The Claiming

by Imogen Keeper

  BOOKS BY IMOGEN KEEPER

  The Tribe Warrior Series

  THE BONDING

  THE BREAKING

  THE TAMING

  THE CLAIMING

  THE SEEKING: TALL, DARK AND DREAMY

  Stand Alone Suspense

  TALK DIRTY TO ME

  Anthologies

  HEARTS & HANDCUFFS: HALLOWEEN

  HEARTS & HANDCUFFS: VALENTINE’S DAY

  THE CLAIMING

  I M O G E N K E E P E R

  The Claiming (Tribe Warrior Series, Book #4)

  Copyright © 2019 Imogen Keeper

  All rights reserved

  No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Under no circumstances may any part of this book be photocopied for resale.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and situations within its pages and places or persons, living or dead, is unintentional and co-incidental. [Remove this bit if your book is nonfiction. If it’s a memoir, you may like to insert: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.]

  Cover design by Victoria Cooper

  For my readers who keep me inspired to write faster.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  1

  can’t catch me

  SQUATTING ON A hot rooftop in a forgotten part of the city, Tessa stared down at the map in her hand.

  It was a sad thing, hand-drawn by a coca junkie in wavering black lines on a piece of reused paper so filthy and wrinkled it had softened nearly to cloth.

  The buildings were jittery inky squares and rectangles. Junkie or not, the cartographer of this little scrap had missed his calling with the city’s re-planning division. It was well scaled, and labeled clearly, despite his tremors. He’d even included spikes for the tammin vines that grew on the southern sides of buildings and a dotted line for the sidewalks.

  This building, a festering warehouse, had been marked with an X. She’d traded the last of the yenna she’d pickpocketed from the crowds on Mebureille Street for this little map.

  According to the junkie, the Boss had been here three nights in a row. This was it. Finally. Certainty and hope thrummed in her bones, like fine wine, not that she’d tasted that in a while.

  A bead of sweat slid down her temple. She rubbed her face against her shoulder and pocketed the map, pressing herself back against the shred of shade along the edge of a skylight.

  The day was glaringly bright, the sun bouncing off walls, intensifying, magnifying. The buildings were pristine up in the Prime neighborhoods where she’d grown up, but here, the stucco was dingy, the roofs were flat and leaky.

  Fjarra bugs the size of her palm with iridescent copper shells scuttled along seams. Normally, she avoided them like her life depended on it. Not today.

  She pulled sunglasses over her eyes.

  She would wait as long as it took. This was the day she killed the Boss.

  In a city of just over a million people, it shouldn’t be so easy for so infamous a man to hide. Half myth, half ghost, the Boss, Delsanthio, spread through the city’s underbelly like a disease, corroding everything he touched, controlling every illicit activity in a city already saturated with crime.

  Drug-pusher. Slaver. Murderer. Asshole.

  Closing her eyes, she envisioned it, lived it, so that it burned so bright in the neurons of her brain and the beating ventricles of her heart that loss of focus would be impossible. Plunging the knife into his chest, watching the blood spread like a blooming rose and the light fade from his eyes, his body going cold and still.

  It would be so sweet.

  Daylight gave way to twilight, the wind over the sea picking up and chasing away the heat.

  And still she waited.

  A sharp crack split the air.

  It was loud enough to have her jerking from her half-sleep and into a crouch. The skylight.

  Finally.

  She closed her eyes, focused on forcing her heart out of her throat.

  The paint along the casing split, and the window lifted upward.

  With one hand splayed on the roof, the other on the knife at her hip, she held her breath as the glass lifted skyward.

  A gust of hot, stale air broke free.

  The pole that operated the skylight jostled the joist, pushing up until it caught.

  Someone was opening the window.

  She was twenty feet above them, and the angle was off. They shouldn’t be able to see her, but just in case, she didn’t move a muscle. Barely breathing, she waited for the pole, and its operator, to move on.

  “Fucking Abysmo, it’s hot in here,” said a low, growly voice.

  She inhaled slowly against the smattering of nerves. This was the closest she’d ever been. She crept to the edge of the skylight.

  A single, exposed bulb lit the space in a meager circle.

  Five men and one woman stood on a broken concrete floor. They conversed in tones too low to catch. Another man pushed in a dolly, loaded with crates.

  They argued.

  Tessa searched one after another. Which was Delsanthio?

  The woman wore a gaudy red dress, her breasts pushed up to her collarbone. She gestured sharply toward the crates.

  One of the men, a big bald brute, tore the wood planks off a crate, a toothpick between his teeth, and lifted the lid, tattooed muscles bulging. He couldn’t be the Boss. He’d never do grunt work himself.

  Black metal glimmered inside the crate.

  Tessa’s mouth dropped open.

  Rezal blasters. Guns.

  A lot of them.

  No one but the Polizei and the armies had guns in Didgermmion. And all of then worked for Manivietto, her oldest brother, and he served the Alliance that ruled the whole of Vesta.

  If all those crates were full of guns, there must be hundreds.

  Palms clammy, she leaned closer, straining to hear, wrapping her hands around the edge of the skylight as she shifted forward, lowering her ear to the opening.

  Which one was the Boss?

  An agreement of sorts was made. She could tell by their body language. The woman, still visibly pissed, made a few sharp remarks.

  Their words rose like smoke in the thick air. “Harder for us to… Need a break…. Too many…. You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  Another of the men, one who hadn’t spoken much
, dressed all in black, said something that seemed to calm the woman.

  He was enormous, standing with his legs braced apart, arms crossed, the corded muscles of his arms glinting in the light. He looked like a Prime, though he wasn’t wearing the classic togata of the nobility.

  Her eyes narrowed. There was a slight deference in the way everyone spoke to him.

  Maybe he was Delsanthio.

  One of the words he said hit her ears, and her shoulders sagged. Boss.

  He wouldn’t talk about himself in third person, would he?

  And it wasn’t the woman.

  The Boss was a man. She knew that much.

  The woman and the speaker were out. They’d outright dismissed something the bald guy had said. He couldn’t be the Boss then. She couldn’t picture anyone dismissing Delsanthio, not if half the rumors were true.

  The other two, she’d distinctly gotten the impression, worked for the woman. Her bodyguards maybe.

  She ignored the smattering of disappointment. Where the hell was he?

  She leaned closer, bracing herself against the window casing.

  Which was a mistake. Because it was old, and the sun, heat and humidity had broken it down to little more than dust.

  It crumbled away.

  Right beneath her fingertips.

  One second the casing was a solid weight under her palm, and the next it was gone. And there was nothing but dust and air as her hand plunged into the warehouse below.

  She scrabbled for purchase, throwing out a leg, and flailing with her other arm, but she was too slow.

  Her shoulder plunged through the opening. Paint chips and rotted caulking rained down.

  Her cheek bone smacked against the glass hard enough to make her eyes tear up. She squeezed them shut, waiting for the glass to give. But it held.

  It didn’t shatter. If it had, she’d already be dead on the ground.

  She shuddered.

  Twenty feet below, five heads turned up. Five pairs of eyes zeroed on her.

  Shit.

  Time to run.

  2

  pssst

  THE BIG ONE didn’t even flinch.

  He just launched into motion, bolting toward the door in a dark blur.

  The way he moved, there was no longer any doubt about his physiology. Prime.

  Which meant was more than twice the size of her, stronger and faster, with heightened senses and probably formal combat training.

  She was totally screwed.

  Grabbing her bag, she took off at a sprint. Straightening her palms to slice through the air, she leaped across an alley and onto the rooftop next to the warehouse. Pounded across the tops of three more buildings. Dropped to a crouch, straining her ears.

  She couldn’t hear a thing. Her heart was pounding hard enough to explode, and she was breathing too loud.

  Way too loud. He’d be able to hear it.

  She sucked in air, expanding her lungs to compress her heart enough to slow its beats. She cocked her head, listening. The breeze. City sounds. A few birds in the distance. And below that… there it was. The slap of booted feet on the streets.

  She launched into another full sprint across the roof top. Vaulted over two more.

  Calm down. She needed to calm down. Panic served no purpose.

  The wrong move would get her caught by the big bastard of a Prime below, and he’d deliver her straight to the Boss.

  And everyone in the city knew exactly what the Boss did with any stray felana dumb enough to get caught unmarked or unattended. Dead and gone.

  She came to a stop at the edge of a building, hesitated with the toes of her boots overhanging the roof by an inch. Down below, the bald one ran by. His boots made a rhythmic patta-pat-patta-pat that echoed across the night.

  The warehouse.

  She spun a tight circle and ran a straight path right back to where she’d come from, leaping from a final rooftop, catching herself on a balcony and climbing up a gutter back to the roof with the window.

  They wouldn’t expect her to go back here. They’d be off searching in the wrong spot.

  Moving quietly across a rusty metal fire-escape ladder, she climbed down to street level, and froze at the bottom to get her bearings. It was too dark to see much more than shadows.

  A few hovers moved around in the distance. The woman in the warehouse spoke to someone in a low murmur. But nothing else.

  Pebbles cracking beneath her feet with every step, Tessa sidled down the alley, knees bent into a deep crouch. It ended at another, larger one that stretched between Chappo and Hastineas Streets. And that was home free. Two more blocks and she could blend in with the Humanis and the stink of the market.

  “Psssst.”

  She didn’t even pause to look, just slid her hand into her boot where she kept her knife, the muscles of her thighs tightened, preparing to run.

  She didn’t make it a single step.

  A hand like steel closed around her upper arm and whipped her back so hard her teeth smacked together. A jab to the forearm numbed her wrist, and the knife clattered across the pavement and out of reach.

  Useless.

  Vaniiya.

  She opened her mouth to tell him he could fuck right off, but a hand clapped down, stifling any noise. Nobody on the main streets would have heard her anyway, and even if they had, they wouldn’t have helped. Nobody helped anybody in Didgermmion. Not since the Council had sealed off the city, instituted rationing and made it illegal for felanas to go outside unattended or unmarked.

  Whoever had caught her dragged her back into the darkness. She dug in with her feet. No way was she getting taken to the stalls.

  She tried to bite, but his hand was stubbornly cupped and she couldn’t catch any skin.

  An arm snaked around her ribcage and drew her in tight.

  A pathetic little whimper escaped her throat.

  It was a man. A Prime. She knew that smell, even though she’d been actively avoiding the species for years.

  He shoved her against a wall. Her skull thudded and pinpricks of light burst in front of her eyes. She lashed out, knees and elbows. Panting, breathing so hard it felt like her lungs would explode, but he wasn’t worked up at all. He was cold as ice, as he trapped her wrists in his fist.

  She twisted, lifting her knee up hard, heading straight for his groin.

  He dodged it with his thigh and closed a hand around her neck. “Watch yourself.”

  She wriggled a hand free and managed to ram her elbow against his eye.

  “Fuck.” His hand left her mouth for a second.

  “Let me go, asshole.”

  He grunted, grip tightening on her trapped wrist. She’d be bruised in the morning.

  And while he was busy with that, she lifted her knee again.

  He let out a series of curses, and blocked the movement with a thickly muscled thigh between her legs. He rammed it straight up, connecting with her sensitive pelvic bone, so hard she was temporarily blinded, then kept pushing until her feet lifted off the ground.

  She didn’t scream, which was a victory of sorts.

  She lashed out with her free hand, fingers clawed.

  With a lazy swipe, he snatched her fist out of the air before it could rake his cheeks. “Stop.”

  She did not, tugging experimentally and twisting.

  She was trapped, her feet dangling uselessly several inches off the ground, his knee jammed up between her legs, doing all kinds of weird things there, not all of them unpleasant. And he was a Prime, which sent her starved body to waking. Not good.

  “Stop moving,” he grumbled.

  “Let me go, and I will.”

  Holding her wrists with one hand, he slapped a palm back over her mouth. She glared at him. A face of hard sharp angles bathed in moonlight, and the silver tapetum lucidem of his retinas, glowing in the night.

  Chest heaving, her nose filled with the toxic smell of him.

  It had been a long time since she’d smelled a Prime from this
close. Years.

  Had they always smelled this good? Like the breeze off the river on those rare days when the river didn’t smell like dead bodies and garbage. He smelled like…heaven, and sex, and candy, and soap all rolled into one, like velvet on skin and whispers in the night, and a big part of her, okay a huge part of her wanted to lick his neck and rock her body against the hard thigh holding her up.

  A bead of sweat trailed down the back of her neck.

  “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth. If you scream, I’ll knock you unconscious. You understand?”

  He held her gaze until she nodded. There was no one to scream for anyway.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will.”

  She just glared up at him, but quit resisting, focusing instead on trying to ignore the way her clit pulsed and throbbed at the contact of his hard thigh.

  “Why were you watching us?” His voice rumbled, scarcely more than a purr, and it did things to her deep down inside. Things she really didn’t want to explore, because the answers there were way too scary. Her next heat wasn’t due for at least a week. No way was this guy potent enough to trigger one just by existing. Or smelling so good.

  She sucked in air, but it was like there wasn’t enough in the city. It was like her lungs had compressed.

  Her vision spun.

  Focus.

  “I was going to sleep on top of the building. The window opened. The light went on. I was curious. That’s all. I didn’t see anything.”

  It was a really bad lie. And she said it too fast.

  “You can do better.”

  “It’s true.” She tried to look younger, smaller, innocent. “I’m a runaway. I move every day. I just wanted some place to sleep. Bad timing, that’s all.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Try again.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. Partial honesty might work. “I’m looking for the Boss, okay?”

  “That’s a dangerous thing to do.”

  “I need his help.”

  “Another lie. I know the look of someone with rage in their heart.” His gleaming eyes probed hers. “What did he do to you?”

  Tessa just scowled under lowered brows. “Where is he?”