by T. S. Joyce
She scented the air, but they all smelled terrifying. No way in hell could she differentiate between their smells now. The fine hairs on the back of her neck were standing straight up, and when she settled onto the log, it only got worse. She’d sandwiched herself between Long Hair and a man she hadn’t even noticed before. He was a huge shadow in her senses. The kind that screamed for her not to turn and look him directly in the eye. Oh, he was a bear, of that she was sure. A grizzly likely, and she’d accepted the wrong damn seat.
“Breathe,” the man murmured, the sound of his voice gravel and silk.
Winter gripped her jeans at the knees and sat there panting, wishing she could stand and leave without giving any of these psychos her back.
With a sigh, the man stood. And stood and stood because he was as tall as a mountain. “Don’t show anybody your neck, kitty. You don’t have an alpha here. Not yet.”
As he walked to the other side and gave her some space, she straightened her neck back out, shook her head hard, and sucked in a deep breath of relief. Two of the men across the circle inched away from the monster bear and then stood and slunk away from him completely. He was massive, but not in the physical sense. He felt everywhere, as if he took up every air molecule, every inch of space, and she hadn’t even looked at his face yet. How had he been the last one she noticed? How had he hidden until she’d sat down beside him? There was nothing more terrifying than a monster so easily disguised.
She could see him out of her peripheral, could feel him watching her, but fuck if she was going to be the prey. Swallowing down her yellow-bellied fear, Winter dragged her gaze to his. She froze at the breathtaking, masculine beauty of the man. Tall, yes, broad shouldered, yes, but his face gave her such an odd sense of déjà vu, even though she’d never laid eyes on him in her life. She would’ve remembered. His hair was dark brown, matching the scruff on his chiseled jaw. It was his eyes that held her though—dark, broody, hard, seeming to take in everything with a glance. Right now, he could’ve been looking straight through to her soul. His dark brows lowered slightly, and he took a step back, angled his chin down, and looked at her suspiciously. “Do I know you?” he asked in that deep velvet voice of his.
Winter forced her attention anywhere else other than his mesmerizing eyes. It was cool outside, but the man wore a dark gray T-shirt with forest green writing too faded to read the logo. Black tattoo ink trailed down one arm, while the other was bare and tan as though he’d spent a lot of time outdoors. He crossed his arms over his defined chest and murmured, “I’m Logan.”
Logan. He even had a sexpot name. It was perfect for a man who was pretending to be normal when his inner animal clearly was not. More camouflage.
“Winter,” she said with a nod.
“Winter?” Logan asked. “You a snow leopard?”
She huffed an uncomfortable breath. The real story was her mom was probably high as a kite when she named a black panther cub Winter. These strangers hadn’t earned real stories though, so they could have the surface one instead—the one Mom had told her when she’d been slumped over in a corner with a needle hanging out of her arm. “I was born during a blizzard. So…Winter.”
“Names?” Long Hair asked. “We’re finally doing introductions? We’ve been sitting here for three hours, and it takes this haggard-lookin’ chick to get us to open up.”
The giant scar-faced man beside him snarled and snapped his teeth at Long Hair like a psychopath, but the smaller man only ducked out of the way and lifted two fingers. “Dustin Porter, the next and best member of the Blackwing Crew.”
The goth girl snorted and leaned back on locked arms. “Look around, Fido. The dragons aren’t going to choose everyone. They’ll pick ten, maybe. Hate to be the one to crush your dreams, but you wouldn’t make the shortlist.”
“Fido? So you guessed what I am… What are you? Make an actual introduction, Princess Emo, or I can guess all the animals here. I’m good at this.” Dustin sniffed the air and jerked his attention to the goliath beside him. “You’re a werepussy for sure.”
The giant let off a low rumble and neatly collected Dustin’s neck in his clenched fist.
“Pussy as in a cat! A big cat shifter,” Dustin wheezed out, then gasped as the titan released him. “Fuck,” he muttered rubbing his throat. “You almost popped my head off like a champagne cork.”
The giant curled his lips back over his teeth and offered Dustin a feral look before he gave them all his back again. “People call me Beast. And fuck your labels. You don’t know me.”
There was a loaded moment of silence before Logan saved them all from the awkwardness. “I’m a bear.”
“Yeah, I think we could all tell that,” Winter muttered.
“Not her,” Dustin said, pointing to the quiet girl with the hearing aids. “She smells pretty fuckin’ human to me. Here for a pity-bite, love? I don’t think the dragon will stand for it.”
“Hey, she could be a flight shifter,” the goth girl said.
“Emma, human,” the girl clarified carefully in a thick voice. She rolled her fist, flipped off Dustin, and then went back to scribbling in her journal after she fiddled with the little device on her right ear.
“Did you just turn off your hearing aid?” Dustin asked in an offended tone.
Winter snorted. She liked the human already.
When she looked up at Logan, he was showing the first signs of a smile. She bet the monster was beautiful when he let a real grin rip.
A car horn blasted, and the crowd parted like the red sea as a jacked-up pickup truck approached. One redheaded muscle-bound titan was yelling out the window, “Out the way before I run you over!” Air Ryder Croy pointed to some brownnoser who had actually worn cut-off shorts for extra points. “I like your shorts. Move! Oh, wait!” He rocked to a stop and leaned farther into his truck, then reappeared at the open window and flung a stack of papers into the air. They rained down like giant white snowflakes. “Applications! Fill them out! Oh, here’s a pen.” He chucked a single pen out the window into the surging crowd.
“One pen, seriously?” someone yelled.
“Crew shit 101—learn to share,” Air Ryder called out over the noise as he began inching his truck toward the cabin again.
Logan cast Winter an unreadable glance. His eyes had lightened from pitch black to smoke gray. “I’ll get the applications.” The rest in the circle had stood, including Winter, urged by the chaos of the mob scrambling for the fluttering papers, but true to his word, Logan brought back a stack in less time than Winter had expected. They took them as he passed them around the circle. All but the giant scar-faced bruiser, Beast. He snarled and stood, disappeared into the crowd, and returned thirty seconds later with his own. A team player he was not.
She thought he would stay on the other side where he’d been standing, but Logan handed her an application and took his seat beside her again. “You sure got a big purse,” he said. “Any extra pens in there?”
“Yeah,” she said on a breath as she dug around the depths of her oversize handbag. She carried everything in it—way more than she needed. There was even a pair of purple hand wraps for boxing, a back scratcher, and four pocket knives. Like she needed all those weapons. She had teeth and claws.
Winter found three pens and tossed Emma one since she was looking right at her like a brave little human. Dustin snorted a disapproving sound, but so what? He smelled like dog fur, and she wouldn’t ever go out of her way to help a werewolf. They were crazy and manipulative, every last one of them. It was ingrained in them since birth. He might be acting normal, but he wasn’t. That was just a show to play nice and try to get into Kane’s crew.
The other pen, she handed to Logan. His fingertip brushed hers as he took it, but he didn’t flinch away from her touch. He sat there, frowning down at her, linked to her by the pen and this tiny brush of skin.
“These questions are bullshit,” a shifter yelled from behind her. “How many times do you jack off a day? Would
you consider yourself a sexual delinquent? And they aren’t yes or no questions, but a scale from one to fifty!”
Winter giggled when she read the first one. Clearly, Air Ryder had put this application together himself. Instead of asking Male or Female it said Dick or Treasure Cavern.
Another car horn blasted, and a late-model, jacked-up Bronco slowly came to a stop. The windows were rolled up, but when the door opened, a tall man with black hair hanging to the side in front of his face got out. His bright green eyes were chock full of fury. The crowd went eerily silent.
“What the actual fuck are you all doing on my lawn?” Dark Kane barked out.
“Interviewing for the crew,” one of the men answered. “The announcement said today.”
“Announcement?” a blond woman said as she stepped out of the passenger’s side of the Bronco. Her eyes were bright gold, and she made the air feel too heavy, right along with her mate. Winter had no doubt this curvy beauty was none other than the infamous Rowan Barnett, formerly of the notoriously violent Gray Backs, now the queen of these mountains and Second in Kane’s Blackwing Crew.
“Air Ryder Croy—”
Kane held up his hand to cut off the man. “Stop right there, say no more.” He slid a furious glance to the redhead sitting on his front porch in a rocking chair with his work boot up on the railing as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Hi, fourth best friend.” Air Ryder wiggled his fingers in a wave.
Under his breath, Kane murmured, “I’m gonna kill you.”
Winter believed it. Kane’s face was twisted into a feral expression that terrified her. A low rumbling noise filled the clearing. “Crew’s full. Now get off my property.”
“What? Hell no, I traveled all the way from Nevada to get in this crew!” one of the men yelled.
The mob went wild, yelling, questioning, surging toward him, but despite Kane’s deep limp, he wasn’t backing down. He strode right up to the first shifter and closed-fist blasted him across the jaw. While the man went down like a sack of rocks, Kane caught the fist of the next one, then head-butted him hard. The sound of the man’s nose breaking was audible even over the roar of the angry masses. Rowan leaned on the hood of the Bronco. She looked bored as she slurped on a red sucker and watched her mate level the rampaging idiots one-by-one. Ryder was on the front porch with a shit-eating grin stretching his freckled face. Winter would’ve laughed if an all-out riot wasn’t happening in front of her very eyes. And also if she hadn’t wasted her time driving all the way out here and getting her hopes up on a crew that wasn’t even recruiting right now. They’d all been obviously duped by Air Ryder.
Logan stood.
“Where are you going, boy scout?” Dustin asked. “Don’t you hear Kane breaking their bones? That dragon will kill you and laugh at your corpse.”
Logan shook his head, and ignoring Dustin’s warning, pushed his way through the fight. Winter stood on the log, balancing on her tiptoes to see what Logan was doing. Dustin had been wrong. He wasn’t going after the dragon at all, but he was pulling the mob back one by one, yelling at them, making space for Dark Kane to fight. And then Beast was there too, pushing the masses back with Logan.
“Fuck,” Dustin muttered as he made his way toward them. “Move!” he yelled at someone who was standing in the way. When Dustin snapped his teeth at them and growled, the gooseflesh rose on Winter’s arms.
“I’m out of here,” the goth girl murmured. She strode off for the gravel road, but Winter stood there stuck. Did she get in the middle of a dominant male fight? Or did she make like Goth Girl and get the hell out of here?
Emma was standing on her log, too, neck craned as she watched the fight. If the human was brave enough to stay and see this thing through, then so could Winter. If for nothing else than to make sure the fight didn’t migrate this way and hurt the frail girl. Winter wasn’t as dominant as the brawlers, but she was a fast Changer, and her animal could fight well enough to protect Emma. She could at least buy her time to run.
The man who bumped her shoulder earlier Changed into a big, blond-furred grizzly and charged Kane. Two echoing clicks sounded and then fire, the shape and size of a soccer ball, struck the ground in front of the bear, stopping him in his tracks. And now Rowan, the fire-spewer, looked good and pissed. She jammed her finger at the grizzly. “You want to die today, you keep it up. You want to get into a Change-off in dragon territory, really? I’ll fucking eat you. Leave.”
The fire had brought the fight to a stop, and now the clearing was heavy with shocked silence and the scent of smoke and blood. Winter wondered how many noses Dark Kane had broken today.
The dark dragon himself stood close to the cabin, shoulders heaving, face like a beast, skin on his bulging arms cracking like concrete and cinching back together, cracking then cinching with every breath. And now Winter could see why Rowan had lost it. Dark Kane didn’t have the best control, and mass Changes would summon his hellish monster from him. Rowan had probably saved everyone in this clearing, and they didn’t even realize it.
Logan was standing closest to Kane, Beast next to him, then Dustin, glaring down the crowd. This is what happened with hordes of dominant shifters. One mistake could trigger an avalanche of violence.
Kane snarled and spun, limped up the porch stairs, and disappeared inside, slamming the door behind him hard enough to rattle the tiny cabin. For reasons unknown to her, Logan slid a lingering glance to her. His eyes were bright silver, and crimson streamed from his lip. The neck of his T-shirt had been ripped, and there was a seeping gash on his neck. He didn’t look in pain, though. He looked…concerned. You okay? he mouthed.
Winter checked behind her, but she was alone. Was she okay? She wasn’t the one bleeding all over the dark dragon’s front lawn. Jerkily, she nodded and mouthed, You?
Logan ripped his gaze away and spat red in the grass. Okay then.
Rowan disappeared inside, but Air Ryder was still leaning against the railing looking flushed. About half of the crowd was already drifting back to their cars, but to the rest who lingered, he said, “Fill out your applications, and I’ll be back out with you shortly.”
“So the crew recruitment is still on?” Dustin asked.
Air Ryder shrugged coyly. “Maybe.” Then frowned down at his phone. “Is there a Winter Donovan here?” His attention went right to her, and his ruddy eyebrows arched high. “Winter of Red Havoc?”
Winter swallowed hard under all the attention that had suddenly been cast her way.
“No,” she said, lifting her chin higher. “I’m Winter of Nowhere.”
Air Ryder’s lips stretched into a slow smile. “Good. Come with me.”
Chapter Three
What was happening? Winter’s legs were numb as she stumbled off the log and made her way toward the lair of the dark dragon. It wasn’t the cliff mansion she’d imagined. It was just a small cabin, and she was about to shove herself in that tiny space with two mother-freakin’ dragons? And Air Ryder, who was one of the most battle-proven flight shifters in the entire universe. Oh, he might joke and look relaxed, but his eyes were blazing gold, and the closer she got to him, the heavier he felt.
Logan stood tall in front of her, head cocked as if confused by her, but he stepped out of the way as she approached. The clearing was silent, as though everyone was waiting for her to make her way to a guillotine or something. On a whim, she stopped at Logan and parted her lips to say something, but what? Her brain was on shut-down mode. Save me if I call? Come in there with me? He had no reason to do her any favors. She was a stranger. Something deep inside of her, some tiny instinct, told her she should fear this man, but she could also trust him.
When she looked up into his eyes, they were churning like silver storm clouds, and his teeth were gritted. He smelled of blood, and her animal reacted. Winter hissed at him before carrying on to follow Air Ryder up the porch steps.
Her cheeks heated with mortification. She’d hissed at a monster and the
n given him her back? Her instincts were broken. At the door, she cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Logan, but where she expected fury etched in his features, she found calculation and curiosity instead.
With a steadying breath, she stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Ryder was already making his way toward a hallway door where Winter could hear crashing and stomping from inside.
Ryder flung it open with an expectant smile and said, “Honey, I’m hooome,” and then neatly ducked as a glass of water shattered against the wall behind him. “You wait here,” he said, pointing Winter to a spot near the door.
“That close?”
Air Ryder ignored her and disappeared inside the room with Dark Kane. Brave snowy owl. Winter wanted to survive, so she stayed right where she was, near the exit and nearest Logan because she’d somehow convinced herself if she needed protection from dragon’s fire, he was the monster to see.
Her inner panther nodded in agreement.
Ready to bolt at any moment, she sat on the very edge of a leather couch, hands clenched in her lap.
Movement caught her attention in the small kitchen, and Winter jumped as Rowan appeared. She filled a glass of water and leaned back on the counter, lips quirked up in a half-smile. “Rowan,” she introduced herself.
