by Leia Stone
8 Denial Is A Town I’d Like To Move To
Funny thing, it turns out that nothing changes when you close your eyes to escape. The world is still a clusterfuck when you open them again.
Cass, Molly, Brock, Sabine, and a wolf I didn’t know still stared at me.
Cass narrowed his eyes while he studied me, and scooched his butt closer across the comforter. “How are you taking the news, hon?”
I took in the others before answering. Were they just going to keep staring at me like I was some kind of rare specimen? Apparently so.
“How do you think I’m feeling?” I asked the friend I’d had since we were eager newbies at the Hunter Academy.
“Like you want to go postal on some tin cans until you run out of ammo,” he replied.
That got the tiniest smile out of me. He knew me so well. “That sounds about right.”
Cass squeezed my hand so hard it hurt, but he didn’t say nonsense like, Sure, you shifted into a fox but everything’s going to be all right. I appreciated that about my friend. No lies, no platitudes. The teeny imp played it straight.
My gaze wandered around the room, my attention landing on the unknown. On cue, the tall, broad-shouldered Greek god stepped forward, hand outstretched. “I’m Ray.”
I recognized his voice right away. “You’re the dominant wolf who was ordered to kill Nathan as punishment?”
He nodded, and I shook his hand. “With how I feel right now, I’m wishing I’d let you do it.”
Brock’s gaze was so furious then that I felt it searing through my skull. “You should’ve let me order it,” he growled.
I didn’t know exactly what to say to him. He was intense right then, and I wasn’t usually at a loss for words. Let him? As if I had any power over the alpha.
What was that blazing in his eyes? Was he protective of me? Was he upset that I almost died? At least the mask had dropped, but I couldn’t decide exactly what he felt by the string of emotions swirling across his handsome face.
“And you should’ve fucking listened to me, and stayed put like I told you to.” He punctuated his pretty statement with a growl.
O-kay, then. So, not upset I almost died, just upset I’d disobeyed his orders. “I wouldn’t have been in danger if you’d kept a leash on your new pet,” I growled back. “That’s your bad, not mine.”
“I warned you.”
“Yeah, and I’m a grown woman who doesn’t need an overgrown dog telling me what to do!” I was naked under a comforter in a room half full of strangers. I’d just been told I was a fox shifter, a fact I was struggling to believe, no matter what kind of video evidence he had. He did not want to fuck with me right now.
Everyone in the room stiffened, save Molly.
Brock’s jaw ticked. The doc watched him from the corner of her eye. Probably no one dared talk back to the asshole.
Brock’s jaw ticked faster, like a clock, back and forth, back and forth. Sabine’s normally formal stance was rigid. Only Ray seemed like he might be enjoying the show. Okay maybe calling him an overgrown dog was a bit harsh, but him telling me I should have stayed locked in my house made it seem like it was my fault I’d been bitten.
“It seems like she’s doing fine now,” the alpha finally said to Sabine. “Maybe you should discharge her.”
I glared at him. He wasn’t going to pin the responsibility on me. Yes, it was stupid to be out on the full moon when my neighbors were werewolves, but I was on my property, and he needed to control his wolves. I was the innocent one here.
“I-I think it would be wiser to keep her under observation for a few more days,” Sabine replied, probably stuttering for the first time in her life.
“Why?” Brock asked, as if the idea of keeping me around longer revolted him.
The thought of it stung a bit before I pushed it away.
“We’ve never seen anything like her before. I’d like to study her, run some tests, understand what it means, and what she’s capable of.”
“Not because you care about my wellbeing?” I asked the doctor, deadpan. I’m not sure why I expected a total stranger to care about me, especially one who was so stiff. It sounded like she wanted to make me a lab rat, and I wasn’t down with that. My period was definitely coming soon, because I was emotional as hell.
“Because,” the doc reasoned, “I’ve been a werewolf and a pack doctor for a long time, and I’ve never run across a specimen quite like you before.”
So it was just curiosity, not concern.
“Well, Doc, I have a cabin to keep from being demolished by some jerk who has no respect for the dead.” I scooted toward the edge of the bed, attempting to get up... and then sank back down into the pillows while the room spun.
Sabine smiled, and I suspected she took perverse pleasure in my ill ease. “Good, you’ll be staying, then. Can’t have you leaving until you’re feeling better. I’ll just run a few tests while you’re here.” Her smile widened.
I clutched Cass’s hand, and pulled him closer, genuine fear rolling through me. I hated needles. “I don’t wanna be a lab rat.”
Brock had been watching me the entire time, something unsaid scrawled across his face. “You really think I’d demolish Belinda’s cabin while you’re unwell?”
There was hurt in his voice, but that didn’t stop me from thinking that’s exactly what he’d do. Was he an amazing, tender lover? Yes. Did he also park a freaking bulldozer in my front yard to intimidate me? Yes again. I couldn’t trust him; he had to know that.
Cass looked from me to Brock and back. “Hon, first time shifts are intense,” the imp said before I could answer the alpha. “They leave the shifter weak for several days. Add to that the fact that Nathan”—Cass snarled when he said the name and I loved my bestie for having my back even when he was kind of in the middle of selling me out—“almost killed you, so it makes sense to stay here for a bit. Have the doc check you out.”
“Why?” I asked, jutting out my chin defiantly.
“Because they know how to deal with shifter... issues.” Cass shrugged helplessly.
“So do you,” I pressed my bestie.
Cass smiled compassionately. Teeth pointy and slightly crooked, it was a face you had to grow to love, unless you were a fae, anyway. Clearly the fae had no trouble loving him.
“Not really,” he replied. “I know how to take down a shifter, not how to heal one.”
“What about a shifter’s regenerative abilities? Aren’t they—uh, we, I guess—supposed to heal when we shift?” I didn’t want to, but I looked at Sabine, then Brock, and finally Ray when I asked the question. Molly looked like she had front row seats to a Supah Freak concert.
“Your shifter healing abilities are the only reason you’re still alive,” Brock said coldly.
“And your intervention, of course.” Sabine placed a hand on Brock’s upper arm, and I shot her some serious eye daggers. Jealousy flared to life inside of me before I could get myself under control. What was going on with me? I hated him. He was a jerk.
Brock noticed my look and smiled wide, the fucker. “Look, we don’t know how you are what you are. Clearly your powers were dormant, and the bite must’ve brought them to the surface. You need to rest, and you may as well stay here where Sabine can keep an eye on you.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. Or have you forgotten that I have a cabin to defend?” I crossed my arms even though my muscles screamed in protest.
He sighed. “A cabin that’s on my property,” he mumbled, barely audible.
“It is not!” I tried to stand, but I swayed again. So I growled instead.
“Calm down before you hurt yourself. You’re in no condition to fight.” Brock gave me a look that said he knew he’d won this fight already.
My eyes closed and dreamed of wiping that smug look off his face with my fist. When my traitorous mind automatically went to memories of all his mouth could do to me, I whipped my eyes back open. I swear the bastard knew exactly what I’d been thinking. He
blatantly adjusted himself, and I glared, mostly pissed off at myself for being this easy to rile. Everyone else pretended they didn’t notice what was going on between us, but you had to be blind not to see it.
“How about we call a truce?” Brock suggested. “While you recover only, of course.”
“Like a cease fire?” I chuckled darkly.
“Exactly like that.”
“I still don’t understand why I need to stay here when Gran’s cabin is just down the hill.” I looked to Cass and then Molly for support, but Cass was no help with the well of worry in his eyes, and Molly was geeked out by the fact that she was spending time in the alpha’s home.
“Sabine can answer your questions,” Brock bated me.
“All my questions?” My eyebrows inched upward. I had a whole lotta questions, that was for damn sure.
The doc offered me a beatific smile, but I remained wary after all her talk of testing. She took half a step forward to line up with the boss. “I’ll answer all the questions I can, and seek answers to all those I can’t.”
I wanted that, I really did.
“Take it or leave it.” Brock shrugged like he couldn’t care less whether I stayed, but I wasn’t buying it. If he was getting to me this much, surely I was getting to him too, at least a little bit. Hell, they didn’t call me Original Sin Eve for nothing. I could tempt men to do just about anything if I were properly motivated.
“You promise to leave that bulldozer at the end of the road?” I asked Brock.
“For the entirety of the time you’re here,” he agreed.
I rolled my eyes. “Nice fine print detail.”
“Thanks.” The asshole was all smiles today, when I’d nearly died and still could barely move.
“And Cass and Molly can stay with me all I want?” I added. I might as well add conditions of my own.
There was the jaw twitch again. “Of course.”
“And I’ll get my answers?”
“If you submit to Sabine’s tests.”
“Fine. I accept your terms. Now, I want to know what the hell made me turn into a fox shifter.”
“I, too, want to know that,” Brock said, and there wasn’t a hint of humor on his face. He exchanged a loaded look with Ray, who nodded and took off to do his boss’ bidding. “Get started right away,” he ordered the doc. “We don’t have time to wait.”
She nodded, and I prepared to be a pincushion. So long as it got me answers, because my life plan sure as hell hadn’t included becoming a shapeshifter. I hadn’t even managed to be a proper witch.
“Hang in there, Ev,” Cass encouraged. “Everything’s going to be right as rain.” Cass didn’t say bubbly shit like that, and that was just another sign that life was going to hell in the fast lane.
9 Stuck In Alpha Hell
My short stay with the alpha turned into a week, seven full days, and it felt like forever. I hadn’t shifted again, which was fabulous news, but I did get furry when angry, something that happened a lot around Brock.
The most worrying thing wasn’t my furry outburst, but the fact that I was growing weaker and losing weight rapidly, which was disturbing everyone, especially the doc. Cass was a blubbering mess, and I was reduced to walking with crutches as my leg muscles wouldn’t support me. I’d lost ten pounds, a ton for someone so small. Sabine was convinced I must have cancer or something, but all the tests came back negative. Shifters didn’t get cancer anyway, so it was another mystery.
After getting an extension from Mack, Cass was out following up on a lead about our siren, while Molly “assisted” Croft. I was in the process of hobbling across Brock’s porch when I felt him. Before smell, before sound, I could feel him. It was odd and comforting at the same time. I spun around, ready to get into a verbal spat about something stupid, but the look on his face stopped me. He looked… scared.
“You’re so thin,” he breathed, eyes wide. He hadn’t seen me in the past two days, while he’d been busy with pack business.
The air was knocked out of me when I realized he was scared because I was possibly dying, and that he cared if I died.
I shrugged. “Doc can’t figure it out.”
I was actually terrified I’d waste away into nothing. I was eating six huge meals a day, packed with meat, cheese, and carbs, and I still couldn’t keep the weight on. Clearly my fox had been hiding for a reason. She was killing me. I tried not to look in the mirror anymore, because what I saw there freaked me out to no end.
Brock frowned. “Your grandmother must have known something about this, right?”
A second punch to the gut. The question I’d been asking myself for the past seven days. Did Gran know and not tell me?
“She couldn’t have,” I defended her automatically. “She definitely would have told me if she’d known.” All those nights I came home from school, and cried myself to sleep for being a dud… she wouldn’t keep this from me, would she?
Sabine appeared in the open doorway. “Evie? I’ve got an idea. Just one more test for today, okay?”
We’d become frenemies who tolerated each other. She poked me to death while also trying to help me. Beneath her stiff clinical nature, she was actually quite caring, though I suspected she’d slept with Brock at some point in her life.
I hobbled past Brock while he looked at me longingly. As if… I don’t know, I was probably imagining it, but it felt as if he wanted to reach out and touch me. We hadn’t yelled at each other in at least forty eight hours, so maybe something was shifting between us. Or maybe he just felt sorry for me.
“When you’re done with the test, come find me. I want to take you somewhere,” Brock called after me.
My nod was the only answer. Where the hell did Brock the Cock want to take me? I was too weak to care.
I barely registered the needle as Sabine took her blood sample. “I’ll have this ready in a couple of hours.”
With another nod, I hobbled back out onto the porch, where Brock was waiting.
“Ready?” he asked.
I gestured to my crutches. “Kind of. I’m quite tired, so how far is this place you’re taking me to?” I’d grown accustomed to two naps a day to deal with the overwhelming fatigue.
He frowned, worry clouding his amber eyes. “Just to your Gran’s cabin. I’ll drive.”
Gran’s cabin. Those words coming from his mouth usually annoyed me.
“Can you make it down the porch or—?”
“I’ll be fine,” I cut him off harshly. I was a badass bounty hunter who took down full-grown vampires. There was no way I was letting the wolf carry me to the car.
I took it slow, step-by-step, until my crutches landed on the soft-packed earth at the bottom of the stairs. I was pulling my leg forward when my knee gave out suddenly.
Brock reached out, lightning-quick, to hook his hands beneath my armpits. He hauled me up quickly until I was smashed against his chest.
“Are you okay?” he asked, nearly panting. With each inhale, his belly pushed against mine, awakening a warm throb between my legs.
“Fine. Just tired,” I squeaked.
We both stood there, breathing heavily, not taking our eyes off each other’s lips.
It was difficult to be sure about much since I’d shifted into an animal, when it shouldn’t have been possible. But at that moment I was certain we both wanted a replay of that first night we met—even if we also wanted to strangle each other.
I felt him grow hard between us… and then he was pushing me away, taking deep cleansing breaths. With one hand he held on to me, and with the other he picked up my crutches, and helped me into his big-ass truck. I was waif thin, weak, with dark circles under my eyes, and still he wanted me. How about that?
He cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything as he drove the short three minutes to Gran’s cabin. We passed his bulldozer, parked on the far outer road as promised, and I glanced at the heavy machine. “Is it expensive? I almost blew it up one night, but thought better of it in case yo
u sued me for the cost.”
A slow grin crept across his face. “Very. That one set me back about a hundred-and-sixty grand.”
I nearly choked on my spit. “Good thing Cass talked me out of it. That’s more than my Gran’s house costs.”
Brock pulled up to my childhood home, and turned to face me. “Do you know why my family has fought so hard for so long to get your grandmother off our land?”
We never talked about it, at least not in the past few days, it only led to fights, but something in him had changed. Maybe because it was obvious I was dying, or maybe because I’d just fallen and smashed my boobs into his chest, giving him a hard-on. But if he was finally going to be forthcoming, I’d take advantage of that no matter what the reason.
“Because werewolves hate witches,” I blurted out my theory. “Hate what we smell like. Hate our magic. Hate, hate, hate.”
He frowned. “No, that’s no it at all. It’s because…” He threw his truck into park and sighed, as if resigning himself to reveal some long lost secret. His gaze got lost past the windshield. “An alpha pulls power from his territory. Territory that’s laid out and marked by the original alpha, making the entire pack bound to it. If another supernatural being claims land within that territory, it weakens the alpha, which in turn weakens the pack.”
My mouth gaped open. “My Gran never told me that.”
He shrugged, turning in his seat to look at me again. “She probably didn’t know. We don’t reveal our secrets to anyone outside the pack. I’m trusting you won’t repeat this. A lot of people would take advantage of it.”
Trust. A powerful word for someone like me who didn’t trust easily. I trusted Gran and Cass, and now maybe Molly, but that was it. I definitely hadn’t expected Brock to confide in me.
I nodded. I wouldn’t tell a soul, save for Cass of course.
Brock gazed at Gran’s cabin. “I remember when I was twelve, it was a new moon and my dad had just been in a bad dominance fight. Belinda was outside doing her weird crystal spells, and drawing power from the land. My dad wasn’t able to heal as fast as he normally did with her stealing the land’s magic.”
