by C. D. Gorri
But the time I get to his door, it’s already open. He’s standing there in a cut off denim vest and sweatpants, looking at me with hooded, suspicious eyes – the same eyes I have; the same eyes Mama has.
“You know you can’t be here,” he says, more to the cheesecake than to me.
“If you want me to leave, I will,” I say. “Just thought I’d talk to you about Violet.”
His eyes narrow when I say her name. Good. He needed to understand I’m serious. He sighs, taking the plate from my hand without another word and stepping back. I take that as an invitation and let myself in the trailer. We both head to his dining kitchen area, and he shuts the door behind me.
“How do you know Violet?” he asks. I can already hear him chewing on the cake, which means he’s picking it up with his hands to eat it. The boy has no manners. How he got a girlfriend in the first place is beyond me.
“How do you?” I shoot back, taking a seat.
He releases a sigh of annoyance, pinching the bridge of his nose as he takes a seat across from me at his dining table.
“If you’re here then you already know,” he says around a bite of cheesecake.
“Yeah, I know,” I snap. I cross my arms over my chest, and then remember he may not know what happened to her. In a more gentle voice, I say, “You know what happened to her?”
He growls, cheesecake temporarily forgotten. “I do,” he says, his voice clipped. “And I have an idea about who might have killed her, too.”
Chapter Eight
I nearly fall out of my chair at his dining table, partly because the thing is so cheap, but also partly because I’m floored. This tells me two things: he thinks he knows who killed her, but also, he knows that she’s dead. Which kind of pisses me off.
“Do you know where she was found?” I push, arching a brow. My elbows are on the surface of the table and my palms are cupping the back of my neck, pinching my skin. I’m trying to keep my tone in check. I’m not upset with my brother. Not really.
Patrick glances over at me, and suddenly, he’s not this powerful leopard shifter. He’s not this grown man. He’s simply a boy who’s guilty of something.
“Yeah,” he admits. He rubs the scruffy part of his jaw, looking sheepish. “I wanted to reach out, to check on you, but…”
“But you didn’t,” I finish for him.
“I just –“
“Didn’t want to draw suspicion?” I finish again, dropping my hands into my lap.
“Will you stop that?” He reaches over and flicks my nose.
I growl at him. Even though he’s older, he’s been bigger than me since he was in middle school. Every time I annoyed him, he would flick my nose. It isn’t a violent gesture but it hurts like a bitch.
“Stop that, would you?” I shoot back.
“I could never kill Violet,” he tells me, and I actually detect sincerity in his voice. He’s not lying, even if it’s hard for me to believe. “I loved her.”
“I bet Mama didn’t like that,” I comment without putting much thought in it. I watch as Patrick takes another bite of cheesecake, contemplating my smartass comment.
“Mama don’t know,” he responds, lifting up a shoulder. “At least, I don’t think she does.”
I blink at him, sitting up. “You just said you knew who killed her,” I point out. “If not Mama, then who.”
“Violet had a boyfriend,” he says, not looking at me. He begins to lick his fingers like an animal, which, I guess, he is. As he speaks, he doesn’t look at me, and I know he’s ashamed. “He knew about us. I guess the more accurate expression would be to say that he stumbled upon us.” He drops his hand. “He was so mad. So, so mad. Not at me. But at her. Called her so many names. I got into a tussle with him. Scratched him a bit.” He shakes his head. “Shouldn’t have done that, though.”
“Why not?”
“My inner leopard came out and he saw,” Patrick says. “Saw the yellow eyes. The fangs. He rightly got scared and left.” He blows out a breath. “That’s the last time I ever saw her.”
“There must be more to this, Patrick,” I push. “She’s dead now.”
His shoulders sag. “I told Mama what happened,” he says. “I was worried the boyfriend would put us at risk.”
Chapter Nine
The last thing I want to do is visit my mama. I know she doesn’t want to see me, but this is a big deal. I’m not here to try and get Patrick in trouble, but if someone attacked him and there’s no way to figure out who it could be, they may target my mama too.
First, Patrick’s human ex-girlfriend winds up in my yard. Now, me and my brother are affected. We both have targets on our backs – but why?
I curl my fingers around the wheel. I know why I’m not liked. But to throw a dead body on my property? Is it supposed to be a warning? I don’t understand. Or maybe it has nothing to do with me. Maybe the warning is directed to my brother, and my yard is where they needed to deposit the body to make a point.
There are too many questions, and I’m not sure how to resolve them all.
I suck in a breath, release it.
My mama lives about two miles away with the pack. They own twenty acres of land and there are six trailers on it. When I park the car, two lanky men with no shirts on start to walk towards me. I don’t recognize them, but I know they don’t want me here. Leopards are more private than even wolves, and I get a weird feeling of foreboding.
I send a quick text to Everett, letting him know where I am. Probably not my smartest idea, but at least someone knows where I am.
I tilt my chin up and get out of the car. I’m not going to let the shifters intimidate me, even if I am.
“You Vivian’s daughter?” one of the men says when he reaches the sidewalk.
I cross my arms over my chest. “So what if I am?”
“You ain’t supposed to be here, baby,” the other one says. He doesn’t use baby as a term of endearment. Rather, he uses it as an insult.
“I need to see her,” I say. “You don’t want me on your land, fine. Can you get her for me, then?”
“We ain’t your messenger bitches either,” the first one snarled.
The second one rests a hand on the first man’s shoulder. “We’ll get her for you. You sit tight, though.”
I’m not sure if they’re going to get my mama or if this is some kind of trap. Trash leopards can’t be trusted. They’re slippery, like eels.
I shift on the sidewalk, the hot sun beating down on my neck. I don’t want to fight, but I’m not sure if that’s going to be helped or not.
After a moment, my mama makes her way over to me and she looks rightly pissed. When she gets to me, she bares her teeth.
“What the fuck you doing here?” she asks.
“I gotta question for you,” I say, “and you better tell the truth. Did you kill Violet Rutherford after you found out she and Patrick started dating?”
Chapter Ten
“I should slug you for that,” she says through a growl.
“Well, if the shoe fits.” Mama doesn’t scare me anymore, not like she used to. Ever since she kicked me off the territory, I’ve been on my own, and the space and distance away from her is a revelation to me. “There’s hair on the body, Mama. Leopard hair. Someone – someone from here – dumped the body of Patrick’s girlfriend –“
Mama growls at the phrase I used to describe Violet, and I know I’ve touched a nerve.
“- in my backyard,” I finished. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.”
“And you think I’m responsible?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. There’s a tilt to her lips, curling them upwards, but she’s definitely not smiling. It’s like she’s amused, but at the same time, not. I don’t know how to describe it, but shit like that is what intimidates me, not the fact that she can turn into a leopard and tear my face off.
“I think you make sacrifices for the good of the pack,” I say. I shift my weight. The sun teases the back of my
neck and I realize I want to get home before it’s night. I don’t trust this place. I don’t trust the people in this place, especially not my mama. “I think you do what you have to do in order to maintain order and protect what’s yours. And by yours, I mean the people you care about, not your biological children.”
“That bitch’s death protects you and Patrick,” she points out. Her entire demeanor is casual and I still can’t tell if she’s behind this or not. I hate that. I should know how to read my mama, but I can’t. Whether it’s because she’s that good at lying or because I wasn’t around her very often to pick up on the signs she gives off when she does lie, I don’t know.
“How does it protect me when the body was found on my property?” I ask.
“Maybe locking you up would do you some good,” she snaps, leaning towards me.
I read her eyes and I can tell she genuinely believes this.
“Let me tell you something here, girlie,” she snarls. “Maybe you don’t live with me, maybe I’m ashamed of you, but that don’t mean I don’t care about you in my own way. You being in jail right now when death is demanded from this pack might be a good thing.”
“How would I shift?” I ask, keeping my voice low. “I need to shift.”
“Well, maybe not shifting will do you good,” she spat. “I know your little friend at the jail likes you. That new detective. He’s shady as shit, if you ask me. He’s come up here a time or two. He knows something. It’s within my right to protect my family, to protect my pack.”
Her words sent a chill down my spine. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I ask. “You killed her. You put her on my property.”
My mama surprises me when she grabs my face and brings her close to me. She kisses my cheek, then the other.
“I did what needs to be done for the good of the pack,” she says slowly. “I will always put the pack first. You should know that.”
I swallow. “And the boyfriend?” I ask. “I know Patrick told you.”
“What boyfriend?” But she smiles and I know she knows.
She killed him too.
“Now, get along,” she says, dropping my face and flicking her wrist. “And don’t come back here. Ever.”
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About Sapphire Winters
Sapphire Winters is a USA Today Bestselling Author of steamy, paranormal romance stories with a love for shifters! Her heroines are strong and sassy fighters who don't give up, and her stories provide an escape where readers can leave their world behind.
Wild Springs By Melissa Bell
WILD SPRINGS © Copyright 2021 Melissa Bell
Edited by: J. J. Jarret
Wild Springs
His growl was so forceful it almost brought her to her knees.
Jennifer is running from her past. If only she knew what she knew now back then about the handsome and debonair bachelor Rick Aspley, she wouldn’t be in the mess she was in now. She’d only ever read about things like this happening, but now it was her life, and she had nowhere to go and nobody to help her.
Declan Chase is a man who follows the law. He is the Wild Springs wolf pack leader, and he’s all about following the rules. What happens when Declan finds his true mate is human, and she is on the most recent list of wanted felons.
Chapter One
Jennifer punched in her PIN and withdrew the balance of her bank account. If she was going to do this, she needed to pay with cash only to pay for her expenses. She was aware that under the circumstances, she couldn’t afford to leave a paper trail. If she knew back then, what she knew now, she would have made so many different choices.
As she walked back to her car, she glanced at her watch, 3:15 am. Jennifer reflected on how she had gotten into this mess, to begin with.
She had loved her job working at the art gallery, but now, it was time for her to move on. Things were never as easy as they should be, she sighed, knowing that everything had become so complicated. In college, she had been the top of her class, and when she’d been offered a job at the top gallery in the city, she jumped at it. Almost ten years later, she was the head curator and still managed to find time to paint and sculpt on her days off. Every so often, she had even been able to sell one of her pieces which she hung in the new artist section of the gallery. Sure they might not have been sold for thousands but knowing they were hanging on someone’s wall made it exhilarating.
Everything had taken a turn for the worse on the wheel of fortune the day that Rick Aspley had walked into the gallery. Since that day, ‘If only,’ seemed to be her motto. It had been a rainy day when he’d sauntered in with an air of arrogance. He’d waved his hand around purchasing three of the most expensive paintings on exhibit as well as a sculpture worth more than a high-end luxury car. He also offered a ridiculous amount of cash for Jennifer to personally assist with hanging the paintings in his mansion. Rick had played her like a finely tuned concert piano, and she fell for his act hook, line, and sinker.
In the beginning, he’d been romantic and caring. He’d treated Jennifer as though she were a princess, and he was her Prince Charming. Before she’d known it, he had woven his way into her heart, and she let him. She shook her head, wondering how she’d missed the signs.
Another glance at the clock on the dash of her car and Jennifer felt as if she was living between the pages of a mystery novel. She started the engine and put the vehicle into gear as she pulled away from the curb. She set the stereo to play her iPod playlist and headed to the only place she would feel safe. When she cast her thoughts back, she could now recognize that there were times when Rick was doting. Unlike other times when he would give her the cold shoulder before coming on strong again when she pulled back from him.
In hindsight, it had been as if she’d been dating two different people. One minute he was charming, and the next, he was standoffish, cool, and reserved. She now knew it was Rick’s true personality overshadowing the character he was playing.
Jennifer had decided to break things off with Rick because he was a dick in reality, although he seemed nice.
Jennifer became suspicious of Rick when they returned from a drive in the country to discover someone had stolen the paintings he’d purchased from the gallery. She was shocked, but he waved it off as if it were nothing. He said he had insurance and that they were covered.
She was puzzled, they were well-known paintings, but she didn’t understand how anyone knew where the art was hanging. It was odd. Rick had called the police to report the theft and advise tha
t the artwork was the only thing stolen without even checking the rest of the mansion. Jennifer felt that he was taking things a little too calmly, considering someone had been inside his residence. He neglected to check where the thieves had gained entry, saying he didn’t want to disturb anything. Jennifer also frowned at the elaborate security system on the wall just inside the door. ‘Why hadn’t the alarm gone off?’ she’d wondered at the time.
Rick Aspley was smooth, but that just made him slippery. To Jennifer, it was just off, in a not normal kind of way. From that date on, he’d become weirder and weirder. He’d asked countless questions about the gallery. Sure it was an elite display of artworks, most with expensive price tags. Still, with the ability to buy art from around the world via the internet and have it shipped directly to your home address, she couldn’t understand his fascination for the one she worked at. Jennifer had excused herself to go to the ladies’ room only to turn back to collect her purse, the one that Rick had been busy looking through. He’d made excuses, but she wasn’t buying any of them. That was a contributing factor for why she decided not to see him again. He’d made things awkward by turning up on her doorstep unannounced and didn’t seem to be pleased by her rejections. He’d stopped at the gallery a handful of times but had only been making things more difficult. He’d even resorted to making a scene in front of visitors at the gallery; it couldn’t get any worse.
That meant that Rick’s inability to accept their breakup just made him look like an even bigger dick, which was another reason not to have a relationship with him.
The wind blew the rain onto the windscreen at an angle that made it impossible to see. Jennifer pulled off the side of the road and waited for the downpour to ease enough for her to continue safely. She still couldn’t believe she’d managed to get away without Rick’s knowledge. Staring at the rain as it pelted against the glass, she felt stunned by her discovery.