Red Havoc Rebel

by T. S. Joyce

  And now she was seriously suspicious that Anson Carter had grown from a troubled boy into a good man.

  He wasn’t the animal.

  Kaylee was.

  Chapter Five

  Bentley was her world.

  Kaylee leaned against the open doorframe as she watched him sleeping. Five years old, a brawny little boy, blond like her with gold eyes like his daddy. Teeth and claws like his daddy, too. Someday he would grow into a big, dominant lion shifter, but for now, he was her baby. Her cub. Her everything.

  The Cold Mountain Pride would be her salvation now. She needed help. Bentley shifted too much, and he was getting more aggressive. She couldn’t raise him in the human world anymore. His father had swept her off her feet, promised her the world. Promised her family. Promised her everything she’d always wanted. He’d given her Bentley, and then he’d gone back on every promise he ever made. He left her like he was born a leaver. He left her easy, like it didn’t hurt him at all.

  But Kaylee had been cut to her core, never to recover again, except in those moments she was playing with Bentley, or she saw him smile, or knew he was happy. That was when the dead feeling and the guilt lifted. That was when she lived. If she could keep him little forever, she would. But already he was big like his father. He was dominant like his father, and someday would have the potential to be a monster of a lion like his father. He had the genetics to be an alpha. He would have the size, and if he kept going like he was, Bentley would always struggle with aggression. He needed males to put his inner big cat in place. He needed discipline she couldn’t physically give him. He needed the protection of a pride, and the Cold Mountain Pride was the best one she’d been able to find.

  Too bad the payment for said protection was her standing behind the throne of Arden, the alpha of Cold Mountain.

  Bentley smiled in his sleep, and she knew he was down for the night.

  “It’s the right thing to do,” Mom said from the rocking chair in the corner. “Those lions keep to themselves. They don’t cause trouble. They don’t draw attention. Bentley can be happy there, and you’ll both be close to me.”

  You’ll both be close to me. That was the real reason Mom had pushed this union. She was lonely. Kaylee should’ve visited more. The money Mom had inherited made it hard to connect with people in this town. They saw her as something she wasn’t. They assumed she was stuck-up, but she wasn’t. Mom was shy instead.

  “What if it was a sign that I got in a wreck right before I was supposed to meet Arden?” Kaylee asked quietly. That had bothered her all day. The timing had been so strange. And the fact that Anson was the one who had unwittingly prevented the meeting? It had sat in the back of her mind like a little grenade with the pin pulled. She believed in signs, and if that was what was happening, she had the strong urge to take Bentley away from here and start over with her search for a pride.

  “It’s not a sign, just a coincidence,” Mom said with confidence. “The lions have the means to provide for you. You’ll have a comfortable life, you and Bentley both. I love him, and I hate that he struggles through those awful Changes.” The chair creaked with each gentle rock. Mom’s blond curls shone in the moonlight that filtered through the open balcony doors. Outside the room was a veranda where Kaylee used to watch the stars through a telescope when she was a kid. This place had been paradise, but it had also been too big, and too cold with just her and Mom here.

  “You should’ve left the shifters alone.” Mom didn’t even need her to respond to carry on conversations. “Bentley could’ve been a normal boy.”

  “He is normal.”

  “He turns into a monster when he Changes, and you know it.” Mom slid a worried glare to Kaylee. “You need someone to teach him how to be a proper monster. You need Arden and his people.”

  “I know,” Kaylee murmured, her eyes on Bentley’s sweet face. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I thought I had it rough being a single mom,” she said with a soft laugh. “You turned into a little cretin in your teens, but you didn’t grow claws and canines, so there was that.”

  Kaylee huffed a short laugh and shook her head. She hadn’t been easy to raise at the end of her teens. She’d been quiet and studious until her junior year, and then Dad had moved out, and she’d rebelled.

  Anson had been part of that rebellion.

  Anson. There he was again, in her thoughts like he had been all day. She had to figure out a way to make it up to him. Covington was going to be the place she grew her roots. She had big plans to get her life together for Bentley, and part of that had to be gaining forgiveness from Anson and Jenny. Was it selfish of her to need that forgiveness so she could feel better? Hell yeah, but at some point, she had to accept the dark parts of herself and work to make the light parts bigger. All she could do was be better than she was yesterday.

  She kissed Bentley lightly on the forehead, made sure the blanket was tucked up to his shoulders just so, then kissed her fingertips and waved at Mom to say goodnight. She would probably sit in there with Bentley for a while longer. She’d done that every night since Kaylee had brought him here. Mom worried he would shift in his sleep and be scared. She didn’t want him to be alone. Kaylee had tried to explain they had his shift schedule down to a near science now. He had some control, and he gave definite signs before the lion cub needed his skin. His eyes would stay gold, and the snarling in his throat would be constant, and he would smell like fur, even to Kaylee’s dull human senses.

  Mom had seen him shift on the first night they arrived though, and it had terrified her. Kaylee didn’t get scared anymore. She’d accepted that someday he would hurt her, and Change her. All she could do was put it off for as long as possible. He wouldn’t do it on purpose or out of anger. It was going to happen by accident when he got too excited and aggressive, or played too hard with her. One nip that was too deep, and he would Turn her. That thought used to terrify her. After what had happened with Anson, the night that changed the course of both their fates, she’d been so thankful she wasn’t a shifter and didn’t have to turn into something else. She was happy she didn’t have to share her body with an animal. But then Bentley had been born, and she’d watched her beautiful baby boy shift into a rough-and-tumble, adorable, little lion cub, and something had changed in her. She wanted to be like him so she could protect him, relate to him, and so he could grow up not feeling alone, or abnormal.

  Arden and his pride would help. She would be claimed, and then she would be like Bentley, too. He would grow up the heart of a pride. She just had to turn off her emotions to help that happen.

  The marble floors were cold under her bare feet as she padded to the room next door. She hesitated in the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest as the chilly wind blew through her open balcony doors. Her old room was pristine, from the four-poster bed with the bombazine curtains draped around it to the antique tapestry across one wall with some ancient family emblem. There was a lion in it, as if Destiny had known there would be lion blood in her family tree at some point. Bentley loved looking at it and running his little fingertips across the embroidered paw of the massive golden cat. The floors were white and polished, and the furniture was big, bold, and antique, the white paint weathered from a hundred years of use. The room was massive and cold. Mom liked clean lines, so Kaylee hadn’t been allowed to decorate her walls with the paintings she had done in art class, or pictures of friends. There were no photographs on the walls, no character at all. This place was a museum. She glanced down at her threadbare gray pajama pants with the hole in one knee and her white tank top with the grape juice stain across the right hip.

  She didn’t belong here anymore.

  She didn’t belong anywhere anymore.

  But for one beautiful summer, she had. The Year of Anson. Just the thought of it made her smile. Before things went bad, they were very good.

  Inhaling a deep, steadying breath, she made her way to the closet, which was the size of most of her child
hood friends’ rooms when she had gone to slumber parties. She’d avoided inviting people here because it wasn’t a fun place. It wasn’t warm and homey, and it never smelled like chocolate chip cookies. It was more mothballs meets wood polish.

  In the back corner of the closet, buried under her old letterman jacket, was a shoe box with little red hearts she’d glued all over the top and sides. After sitting down on the floor, she pulled off the lid carefully and peeked inside.

  A smile immediately stretched her cheeks. There was a stack of old, folded notes, pictures she and Anson had taken with a polaroid camera he’d bought for her birthday, and an empty candy necklace package. There were old movie ticket stubs down in the very bottom. They would buy one ticket but then sneak into other movies. Anson called it Movie Day. Saturdays they would spend hours and hours making out in the back row of the theater. Half her diet had been popcorn and M&Ms that summer. Anson liked to pour the sweets in the tub because he liked salty and sweet. She’d thought it so rebellious the first time he’d done it. It felt chaotic, mixing snacks like that, but Anson was like that. He was free. He did what he wanted and thought outside of the box, and he made her think outside of her little sheltered world, too.

  On a whim, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and took a picture of the four tattered movie stubs. And before she could change her mind, she sent the image to Anson’s old number she still had saved. Even after all these years, even through several phone changes, and even through the anger, she hadn’t been able to delete his number. He’d probably changed it a long time ago, and if so, that was meant to be. He wasn’t meant to get the picture of their memories.

  Kaylee set the phone beside her and flipped through the polaroid pictures. Most of them were selfies of both of them, smiling and making funny faces, always in a different place. The ice cream parlor, the movie theater, Big Bad-A Burger House. One was of them at the counter of an old-fashioned candy store with matching candy necklaces. They’d bought them for each other the day he asked her to be his girlfriend with a cheesy poem. They’d sat in that candy shop and talked about anything and everything until they’d eaten every sweet treat off the stretchy string necklaces.

  In another picture, they were in the park, and the sun had hit Anson’s eyes just right. They were so gold. It was so obvious now that he was a shifter, but at the time, she hadn’t a clue. She’d just thought his eyes striking. He’d been upset that day. Something had happened at home, and he’d called her and asked her to meet him at the park. He hadn’t wanted to talk, but sat them on their favorite bench and held her for a while instead. She remembered his arms were so strong around her, and she’d been confused because he was the one going through something rough, but he seemed to find comfort in comforting her. And then he’d snapped this picture with his golden eyes. He’d dried the picture, waving it in his hand until the image showed up, and then he’d stared at it for a while, as if he couldn’t decide whether to show her or not. And when he finally handed it to her, he’d watched her face with an unreadable expression on his.

  Now, she understood he’d been sharing his gold eyes with her, testing her reaction. But Anson had just been Anson. He’d been her Anson. He had been the one getting her through Mom and Dad’s divorce. He’d been the only one she trusted, the only one she was leaning on.

  She took a picture on her phone of the selfie in the park and sent it with the caption, You tried to tell me that day, didn’t you?

  Deep in her heart, she knew she was sending these texts into the abyss, but it still felt good to have a little connection to him, even if he never saw them.

  Kaylee moved to put the phone down, but it dinged. With a gasp, she yanked it to her chest and clutched it there. Please, please, please be Anson and not some grumpy old man telling her to stop sending him pictures so late at night.

  She pulled it in front of her face, and her heart dropped to the floor. The message was from Arden. I’ve been thinking my territory might be intimidating to you for our first meeting. Maybe this is why you’ve put off negotiations.

  Negotiations? For a marriage? For a claiming? It sounded so cold and made her sad in ways she hadn’t expected.

  Meet me at Jessie’s Brewskies. It’s the new bar in town. We’ll drink a little and get to know each other before the meeting tomorrow. See you there.

  Okay. He hadn’t asked her on a date. More like demanded it, but this did sound better than meeting him for the first time in front of his entire pride. And honestly, she had been a little worried about meeting four bachelor lions deep in the woods—alone.

  See you there, she typed out, using his words. Send.

  Such an empty feeling yawned in her gut as she stared down at the scattered pictures on the floor. Anson had been hers for a year, and he’d ruined her. Settling for Bentley’s father, and now Arden, was a harder pill to swallow when she was staring at the beaming smile in her younger face in these pictures.

  She hadn’t smiled like that since. Now, her smiles were plastered and forced and out of politeness. It was important that she gave Arden a chance, though.

  And who knew.

  Perhaps he would surprise her.

  Chapter Six

  “Gravy gun,” Barret said, tipping his glass of frothy beer toward Anson and arching an eyebrow like he was the best dick-namer ever.

  “Fuck tool,” Anson said half-heartedly. He didn’t really feel like playing drinking games right now. Not when those two pictures were sitting in messages from a number he didn’t recognize. It must be her. Kaylee. She’d texted him, which meant she’d kept his number all this time, and now she was sitting in what looked like her old closet at her mom’s house, reminiscing.

  It meant something…right?

  “Anson!” Barret reprimanded.

  “Oh. Uh, sex flute.”

  “Ew, it’s a piccolo. Well maybe yours is. Am I right?” Barret asked Jaxon, the new grizzly shifter member of the crew.

  Barret lifted his hand up for a high five. Jaxon lifted his hand to slap it, but Barret made a screeching sound and avoided the high five. “Just kidding, asshole. I still hate you.”

  “Prick,” Jaxon muttered.

  “Prick is too simple for this game, but I guess it works,” Barret muttered. “Pussy hammer.”

  Anson was reading Kaylee’s text for the tenth time. You tried to tell me that day, didn’t you?

  He shouldn’t respond. Opening the doors of communication would only get him burned again. But goddamn it was hard not telling her what had happened the day of this picture. His parents had been thinking about pledging to a panther crew in Georgia, but he’d been begging them to stay in Covington—for Kaylee. He and his parents had been going to battle for months over it, and that day, they’d had the biggest fight of all. His parents had told him he had to break up with Kaylee. His response? He had packed his shit and told them he was moving out. They’d smoothed things over later, but when he’d seen Kaylee that day, he had no idea about his future, or where he would live, or how he would make it on his own. All he’d known was she was worth making the effort to stay in Covington. He’d been full of secrets back then. She’d been so good and so pure and so naïve, like this angel who made him want to be better. Who made him want to be normal.

  And then she’d turned on him.

  “Drink!” Barret demanded. “You took more than five seconds. Anson, you aren’t even paying attention! You always dominate at the Dick Game, but you’re glued to social media instead like some teenybopper girl watching a boyband video. And what the hell are you looking at anyway?”

  Barret strained his neck and tried to look at Anson’s phone, but he shoved it in his pocket. He flipped off the former Second of the Red Havoc Crew, now the Third, with both middle fingers.

  “Probably porn,” Jaxon muttered from the other side of Barret, where he was nursing a bottle of beer and watching a football game rerun on the television behind the bar.

  “If it was porn, he would own it like a damn ma
n,” Barret growled. “Secrets, secrets, Anson. You’ve been a hidey little hider all fuckin’ day, and it started with that girl.”

  “What girl?” Jaxon asked, jerking his attention to Anson.

  Hell no was he explaining Kaylee to his crew. They would read too much into it and rib him mercilessly. Anson was prepared to plead the fifth until he died and well into ghost-hood, but Barret pointed behind them at the door and muttered, “That girl.”

  “Sheeyit,” Anson murmured as he spied one fine-as-hell Kaylee Cummings winding her way through the crowded bar toward him. If she’d seen him, she wasn’t showing it. So far, her eyes were on the locals as she bumped like a pinball against them and apologized over and over. He didn’t remember her being this clumsy. He kind of liked it. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts that were frayed at the hem and a purple baggy sweater that did nothing for her figure. Gray lambskin snow boots stretched halfway up her calves. He’d always thought them hideous on everyone else, but on Kaylee, they showed off her long, toned legs.

  “Boner,” Jaxon said.

  “Man, you suck so bad at this game,” Barret complained. “You’re supposed to come up with two words for dick, and they’re supposed to be funny. Not, ‘oh, that dick is called a dick.’ You’re the worst one in our crew. LVP. Lease valuable player.”

  Kaylee stumbled around one more patron and looked up suddenly, locking her pretty spring-sky blue eyes on Anson. She froze like a deer in headlights until her purse flung her forward with the sudden stop and rocketed off her arm and onto the floor.

  For a moment, Jaxon and Barret grew quiet, watchful, and then went back to arguing while Anson stood and made his way over to her. Slowly, he bent and picked up her purse. It didn’t have the brand names that she used to love printed all over her girly things, but maybe her tastes were different now. “Hey Snob. What are you doing here with the riff-raff?”