Come Out Swinging (Reach for the Moon Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  “Probably.”

  “That Mum put the hit on him?”

  I swallowed, tossing the towel into the dirty clothes basket.

  “Probably.”

  “Fuck…”

  “Yeah, fuck,” I replied, but I squared my shoulders. “I hate that. I hate that he was sitting at his desk in the alpha estate, knowing the knives were coming for him. I hate that he didn’t think he could call me, but…” I shook my head. “But they are the sins of our parents, not us. I couldn’t move forward if I got caught up in them and neither should you. Cue eighties training montage, Bridge, because we are gonna get strong, get tough, get working and fighting together, and then I’m going back to Lupindorf and cleaning house.”

  Her nod was a sharp abrupt thing, so I didn’t expect her to sweep in and hug me. My arms went around her though, holding her close.

  “This eighties montage, will there be plenty of gratuitously hot dudes working out in the background because…?”

  There was.

  The next morning, after the usually austere breakfast of protein shakes and fruit—“We’ve been eating shit for weeks, Paige,” Zack had growled—I took my cousin downstairs as the guys loped off to Maccas to get their usual fare of grease and carbs. When I unlocked the doors bright and early, I was gratified to see a lot of our clients were back.

  “Hey, beautiful girl,” one of the guys said as he walked in the door. “Zack told us about your dad. Condolences.”

  The response was fairly basic, but there was an awkward sincerity there. Guys that came to the gym, they were mostly nice dudes, but expressing finer feelings? The others said much the same as they filed in.

  “Who’s your offsider?” Gavin, a big burly kangaroo shifter asked as I steered Bridget towards the counter. I was going to train her in how to man it while I worked with my mates. His smile was broad, cheeky, but it faltered when she looked up. I saw it, the flare of something hot in those pale blue eyes, standing out starkly against the ruddy brown of his skin. They catalogued every bruise like it was somehow an affront to him personally.

  But that wasn’t the way Bridget saw it. I saw the fragile confidence she’d found this morning falter, saw her eyes drop down, saw her take a step backwards as if that would protect her, right as his hand rose. I cocked an eyebrow, my focus finally registering with him as he dropped it hastily, his big hand clenching into a fist.

  “Whoever did that to you, love? You tell me. I’m Gavin, by the way,” he said, introducing himself belatedly. “I’m a local MMA fighter, but I’ve won enough bouts to be able to put whoever did that to you into the fucking ground.”

  Her eyes darted up, and it seemed like she saw Gav for the first time.

  “I’m…” She straightened, her chin lifting, her eyes flashing with a familiar fire. “I’m Bridget, Paige’s cousin, and thanks. Some of them already are, and we intend to take down the rest, but we might need some extra help.”

  “Well, count me in, love.” He settled down on the counter, resting on his elbows. “Can you make me up one of those fruit smoothies? Double protein powder for me.”

  “Sure, I’ll show Bridget how to run the machine,” I replied, turning around and winking at my cousin as I walked her through the process.

  “So, what was that?” Bridge asked me as he sauntered away. I noted she watched every move of that finely wrought arse in his shorts as he did so.

  “The shifters here? They are death on domestic violence,” I replied. “Zack won’t tolerate roid heads or power trippers. They’re strong, powerful warriors, but they know better than to direct that violence towards women.”

  “And hot. You neglected to say hot.” Her eyes scanned the floor, taking in all the many, many displays of well muscled flesh on display. “I’m starting to get pissed that you didn’t call me and invite me up to stay, Paige. You were holding out on me.”

  “Well, nothing to say you can’t enjoy yourself now. Some of the guys have mates, but most don’t. The whole nix thing kinda drew in more single men than mated.”

  “I take it all back. What Mum did fucking sucked so hard…” I watched her jaw lock down hard before she forced herself to take a breath. “But I can feel my face again and the Engels are dead. Maybe that was a fair trade for all of this…”

  “Why choose?” I said with a smirk, something deep inside me warming at the slow but steady return of my cousin. “Now, do you reckon you can hold down the fort for a bit? I need to start working with the guys.”

  “Working?” She grinned impishly. “OK, sure, I can serve customers while you have group sex with your polycule.”

  I stuck my finger up at her as I sailed past, leaving her to it.

  Chapter 29

  I could see some of Bridget’s point of view as I approached the ring. The guys had dressed in athletic shorts, which was just obscene. The silky breathable fabric fell against their bodies, providing tantalising glimpses of what lay beneath. But it was the fact that they were only wearing them and nothing else—well, except for the wraps across their hands—that had my feet slowing.

  I couldn’t do this. Bridge has been joking, but I saw it, felt it now. Declan stood there, every muscle tensed under that pale freckled skin, as he sparred, sending powerful punches in Lorcan’s direction as the other man jerked himself out of the way, swinging under and away from his hits and then striking out himself with a sharp kick, that Dec neatly dodged.

  Zack saw me first, ducking under the ropes and approaching, but he slowed when he scented me, his smile pure satisfied male. He could smell my response, and he liked it.

  “Your boys, they’re good. Mason trained them well. We’ve got a lot to work with here,” he said.

  “So what are we going to focus on?”

  “Everyone here’s a fighter, but can they fight together?” His eyes slid over me. “What happens when you get in the mix? Is the power only sexual? We took down the Engels, and it felt like the power rose then as well.”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I asked. “Strip down and give the boys a show while they spar?”

  His smile twisted slightly, his eyes staring, as if he imagined me doing just that.

  “You have no idea how much I want that.” His low growl sent shivers through me. “But no, I don’t think we can get away with that, not without dragging every shifter in the gym into the mix. Just come into the ring at first, see what your proximity does. Then we might get you to try and distract them a bit, see if you throw them off their game. How’s that sound?”

  My eyes slid to where Lorcan and Dec were taking a break, just standing there panting, looking like an ad for boxing porn. Shit, I thought. It sounds bloody unbearable. But of course, I walked up to the ring, feeling all their eyes on me as I climbed in, Dec and Lorcan moving in a step before they’d even thought about it.

  “All right, who wants to swap in?” Zack asked, using enough dominance to drag the attention back to him.

  “Looks like Mase and me,” Micah said, hitting his palm with his fist.

  “Sounds good.” Mase strolled towards the centre of the ring, fists at the ready, and my eyes raked down his form. He knew what he was doing, making me wonder how the boys were raised. Did their dad—no, their dads train them? Micah stretched his neck out on each side, making a horrible cracking sound, and then grinned, bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  “We pulling our punches?” Micah asked.

  “Yes,” Zack said at the same time his brother said, “Maybe.” The two men looked at each other, and Zack just shook his head.

  “You wanna bust each other’s heads? Go for it. But I’m gonna get our girl to try and throw you as much off your game as she can.”

  I smiled at that, rubbing my hands together before tugging down the tank top I was wearing until my cleavage was on display and rolling down the yoga pants until they sat as low on my hips as was polite.

  “Fuck…” they both said, but Micah tapped his knuckles to Mason’s and pulled back, ready t
o fight, Mason responding in kind moments later. I watched them shuffle, then moved closer.

  Male shifters have keen senses of smell that can pick up a lot from the scent of women. They can smell when we’re receptive, turned on, angry, or wanting them to piss right off. Apparently, the last one smells acrid, like burned hair or something. So as I moved in closer, I assumed they were getting a whole lot from me as they fought, the me that watched them work with a keen eye.

  “Be careful,” Declan said from the ropes, but I moved with them, going through the steps of an especially savage dance. I knew it was working when both men’s eyes slid sideways, resulting in Micah catching Mason on the chin.

  “Fuck!” he snapped, putting his fist to his jaw. “So we’re not pulling them? Good to know.”

  And for a moment, I was disregarded as they each circled the other, looking for any opening. I could feel their focus like it was a buzzing inside me, a familiar feeling. My eyes flicked to Zack, who nodded, making me think he felt it too. I took a deep breath, bringing my awareness to here, now, and then tapped into that sensation. A gasp escaped my lips as I felt it—a vibrant web of threads, tying the lot of us together in so many ways. There were the bonds between me and my mates of course, but there were many threaded connections between all of us. Mason and his guys were tied tight, Zack and his brother obviously, as well as the links between the individual guys. The one that stood out was the very strong but very lonely bond between me and Lorcan.

  It made me wonder if he still considered himself an Engel, an outcast within the group, because while some tentative threads reached out to the others, the vast majority narrowed down on me. I frowned, because I hadn’t realised that and certainly hadn’t done anything about it, moving forward blindly, only able to see those threads not the men themselves, so when I felt the whistle of a fist swinging through the air…

  “Paige!”

  The voice cut through the other sounds, shouting its warning, but they didn’t get it. I could feel it, Mason’s intent and trajectory, so I ducked under his arm at just the right time, skating past the two of them and following that intense bond back to its source.

  “That was some amazing reflexes,” Lorcan said, taking me into his arms when I reached for him, his skin cool and clammy now, but I didn’t pull away. I wanted… It was hard to put into words. Now I saw how isolated he was, I needed to fix it, grab the threads of him and bind him to the others, weave a family around him to replace the dysfunctional one he’d left behind. All of that was broken off him now, with Gary, with the execution of the brothers… Maybe he was still connected to some of his Roth family, but he’d spent his life growing apart from them. I placed a hand on his stomach, feeling it tense before he covered it with mine. That connection pulsed with it, winding tighter and tighter around us.

  I closed my eyes and lifted my mouth to his, felt his connect, felt the bond throb hard in response. Which seemed to summon him. I couldn’t stop kissing Lorcan. His hand cupped my jaw, pulling me into him, pouring all that hot, hot emotion that I felt down the bond into me, but as I was swept up in Lorcan, in his lips and his body and his heart, in the darkness of my mind, I saw a figure emerge. Glittering silver eyes, long black hair that flickered with an unseen breeze, he padded like the apex predator he was, in the shadow of a massive wolf.

  I jerked back, breaking the contact, but Lorcan wasn’t having that. The bond wound tighter, his fingers biting into my skin as he hauled me back against his body. He sought my mouth, and when he couldn’t get that, his lips landed on any surface they could get, needing the taste of me.

  “Lorcan?” someone asked, but I couldn’t see, could barely hear them. It was all him, all Lorcan, drowning me physically, psychically with him. My eyes were open, but I saw the giant wolf superimposed over everything, because the man and the wolf were the same, I somehow knew. And right now, Lorcan was his conduit.

  He hunted the Moon Maiden, brought her down, tore her to pieces to get inside her, and now it felt like Lorcan was his avatar. Need slammed into me, all the aching, throbbing want that swelled in Lorcan’s soul, kept back for fear of hurting or alienating me. He, the giant wolf, whatever he was, he unlocked it. I was pushed hard against the ropes, Lorcan’s thighs between mine, his hands in my hair, his teeth on my skin, closing down on the muscle at the juncture between my neck and my shoulder.

  “Mine!” he snarled when someone tried to touch him and pull him off, the sound muffled by his mouthful of me.

  But that wasn’t to be. I felt them, the rest of my pack, move as one, hauling Lorcan off of me, a look of horror washing over his face when the silver in his eyes receded and the green returned.

  “What the fuck was that?” he asked, frowning, staring at his hands, flexing them as if they were someone else’s.

  “What the fuck indeed,” Zack said grimly. “We took this too fast, went too hard. Whatever this is, it’s powerful and unpredictable.”

  “It’s him,” I replied. I didn’t explain who, because they all knew. Not Lorcan, but the powerful puppet master who seemed to be able to take possession of all of us.

  “He’s the Father,” Micah said, meeting our collective gaze head-on. “If she’s Mother Moon, he has to be Father Wolf. It makes sense. That’s how the legend goes, how we were created. From the Mother’s daughter and the Father’s wolves.”

  “I’ve never heard of Father Wolf before,” I said.

  “No, which makes me think trying this was a bloody stupid idea,” Zack said, rubbing a hand over his face. “I thought testing things out here might be safer, but it’s now obvious we can’t keep playing around. We need information.”

  “Research,” Mason agreed. “You got any computers or tablets up in that fancy apartment of yours?”

  “We do. We also need to find some local packs to talk to,” Zack said. “I’ll give Nicky a call, see if she can come in early and keep an eye on things here. I’m glad we didn’t schedule any classes for you today,” he said to me. “We might have to put that on the backburner for a bit.”

  “No.” My jaw firmed. “I need to get back into things. I’ve built a good client base who are relying on me.”

  “Then we schedule what we can around this. We need you more, Paige. All of us are drawn so strongly to you, we’re not going to be able to hold out for long, but each time one of us touches you, we don’t know if something’s going to happen.” Zack turned to Lorcan. “What was going through your head just then? What did you want to do?”

  “I wanted to mark her, bite her. Right then, it was all I could think about. It felt like the whole world awaited me if I did just that. A need I’ve never felt rose and rose until that’s all I could think about.” Lorcan turned to me, looking so painfully vulnerable, it hurt to look at him. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but it just felt like if I marked you as mine, everything, literally everything, would be OK.”

  “Then maybe you should.” Everyone looked around to see Micah regarding the group. “I did, and neither of us suffered for it. What would it hurt?”

  “Because he wants it,” Declan said. “I dunno about you guys, but I’m pretty fucking done with shadowy forces manipulating us. Zack’s right—research, make contacts, start reaching out to people. Who runs the local wolf packs in this place?”

  Zack’s eyes swivelled around to the men using the equipment on the gym floor.

  “I’ll make some introductions.”

  “How’s it going, Mick?” Zack said, approaching a man who was just stepping away from the bench press.

  “You know how it is,” he replied with a grin, wiping the sweat streaming down his face. “Feel weak as a kitten straight afterwards, but the endorphins are pumping. Gotta get back up to my max weight again though. That time off, it shreds your gains. I tried the pack gym but…” He shook his head. “It’s uncomplicated here. Peace, quiet, focussed. No hierarchical shit.”

  “That’s good to hear, mate.” He went to slap the other man on the shoulder, but they bot
h grinned when they saw how sweaty Mick was. “Look, I found my pack when I was out of town.”

  “Yeah?” Mick’s gaze switched to us. “That’s fucking awesome.”

  “So I was wanting to talk to some of the local alphas, see how the politics of that works. Would you be able to make an introduction to your alpha?”

  “Yeah, sure. Jake, he’s a hard arse, but he’s fair. Just giving you fair warning. Gimme your details, and I’ll ask him to give you a call.” Mick considered us again. “It can be tough, especially in the city. No clear boundaries between turfs and that. Anyway, you can talk to him and get the low down. So, no more lone wolf, huh?” His expression shifted to a more serious one. “Does that mean things are gonna change here?”

  “Nah, I don’t want a territory or anything, just want to coexist peacefully, but I gotta know what to avoid so I don’t step on anyone’s toes.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll let him know. They do have meetings, him and the other alphas. Maybe you can get in on that. Well, good to see you back, Paige. Sorry to hear about your dad.”

  “Thanks,” I replied. “Have a good workout.”

  “You’ve obviously got a lot of contacts here,” Mason said. “Any who might know anything about a nix?”

  “Maybe.” Zack turned to look at me. “I’m gonna ask Margaret.”

  Chapter 30

  “Nix?” I watched Margaret’s nose wrinkle with a sinking heart.

  Margaret was the master who’d taught me so much about fighting much bigger foes. Zack covered a lot of the basics, but once I had them under control, he passed my training onto her to take care of the details. He didn’t have to work with a massive size and weight difference but she did, and she knew how to turn that to her advantage. Her deep brown, almond-shaped eyes slid to me, and I frantically tried to decode what lived there. I didn’t want to see the rejection and revulsion I was sure would rise.

  We sat in the lounge room of the new apartment, the other guys ostensibly working on their phones or the tablets Zack had procured, but they were keeping one ear open. Margaret shook her head.