First Beast

by Faye Avalon

  “It is. Was. I’m still in the process of getting everything changed.”

  “How long? Since you’ve been married?”

  “A few weeks. Look, I don’t see what business this is of yours. You need to get out before my husband gets home. He’ll be here any minute.”

  Caleb had expected changes in his absence, especially since he’d been gone almost a year. But the fucking nerve of Joshua to set up house in the home that was rightfully his. Now that his father—their father—had gone, the house, grounds and leadership of their pack passed to him, Caleb McLeod. The Principals had no business allowing Joshua to usurp him from his rightful property and holdings.

  He had been missing, not fucking dead. There had been no body. No confirmation of his demise. It was all conjecture. Yet it hadn’t taken Joshua long to usurp him, declare himself leader and move into his house.

  At the first opportunity, Caleb would summon the Council together and damn well reclaim everything that was rightfully his, and in the process set about reversing some of the decisions that Joshua had no doubt made in his absence.

  The woman in front of him would get the shock of her life when she realized she was currently staring down the true leader of their pack. Surely to hell, she knew what she’d married into. And what in the name of all that was holy was Joshua doing? What were the Principals doing, allowing a non-shifter into their commune? Allowing a member to mate with—and marry—a human, for pity’s sake?

  For centuries, non-shifters had deliberately been kept away. There were intermittent rumors of big cats roaming the moor, usually because one of the inexperienced young panthers had been less than discreet. But the pack’s secret had been protected by rules and regulations, the biggest of which was that non-shifters be kept from infiltrating the community. Members of the pack were encouraged to befriend non-shifters, could even fuck them, but as for mating and marriage?

  “Did you hear me?”

  Caleb gave himself a mental shake. Here he was having illicit thoughts about a woman who was not only married, but married to his half-brother. While he and Joshua rarely saw eye to eye, Caleb didn’t consider it morally prudent to get a hard-on for another man’s mate.

  “You need to get dressed.”

  Her head jerked back. “You think?”

  “Get dressed.” He placed the photo back on the unit. “Now.”

  “You don’t get to give me orders in my—”

  “Yeah, yeah. We’ve established it’s your home.” And the thought of Joshua setting up house with this woman anywhere, let alone in the McLeod family residence, almost ripped Caleb in two. Shit. He needed to get a fucking grip.

  “Finally.” Her shoulders went down, but her grip on the towel remained firm. “So now you’ve finally got that simple fact into your thick head, perhaps you’d like to remove yourself from my property?”

  Caleb picked up his glass. “Not going to happen, sweetheart.”

  “But you said—”

  “I know what I said.”

  The porch door slammed and footsteps sounded on the wooden floor. Seconds later, Joshua appeared in the doorway. His gaze fell appreciatively on his wife, before tracking to Caleb. His eyes flared with recognition, but his expression didn’t change. Caleb had to give him his due. He displayed not one hint of shock or surprise at coming face-to-face with a man—a half-brother—who had been missing for the better part of a year.

  “What the fuck?”

  Caleb’s slow grin held no humor. “That was going to be my question.” He lowered himself into the nearest chair. “Seems you’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Keeping his eyes on Caleb, Joshua dropped his workbag to the floor. “Shit. We thought you were dead. When did you… What the hell is going on?”

  For months, Caleb had been asking himself the same question. “It appears I’m back, little brother.”

  “That’s impossible.” Joshua’s face lost all color. “We were told you were kidnapped. Missing.”

  Caleb held out his arms. “And yet, here I am.”

  “How did you…”

  “Escape?”

  Joshua’s throat contracted and he clasped Talia’s hand when she moved next to him. Caleb ignored the way his gut clenched. He was disoriented and mad as hell, which was the only explanation for his inappropriate response to a simple gesture of wifely support.

  “Let’s save that conversation for another day.” Caleb hiked his ankle onto his opposite knee. “Instead, why don’t you explain to me why you’ve put our community at risk by mating with a goddamn human?”

  Joshua slid his arm around Talia’s waist, and yanked her close. “Her name is Talia,” he snapped. “And she’s my wife.”

  “I know.” Caleb allowed himself a feral grin. “We’ve already met.”

  Chapter Four

  “You don’t trust him?”

  Caleb sat on a rock at the edge of the moor, and turned to his friend. “Right now I don’t trust anyone. Present company excepted.”

  It was true, Caleb thought with a smile. In the week since he’d returned to the community, Tynan Galloway was the only man he currently felt comfortable confiding in. The only man who knew the whole story about his kidnapping, the only person he could trust with his concerns.

  They’d known each other their whole lives and, as children, had been inseparable. Tynan would have accompanied him to the jungles of South America, but a freak accident when he was twenty had robbed him of his warrior destiny, and he’d been forced to help protect and defend their community in other ways.

  Tynan was the first person Caleb had contacted after his escape from his captors. He’d wanted to keep his escape secret until he’d been able to follow up on his suspicions regarding who was responsible for his ordeal. Caleb knew his friend would respect his wishes.

  He trusted Tynan with his life. Literally.

  Now, with his inquiries gaining momentum, he’d made his return common knowledge, and just yesterday had been welcomed back into the community and officially declared pack leader.

  “The woman Joshua’s mated to. What do you know about her?”

  Tynan shrugged in that inimitable way of his that enabled him to keep things in perspective. “Journalist. Works for the local paper. Not one of us,” he said with a wry smile. “But then you’d already know that. Seems a decent enough woman. Not much of a cook, though. They invited me over a couple of weeks back and I had to stop off on the way home and grab some takeout.”

  “How come he was allowed to mate with her, marry her? How did that get past the Council?”

  “Ah, now there’s the six million dollar question, my friend. It caused some upset around here. Some of the older folks didn’t like it one bit. Still don’t. Especially since Joshua isn’t the most traditional amongst us. People don’t like the free reign he gives her. More than anything, they don’t like that she works for the paper.”

  “Yeah.” Caleb dropped his elbows to his knees and touched his chin to his fisted hands. “That’s a fucking problem if ever there was one. How did she find out about us?”

  “Nobody really knows. She hooked up with Joshua, and the next thing anyone knew, he’d requested a meeting with the Council and demanded that he, as leader, be given the right to choose his own mate. When they tried to argue, he told them she already knew about him, about us, and would swear to uphold the clandestine nature of our community. Said she loved him and was prepared to help him uphold his duties as leader.”

  “He allows her to keep working.” And that, Caleb thought, hit too damn close to the heart of what irritated him. The leader’s mate never took outside work. The duties of the community were far too important, besides which she should be concerning herself with the production of heirs and building a home for her family. Not gallivanting around the fucking countryside reporting on things that didn’t concern her a
nd socializing with anyone she damned well pleased. “I heard she hangs out in the local bar with women of questionable morals.”

  Caleb frowned when Tynan let out a bellowing laugh. “Shit, Cal. Sometimes you sound like something out of the Dark Ages.” He wiped his hand across his mouth. “She has an after-work drink with colleagues now and again. Nothing untoward, as far as I can gather.”

  “It should be stopped.” Caleb didn’t want to consider that his friend might be right about his old-fashioned ideals. Some things were important, like tradition, continuity, security. And none more so than in a community such as theirs. “It’s not right.”

  “Well, you’re back now.” Tynan patted Caleb on the shoulder. “How are you planning to handle Joshua? Now that you’re officially pack leader.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “It’s my birthright. There’s nothing to handle.”

  “Joshua’s not going to give in gracefully. He won’t take kindly to me being chosen as your second in command. He likes the limelight.”

  “I’ll give him fucking limelight. He can spend his time keeping that wayward wife of his in line.”

  If it was up to Caleb, he’d demand his half-sibling divorce the woman, get her out of the community. But he knew that in doing so, she might do exactly what he feared the most. Report on the secret community of shifters living on the edge of the moor. That would be the death nail for their lifestyle. They’d have to scatter as they’d done back in the seventeenth century, when their Irish community had been betrayed by an outsider let into the community, much like Joshua’s wife had been, who had exacted revenge after a betrayal by one of the pack.

  Families had been ripped apart: members caught, tortured, killed. Babies torn from their mother’s breasts and thrown on pyres.

  While, thank God, civilization had moved on since then, there was no way on earth Caleb would chance history repeating itself. Not if he had anything to do with it. And it was his responsibility to make sure he kept his people safe.

  It was the main reason outsiders were never accepted into the community. And it filled him with rage that Joshua had put their clan at risk in such a heinous way. Not that he should be surprised. His sibling had spent the best part of his life pushing the boundaries, and Caleb wouldn’t be surprised if Joshua had married a human simply to make a point, to basically thumb his nose at their traditions and practices.

  As tension crackled through him, making him edgy, restless and fucking pissed, Tynan turned to him.

  “You need to run?”

  “Yeah.” He needed to shake off some of this restlessness that had plagued him since returning home. “I really do.”

  There was a kind of consolation in his friend’s perception of his moods. He’d missed having someone on his side this past year. Well, he’d thought he did have someone on his side, which only went to prove once again that you couldn’t trust outsiders. Or women. The confirmation further increased his resolve to do something about Joshua and that wife of his.

  “Want company?”

  Caleb turned to Tynan and nodded. “Why not?”

  The men stood as one, shrugged out of their clothing and shifted into their beasts.

  Damn, but it felt good to run with a friend. To slip into the easy camaraderie. Once, before Tynan’s accident, they had indulged in light competition to outrun the other—testing speed, agility and strength—but it was always tempered with allegiance, loyalty and friendship built on years of familiarity and trust.

  Mindful of his friend’s physical limitations, Caleb tempered his pace as they pounded over the moor, noses to the wind, ready to take evasive action should the scent of outsiders permeate their senses. Both he and Tynan were adept at evading humans and had never once been caught either by sight or on camera, unlike a few of the younger shifters whose blurry forms had sometimes accompanied the latest news story of large cats sighted in the area.

  Rumors of the existence of large cats living wild on Bodmin Moor had abounded over the years, but were generally quashed by so-called experts and wildlife enthusiasts, who reasoned that the cat-like creatures were likely figments of overactive imaginations.

  It didn’t stop the believers, though. Those who made it their main interest in life to track down the beasts that allegedly roamed the moor. They were more dangerous than the fortuitous enthusiasts who plucked their digital cameras from their backpacks as a flash of fur disappeared into shrub land. Those whose amateur photos often graced the social media sites and created a frenzy of interest from the press, until lack of evidence plunged the mystery of the beasts of Bodmin once more into the realms of fantasy, alongside Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

  Four hours later, Caleb walked with Tynan back to the edge of town, where they parted ways. As always, the run had cleared his head and left him with a clarity that directed his steps to the offices of the local paper.

  He entered the front office, and Talia looked up from her desk, where she’d been busy working on her laptop. Her fingers froze above the keyboard and her eyes went wide. She seemed to quickly regain her composure and, after a nervous glance around the empty office, looked back to him.

  “Is there something I can help you with?”

  Her frosty, official tone did something fucking amazing to his hormones and left him wondering how the hell she could affect him so damn much. “I came to talk with you.”

  He frowned at the automatic instinct that made her reach for her notebook.

  She sat back, tiny lines appearing between her eyebrows. “What’s on your mind?”

  Many things, he thought. But the only thing right then was the way her blouse hugged her perfect breasts. Since he’d seen them firsthand, he knew what delight lay beneath the crisp white fabric. His palms itched to cover the plump flesh, to let his thumbs rub over her tight buds until she moaned with desire. For him.

  Fuck.

  With incredible effort, he got his thoughts back to focus on the task at hand. He walked toward her, pleased when her eyes widened again and her fingers tightened around the notebook. “Your marriage to Joshua.” He pulled out a nearby chair, turned it so he could straddle the seat and drape his arms over the back. “Why?”

  She tucked in her chin and frowned. “Excuse me?”

  “Why did you marry him?”

  She huffed out an exasperated laugh. “Because I love him, of course. What sort of question is that?”

  He studied her for long moments. He had to give it to the woman—she was one cool customer. She had to know that now that he was pack leader, he could retract the permission given to his half-brother to marry her. That knowledge should at least have her kowtowing to him.

  “This isn’t a game, sweetheart.”

  “Really? And yet here you are playing one. Why don’t you just come out and say what you actually want? You want to know if I intend to leak anything. Whether or not I’ll keep your secret.”

  “Will you?”

  She slammed down her notebook. “Of course I will. I’m married to Josh now, which makes me a part of this community, whether you like the idea or not.”

  “I don’t.”

  She jerked back a little. “Well, that’s too bad. Because I’m here to stay.”

  “And what happens when the next sighting occurs? Are you going to take that notebook and get witness statements? Write up a piece for your newspaper?”

  “I’ll report the facts.”

  The way she said it sent waves of unease rippling through Caleb. His worst fears about how their community would be negatively impacted by her inclusion seemed in danger of being realized at some point in the future.

  “Look. You obviously don’t trust me, so why don’t you just say so?”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  The admission came out so deep it was almost a growl, and she pushed back in her chair as if he’d delivered a phy
sical blow. After several moments, during which he was distracted by the way those magnificent breasts rose and fell with each breath, she sat up, straightened her blouse and turned back to her laptop.

  “At least we understand each other.”

  Caleb rose and moved behind her. He leaned down, placing one hand on the desk beside hers, stretching his other arm along the back of her chair, effectively trapping her. “Let’s get something straight, sweetheart.” Deliberately, he leaned closer until his mouth brushed her ear. “You don’t understand me.”

  He tried to ignore the way her scent flooded his nostrils, the way it permeated his senses and made him hard as a plank. “But make no mistake,” he drawled, close to losing the gist of the threat. “You cross me or my people and I’ll give you cause to understand me real good.”

  Had she seemed intimidated by him, or given him cause to soften his threat by trembling or shaking, he might have resisted the urge that had him pushing his nose into her hair. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and allowed her unique scent to sweep through his veins. He slid his mouth along the shell of her ear, the long line of her neck.

  She jerked away, and turned to glare at him. “If you think you can come in here, to my workplace, and threaten me, then allow me to assure you that in my line of work, I’m pretty much immune to threats.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. Now if you’re finished with the macho act, maybe you’d like to use the door and get back to whatever menace you’re planning next.”

  Caleb felt the punch of her stormy eyes right through to his groin. He’d hoped to intimidate, to put her off balance. But damn it, she’d sideswiped him.

  He straightened up, determined not to be knocked off center by a female. Except those damn eyes wouldn’t let him go. Maybe long months in the jungle had made him soft. To hell with that.

  “You want to watch that smart mouth of yours. It could get you into a lot of trouble around here, around me.”

  “You mean with your Neanderthal attitude? I’ve already had a gutful of that, so your particular brand of intimidation doesn’t exactly have me shaking in my shoes. The Principals put me and Joshua through hell until they gave permission for us to marry. The damned Spanish Inquisition couldn’t have been as thorough.”