She hadn’t meant to push his buttons, but guilt made her gut churn. She sighed and tightened her grip on the steering wheel. Her attention should be on the road nearly obscured with snow, but she couldn’t keep from stealing glances at him.
She was driving maybe forty-five miles an hour on the highway after all. If she went off the road again, they could just push the cockroach of a car back onto the shoulder.
“Well, I can drop you off anywhere between here and St. Lawrence County. With the weather as bad as it is, we might have hours to get to know one another.”
His seat creaked under him as he moved around. She wanted to steal another look at him and try to read his face, but a group of red taillights glowed ahead. Letting off the gas, she tapped the brakes every so often until she came to a complete standstill. There was no way to see through the veil of snow falling around them to figure out why the highway had come to a stop.
An accident, she figured. How much of New York was shrouded in this merciless storm? It couldn’t possibly reach all the way to her parents. There had to be an end in sight, but the moments ticked by and there was still no movement.
“I totally jinxed us,” she blurted out. She drummed her fingers along her uneven steering wheel. “Do you think…do you think we should go out and help?”
He was already opening his door. The snow tried to swallow him, but as soon as she glimpsed his blue flannel near her window, she parked the car on the side of the road and jumped out to follow him. He had to be like her. She didn’t know what to call it, but the way he held himself was strong and dominant.
In the gleam of the red taillights, she thought she saw a flicker of white in his eyes when he looked back at her. She paused, the red light making him look devilish. Was this a mistake?
She didn’t have long to process the thought because a muffled cry for help came from ahead of them. Frankie launched into a run. She sped past the man only to slide on a patch of ice. He caught her before she could land on her ass and gently set her back on her feet. She had to admit that the feeling of his hands on her made her pulse race.
He pointed into the haze. “There. Someone went into the ditch.”
But that wouldn’t hold up traffic. She pressed forward, walking between the cars anxiously idling. No one dared open their window and let this hellish storm inside. Nor did they try to venture out into it, probably for fear of being swallowed up by it. Only she and the mystery man tried to figure out what was going on.
At the front of the traffic jam, an SUV was sideways in the middle of the road. Another car was embedded in its bumper, creating a crooked V of cars. The woman in the SUV was still shaking. Frankie prepared to step up and knock on the window, but the scent of blood reached her.
The creature squatting inside Frankie thrashed. Her lungs clenched and she gasped for air while the creature fought for freedom.
Not now. There are too many people watching. She begged and pleaded with the monster, but all it wanted was to run and hide. Fear overwhelmed the creature even though Frankie knew the blood had to be from the accident. No one was going to bite her again. The damage had already been done.
A gentle hand touched her shoulder. The mystery man was there, at her side, looking down at her with worry-filled eyes. His thick lips were parted, and she felt the need to lean forward and capture them. Instead, she focused on a scar near his temple.
“If we get separated and you can’t find me, just scream Atticus very loudly.”
“Atticus?” she repeated.
“A bit louder than that,” he told her before jumping into the median and wading through the snow to help the car trapped in the ditch.
Ah, so that’s his name.
Frankie turned back to the smashed together cars. She overheard a female couple arguing in the SUV right before the driver’s side door flew open. The woman from the SUV glared at the young man getting out of the little sedan. His hands shook as he took in the accident. He tried to apologize, but the woman had her phone pressed to one ear and stomped away from them.
“We should wait for the cops and a tow truck,” the young man said.
Frankie shrugged. If one person driving down the highway didn’t see the line of traffic stopped here, they could cause another string of accidents. It was best to get the cars off the road. She sniffed the air. At least none of the gas tanks had been punctured. The young man had hit the SUV at just the right angle to miss it.
The sound of crunching snow approached. Frankie glanced over her shoulder to find Atticus pushing the car out of the ditch and back toward the road. A woman thanked him profusely, a bit of awe on her face. Jealousy stirred inside Frankie, the creature inside her growling possessively. She swallowed it and tried to ignore the way the woman kept touching Atticus’s shoulder.
He singlehandedly got the first car on the road, ahead of the accident so she could speed off into freedom. Once he was done and the woman was gone, Frankie’s shoulders relaxed. They didn’t have to stop and do any of this, but the person Frankie used to be would have done anything to help. It seemed Atticus was cut from a similar cloth.
Both a good person and something more. Like her. A monster? He didn’t seem like one. Not when he was brushing off the woman’s offer of money. Not when he was going around and making sure the kids inside the SUV were alright. When the woman in the passenger seat rolled down her window and wiped blood from her nose, Atticus didn’t even flinch. The woman assured him it was just a nosebleed from the stress. Frankie’s heartstrings tightened as Atticus pressed to make sure the woman was alright.
He was capable of great feats, and so he did what he could to help. Frankie reminded herself that she, too, could do great things. The year she spent with her head down and the lights off in her apartment had darkened her image of herself. Now, in a blizzard, she and Atticus ripped the SUV and sedan apart.
Atticus watched her knowingly. No normal woman could do what she was doing. She licked her lips, knowing she should have been hiding her strength. Especially in front of all these people. But it was better to do the right thing. They pushed the young man’s sedan until it was on the shoulder and then turned to the SUV.
The kids rolled down their windows and watched Frankie and Atticus push their car. They shouted cheers and cries of joy that made Frankie smile. The kids even asked for high-fives, making Frankie feel almost normal again.
The creature inside her preened with pride. Helping was her passion. People. Animals. Anyone, really. She lived for the appreciative smiles and the knowledge that a life was better for having her in it. This was the kind of person she’d always wanted to be, the kind of person she was before a strange dog bit her.
On the outside, it’d been a normal incident. Frankie had found a dog huddled in an alley, shivering and wild-eyed. She’d rescued a number of pets like this before. It should have been easy. The dog had been as large as her, but she couldn’t show fear. She’d approached it, hand out.
As Frankie stepped away from the SUV, she shook her hand as if she could feel the dog’s teeth in her flesh all over again. The scars were still there, the only scars that she’d gotten since that night. Everything else healed too fast to scar.
Atticus stopped and put a hand on her shoulder. Her head snapped up. A flash of light blinded her. The creature inside her growled menacingly, but before she could move, Atticus was in front of her.
“That’s not normal,” a guy shouted. “What the two of you just did. No normal people can do shit like that.”
There was another flash of light. Her creature thrashed. She could feel it gnashing its teeth to get at the man. She was going to rip the door of his truck off its hinges. She was going to teach him a lesson about respect. The beast growled, its thoughts permeating her mind.
Her skin writhed. It would peel back and give way to fur at any moment. Claws would carve through the man’s truck. Her teeth would sink into his flesh. The creature pushed and pushed, too close t
o breaking through. Her body moved against her will. It didn’t matter how hard she tried to lock her muscles, the creature propelled her forward.
And right into Atticus’s back.
“I’m going to email this to the local news station. Then everyone will know about you weirdos.” The man rolled his window back up, cackling the whole time.
Frankie’s hands curled into fists, gripping Atticus’s shirt tight. He leaned back into her. He might have been pushing her back, but it felt like solidarity, like he was telling her that he was right there with her. She turned her face and pressed her cheek into his spine, breathing him deep.
He smelled of laundry detergent and cold stone. She memorized that scent, tucking it away into her mind so she could pull it out whenever her life seemed uncertain. She would remember this moment with Atticus.
The woman from the SUV shouted at the man with the pictures, trying to come to Frankie and Atticus’s defense, but the man didn’t hear. It wasn’t like he would have cared, either. He didn’t see two people doing their best to help those in need. All he could see were two inhuman freaks.
“The cops and a tow truck will be along any time now,” the woman told them.
Atticus nodded and grabbed Frankie’s shoulders. He used his grip to guide her back to her car. She couldn’t feel her feet because she was lost in herself, grieving for the person she’d wanted to be. That person was gone. No matter what she did to help others, they would see through her. They would be able to tell there was a monster lurking inside her.
Atticus led her to the passenger side of her car, one hand around her waist. He held her while traffic steadily moved past them. Her inner beast kicked and snarled, but its efforts grew weak while she breathed Atticus in. They stayed like this until the last of the held-up traffic disappeared. Frankie didn’t argue when Atticus got into the driver’s seat. She threw herself into the car and wrapped her arms around her middle. They passed the two cars on the side of the road, but the smiles of those they’d helped did nothing to soften the despair growing inside her.
She let her head fall against the window. Outside, the sky was growing dark. The white world became a deep shade of gray, the only sign that the sun was setting. She should have been in Northern New York by now. Instead, she was trapped somewhere in the middle of the state.
“Let’s get off the road for the night,” Atticus suggested. “You’re exhausted, and I haven’t eaten anything in...hell, I don’t really know how long it’s been since my last meal. We could both use a break.”
Frankie wanted to argue that they were almost there, but helping move the cars off the road and fighting her inner beast had drained her. The beast sapped everything she had, even her ability to care that a mystery man was driving her car.
After what happened on the road and how he kept her from shifting and attacking that man, she trusted Atticus. Maybe it was the reminder that she wasn’t alone. Inside him was a beast. What kind, she couldn’t tell yet. All she knew was that she wasn’t alone. Atticus took her hand in his as her eyelids drooped. She nodded in agreement before letting sleep take her.
***
This woman was so young and new. Atticus saw the scars on her hand, silvery lightning bolts like something had ripped her skin. He wondered how long ago she’d been changed. A year? Two? Her control was horrible, and it was ripping her apart. If he had to guess, he would have said she’d been changed yesterday.
Atticus hated the way the man had talked about them. Had it not been for the young woman’s lack of control, Atticus might have tried to knock some sense into the guy. Instead, Atticus chose to stay by her side. She needed someone strong to lean on. Atticus didn’t mind filling the role.
He took an exit into a small, familiar city. This had been part of his territory. While the young woman slept in the passenger seat, he drove until he found a familiar bridge. Snow covered it and dripped from the sides, but he parked and got out. Under the bridge, tucked up in the unreachable darkness, was a box.
With one last check to make sure no one was watching, he jumped with inhuman strength, grabbed the box, and landed back on the ground. The metal box’s contents rattled a bit, but it was a good noise. It told him no one had found his old stash. He kept boxes like this all around his territory in case he found himself naked and without cash, which happened often when one was a shifter.
Inside were some clothes, a burner phone that was probably obsolete, and a leather wallet containing some cash and cards. He brought it back to the Volkswagen where the young woman was still sleeping. Now he had enough money to pay for a hotel room for the night. There had been one just off the highway, with a pancake place and a Starbucks just outside. Women liked Starbucks, right?
He hoped this one did. He knew nothing about her, not even her name. And yet he couldn’t bear to leave her side. After booking a room with two beds, he went to wake her and paused. Her curly hair was slipping out of the tie around it. He paused and watched her through the window, marveling at the perfection of such a creature and wondering why no one was protecting her.
She should have a pack to care for her and teach her how to control her beast. No pack would let a young shifter visit family alone. Someone should be by her side to remind her of the fine line she now walked. Beast and human. Somewhere in between. It could be confusing, but it could also be great.
Like how they helped the people on the highway. Their strength and resistance to the cold made them perfect for the situation. If only the asshole hadn’t pushed her. The man couldn’t stop himself from pointing out what made them feel less than human.
Atticus wanted nothing more than to introduce the man’s face to his fist. But here he was, waking a sleeping shifter. She jerked awake, eyes wide and wild. Her chest heaved and her eyes darted in every direction. He squatted near the open door, unafraid. A growl emanated from her chest, so Atticus growled back.
His growl was deeper, rumbling from the vast infinity that was his dragon. Her eyes dropped. He took her hand in his so the skin-on-skin contact could calm her racing heart. She let out a breath and softly apologized.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for,” he informed her.
She didn’t look convinced, like he was trying to sweeten her with lies. Atticus didn’t know what to say. He’d spent too much time alone. Even when he tried to live among others, he had been apart from them. He could use his beast to calm hers, but words escaped him.
Atticus stood and stepped aside. She was still taking in her surroundings, as if she were mentally tracking their steps on a map. Finally, she nodded, her shoulders relaxing, and wiped her eyes. Sleep was still tugging at her. He didn’t know the last time she’d eaten. Was this lonely shifter taking care of herself? Did she even know what she needed?
She yawned, mouth stretching wide and making her seem even younger. Atticus wanted to fold her into his arms and growl at anyone who dared look at her. The urge slapped him in the face. He’d never taken to anything, let alone another person. It was the reason his beast chose to sleep its life away.
Now, less than four hours into knowing this woman, he had claimed her. The beast would never look at another woman the same way. This wasn’t what he thought would happen. She leaned into him as she walked, her weight in his hands and her scent wrapping around his heart. As he walked through the hotel lobby, he checked the date on the counter calendar.
Five years. He’d only slept for five years. The beast in him was wide awake now.
“Sir?” A young clerk asked with shaky breath.
Atticus stopped. His dragon growled when the clerk looked at the woman. Atticus didn’t even know her name and his beast had claimed her. If the clerk stared at her any longer, Atticus would take a chunk out of him.
“We’re going to need to put her name on the account…for the room.” The clerk glanced between Atticus’s snarl and the woman’s sleepy fugue.
She nodded and pushed him away. Atticus wanted to g
o after her, but she waved her hand to let him know she would be fine. She yawned again. She really should be resting, not dealing with a clerk trying to dot all the I’s and cross all the T’s.
But when Atticus turned his back, he heard the clerk whisper.
“This guy didn’t drug you, did he? Do you feel safe with him?”
Oh.
Guilt churned in Atticus’s gut. His beast didn’t care. She belonged to him. The creature believed they were meant to be. Why else would he wake from a five-year nap? But Atticus, the man, knew this must have looked bad. He didn’t want this gentle woman to assume he was kidnapping her. He had, after all, driven her car while she slept. He could have turned around and taken her anywhere.
He blew a hot breath out his nose and tried to focus on the rack of brochures. His eyes glazed over. The titles became a blur while he wrestled his greedy beast into submission. Not even the cheery ropes of metallic garland and gift-wrapped boxes near the counter could brighten the storm inside him.
Atticus wanted this to work.
Five years ago, his beast went to ground. It chose sleep over living because the world above didn’t have room for him. The pack he’d lived around had closed him out. This was his territory, but he felt outside of it. His life should have been empty from then on.
But then the appearance of a lost woman woke him. She was his chance at living again.
“How dare you accuse him of such things!” the woman cried out. “Listen here. He is a man of character who helped four—no, five—people on the highway today. He was out in that storm with no coat. What have you done today?”
Atticus ran up to her and grabbed the back of her shirt. “Okay, we’re done here.”
She scuttled away with him, laughing. Atticus looked down at her, astonished, and blindly punched the elevator button.
“Was that…a farce?”
She shrugged, a sly grin on her face. Already, her eyelids were sinking again. He wanted to lift her off her feet and carry her to the bed two floors up. She’d put on a boisterous show to get the young clerk to back down. There would be no question in the young man’s mind now that the two of them were willfully travelling together.
A Shifter's Christmas Box Set Page 2
