BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset)

by Parker, Kylee

  “Don’t stick up for him, Rosa. Just because I can’t challenge you without going through him doesn’t mean I won’t.”

  And Bruce believed Lori because she would attack anything. Her size as a human didn’t matter to her.

  “That’s enough,” Tara said and the pack fell quiet like a couple of squabbling children when mom spoke. “I agree that loyalty in the pack is questionable.” She glanced at Cleveland as she said it. The shifter didn’t blink or break eye-contact with her. He looked calm and collected and faced her straight up, like he had nothing to hide. “Just know that if your loyalty is elsewhere, I can’t promise my protection when you need it most.”

  Tara would never officially kick someone out of the Family. She needed to collective power too much. The more people there were, the more power she could draw from when she needed it. It was one of the perks of being alpha. It was also one of the weaknesses. An alpha gained a lot and sacrificed a lot in that position, all at the same time.

  “I’ve taken her away from the village, and she’s in no contact with the humans. You don’t have to worry about her influencing them, and I doubt the Assassins would find her without finding us, first.” Bruce had said that last bit with enough confidence to fool the Family, but he wasn’t convinced himself. He knew what the Assassins were capable of. He knew they were strong.

  Dwayne could find Jenna if he knew what to look for. There were others, too. Others like him that worked for the enemy.

  “I don’t like it,” Lori said again. Bruce wanted to say that if they had to go by something she actually liked they wouldn’t get anywhere at all, but he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t about to get into another round with her. She was bloodthirsty, he could smell it on her.

  She hadn’t hunted nearly enough and Bruce didn’t feel like being her next kill.

  “What are you planning on doing about it when the time comes?” Tara asked Bruce.

  “About what?” he asked like he didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “About the human, knowing. If the Assassins are on us, what will you choose? The Family, or the human?”

  Bruce knew exactly what Tara was asking. This wasn’t just loyalty, where his heart lay. This was about whether or not he would kill her to save himself and the other shifters. And he wasn’t ready to answer that question yet. Not because he didn’t want to get into trouble with Tara, but because, put like that, he just didn’t know.

  Tara looked at Bruce for long enough that he resisted the urge to squirm, and he had the feeling that she knew what he was thinking, that she knew he didn’t know which one he would choose. He would never be able to sacrifice the Family. They were horrible as far as people went, selfish animals and a lot of it was barbaric. But they’d been there for him when he’d had no one else, and no matter how much they didn’t work together as a real pack, they understood him. How many people could he say that about? He couldn’t say it about Jenna.

  But he couldn’t lose her, either. She was his everything, she’d come to be the reason why he woke up in the morning. The reason he fought to stay in touch with his humanity and not let it get lost under the weight of the animal inside of him. She was the sunlight that lit up his darkness, and she loved him even after she found out that he was a monster.

  How could he choose between them? But he knew that at some point, a choice had to be made. He couldn’t have both worlds.

  “What news do you have about the Assassins?” Tara asked Dwayne, pulling Bruce out of the depressing spiral of his thoughts.

  “They’re still not leaving, but so far they haven’t made any moves. They’re not coming closer, either.”

  Tara looked out from the plateau into the darkness. The Syracuse Mountains stretched out to the side and below the plateau, and somewhere below was the valley. Bruce could see the twinkling of lights coming from Rhodestown on the horizon.

  “That’s not good,” Tara said. A breeze picked up and all the shifters turned their faces toward it. “They’re waiting for something. They know something.”

  Bruce had to agree with that. The Assassins weren’t the kind of people that stayed in one place unless they had some kind of lead. It was just impossible to know what it was. Not even Dwayne could reach them with his mind. The psychics sent out feelers and blocked anything that would be more than just a search. Dwayne could do that for the Family, too, but he wasn’t as strong as some of the Assassins.

  He couldn’t block all the minds in the Family to the penetration of another psychic’s abilities.

  “I think we need to move before full moon,” Tara said, turning her head pack to the Family.

  “What?” Bruce asked. He had a horrible, sinking feeling in his gut.

  “We need to take out the village. They’re too much of a liability, and we can’t afford to leave the mountains now. Where would we go?”

  Bruce opened and closed his mouth, looking for the right words, but they didn’t come.

  “There aren’t too many of them. If we go in all at the same time we can do it.” Lori was on board with the idea.

  “There are women and children down there,” Bruce finally managed.

  “So? The Assassins can read a kid’s mind just as well as any adult.” Tara sounded business-like about it. She was talking about killing off an entire village like it was just another thing on her to-do list.

  Hunt

  Pack meeting

  Kill off a village

  “These are my people,” Bruce said and the words were out before he could stop them. Tara looked at him and pulled her lips back, baring animal teeth.

  “We’re your people, Bruce. If you want to stay alive and stay with us, you’ll remember that.”

  That was a direct threat, and Bruce knew that Tara was good for it. She would make him pay if she had to, and he would pay dearly.

  “You promised me I had until full moon,” Bruce said in a voice that was a little hoarse, and he knew he sounded pathetic trying to make Tara go back to her word.

  “We might be dead by full moon,” she answered. “With the Assassins so close? Or did you think we could all live as one happy family, us, the Assassins and that precious human of yours? The humans just slow us down, Bruce. They’re a liability and I won’t have it.”

  “You can’t kill them all,” he said and his voice was starting to get louder. “You can’t just go ahead and kill a bunch of innocents.”

  “I can do what I think is best for the Family,” she said and there were murmurs of agreement. Bruce looked at Dwayne, who just shrugged, and Cleveland who made no movement at all. So much for their loyalty. When it came down to it, they wouldn’t confront Tara. They would forfeit their protection but they were just as scared of her as her loyals.

  “I won’t let you do it, Tara,” Bruce said. Tara sneered at him again and he thought that her teeth looked longer and sharper than before. Her eyes changed, flashing into that glowing white light that showed how much of her animal was in control, and her pupils lengthened into thin slits. Her transformation was in slow motion. Bruce saw her fingers elongate, the bone breaking through the skin before fur crept over her hand and covered the strange claws.

  Her feet changed as well, something similar happening, and a tail curled out from behind her. But she still had the hair, the upright posture, the breasts of a woman. She was a bipedal monster.

  She launched at Bruce and even though he saw it coming and tried to stop her she hit him so hard he lost all the air in his lungs. She drove him back until he hit a tree with his back and he gasped, desperate for air. He felt like he was flipping inside out, with his vulnerable areas all on the outside and no way to breathe.

  “And who’s going to stop me, Bruce? You?” She laughed in a creepy cackle that danced around the trees and bounced back at Bruce as if there were more than one of her laughing in his face. “You can’t even save yourself. You can’t do anything about it.”

  She let him go and he sank to the ground at her feet. He ga
sped for breath, trying desperately to draw in the fresh air, to make his lungs work with him.

  Finally he managed to get his body to cooperate and he drew big gulps of air into his lungs, coughing and spluttering.

  Tara stood, towering over him in her monstrous form and looked down at him.

  “I’d love for you to challenge me, Bruce,” she said in a voice that was laced with a growl. “I haven’t killed another shifter in a very long time.”

  The words made Bruce’s skin crawl. He was still trying to relearn how to breathe.

  “You’re pathetic,” she said, and then she slinked away, hips rolling and power draining with her until Bruce felt incredibly small and deserted.

  Chapter 4

  Jenna sat on the rugged armchair with her feet tucked under her and her knees pulled up to her chest. She’d turned the chair so that it faced the cave entrance and she’d put a candle close to her so that she wasn’t without light. The screen with the bed behind it was to her left. She was tired but there was no way she was going to get to sleep.

  The night had come alive. It had taken about an hour after Bruce had left before every nocturnal animal had crept out of their hiding places. The darkness outside the cave was alive with sounds. Jenna recognized only a few of them. Owls, wolves, now and then something that sounded like a mountain cat.

  She didn’t know how far away they were. Sound traveled far at night, and Bruce had said that nothing could get through the trees and get to her. But they’d gotten through the trees, hadn’t they? So it wasn’t impossible.

  Jenna resented Bruce for leaving her. He’d thrown her into a situation where she had to be completely isolated, taken her away from her home to a random cave where she was supposed to live with candles alone, and then he left her.

  She understood that half of it was her fault. If she hadn’t followed him… but then, if he’d been open with her, she wouldn’t haven’t followed him in the first place. She sighed and closed her eyes for just a second.

  It was easy to go in circles, blaming everyone and everything, but it wasn’t going to help. It was just going to drive her crazy, trying to think of what should rather have happened.

  A wolf howled somewhere and Jenna’s eyes shot open again. She didn’t want to keep them closed. What if something came to get her? She wanted to know about it. She’d been under attack one too many times lately to be able to relax.

  She was stiff, every muscle clenching, bunching under her skin until it she ached all over. Her head hurt and she was hungry. Hungry and sick to her stomach, all at the same time. Another wolf howl. What bothered her the most was the fact that she didn’t know if the creatures she heard were normal animals, or shifters. She might be able to defend herself against normal animals.

  She knew now that shifters wanted her dead. What a family to marry into. They all wanted her dead.

  Jenna wondered what had happened with Bruce’s real family. He spoke of the pack as his Family, but surely he must have come from somewhere. Maybe there was a mother somewhere that wondered if he was okay. Or maybe the reason he was there, looking for solace in a pack that obviously hated him, was because he had no one else.

  The thought made Jenna shudder. How could she live a life like this? How would she ever fit in with people that weren’t really people? Her life had gone from perfect to messed-up in less than two weeks.

  Jenna heard a crunching sound just outside the cave, and she froze. Something was creeping closer, and this time it wasn’t far off. Something was right here. She looked around. If anything got into the cave now, how was she going to defend herself? She reached for the candle. The flame was tiny on the wick and it wouldn’t do much good, but animals were scared of fire. Maybe not a fire so small, but fear made her struggle to think rationally.

  “Jenna?” Bruce’s voice sounded, and she realized it was him. Relief washed over her and suddenly she wanted to cry. Her body felt numb, her muscles like jelly.

  “Are you back?” she asked in a thin voice.

  He appeared around the smooth stone of the cave entrance, human and normal, the Bruce she always thought she knew.

  “It’s almost sunrise,” he said.

  Jenna let out a shuddering sigh. “I thought you’d never come home.”

  He walked to her and wrapped his arms around her. She wanted him to tuck her against his body. She wanted him to kiss her and ask her if she was alright, if he could get her something. She wanted him to apologize for leaving her.

  Instead he planted a kiss in her hair and let her go.

  “I thought you would be asleep,” he said.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Jenna said. Bruce nodded as if it was a normal fact and walked past her.

  “Let’s go to bed, honey. I’m exhausted.”

  Jenna wanted more. This wasn’t Bruce the way she knew him, after all. He was switched off and distant.

  “Did something happen tonight?” she asked. He shook his head.

  “Nothing more than the usual. Hunting, pack business.”

  “Is everything okay with the Family?” she asked, hoping that if she probed he would tell her more.

  “Perfectly fine,” he said and she couldn’t help but feel like there was something he wasn’t telling her. He disappeared behind the screen and then she heard the creak of the bed as he sat down on it.

  “Are you coming?” he asked. She glanced toward the cave entrance. It was still quite dark outside but it was starting to light up, the sky turning a different kind of gray. There was nothing else she could do, and she realized how tired she was. Her body hurt and she felt like she’d been run over.

  She walked to the bed and got in next to Bruce. He was lying on his back, the covers stretching over the bulk of him.

  “It feels good to lie down,” he said. Jenna shifted closer to Bruce so that he could put his arm around her and pull her close to him. She wanted to feel the warmth of his body, the safety of his arms. But instead of scooping her up and holding her close, he rolled onto his side so that his back was to her.

  “See you in a couple of hours, sweetheart,” he said, and as quickly as that he fell asleep. Jenna was left lying behind him, staring at the span of his back, feeling abandoned.

  When she woke up again it took her a while to figure out where she was. The ceiling didn’t look like her own and the light had a strange quality to it. When she sat up she recognized the cave. It looked better during the day, with light streaming in from the entrance making everything she’d feared last night seem silly.

  She slid out of bed, Bruce still fast asleep, and walked around on bare feet. The stone was cold under her feet. It was hard to believe that this was her life now. It seemed so surreal.

  She walked to the cave entrance and stepped outside.

  From where she stood she could look out over a lot of the valley below, and the view was breathtaking. She knew Williamsburg was somewhere to her right but she wouldn’t be able to see it. There were too many trees and rock formations jutting out of the mountain. That had been the point of this place, Bruce had said. It was far enough away from civilization that humans wouldn’t accidentally stumbled across it.

  The stream with its running water made a joyful sound, rushing over rocks and disappearing into the trees. She walked to it and stuck her hands in the clear water and lifted them to her face.

  The water was sweet and tasted wild, like the mountain. The wind picked up and sliced through the coat Jenna was wearing, freezing her bare toes. Winter was definitely on its way. She guessed that in another couple of weeks the clearing in front of the cave would be covered in snow. Hopefully she wasn’t going to be there by then.

  She straightened herself up again and looked around her. The view was great, but when she walked just a little forward to where the ground starting sloping down, the trees rose up like a wall. They were all around, a thick tangle that she couldn’t see further than a couple of feet into.

  It was like a jail, with bars, and Jenna was tr
apped.

  Bruce stepped out a moment later.

  “I was wondering where you were,” he said. “The bed was empty.”

  Yeah, that was what it felt like, Jenna thought but she didn’t say it. Instead she forced a smile. “We’ve slept the day away.”

  Bruce looked up as if he was used to judging the time by the sun and rubbed his eyes.

  “There’s still daylight left. What do you feel like doing?”

  “Going to work,” Jenna said before she could stop herself. Bruce froze and then his face softened.

  “We’re just going to be up here for a short while, Jen,” he said.

  “Until when? Until you can sort everything out with your pack? Until they decide that for some unknown reason they don’t want to kill me anymore? I know I don’t know them or your world but to be honest with you I don’t see any of this working out that way.”

  She hadn’t realized how upset and bitter she was about it.

  “You just have to trust me,” Bruce said.

  “To do what, keep more secrets from me?” She was angry and she knew that she was taking it out on Bruce, but there was nothing and no one else around to throw her rage at.

  “That’s not fair,” he said softly and Jenna almost felt guilty, but her bitterness overruled the feeling and she kept going.

  “What’s not fair is that I’ve been dragged into the mountains, effectively gone into hiding, because you’re exceedingly complicated.”

  “I can’t help who I am, Jenna,” Bruce said. His voice had gone impossibly soft.

  “You could have helped me before marrying to let me know who you are.” As soon as the words were out Jenna knew that she’d pushed too far. She’d brought their relationship into it. The hurt on Bruce’s face was enough to pull her back down to earth and the guilt finally kicked in.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Bruce shrugged. “I know this is hard, okay? It’s not easy for me either. I’ve lost enough people in my life to be terrified of it happening again. I know what it’s like trying to make life work with pieces that don’t fit.”