by Kamryn Hart
“Stay down,” Ethan hissed as he gave Mason the quickest of hugs and jumped to his feet, teeth bared and fingers clawed.
“Cute,” David remarked. His lips quirked up, showing off the scar that deformed his upper lip.
Ethan jumped forward as if to take David head-on, but he wasn’t stupid. He was no match for the lion. He dodged to the side in the last minute and hit David from another angle, but the guy was like a boulder or even a mountain. He didn’t budge an inch. He grabbed Ethan effortlessly and smashed him down onto the icy concrete below, breaking it with Ethan’s body. Ethan was pretty sure he heard his own skull crack. He sucked in a painful breath of air, but it did little good. David put him down with that one attack. His ears were ringing, his vision was pulsing, fading in and out.
He heard Mason’s scream, a feral sound that came straight from his devil as he shifted. He was bigger than a normal Tasmanian devil, but he was no match for David, the monster African lion. Ethan was barely aware of David shifting that same moment. He saw only flashes of blood and fur as screams and roars filled his ears, cheering and shouting too.
Ethan blinked his eyes hard a few times. He tried to struggle to his feet, to call to his black panther and shift, but his body wasn’t responding. It was like his brain and body had been disconnected. He tasted blood in his mouth. It was pouring out of his nose, too.
“Mason,” he wheezed. God, he couldn’t breathe. He was dying. Mason was dying. This was how it ended.
Ethan’s eyes filled with tears when David threw Mason down for the last time, a bloody heap of black fur with the patch of white on his neck dyed red. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t breathing.
“Mason,” Ethan cried. His voice was garbled and blood spilled out of his mouth again. What had David done to him? His head was pounding. He could hardly think. It wasn’t a Solsis Burst. He would have been burning, but it was just as bad, just as painful but in a different way.
“What the fuck?!”
Ethan closed his eyes when a crashing noise made his head hurt worse. There was more growling, bones cracking, and shifters shifting. It was madness, and there was only one explanation. Those outsider shifters arrived, and they were having an all-out war.
Fuck that. Fuck everything. Ethan only wanted one thing now. He wanted to get to Mason, to hold him.
“Fuck,” he groaned as he managed to get his arms to move enough to inch across the icy concrete. It felt like a cheese grater on his bare skin, but he couldn’t do anything about that. All the action was happening behind him. His eyes were only for Mason. He reached out for the torn apart Tasmanian devil and held him close.
“Mason. Oh, my God. Can you hear me?” Ethan was shaking. His body was threatening to give out on him officially. He was going to pass out.
Mason opened his eyes, the dark eyes of his devil. Shit, he was hanging on, but it was just that. Hanging on. He struggled out of Ethan’s grasp and his skin rippled, his bones cracked and rearranged as his form started to change.
“Don’t shift,” Ethan pleaded, but Mason didn’t listen.
He looked awful. He could barely breathe. Blood was oozing out of his throat and he fell back down to the ground. Ethan tried to support him, but he didn’t have the strength to do it. All he could do was cry and hold him in his lap.
“Ethan, you have to promise me something,” Mason said as he coughed violently.
“Anything,” Ethan agreed.
“Keep Emily safe.” Mason reached up with a shaking hand and touched Ethan’s cheek, leaving a bloody handprint. “Don’t go to see her again. She’s human. They’re shifters. You’re a shifter. Shifters are dangerous. I know you love her. I know you two have been seeing each other, but it’s for the best. I swear. You see it too, don’t you?”
Ethan’s heart shattered. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem, Mason. I’m going with you.”
With a tremendous amount of effort, Mason shook his head. “Promise me.”
Ethan bit his lip. “I promise.”
Suddenly, the world came rushing back with an almost perfect clarity. It was like a direct line of electricity found its way into Ethan’s heart to jump start it, and now his body and mind were working double time. At the same instant, Mason’s hand fell away from his face, leaving a momentary burning sensation there before he fell limp.
And dead. He was dead.
“Mason!” Ethan screamed. “What did you do?” Mason’s mark, the Lunas Sigil they shared, disappeared from his chest. Ethan had this newfound life-giving energy and at the same time, he had a hole in his heart.
Red fury seeped into Ethan’s vision. He looked behind him. He could feel the gold blazing in his eyes as he looked at the shifters slaughtering each other. Five Claws was almost completely wiped out. Their bodies littered the floor and everything was dyed red. Liam was the last one standing. He was fighting a big-ass grizzly bear, and he was quickly losing. That grizzly was a monster, a lot like David. He had some ugly scars, namely the one marring his left eye. The eye itself had lost all pigment and looked ghastly, evil even. The grizzly and his fellow shifters were something. Even David was on the ground, bloody like the rest of Five Claws.
The grizzly locked eyes with Ethan and seemed to ask him, “Do you want to finish the job?”
Did he? Ethan was so angry. He was. But more than that, he was broken, sad, lost. He lost everything. Mason was dead, and he would never see Emily again.
Ethan looked away from the grizzly. He could finish the job. Ethan just didn’t care.
No, he did care. Killing Liam would keep Emily safe.
Ethan screamed as his black panther answered with a smooth as water shift that left his body long and sleek, coated in black fur, and equipped with a long tail that gave him superb balance. The grizzly saw him coming and backed out of his way, allowing Ethan to finish the deed. To make his first kill.
Liam was already in a bad way, ripped to hell because of the grizzly. All Ethan had to do was slash him, force him into a corner, and lock his jaws on his throat. He didn’t have any fight in him. He couldn’t claw Ethan’s stomach. He couldn’t kick away. It was over. Just like that. Because Ethan didn’t do anything worthy of note. But he finished it. And the taste of Liam’s blood filling his mouth made him sick. It made him so sick, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. He hated him so much. This should have felt better, but Ethan was still left with nothing. He never wanted to kill. He never wanted all of this hate and pain. He only wanted the love Mason and Emily gave to him. He was soft in his heart and always was. Liam had never managed to beat it out of him. Maybe it made Ethan weak. Because it was gone.
It was all gone.
“Let go.”
Ethan growled at the man behind him, the man touching him with no fear. It was the grizzly, he smelled the same. He had the same scarred left eye. He had a bulky frame, and his short hair was the same brown as his grizzly’s fur.
He left Ethan alone for a moment to slip on some pants and glanced at his other shifters who were also shifting back into their human skin and getting dressed. Then he said it again, “Let go.”
Slowly, too slowly, Ethan let Liam go. His body fell to the floor with a clatter.
Ethan yowled as he padded back over to Mason. He shifted so he could hold Mason in his arms, and he cried into his bloodied neck.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Ethan sobbed.
“Ethan Street?” the grizzly shifter asked.
“What do you want?” Ethan growled.
“You’re coming with us.”
“Yeah, okay. Whatever you say, big man.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”
Ethan glared at him, but he seemed like he meant it. The grizzly didn’t seem hostile. He didn’t seem to want to hurt Ethan. But none of that mattered.
It didn’t matter where Ethan went or what happened to him as long as he was far away from Emily. He killed Mason. He wouldn’t kill her too. Mason was right. Shifters w
ere violent and dangerous. Emily didn’t need that. It didn’t matter that Five Claws was dead. It didn’t change much of anything. Ethan was destined to be alone. Loving someone too much got him killed. Fated Mates or not, it didn’t matter. Death came for everyone. Ethan would never hurt someone he loved again, and that meant he could love no one.
Chapter 2
FIVE YEARS LATER.
Emily Walker picked a random place to search this time: Texas. Then again, everywhere she had searched was random because she didn’t have any clues. Not one after all these years.
She glanced out the motel window she didn’t bother concealing with the curtains. Rain splattered the glass and a lone streetlight blared through the constantly moving water. It looked like an ever-changing abstract painting, the artist flicking paint at the canvas without ever having to refill their brush or give their arm a break.
She glanced behind her. She hated how prominent the mirror was in this motel room. It reminded her of how half-assed she looked these days. She had her wild hair micro braided because it worked better for her. She liked long hair but wanted it out of the way. It was easy to leave down or pull back in this style, but if she were really going for maximum mobility, she would have shaved it all off. She couldn’t bring herself to do that even though she didn’t spend much time on her appearance these days. Makeup was a lost routine, but she was blessed with dark and healthy skin, dark eyelashes, and eyebrows that looked killer without her having to do anything with them.
Her boys used to compliment her all the time.
Emily could barely make out her black 1967 Impala parked outside. She glanced at her SIG Sauer P938 sitting on the small desk she was seated at. She hadn’t had to fire the thing in a while, so that was nice. But it wasn’t what she wanted. She would fire that gun a thousand times if she could just get what she wanted.
Poring over her journal and the maps marking where she had been, made everything look bleak. Five years. She had been doing this for five years, since she was nineteen years old. She picked up and left home when Ethan disappeared and Mason turned up dead. That was the most horrific time in her life, and the years following hadn’t been much better. She was loved her whole life. Her parents adopted her when she was a baby. All she knew was that life and her excitement when she got a new brother, Mason, at the age of fifteen. Her childhood was fantastic. She loved Mason, and later Ethan, more than life. She had everything. Then, suddenly, she had nothing.
There was no news on Ethan. Her parents never really knew about him. Emily never knew much about him either. He kept a lot of secrets, although he went out of his way to see her. Mason liked to keep her out of his shifter life since she found out about it on accident one day when she caught him shifting. Their parents didn’t know, and she agreed to keep the secret. She knew Ethan was a shifter too, but that was about all she knew when it came to his personal life. She wanted nothing more than to be a part of their life, but they tried to keep her at a distance while still showering her with all their love and affection. She loved them back, and she wanted more, but she believed them when they said she wasn’t cut out for their world. She never pushed for more. But there were many times she dreamed of kissing them, holding them.
Yes, Mason was her adopted brother, but they met when he was fourteen and she was fifteen. She was attracted to him, and he was attracted to her. That was another thing they kept a secret from their parents. It was also something neither of them acted on. Emily regretted it. She regretted that she let the boys dictate her life like that. She should have fought for what she wanted. She was damn good at keeping secrets. She proved that. She should have also proved she could handle a couple of shifters and their lives.
She certainly could now.
Five Claws ceased to exist at the same time Mason died and Ethan vanished without a trace. She had so many unanswered questions. If she were someone else, she would have left those questions unanswered instead of wasting five years of her life. She could still have been in contact with her parents. She could have finished college, gotten her career job, maybe gotten married, but no. She chose to break her parents’ heart because of one simple fact: Ethan might be alive.
Mason was gone and there was nothing she could do about it, but maybe Ethan wasn’t. She held on to that small shred of hope. She couldn’t save Mason, but maybe she could save Ethan, keep Ethan. What if he was in danger? What if he needed her help? He was a shifter like Mason. Not many people knew about shifters. Not many understood, but she did. She could protect him. She could protect him like she should have been able to protect Mason. Somehow. She didn’t know how to live without doing something about all of this. A part of her died when Mason died. The possibility of Ethan being alive was the only thing that kept her going. There had to be a way to make this right.
She traveled the country searching for Ethan, trying to pick up his trail, following any stories about black panther sightings, anything that could have anything to do with Ethan, anything that sounded remotely like Ethan. But it had all come up empty. Ethan really had vanished without a trace. After all this time, she was finally starting to lose her fire. She was tired. She had been doing this for five years. Five years. And nothing.
If she was thinking, using logic, she knew it was time to give up. She should go back home.
“Damn you,” she murmured under her breath. “Damn both of you. Why did you leave me?”
BAM!
Emily jumped out of her seat, snatching up her gun along the way. She aimed it at a man standing in the doorway, soaking wet from the relentless rain pouring down on him. He broke the damn lock like it was nothing. He was covered in scars. Emily pegged him as a shifter. The brownish golden glow in his eyes confirmed her suspicions.
“I’ll shoot,” Emily threatened.
The man grinned as the howling wind blew past him with a vengeance, chilling Emily to the bone. His grin looked wild and unnatural because a chunk of his lip was missing. Part of his teeth could probably always be seen at any given time. She didn’t recognize this man. What was he after?
He took a step forward. She fired a warning shot at his feet. The bullet burrowed into the carpet and left a thin smoking trail in its wake.
“Not another step,” she said.
His grin somehow grew wider, showcasing yellowed teeth that looked more like an animal’s big canines.
“Get the fuck out before I kill you.” Her skin was crawling. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, like a piece of meat he was getting ready to devour.
Slowly, he raised his hands as if to demonstrate he meant no harm. Emily kept her gun steady and lined up with his heart.
“You’ll want to hear what I have to say first,” he commented. “It’s about Ethan.”
“Ethan,” Emily whispered. She almost buckled. She could feel her arms losing power as they tried to slap limply against her sides, but she refused. She held steady and kept her gun aimed. A rush of emotions was flooding her body: relief, fear, hope.
“Tell me,” she insisted, experimentally moving her finger back against the trigger. She didn’t pull it. She was just hoping to get the shifter off balance. He didn’t show any sign of caring though. He was a tough customer. She raised the gun so she was aiming at his forehead, dead center.
“You won’t kill me. You won’t risk it until you hear what I have to say.”
He was right.
“What do you want?” Emily demanded.
“Nothing, actually. I’m willing to give you this information for free. Just don’t shoot me, beautiful.”
God, she felt like fire ants were crawling all over her skin, biting her and leaving big welts.
“These days, Ethan goes by the name Rogue,” the shifter said matter-of-factly; apparently, he wasn’t too worried about getting her word on agreeing not to shoot him. “He’s currently staying in some hick town in Idaho called Moonwatch, with a pack of wolf shifters.”
“How do you know that?”
“What does it matter? You finally have what you’ve wanted for years. You know where Ethan is.”
“What’s your name? How do you know Ethan?”
The man let out a growl. It was nothing more than a low rumble emanating from his chest, but it was hostile. He kept the grin plastered onto his ruined face. Among all the scars, Emily thought she could see some ink creeping up along his neck. This man was obviously a fighter, but that was the only thing she could gather, and that was based solely on his scars and mannerisms.
“Name’s Owen Barr,” he informed, giving up the information much easier than Emily had anticipated. “Ethan will know who I am if you choose to tell him.”
Emily scowled. “Why are you telling me any of this?”
“You ask too many questions, Emily Walker.”
Emily pressed her plump lips together into a tight line. She knew it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he knew her name too. He knew she was searching for Ethan. It didn’t make it any less unnerving, though.
“Go catch your kitty cat, Emily. Go to Ethan.”
Emily thought about holding him at gunpoint a little longer, demanding he answer a few more questions, but her moment of hesitation was all Owen Barr needed to slip away. Lightning flashed bright, blinding Emily just long enough for him to disappear. The door to her motel room was creaking, swinging back and forth in the vengeful wind.
She ran outside to try and find this Owen Barr, but the rain pelted her into submission. She could hardly see anything and had the urge to wipe the waterfall from her eyes every couple of seconds. The shifter was gone. All she could see were the cars in the parking lot lit up by the one lone streetlight that fought through the storm and darkness of night.
Emily glanced at her Impala. She could hop in, start up the engine, and go to Ethan right now.
But what if it was a trap?
But why would anyone want to set a trap for her? That seemed unlikely. She didn’t have enemies. She was little more than a ghost these days. But he knew. Owen Barr knew about her. He knew about Ethan.
