew how to win. Their winnings earned money for military hospitals and families who had lost loved ones in combat. Sure, a lot of motorcycle riding was fun and games, but it was a sport that Benny took seriously. It wasn’t about being cocky or being the best to him; it was about following the rules and being the fastest.

  Their races were performed largely as exhibitions at things like air shows and festivals. They were performed on race tracks. Benny did not condone street racing of any kind, which was why Lance’s roughhousing on the road was a problem for Mona. She was not good at being an authority figure. That was one of the many reasons that she was glad to have Ryan back around.

  Now that the two boys had settled down and more and more of the other members of the Running Hill Riders were present, they could get started with their memorial service.

  “Dad loved you all,” Mona said as she stood on the bar, looking as many of them in the eye as possible as her eyes scanned the large room full of leather-clad men. “He loved racing, too, and nothing would please him more than to know that we are going to continue on in his mission statement. We are going to participate in as many fundraisers and biking performances as we can possibly fit into a schedule. And we are going to do it… FOR BENNY!”

  “FOR BENNY!” everyone else chanted in unison.

  Everyone drank beer and celebrated the life of Benjamin Myers that morning. Mona and her workers did her father proud in the wining and dining department long into the night. Everyone seemed to take notice and appreciate all of her efforts and hard work getting the whole gang back together for this event.

  No one noticed half as much as Ryan.

  ****

  After everyone else had filed out of the place, Mona was startled to discover that Ryan was still there. He’d stayed near her through the entire wake, almost as though he knew that she wanted him there. They hadn’t spoken to each other much in their lives, beyond the passing motorcycle- or Benny-related conversation. Ryan was gregarious, but Mona was rather shy, particularly while her father was around. She was his baby girl and he worked hard to keep her tender heart protected from the bad biker boys he’d rounded
up.

  Benny’s Running Hill Riders always felt like a close-knit group of people on the fringes and margins of society, a veritable mixing pot in a place where differences often went ignored, uncelebrated, or even condemned. Benny Myers’s wife Leila was a Native American woman who died of cancer not long after Mona first befriended Ryan at the tender age of 15. Benny always said he would never forget the stories of injustice and prejudice he heard from Leila and her family when they’d gotten married back in the late 1960s. Benny was forever changed, always bent on being as caring and compassionate as possible, and that included sharing his passion for bikes. Because of that, the Running Hill Riders worked hard to find bikers who were shunned or expelled from other groups, and it worked out splendidly; now, however, that sense of kinship and camaraderie was gone…

  Mona didn’t know why, though she supposed it had something to do with the fact that they’d been under her kind but misguided leadership while Ryan dealt with his wounds.

  There was no respect towards her. She was young and she’d only ever been on the back of her daddy’s bikes. She didn’t know what she was doing. Now that Ryan was back, she was prepared to fully step aside and not be part of it so much anymore.

  “You did a great job putting all of this together today, Mona,” Ryan said to her once they were alone. His black helmet was off and still on the bar. He didn’t look like he was planning to leave any time soon.

  Mona blushed. “Thanks. I highly doubt that anyone else agrees with you, though. I get so nervous when everyone’s together, all eyes on me. That’s one of the many reasons I’m not cut out to be the de-facto owner of the club now. I’ve got a voice like a chipmunk when I’m nervous and a raspy voice otherwise.”

  “Your voice is my favorite sound. Why wouldn’t I want to hear that?”

  Mona opened her mouth a little, not quite knowing what to say to that. She hadn’t expected him to stay there with her after the wake, and she had expected him to pronounce his affection for her voice even less. “Come on, I sound like a smoker who swallowed a bag of rocks,” she quipped, trying to lighten things. She couldn’t take him seriously, right? They’d known each other for years and he’d never made a move. So why now?

  “And it’s hot,” Ryan insisted, prompting Mona to dissolve into awkward giggles.

  She stopped laughing abruptly as a thought entered her mind. “I suppose that it would be better to talk to you about this while I’ve got you here alone,” she said.

  His eyes widened before he waggled his eyebrows. She was starting to realize that he’d just been kidding around about her before. He often wasn’t serious about much of anything, except for motorcycles and charity work.

  “I think that, now that you’re fully recovered, you should take over as the leader of the club. I’ll go back to being the barkeep.” With that, she opened up the bar and stepped out from behind it, though she stayed leaning against it because it was her turf and she aimed to look after the register until closing time.

  This really did seem to surprise Ryan. “Me? leader? I don’t know… You’ve seen the way the others respect me.”

  “That’s only because they’re jealous,” Mona pointed out. He couldn’t deny that. He was a top-notch rider, and he’d always been one of Benny’s favorites. “Who else should be leader? Lance? Give me a break.”

  “Why not you?” Ryan asked.

  She laughed, but then she realized that he was serious. “I’m not one of you, Rye. I love you all as my family, but I’m no biker. I can’t lead the team to glory from behind a bar. I can’t schedule races. I don’t know the first thing about it. I’m just an accessory.”

  This seemed to displease Ryan. He shook his head a little. “I don’t know if the boys will feel right with me assuming the leadership position.”

  Mona shrugged. “I’ll tell them it was Daddy’s idea. No one will argue with Daddy’s ideas…” She suddenly thought of something else, too. “Speaking of Daddy’s ideas and ways of getting the old band back together, when’s the last time you ran a charity race? Are the boys all still doing monthly food drives? This is something you’d know more about than I would.”

  Benny had set up monthly donation drives for low-income families nearly twenty years before, and the members took turns making grocery drop offs. “I actually haven’t heard about one in a few months,” Ryan admitted.

  “Months?” Mona repeated with a note of alarm. “How many months, Ryan?”

  He searched his memory as anxiety knotted in his stomach. “About…eight? Nine?”

  He knew then that he’d made a mistake, but it still wasn’t clear what had happened within the group to cause this change. “But you have to remember,” he said defensively, “I’ve been out of the game for a while now. Broken legs don’t heal within only a few months, you know.”

  Mona let out a noise of exasperation and threw her hands into the air. She knew that she shouldn’t be too hard on Ryan. He had an excuse. The fault was largely her own. Ever since her father’s death, she’d been preoccupied with funeral arrangements and her own grief process. She hadn’t exactly been paying attention to the schedules of the club. “What the hell is going on with my father’s riders, Ryan? I thought everyone had their shit together.”

  “Everyone had their shit together before I got hurt,” Ryan said sadly, “but I can’t orchestrate food drives while laid up in a hospital bed. I got too depressed to imagine all of my friends out on their bikes. And you know Lance. He’s…wily. And sharp. Like a needle. He would always speak over people and start assuming control of small groups whenever we did a charity drive without them even realizing it.”

  Mona nodded.

  “He hardly even came to meetings before Benny died, though, so I didn’t really consider it.” Ryan was regretting it now. “I think we’ve splintered off into factions. I hate to say it, but that’s what it’s beginning to feel like. And I don’t like it any more than your dad would.”

  The Running Hill Riders that she had inherited and she was asking Ryan to help run were no longer her father’s dream team. “What do you think we should do?” she asked, feeling beaten before she’d even begun.

  “I think we should start fresh,” Ryan answered. “Assemble the team and find out if people are actually for continuing or if they want to follow Lance’s more illegal approaches to racing.”

  Mona thought about that. “Only one problem,” she said. “What if everyone is for leaving?”

  Ryan slowly shook his head at her and smiled. “Trust me; the majority of us want to be with you.”

  She blushed again, wondering if there was a double meaning in that. “Okay, then, you organize a meeting and have people sign up. Let me know when it’s planned. I’ll be there, at least to make sure you don’t screw everything up.”

  He grabbed his helmet from off the top of the bar and put it on, grinning at her. “And I’ll be there, hoping that maybe you’ll consider signing up.”

  ****

  Going to her father’s house was not easy for Mona. She needed to tidy it up now that he was gone. She’d been on the fence about whether she was going to sell it or not, but it was her childhood home, so she couldn’t. It would be much nicer to move out of her small apartment and into the modest, two-bedroom house. She didn’t exactly need the space, but it would be nice to have it.

  Loving father that he was, Benny had willed the home to her, as well as the ownership of the motorcycle club and a pretty decent amount of money. He trusted her. That was why, even though she was out of the loop on a lot of the stuff going on with the club, she couldn’t just abandon it.

  When she went into the house’s garage, her eyes fell on Benny’s radiant, teal and pearl, 1994 Softail Harley. He’d owned that bike for ten years, remodeling it and fixing it up until it practically sang as it raced past. Benny called it The Duke because he’d purchased it from a now-out of business bike shop known as Duke & Wessox Motorcycle Emporium. Benny had other bikes, but none of them meant as muc
h to him as this one.

  Mona carefully got atop it, lying against it a little. She missed her father. Ryan expected her to ride with the club, and if ever she was to do so she’d want to ride The Duke. The trouble was, she didn’t trust herself not to crash and ruin it.

  Ryan was going to be hosting a sign up for the Running Hill Riders at a barbeque joint in town. Mona knew that he, and several of the others from the team, were hoping to see her there. She closed her eyes as she straddled the old bike, wishing that it could connect her to her father. “I don’t know what to do,” she said softly, sadly. “I need your strength…”

  Deciding that showing up at Ryan’s meet, even if she was undecided, was better than not showing up at all, Mona put on some tight blue jeans and a black t-shirt, then slipped into her father’s worn, brown leather jacket. It wasn’t fashionable to wear brown with black, but who would really care about that?

  She elected to drive herself in her red and white Mini to the place, knowing full well that she’d be the only one to not arrive on the back of a hog. Mona Myers was responsible. She was no show-off. She didn’t plan to appear on the back of The Duke til she knew how to properly handle it. And she knew who she wanted as her teacher.

  All eyes were on Ryan as he stood at the front of the room; he looked up and smiled when he saw Mona come into the restaurant. “—we just wanted to make it official that we will be continuing on in the traditions that Benny started. We have no plans to start taking on some of the more risky and illegal types of cycling. We are first and foremost about helping the less fortunate, not about showing off.”