by T. S. Joyce
Jaxon didn’t miss the anger that flashed across his face, though. It wasn’t the anguished expression that would tell him the female panther wasn’t walking the earth anymore. It was a reaction that told Jaxon she was probably spiraling because of what Brody had done.
Three women hurt—some female named Winter, Brody’s mate, Lynn, and now Annalise. Brody was a beast—a destroyer of bonds, a creator of monsters. He was a life-ruiner. A woman-ruiner who left a trail of shattered hearts in his wake. Turning someone against their will was the biggest law broken in his world. It created shifters like Annalise, whose animal had been born in violence and would never be easy to manage. It created shifters who had to be put down if they weren’t strong enough to control the volatile animals inside of them. It created She-Devils.
This was it. This was the hunt his bear lived for. Blood for a cause. Blood for vengeance. Blood for justice.
It would be the most satisfying hunt of Titan’s entire existence.
Chapter Six
Jaxon Barns was sex on a stick…whatever that saying meant. Annalise adjusted the floral bag of shower stuff on her arm and switched her fluffy purple towel to her other hip as she made her way toward the communal restrooms down at the end of the row of Red Havoc cabins. Her flipflops clacked loudly with each step, echoing across the empty clearing.
She couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d touched her last night. The way it had felt like a match carelessly flicked into a puddle of gasoline the second their bodies had collided in that soul-altering embrace. Making out on the hood of his truck and his hand down the front of her shorts. She’d woken up way too early feeling feverish to see him again. Not just for sex, but for that high of feeling safe around him.
“You’re thinking about the grizzly,” Jenny said, appearing right beside Annalise.
Annalise startled hard and skittered to the side. She didn’t often get snuck up on now that She-Devil existed and paid attention to everything.
She gave Jenny a sideways glance and steadied out her pace again. The alpha’s mate had her dark hair piled up in a messy bun on top of her head, not a stich of make-up on, and she still somehow managed to look glamorous. Annalise was all baggy sweat pants, a tank top that was too long, and looked exactly as though she’d only slept fitfully for three hours last night. That part was the fault of Jaxon and her perverted mind that kept swirling around the sexy way his abs had flexed against her stomach every time he pumped his dick deeper into her.
“N-no, I’m not thinking about him.”
“Your pants are in serious danger of catching fire there, Annalise. Even if I couldn’t hear the stutter or the false notes in your voice”—Jenny pointed to Annalise’s face—“you’re stroking your lips like a weirdo.”
Oh, God, she really was. She yanked her hand from her mouth.
“Ben busted you two last night, just so you know you didn’t get away with anything. He sees everything that happens in and near his territory.” Jenny arched her delicate eyebrows high and gave her a serious look. “Careful with the grizzly. Ben and the boys can’t handle other dominants in their territory, and I don’t know if your instincts are firing on all pistons yet, but your boyfriend? He’s a frickin’ monster. It’s like a wasp in a hive, girl. You don’t want to get these boys all riled up. You’re gonna get blood on their hands if you aren’t more careful.”
“Jaxon was defending himself just fine yesterday,” Annalise muttered, feeling defensive.
“Oooh,” Jenny drawled out. “He has a name to you. So real feelings attached, too?” Jenny hugged her white towel to her chest and shook her head. “You’re gonna give my mate gray hairs prematurely. I’m calling it now. You’ll be worse than Lynn.”
Annalise cast a quick glance back toward the cabins sitting quietly in the gray dawn light in the shadow of the Appalachian Mountains. “Which house does she live in?”
“None of them right now. She’s in the treehouse. Lynn has some stuff she’s working through, but if she comes back to us, she’ll live there.” Jenny pointed behind them to the cabin right next to Annalise’s, second from the front.
Well, okay. Maybe Lynn was crazy, but Annalise was actually relieved that there might eventually be another girl in the crew. “Admission,” Annalise said softly as she pulled open the door to the bathroom, which looked like a little log cabin. “I don’t have any girl-friends anymore.”
“Welcome to the club,” Jenny said, pulling a toothbrush from the bag on her shoulder. “That’s one of the pitfalls of getting your ass bitten by a panther shifter. Girls are harder to come by in the big cat community. It’s a boys’ club. Sometimes the ladies don’t make very good monsters, if you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, actually, I completely get what you’re saying. I make a terrible monster.”
“Oh, my God, the worst,” Jenny said with a giggle as she started brushing her teeth at the sink. Around a frothy mouth of toothpaste, she said, “I saw your claw marks on Barret’s face, remember? Those were deep and intentional. You went after your own people and gave your back to a Gray Back grizzly. You’re crazy.”
Annalise’s frown deepened so much it made her forehead hurt. “Thanks.”
“Lynn’s crazy, too, and so am I, so don’t get your panties in a twist. You’re a black leopard, right?”
That question left Annalise completely baffled. “No. I’m a panther.”
“Yeah, but there are two kinds of big cats that fall under the panther shifter category. Get it? Cat-egory?” Jenny spat toothpaste in the sink and dipped down to fill her mouth straight from the faucet. She gurgled, spat again, and then said, “I saw your spots. We’ve only had one black leopard in the crew before, and he was a douche-canoe of the highest level. I’m a Jaguar. The boys are all Jaguars too, and so is Lynn. All black big-cats are called Panthers. But you’re a rare one, Miss Ma’am.”
Huh. Well that actually answered a burning question she’d had about her spots. Cool. A black leopard. “Can I play twenty questions?”
“Let me guess,” Jenny said, making her way into one of the shower stalls. “The boys haven’t explained anything to you.”
“I asked questions the first couple days but gave up when Anson answered everything with ‘your momma.’”
“Ha!” Jenny blasted out a laugh that echoed through the bathroom. “And asking Greyson would’ve gotten you the silent treatment. And Barret would’ve probably just tried to bite you. That man is a savage. Did you ask Ben anything?”
“No.” Annalise made her way into a stall of her own and pulled the curtain closed. Living out here was like living at a campground, and as she watched a spider drag its waterlogged body across the shower floor toward the drain, she thought perhaps she would never get used to this. “Ben feels big. It’s hard to explain. It’s like, when I’m around him, it’s hard to breathe and my chest gets all tight and my panther wants to rip out of my skin and fight him.”
The water turned on in Jenny’s stall. “Good God, you really are crazy. The first part of your story was normal. That heaviness you feel from Ben? That’s his alpha mojo. You should feel that. That’s what he uses to control the crew. Sounds bad, but they need all the guidance Ben can give them. He collects the broken souls, the C-Teamers, the big cats no one else wants. Some crews live closer to civilization, but we live out here for a reason. This place is Ben’s attempt to rehabilitate problem shifters.”
Annalise stripped out of her clothes and turned on the water as hot as it would go. “Well, that’s noble of him. I guess that’s why he is fine with me here.” Honestly, she didn’t really like that she’d been let into Red Havoc territory because she was broken.
The sound of a shampoo bottle popped, and then Jenny called over the wall, “It’s more noble than you understand.”
“What do you mean?” Annalise asked, stepping under the steaming jets of water.
“Alphas who take the broken ones risk having to put them down. Some can’t be saved.”
&n
bsp; Gooseflesh rippled across her skin, and Annalise froze. “What do you mean ‘put them down?’”
“You know what I mean. We police ourselves outside of human law. Sometimes killing is necessary.”
“No, no, no, it’s never necessary because that’s murder, and murder is wrong.”
“That’s the human in you talking. Listen to your panther, though. She’ll see the necessity in killing off the dangerous ones.”
“Well, she thinks it’s a great idea to kill everything that breathes, so she’s not really who I go to for life-advice. Oh, my God, Ben kills people?”
“You’ll kill someday, too.”
Horrible memories of the night she’d been Turned washed through her mind like a tsunami, and Annalise closed her eyes against the onslaught. No one could know what really happened that night. “That’s why I came here, so that I wouldn’t go all kitty-serial-killer on the outside world. Ben is supposed to stop me, or protect everyone from me, or something. But he’s a killer!”
Jenny sighed a tired sound. “Annalise, your life is different now. You’ll have to learn how to let your old life and your old views go. Shifters go to war, shifters fight over territory, humans try to hurt and expose us and have to be dealt with. There’s always something happening. It’s just the way it is.”
“But I never saw anything about this online or in the news.”
“And you won’t if we’re handling things correctly. What would you have Ben do with a panther who goes on a killing spree? Women, children, he just goes mad, and his animal takes over and ends human lives. Hmm? What would you have him do with that shifter?”
“Give them to the police!”
“So they can lock him up with other people, who he would kill or Turn into a monster shifter, just like him.”
Damn. Jenny had a point. “Isn’t there some shifter maximum security prison or something?”
“Yes,” Jenny murmured softly over the sound of running water. “And putting down the unsalvageable shifters is a kindness to them, Annalise. Ben doesn’t do it lightly. He saves who he can, and when he has to make the hard decisions, it rips him up inside. For always. He’s no killer. He’s an alpha, and they have to keep their crews, as well as the outside world, safe. You shouldn’t ever give into your urge to fight him, Annalise. Challenging an alpha is a really bad idea and can get you killed. Don’t push him to make an example of you. Don’t force his hand. If he goes easy on you, the boys will start challenging him for alpha, and it will be chaos in the crew. There are no submissives here, and everything hangs in a very fine balance. Don’t fuck with that balance. It wouldn’t take much to poison this crew. You want to fight someone? Go after Barret. He’s Second and a total dick ninety-four percent of the time. Plus it would be hilarious if he lost Second to a girl.”
“Wait, why aren’t you Second? You’re Ben’s mate.”
Jenny snorted. “Not how it works, Newbie. I had to fight for my place at the bottom of the crew. I care nothing for dominance and crew politics. I only care about if Ben and Raif are happy.”
“I have to admit, you coming out of the trees yesterday with that rifle like some zombie-slaying badass was pretty cool,” Annalise said, scrubbing shampoo into her hair.
“Flattery will get you everywhere with me. You and the boys were a mess yesterday. I wanted it done and the grizzly out of our territory. He’s bad news. All Gray Backs are.”
“Why?”
“Because they are notoriously violent monster beasties, and I like survival. You can’t trust a Gray Back. They’re the original C-Team. Creed is like Ben and collected a menagerie of broken shifters, then tried to make them get along. Except rumor has it they fight all the damn time. Think what you did yesterday, going after your own crew, and multiply that by entire crew battles, just ripping each other to shreds for fun. And you brought a mother-fucking Barns into Red Havoc territory. His daddy, Matt, is this scarred-up beast bear who survived years in some testing facility. And his momma? Willamena Mother-Freakin’ Madden, now Barns. She’s a worm-loving weirdo. Glasses, dyed red hair, little, compact, doesn’t look like she could lift a can of beans out of the pantry. But she was Turned by Beaston, the monster of monsters, and the moment her grizzly comes out, she brings hell. She’s one of the only female shifters to take Second in a crew, and she’s dominant over all those broken Gray Backs. Except for Creed. She and Matt made little monster babies, who grew up to be demon grizzlies, and you brought one here, to a crew already on shaky ground.”
Oh, she hadn’t just brought Jaxon here. She’d totally had a diddle party with him up on the mountain last night. Standing here under the hot jets of shower water, she waited for regrets that didn’t come. What Jenny was telling her should’ve scared her, but it didn’t. She knew Jaxon. Knew him from months of texting and building a tentative bond already. He might attack every last one of the Red Havoc Crew, she didn’t know, but in her heart she did know he would be protective of her. And yeah, maybe he was a demon grizzly, but he hadn’t hurt her during the fight yesterday, even when she gave him her back. And he hadn’t hurt her last night during boink-apalooza. He’d given her the epic fucking of her lifetime, plus one billion butterflies in her stomach.
Maybe her instincts really were broken. She-Devil practically purred inside of her every time she thought about Jaxon. Grizzly or no, he felt important, and she wanted more time with him. She knew it was wrong to be with Jaxon, but hadn’t figured out why yet. And the why it was wrong was the most important question.
“Jenny?”
“Yeah?”
“Why aren’t panthers allowed to mix with other shifters?”
Jenny sighed. “That’s a question with a layered answer. The biggest one is that we’re rare. If you and Jaxon had a cub, there’s a fifty percent chance you would be having a grizzly. There’s plenty of those. Also, the mixed crews get a lot of attention. They’re out to the public and proud. People take their pictures and want their autographs. They are recognized wherever they go. But big cat shifters tend to stay to themselves in prides or crews because our animals have the instinct to band together and stay hidden and safe. Panthers have always stuck with panthers. It’s just the way it is. We can’t bring in a grizzly like Jaxon, Annalise. Ben would have trouble holding the crew. That man is too dominant, and his animal too big. He would turn this crew into the blood-letting Gray Backs within days. He would ruin Red Havoc and everything we’ve built.” Jenny turned off the water, and Annalise heard her shove the curtain aside. “You could’ve been with him if you were anything but a panther, Annalise. But that’s life. That’s shifter life. It isn’t fair. Protect your crew and let him go.”
Jenny’s flip flops clacked on the tile as she made her way to the door. With the barrier shut behind the woman, and Annalise left alone in the bathroom, the loneliness in her chest threatened to overwhelm her. It was like the old days when she’d first been Turned and had to give up all her friends for their safety. When she’d had to cut herself off from the world to protect it.
Annalise slid her back down the wall and pulled her knees against her chest, hugged them tightly, and watched the spider crawling along the wall across from her. He was going slow, impeded by the water.
She and that spider were the same—wet, alone, and dragging themselves through life.
She didn’t want to be the spider anymore, though.
She wanted to create a life worth living. One where she chased smiles, got the one billion butterflies, and became a functioning member of a crew.
She wanted it all.
Now, she just needed to figure out a way to have her panther-shaped cake and eat her grizzly-shaped cake, too.
Chapter Seven
See Jaxon again asap.
Make him fall in love with me asap.
Make Ben stop being a douche-titty-kitty.
Make Anson and Barret stop being pecker-faces.
Make Greyson talk to me in more than single syllable caveman grunts.
; Get everyone to stop calling me Princess Panther.
Make Jenny be my friend. And possibly Crazy Lynn?
Get a motherfuckin’ job. Maybe this should be number 3.
Steal a car to get me to the super-awesome job I find.
Call Samuel so he doesn’t worry.
Find a magical serum to cure shifter-dom, aka kill She-Devil.
Marry Jaxon and have a dozen of his monster bear-panther babies.
Live happily ever after in the woods with a bunch of gross boys who I’m pretty sure are making moonshine on the mountain behind my cabin.
Annalise giggled as she finished writing the last word of her list into her notebook with a flourish of her ballpoint pen. Some of these were jokes. For example, she didn’t really want a dozen babies. Four would be fine. And she probably wouldn’t do any grand theft auto. She had some money saved for an old beater car if she could get a good deal.
She’d always been a list maker, but over the past six months, she’d gotten overwhelmed and stopped doing the things that used to bring her joy. This list was a way to meet short-term goals one by one until she got to the big goal—happiness. She wanted that really bad, but this morning in the shower, as she’d watched that pitiful spider, she’d realized that happiness wasn’t just going to fall into her lap if she pouted long enough about her lousy lot in life. Happiness was something she was going to have to work to create.
Movement out the front window caught her attention, and she stood in a rush to find Greyson walking past her cabin. Yes! Gripping her notebook to her ample teets, she made her way outside and called from the top step of her porch, “Hi Greyson!”
He ignored her like a champ.
“Lovely weather we’re having today, isn’t it?”
Her cave man grunted. Getting warmer.
“What are you up to today? Where are you headed?” she called louder as he strode toward the side of her house. Greyson turned like he was going to answer, and she poised to mark number five off the list. But instead of saying an actual word, he lifted his middle finger and glared at her instead, then disappeared around the corner. Lovely.
