Heart of Cinder

by P. Jameson

  “No.”

  Max nodded slowly, looking her over like he was appraising a piece of meat.

  Oh god. Where was Smokes?

  She tried to look around the man. But he took up all her space.

  “I’m… I’m with someone,” she stuttered.

  Max smirked, his disgusting lips twisting in a way she knew well. “That cheap asshole couldn’t take you for steak first? Listen, I know Bastian is gone but if you ever want a repeat of our last date together, you just gimme a call. You know I’ll treat you right, baby.”

  Baby. That word. She wanted to scream.

  Janet squeezed her eyes closed. No, no. She wasn’t Twenty anymore. She wasn’t that, and this guy couldn’t use her ever again.

  “No,” she whispered out loud, and her stomach lurched.

  “You know I’ll pay you nice, too. You can keep it all with Bastian out of the picture. As long as you make it good.”

  “No, please…” Janet held her belly, willing it to steady. She was desperate to get back any sense of the hopefulness she’d experienced just moments earlier.

  Suddenly, Max was pulled backward and Janet could focus enough to see Smokes slam the man down on a nearby table, a powerful hand clamped around his thick throat as he snarled down at him.

  “She is not for sale, you fucking piece of shit,” Smokes growled, sounding dangerous and wild. He gave her chills, and she couldn’t decide if they were good or bad. “If I ever see you near her again, I will end you. Are we clear?”

  Max garbled something and Janet was aware of people staring.

  Smokes squeezed the man’s throat harder. “Are. We. Fucking. Clear?”

  Max nodded and Smokes released him with a shove. Turning to find Janet, he fell to his knee to look her eye to eye. And his… his were burning. She blinked twice but the silver flames in his irises didn’t fade.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Y-your eyes… they…”

  “Jan, are you hurt?”

  “No,” she whispered. She wasn’t hurt. Not on the outside anyway.

  She looked around. Max choked, spitting into a napkin, while others rushed to help him. As if he wasn’t the threat.

  “Get…” A sob rattled from her chest and she felt the familiar burning of her stomach betraying her. “Get me out of her,” she begged Smokes. “Please. Get me out of here.”

  He pulled her from the booth and tucked her under his arm, guiding her to the door. “I got you, dove. I got you,” he murmured against her temple.

  But she couldn’t depend on it, on him. She couldn’t depend on anyone. Just herself. If she ever wanted free of the past, she would have to trust herself.

  She once asked Mama Kitty how she was able to love the Alley Cats through their worst. In this moment, the words came back to her. Every journey is different, but I think the first step is to love yourself.

  She didn’t know if it was possible, but she was damn well going to try.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Logan stood against the wall of the warehouse lounge, watching his patient and Dr. Crest do yoga. It had only been a week of training with Toya, but Janet was already getting stronger.

  “She’s doing great,” Leah murmured from his left side. Some of them called her Mama, but Logan couldn’t think of her like that. Or think much at all when she was around. The woman smelled damn good and made him think about things he had no business thinking about.

  For all he knew, she was just as dangerous as the rest of them.

  The Alley Cat called Weaver stood at his right. Why the asshole was interested in yoga, Logan didn’t know. But many of the rough males around here seemed protective over the women.

  Logan couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing.

  Good, and certainly unexpected: that the ladies were treated respectfully.

  Bad, and still a mystery: that these men weren’t known for doing anything without a reason.

  So what the hell was their reason for harboring these women and seeing to their needs?

  Noticeably absent from the room was Smokes. The one who seemed to care the most about Janet and her baby. Another mystery to unfurl.

  But the biggest reason Logan was keeping a close eye on things was because there was still no sign of Felix. He knew the man could return any moment and destroy whatever sort of peace the ladies were living right now. Shit would hit the fan when he came back, and Logan planned to be here when it did.

  His urge to make sure the women were safe came from somewhere inside and he couldn’t ignore it. Wouldn’t ignore it. Especially with a baby involved.

  Not for the first time in the past couple weeks, he wondered about his half-sister and where she might have ended up. He’d poked around, asking Leah about the one called Reaper, but she didn’t know him. Before her time, she said.

  Toya and Janet were wrapping up so he said his goodbyes to Leah and Weaver, and took the stairs down to the first level. It was late and he was on call. He wanted to get some rest before heading back to the hospital.

  He was halfway across the parking lot when a glow from the back of the property caught his attention. Thinking something was on fire, he went investigating.

  Logan ran through the maze of dumpsters that bracketed the southern edge of lot, getting closer to the blaze with each step. And it was a fire. He could tell by the way the shadow of the flames flickered against the metal containers.

  Shit.

  He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and started dialing 911. But when he rounded the last container, he stopped in his tracks as the fire was suddenly extinguished.

  One of the females stood in a clearing, naked as a baby on its birthday. She faced off with a man Logan had seen around the warehouse. This one sported nasty scars all over his face and was equally naked. But the woman wasn’t afraid. She was laughing.

  What the fuck?

  Logan ducked behind a dumpster to watch things unfold.

  “I told you I would win,” she said to the scowling man. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “Mmm,” he rumbled, stalking over to her. “I do like it when you win.”

  “You really do.”

  He pulled her in for a hard kiss and then said, “Let’s go again.” He walked backwards until they stood about ten feet apart.

  “What,” she teased, “haven’t you had enough?”

  “Never.” The man winked, causing his scars to twist.

  And then, before Logan’s eyes, he exploded into a roaring ball of fire.

  Shit, shit.

  Logan started forward to help but before he could, the woman changed too, swirling into a foggy frozen tangle of limbs and… fur? The air around her seemed to turn to ice, and as she shook out her gleaming white coat, he could see she was some kind of lion.

  Blinking, Logan found the ball of fire, realizing it too, was a lion. A burning lion with a mane of fire circling its head. It roared, shooting flames at the frozen one. But when she roared back, the blast of icy wind extinguished the fiery cat on contact, leaving only golden fur that could barely be seen in the moonlight.

  What the hell was he seeing?

  Logan shook his head. Blinked so many times his eyelids hurt. But the scene before him didn’t change. There were people. And then there were lions. Not just lions, but ones made of ice and fire.

  The Alley Cats. Were they all like this? What about his patient. Was Janet pregnant with… with… whatever this was.

  Felix. Did he burn like this man did?

  Logan’s mind spiraled with questions, his past intermingling with this new piece of information. If the Alley Cats could all do this, then what about his mother’s lost baby. His half-sister. What if she was alive somewhere, burning shit down with her fire power.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, rubbing his temples. This was all wrong. He must be seeing things. As a fucking doctor, he had studied the human body, inside and out. What he was seeing simply wasn’t possible.

&nbs
p; Logan stepped backward, slamming into another body and realizing he wasn’t alone. He spun to find Toya watching the clearing wide-eyed.

  “The elevated temperature,” she whispered. “This is why. Felix is one of… of… these things.”

  “You see it too?” Logan hissed.

  She blinked and turned her gaze on him. “People who turned into beasts. Yes. I see it.”

  Shit. Any notion that he might be hallucinating went out the window, flashing him a hard middle finger.

  He pulled Toya backward, heading for the front of the lot.

  “W-wait. I wasn’t done watching.”

  “You’re done. We have to get out of here before they realize we know.”

  “But we haven’t learned why yet,” she argued. “Why do they morph? Why—”

  “It doesn’t matter. These aren’t good people. We can’t forget that.”

  She dug in her heels until he was forced to face her. “They seem like good people to me. Not one person in that building has treated us badly. And have you seen the way they’re all a family? The way they help each other. Or what about how the couples are so sweet with each other. Ratchet treats Marlee like a princess. That crew loves hard. Why do you hate them so much?”

  Logan opened his mouth to answer, but what could he say? He knew another side of them. One Toya hadn’t seen, or wouldn’t ever see. But she wasn’t wrong either. The Alley Cats of today were nothing like the ones he remembered from the past. And he had no idea how to reconcile the two.

  But he wouldn’t figure it out standing in a dark parking lot.

  “Let’s go,” he urged Toya.

  And this time, she followed him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Smokes stood under the stream of hot water trying to wash the day away. Every day he worked and every night he checked in on Janet. Things were tense between them since their time at the diner. She’d seen the worst side of Smokes when he almost killed the man who recognized her. Fuck, he still burned hot over it. But worse than that, he was more worried than ever that he couldn’t control himself around her.

  He wanted her.

  Everything about her. Every part of her, he wanted. Her time, her grins. Her trust, her touch. Her stories and her future.

  And he wanted to give her all of him too. His worries and fears and failures. All his faults. His entire fucking heart. It was hers.

  But nothing had changed.

  Today had been his turn to drive on route duty with Monster. Which left him with too much time to think and not enough time to pretend he was okay.

  He wasn’t okay.

  And when Monster asked how things were going with him and Janet, he’d gripped the steering wheel tight enough to crack the hard plastic.

  His beast was growing stronger. Too strong. Too dangerous.

  “You should let it out,” Monster commented when he saw the wheel. “Holding it in won’t do anyone any good. Most especially your mate.”

  “What are you, some kind of mating Yoda. Thanks, but I didn’t ask you, oh wise one.”

  Monster smirked. “You’re afraid. S’ok. We all were.”

  “I’m not afraid of shit.”

  “I’m not afraid of shit,” Monster mimicked at the same exact time. “Give it up, man. I’ve been there. I see you better than you see yourself right now.”

  Smokes grinded his molars at the memory. And at what he said next.

  “I don’t want to hurt her.”

  “The bond won’t let you. It protects.”

  “We aren’t bonded.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Monster was wrong.

  “How the fuck would you know?”

  He’d tapped his temple. “I’m wise, remember? Said so yourself.”

  “Right.”

  It was hours later when Smokes asked him a burning question. “How did you know you wouldn’t hurt Vegas? How did you know for sure?”

  “I didn’t know for sure. But the idea of hurting her was fucking crippling. Still is. That won’t ever go away.”

  “So, I’m fucked.”

  Monster shook his head. “No, you just have to let it happen.”

  “Let myself hurt her?” The idea was nauseating.

  “No, dickhead. Let your animal have control.”

  Never. He couldn’t.

  He could never be beholden to a beast again. He was done being monstrous. He would fight it until it faded or he died trying.

  Smokes shut off the shower and stepped out, wrapping a towel around his waist and reached for his cigarettes.

  Cigarettes that still weren’t were they normally were. But it was getting easier to be without them. It was the little habits like this that jammed him up. He usually had a smoke after a shower.

  Strolling into his room, he pulled a hard stop when he realized he wasn’t alone. Dr. Gregory leaned against his closed door, arms crossed, looking like he wanted a fight.

  Smokes’s skin prickled in warning.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “I opened the door and walked in. It’s a pretty normal concept.”

  Smokes glared. “The door was locked.”

  “Whatever. We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  The doctor pushed off from the door and came to stand face to face with Smokes. “About what I saw on the lot last night. About what you’re all hiding here in this warehouse.” He narrowed his gaze. “About Felix.”

  Felix.

  The doc knew something about Felix. Smokes had been distracted and forgot that Logan mentioned Felix that first day when he abducted him from the hospital. This was the detail that was nagging at him when Ratchet told him about the news article.

  Shit.

  “What do you know about Felix?”

  “I know he’s not dead,” Logan said, turning to slowly pace the floor. “But we’ll get to that later. First, you’re going to answer my questions.”

  Fucking hell.

  “What questions?”

  Logan spun to face him again, his expression furious. “What are you?”

  Smokes feigned a laugh. “What do I look like?”

  “A man. But you’re not a man, are you?”

  Smokes grew serious. “I’m a fucking man, doc. Nothing else.” Not anymore.

  “Bullshit. I know what I saw.”

  “Why don’t you tell me, and we can work this out.”

  “You turn into lions. Burning lions. Or… frozen lions. I’m not sure how it works yet.”

  Holy fucking shit. Ratchet was going to lose his damn mind when he heard about this.

  Smokes shook his head. “Doc, you been on the sauce? You’re seeing things.”

  Logan laughed, shaking his head. “Naw, that isn’t going to work on me. I want the truth and I want it now. Or my knowledge of Felix goes to the grave.”

  Smokes eyed him, gauging how to handle the situation. But the doctor played hardball with his next move.

  “And I stop caring for Janet.”

  “Fuck. What is wrong with you?”

  Logan smiled like a shark. “The truth. I need it or I can’t be responsible for Janet’s care. How can I, when I don’t even know what she is.”

  “She’s completely human, you asshole.”

  Logan crossed his arms, waiting.

  “Some of us…” Shit, this was going to blow up in his face, he knew it. “Some of us can shift. We carry an animal side and sometimes, the beast needs out. We don’t hurt anyone. Not anymore.”

  “No one? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the Alley Cats responsible for burning down Bastian Marx’s mansion?”

  Smokes stiffened. “How did you know that?”

  “I’m a doctor. We don’t just know how to heal, we also know how to research.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I put two and two together. How many of you are animals?”

  “Currently? Four. I’m not one of them, but we all were at one time. All except the females.”

  “I saw
a female shift.”

  Smokes nodded. “Vegas. She’s ice. But the rest are human. We rescued them from Bastian. He was using them,” he gritted.

  Logan’s expression turned angry. “He’s the one who hurt Janet.”

  “Yes.”

  “The baby isn’t yours, is it?”

  Smokes looked at the floor. He didn’t want to answer the doctor’s question. “It’s as much mine as anyone’s within the clan.”

  Logan was silent for a long stretch before he began pacing again.

  “Felix was my patient in the hospital. I recognized him from when we were kids.” He found Smokes’s questioning glare. “My mother had a relationship with an Alley Cat called Reaper.”

  Smokes barely remembered the man. He was one of the Fathers, one of the meanest, but he disappeared when Smokes was just a young. But he didn’t remember Logan at all. Or any children besides his brothers.

  “I knew the Alley Cats were bad news, but I hadn’t thought about it for years. Then just after the Marx Mansion fire, Felix arrived at the hospital not knowing who he was.”

  “Amnesia?”

  The doc nodded. “I kept it quiet, thinking I was doing the right thing for the females here. But Felix must have regained his memory, because he escaped in the middle of the night and we haven’t seen him sense.”

  “When was this?”

  “Three weeks ago. Just after I returned to the hospital from treating Janet.”

  That meant Felix had been in the wind for weeks now. Firecat or not, why hadn’t he returned home to the clan?

  Logan stopped pacing and turned to Smokes. “So, there you go. You know my secrets, and I know yours.”

  “You don’t even know the half of them,” Smokes argued.

  Logan nodded. “Ditto, fucker.” He started for the door, stopping with his hand on the knob. “I’ll be by tomorrow to check on Janet. In the meantime, don’t hurt her.”

  Asshole. It was like the man knew how to get under his skin.

  But the doctor’s words were a chant in his mind. Don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her, don’t hurt her. And it matched the beast’s that threatened to tear him apart at a moment’s notice.

  Control was slipping.

  It was time to cut the strings.