by T. S. Joyce
Donovan looked equal parts disgusted and sympathetic. “We still have to keep him for observation for a while. I’ll give you a call when he’s ready for release.”
Fury took Ethan’s face and, for a moment, Trina thought he was going to smudge Donovan out of existence, take his keys, and set them both free, but Leah slipped her hand into his and whispered his name. Ethan relaxed immediately. Oh, his face was still seven shades of terrifying, but he looked a little less murdery. Ten points for Leah the Monster Tamer.
“We’ll be outside when you’re released,” Ethan rumbled, his pitch-black eyes freezing Trina into place.
“O-okay.”
Ethan and Leah followed Officer Donovan upstairs, and the echoing of those fading footsteps was a truly lonely sound.
Now it was just her and the crazy werewolf down here.
“Are you okay?” Kade sounded like he hadn’t spoken in a week for how gritty his voice was.
His back was to her, so she could see the full extent of his injuries from the fight. She had some too, but not like his. He had bite and claw marks all over him.
“I’m doing better than you,” she murmured softly.
With a grunt, he pushed himself up, stood stiffly, and made his way to the pair of jeans someone had wadded up in the corner of his cell.
“No fair,” she teased as he pulled them onto his powerful legs slowly. “All I got was this prison jumpsuit.”
He slid a silver-eyed glance at her and gave the slightest smile. “How do you look pretty in every color?”
Stunned by his surprise compliment, she covered her shy smile by looking down at her pumpkin-orange outfit. It really was hideous though, so she huffed a laugh and said, “Well, apparently, you’re still crazy.”
He grunted and nodded once as he buttoned up the jeans. They fit him perfectly. Maybe those were his jeans someone had brought from the bar. They sat low on his hips, and as he fastened the belt, his eight-pack abs flexed. That man was fine. Terrifying, but fine.
Every movement he made looked painful. “Is that the first time you’ve had a forced Change?” she asked.
“Yep, and I’m probably gonna kill Ethan later for doing that. Fuckin’ Alphas. That right there is why I miss being rogue.”
“Being rogue is probably what made you like this.”
“Like what?” he asked, eyes flashing.
“Crazy.”
He huffed a breath and made his way to the other side of the cage. Now they were both sitting as far away from each other as possible. He slid down the bars, sat on the cement, and rested his elbows on his bent knees, staring off with a faraway look.
It was a long time before he spoke. “I wasn’t always rogue.”
They’d sat for so long in silence his admission surprised her. “What?”
He scooted a few feet closer to her cell, then cleared his throat and repeated, “I wasn’t always rogue.”
“Were you part of the Wulfe Clan? Is that why you have a beef with them?”
He rolled his head back and forth against a bar. “My real mom is a wolf. High ranking. She’s in the Wintercast Clan.”
“Wow,” Trina murmured, scooting a few feet closer as a reward to him for sharing with her. “I don’t follow wolf Clans, but even I’ve heard of that one.”
“Biggest wolf Clan in the world. Forty-two members last I heard, and my Mom is Second. And not mated either. She fought her way there. Highest ranking female of our kind.”
“Why aren’t you with her?”
“Because she’s a piece of shit.” When a snarl rattled his throat, he shook his head hard. The noise stopped.
“My dad is a beast. His wolf is as big as mine, and she picked him because she liked power. She pushed him into fights. Into Alpha Challenges. Back to back to back to back. I remember being six, maybe seven, and watching him fight every week. Fight, recover, fight, recover. He was always bleeding. Even when his wolf started getting addicted to the bloodlust, she didn’t care. All she wanted was for her mate to be king. And when he lost a fight to the Alpha, she shamed him in front of the entire Clan. Alienated him. Made him look worthless when she should’ve had his back instead. He nearly died, and I remember sitting on the stairs in our house, holding onto the railing, so worried about my dad living, watching him struggle for each breath. His arm was hanging off the couch, just…dripping blood. It wouldn’t stop. There was this huge puddle, and my mom was staring down at him with a look of …disgust. I tried to take care of him, but my Mom wouldn’t allow me in the living room. I remember her face when she told me, ‘He doesn’t deserve your care. He would’ve been better off dying in that fight.’ The next week, when my dad was well enough, he packed his suitcase and mine, and we left. My mom watched us leave like she didn’t have any feelings for us at all. When we left, she told my dad, ‘Don’t want no pup that’s as weak as you.’ And that was that. She never called, never wrote a birthday card, nothing.”
“Oh my gosh,” she murmured. “No wonder you didn’t want to be part of a Clan.”
“You’ll meet my dad.”
“What?”
He rolled his head on the bars and gave her a sad smile. “I want you to meet him. He’s who I wish I could’ve turned out to be.”
When Trina scooted a few feet closer, he watched her with a curious frown, and then he scooted closer to her cell, too.
“What happened after you left the Wintercast Clan?”
A faraway smile transformed his face. “We got an hour down the road, and my dad got this old, ratty map out of the glove box of his Chevelle. He slapped it on the hood, and I’ll never forget. It was hot, and we were out there sweatin’ in the sun. I mean hot, like the hurts-your-lungs-to-breathe kind of hot. And he told me to close my eyes and pick a spot on the map. I did, and we drove a couple states over and landed in Stevensville, Montana.”
“That’s close to here.”
“Yep.”
“You stayed all this time?”
A nod. “My dad said we needed to put down good, strong roots because his wolf was half crazy from all the fighting and from being shunned from a Clan. You were right. Being rogue is hard on an animal. For a long time, it was just me and him, total boy’s club, and then he met a quiet lady. A human. But she knew all about shifters because she’d been mated to one and had two crow boys. She’d lost them like my mom had lost me, but she was different. She was deeply hurt over their dad taking them. The kind of hurt that some women can’t recover from. When they met, she was half-crazy too, just like my dad. She was hurting from grief—the kind that brings people to their knees. But in that first year they were together, I got to watch them fix each other. That lady included me in everything she did. I was growing into a monster with a wolf that would never be in control, but she loved me like her own flesh and blood boy anyway.”
“Ethan and Rike’s mom?”
“Yep.”
Trina scooted all the way over and leaned her shoulder against the bars. “And that’s why you pledged fealty to Ethan as your Alpha?”
For a few moments, Kade sat there, arms draped over his bent knees, rubbing his thumbnail absently with his other hand. But then he scooted over and rested on the bars beside her. “At first I was so jealous of Ethan and Rike. Their mother never stopped loving them or thinking about them for even a minute. And I knew my mom wasn’t thinking of me at all. I thought I’d done something wrong. I couldn’t understand how they had gotten a mother to love them. I couldn’t figure it out. But one day, she asked me to go ride with her a few towns over on an errand. I was maybe eighteen at the time. Angry. Always angry. She took me to a post office with a big picture window up front. She sat next to me on a bench inside where we could see the hamburger joint across the street. I was sitting there, stomach growling, thinking about asking her if I could go get us a couple burgers, when two boys my age sauntered up to the front door. She sat up straight as if she’d been electrified. Her eyes filled with tears, and she didn’t relax back in her
seat until they’d finished eating and rode away on these old beater Harleys. I knew who they were from the tears in her eyes, but I asked anyways. She told me they were her boys, but one didn’t remember his life with her, and the other was protecting him and didn’t want to come around her because she reminded him of bad stuff that had happened to him.” Kade swallowed hard and dropped his gaze to the floor in front of him.
Trina wanted to cry for him. This must’ve been very hard for a man like him to share. So she reached through the bars and squeezed his hand. When she moved to pull away, he flipped his hand over and squeezed hers back, then held it.
“After they left, she wrapped her arm around my shoulder and said, ‘I love you like I love them. As far as I’m concerned, you’re my boy. And those are your brothers.’ So from then on, we went to that post office every Thursday because Ethan and Rike ate there every week at the same time. When they stopped that tradition, I started following them to find other places my mom could see them because she wasn’t so sad when she got to see her other sons every week. And I taught myself how to watch them without getting caught.”
“They never saw you?”
Kade shocked her and pulled her knuckles up to his cheek, rubbed his rough whiskers against her skin there as he smiled. “They saw me plenty. They just never realized it. I would sit near them at the bar or walk past them in restaurants, anything to be close to my brothers without messing with the balance my mom said was important for them to be okay. I had to. Being around them was something I needed to feel close to them—my brothers who didn’t even know me. It taught me how to become invisible.”
“When did you finally meet them?”
Kade shrugged up a shoulder. “A few months back, my mom told me she wanted me to come home for dinner, and they walked in. I was in shock. They didn’t see me at first because I didn’t want them to. I just wanted to watch how they were with Mom. She was having a big moment with all of us there in the same room. When they saw me, and my mom and dad told them I was family, my heart was pounding out of my chest. I was trying to keep cool, but I’d watched them for so long, and then suddenly they were talking to me. I fucked it up. The wolf came out, and I didn’t get to stay for dinner. I had to go out the back door. So…the second I saw a chance to be in Ethan’s Clan, I took it. I thought maybe if he sees me all the time, he could help make me a better man. Like him. Because he was a total monster, like me, but he’s okay now. And sometimes I get dumb enough to think I can have that, too.”
“You can,” Trina said, intertwining her fingers with his. “If you want to, you can.”
He huffed a breath and pressed his lips against her hand, and then gently, he put her hand back through the bars and settled it onto her lap before he slid away from her. “You saw my wolf. He will never change.”
“Kade?” she murmured.
“Mmm?”
“I was wrong.”
“About what?”
She swallowed hard. She wished he was still close to the bars so she could reach through and touch him again. “You aren’t crazy at all.”
Chapter Six
Kade couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
Trina blew a wavy strand of blond hair out from in front of her face and leaned onto the bar top. This was the best time of day to watch her because the sun was just going down and the lights inside Trina’s bar, The GutShot, lit her up just right.
You aren’t crazy at all.
She wore the cutest little frown, her lips pursed slightly, her blond eyebrows furrowed as she stared at a clipboard. It was inventory night. She always scrunched up her face like that when she was doing math.
You aren’t crazy at all.
And yet here he was, sitting on a stack of crates across the street, watching a girl who didn’t know she was being watched. The prettiest girl he’d ever seen. She’d been doing up her make-up more lately. A wicked part of him hoped she was doing it for him. Her boobs pressed against a white tank top, and she was wearing his favorite jeans—the ones with the sparkles on the back pockets. He only got to see her ass when she came out from behind the bar to serve customers.
It would get rowdy soon, but this was the calm before the storm, the witching hour when he got to watch her all calm and collected. She smiled more when it wasn’t busy. Sometimes he couldn’t watch her at all if she was rushing around, trying to be enough for everyone in the bar. When she got stressed out, his wolf got stressed out, and that was a dangerous game.
It was also a new game.
It was the first time his animal had been anything but a mindless killing machine. Now…sometimes…he wanted to be a mindless killing machine for Trina.
You aren’t crazy at all.
“Caw, caw, caw, caw!” a crow cried from the branches right above Kade’s spying place.
He startled hard and snarled up at the massive black bird with the ring of white around his neck.
Ethan spread his wings and dove from the tree, and just before he hit the ground, he Changed and landed on his feet.
Kade glared at him. It was obnoxious that his Changes were so easy and controlled. “I can see your dick,” Kade muttered, giving his attention back to Trina. “Fuck off.”
“Ma told me how you used to help her watch out for us.”
“So?”
“So…I’m keeping you company while you watch Trina tonight.”
Kade tossed him a dirty look. “Don’t need company. I’m fine on my own.”
“Dude, you were the one who made us a Clan and decided I was supposed to be the Alpha.”
“Shhh.”
“And Leah said I should try to make us all closer.”
“Ethan, shutthefuckup!”
“She also called the stars ‘the glitter of the sky’ and has been trying to convince me the man on the moon is actually a manta ray in the moon, and—”
“I’m literally going to murder you and not feel even one percent bad about it if you don’t leave me alone,” Kade whispered. “I’m busy. And good God, cover your balls up, man. You’re making this weird.”
Ethan had his hands on his hips and looked down at his dick with a frown. With an eye-roll, he covered up his junk and whispered, “Just so you know, it’s already weird. Why don’t you just go talk to her?”
“Because she deserves better.”
“Horseshit. Let her decide that.”
“I tried to eat her the other day in jail.”
Ethan snorted and leaned on the tree trunk beside him. “Well, there’s a word combination I never thought I would hear.”
“Don’t you have a mate to bone?”
“Nah, she’s crafting tonight.”
“Mod Podge Mondays,” they both murmured in unison.
Kade kept the smile off his face, but just barely. As far as living creatures went, Leah was less annoying than most. But seriously, if he had to stand here with Ethan and his stupid balls out anymore, he was going to kill something. “Dude,” he growled.
“Oh, right.” Ethan covered himself up again. “So, do you want the dirt on Trina or not?”
“Fuck. Off.”
“’Cause I found her story pretty interesting when I was asking around town.”
Kade narrowed his eyes at Ethan. His stepbrother had picked the perfect chum bait for a psychotic little shark like Kade.
“I think you’ll find it interesting toooooo,” Ethan sang low.
Kade could probably break both of Ethan’s shin bones before he would even react. He considered it for a few seconds, but he would save his violence in case the Wulfe Clan came back in tonight and messed with his girl. The girl. Eh-hem. That girl over in the bar who was attached to no one. Fuck. Snarl. Shut up, Wolf.
You aren’t crazy at all. In his head, Trina’s voice sounded so pretty.
“Tell me,” Kade gritted out, “and then fuck off.”
“Trina Luna Chapman, born April tenth, nineteen eighty-three—”
“Ethan, I swear to you on everything that i
s holy—”
“Born and raised here, mom passed away when she was seven, and she was raised by her dad, Cooper. That’s the old codger coming out of the back office.” Ethan gestured to the silver-haired man making his way toward a distracted-looking Trina. “Trina was born a shifter.”
“What? I thought mountain lions were one of the shifters who could only have boys.”
“Me, too, but apparently not. We have a party pack of weird shifters in this town,” Ethan murmured. “We got a squirrel shifter Origin, the first of her kind ever, a natural born female moose shifter—"
“They’re called cows—”
“Ha, if you met her on a bad day, you would not want to call her that. Vina damn-near killed me with her stompy, big-ass hooves. Anyway, then we have Trina, another female shifter, not Turned, born with the animal. So you know she’s already tough as leather because girls have a hard time controlling predator animals.”
“Leah doesn’t,” he pointed out.
Ethan chuckled. “I don’t think anything ever stood a chance at getting Leah down. I thought for sure her wolf would be a psychopath, because look at her maker?” Ethan gestured to Kade. “But nope, her wolf is the happiest, most playful monster on the planet.”
“Please,” Kade muttered. “I saw her the other night in that bar fight. She’s a killer.”
“When she wants to be. When her people are threatened.”
Kade wouldn’t admit it out loud, but there was a little part of him that smiled because he was one of Leah’s people. It was still new, being a part of a Clan, and Kade didn’t really know how to navigate it quite yet.
In his head, he was still a lone wolf, but sometimes it was fun to pretend he wasn’t.
Ethan looked around. “So, did you ride your motorcycle here? Or did you walk?”
Kade sighed and scooted farther away from Ethan. He could see Trina better from the shadows over here anyway.