by Joyce, T. S.
“I-I meant, can I talk to Karis alone? I need to show her something.”
“Anything you show me, you can show him too,” Karis said.
“No.” Trina shook her head hard. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Colt snarled.
“Because I’m scared.”
“Of who?” Colt asked, in a tone that said he didn’t believe she was scared of anything.
“My new Alpha. You. The Two Claws Clan. The new Darby Clan. I’m scared of everything now. I don’t have protection, and I’m taking a risk talking to you. I-I-I…fuck.” Trina sucked in breath as though she was having an anxiety attack and couldn’t breathe.
“Just say it,” Karis encouraged her.
“I’m trying to help you, but I can’t do it with Colt there.”
When Karis looked up at Colt to see what he wanted to do, he was looking down at Trina with the most baffled expression. “Karis has a monster in her,” he murmured. “Fuck with her at your own risk.”
Okay, that’s how he wanted to play this. He wanted her to go with Trina, but he was giving the woman a warning that Karis was more than capable of handling herself in a brawl. Huh. She liked that. He wasn’t being a macho man, thinking he had to take care of her. He was having her back, but also trusting her to have her own. She really looked at him. Not his scars, but his gold eyes as he trapped her in his bright gaze. Silver and gold. Silver and gold because she knew her animal was riled up right now and her eyes were probably sterling.
“Show me what you need to. My food is getting cold,” Karis said.
“This way,” Trina said, jerking her head toward a hallway at the back of the restaurant.
Karis followed her down the hallway to a set of stairs. She hadn’t realized this was a two-story building, but when she got to the bottom and looked around, it made more sense. This was some type of basement that had been finished and separated into rooms. Trina’s hand shook so bad her keys jingled as she tried three times to get it into the lock on a red door. The fourth time was a charm, and she shoved open the barrier and ushered Karis inside quickly. The lights came on automatically and illuminated what looked like a casino room.
“Whoa,” Karis whispered. “Is this some sort of illegal gambling ring?”
“Kind of, but the cops in town know about it. They even play here sometimes. This isn’t what I wanted to show you, though. Come on.”
Trina led Karis though the maze of poker tables upholstered with green felt to a doorway on the other side of the room. Karis locked her legs in the doorway and gasped. This room was some sort of break room. There were refreshments lining the countertops by a small fridge. Danishes, cupcakes, cookies, muffins, granola bars. A six-pack of orange Fanta sat by the fridge. But on the opposite wall was what had stopped Karis in her tracks and frozen her heart in her chest.
There was a bulletin board of lude pictures of girls, only they weren’t just plain ripped-out pages of nudie magazines, no. They were nudie magazines with women’s faces glued onto the pictures. And right in the middle was a picture of a naked woman with her legs spread, ass to the camera, looking over her shoulder, and the face that was glued over the model’s features was none other than Karis’s.
“What is this?” she whispered in horror.
“Read the sign above them,” Trina murmured, sounding sick.
Breeders, it said in chicken-scratch handwriting.
“Oh, my God.” Karis’s eyes burned with tears of anger, horror, and mortification.
“This is what this town thinks of breeders. The Darby Clan is made of mountain lion shifters.”
“Is that what you are?”
Trina nodded once, but she wouldn’t meet Karis’s eyes now. “It used to be a good thing to be what I am. It used to be something to be proud of. I was safe. The Clan ran this town. They still do, but there are bad parts to every Clan. For the Darby Clan, they don’t respect breeders. You are nothing but a wet hole to them. Something to be fantasized about and belittled. I knew who you were the second you showed up here. You are a favorite of theirs to talk about. Two of the Clan have talked to the matchmaker about you, but she refuses to work with mountain lion shifters. That’s probably the Darby Clan’s fault.”
“Are all the men horrible in your Clan?”
Trina shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. There used to be someone who was good, who could’ve turned things around for us, but he went against our Alpha and killed him. Killed. Him. You’re a shifter, so I know you understand. Once you betray a Clan, you can never go back. He will be rogue for the rest of his life and I…” Trina dropped her eyes from the pictures on the wall to the ground. “I’ll always be here.”
“Why did you show me this?” Karis asked softly.
“Because this is your warning. You’ll have no friends in the Clan. They will treat you like a piece of pussy the second they realize you are in town. You will be degraded. But that isn’t the worst of your problems.”
“What’s the worst of them?”
Trina jammed her finger at the stairway. “Colton Dorset. People used to call him the Peacemaker, and now they don’t. They call him the Warmaker. You picked a savage monster for your man. It ain’t your fault, you were probably matched, but he has more blood on his hands than in his body.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Colt? We’re talking about the same Colt?”
“Yep. He was Turned by his best friend, Trigger Massey, five years ago. He used to be good, but that bear inside of him turned him into a damn demon. Being turned that way did something bad to his soul. It turned it pure black. Oh, the man is charming enough. And for a while he was called the Peacemaker because he was trying to keep his Alpha, Trigger, from murdering the whole damn Clan. But now he’s just as bad as the Alpha of Two Claws. His sister is here now, and we thought she would tame him down a bit, but nope. He and Trigger painted their land in my Clan’s blood. We were cut in half in a single night of war, and I watched him, Karis. That bear inside of him? His eyes were empty and completely soulless as he killed us. He killed a War-Bear, too, and didn’t even look hurt.” She lifted the hem of her sweater to expose long, angry red claw mark scars down her ribs. “This is the man you’re with. Save your hide and run.”
Run. From the man she actually felt a connection with. From the man she actually had a shot at a future with. From the man who was willing to give her the one thing she yearned for—a family. A home. Protection.
“What did you do to cause war?” she asked quietly, because she wasn’t stupid. There were always, always, two sides to every story.
Trina’s lip snarled up, and her eyes flashed a lighter green. “We tried to snuff out the bear Clan before it came to be. You want to be a breeder? Fine. Pick any other shifter. Bears are poison.”
Karis huffed a breath and let her eyes go dead. “Your first problem was in assuming I’m not a bear.” And then she made her way to the breeder board, ripped every last degrading picture down, pulled the board down and broke it across her knee, then turned and walked away.
Oh, she was going to heed that cougar shifter’s warning…to a point. But fuck Trina for bringing Colt into this. If Colton had demons, okay. She had some of her own, so who was she to judge? But it wasn’t up to some shifter with questionable intentions to explain his soul. That was for Colton, when he was comfortable.
As she climbed the stairs, Karis shook her head in amazement at herself. She’d just been told her arranged mate was a murderer, and what was she doing? Marching right back up to him.
The door was ajar by inches and so, good and pissed, she kicked that shit and stomped through, fighting the urge to Change and shred this entire place. Trina thought grizzly shifters were poison? Well, she hadn’t met a fucking polar bear shifter then. Karis’s aggression could stretch for days when she gave the predator inside of her the power to rage. Snuff out the bear shifters? Bears were poison? God, she wanted to throw up.
“Are you okay?” came a soft, growly voice as she stepped ba
ck into the restaurant.
Karis startled and took two quick steps away from Colton, one hand gripping her chest. “You scared me.”
Colton’s lips pursed in a thin line and his eyes churned with a sadness she didn’t understand. “You don’t have to be scared of me. I wouldn’t hurt you. Neither would my animal.”
Karis ghosted a glance down the dark stairs and back to Colt. “Did you hear what she said?”
He nodded once, blazing gold eyes never leaving hers. “Didn’t meant to eavesdrop, but Trina is a loud talker, and I had to make sure you didn’t need back-up down there…so I just…”
“Stayed right here and heard those things about you.”
A nod.
“Are they true?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Were you justified in going to war with the cougars?”
“Yes.”
Karis’s heartrate slowed, and she unhanded the collar of her shirt. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“And we have a lifetime to talk about that long story, but I need the CliffNotes now. I’m looking at you as the potential father of my cubs. I need to know if I’m in danger or if my cubs would be. Not only from you, but from the trouble you attract.”
Colt sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, which made him look even bigger somehow. Leaning against the doorframe, he tracked Trina’s progress as she passed between them. Trina gave him a fiery look and made her way back to the front of the restaurant, while Colton frowned after her with a troubled expression.
“I’ll give you the CliffNotes, and then I’ll watch you run. I don’t want you to run, but you’re asking for the truth, so here it is. Yes, Trigger Turned me. Yes, I almost died. Yes, it did something regrettable to the monster born inside of me, and yes, I’m about as fucked up as a man can get. I was vice president of Trigger’s motorcycle club for years before he dissolved it, and I’ve got a rap sheet that would make your eyes blur to read it. I have trouble minding rules now, and even more trouble keeping my fist from someone’s face if they deserve to lose some teeth.” He jammed a finger at where Trina was taking an order up front. “Her Clan got what they had coming to them. Me and Trig and Ava would’ve been happy to live peacefully for the rest of our days on our ranch, but they came into our territory to kill us. All of us, my sister included. I’ll be good-goddamned if I ever let that happen. They wanted to snuff out the bear Clan before it came to be? Well, them starting a war on our own territory was what raised the damn Clan. They pushed us too far. They came after my sister. They came after my best friend. Their fault. They started the battle”—Colt shrugged one shoulder and arched a blond eyebrow—“but we finished it.” Midway through his explanation, Colt’s eyes had turned to fire and his cheeks had gone red. Oh, there was some protective instincts with his sister.
And to Karis, that was a very good quality for a man to possess. It meant if anyone touched a hair on his cub, the Peacemaker would go to sleep inside of him, and the Warmaker would rise up to take care of the threat.
“You’re an outlaw.”
“I am. And I’m old and broken and set in my ways, so that will likely be how it is for me always. And you should also know, if anyone messed with you…they would be messing with the devil inside of me.”
“You’ve known me for one day and you can make those declarations?”
“I can and I do. Don’t matter how long I’ve known you. You’re mine until you tell me otherwise. Now, show me what had you so upset down there. You went quiet with your words, and I could barely hear your responses to Trina.”
Karis hesitated. She didn’t want to be the cause of another war. But Colton was standing here, hand out, palm up, waiting for her to trust him. And that’s how this was supposed to work, right? Trust. As friends?
Pursing her lips from the stress she felt in her chest, she laid the stack of rumpled papers on his hand. The top one was of her face glued on that naked girl’s body.
“What the fuck is this?” Colt’s voice came out way too deep and rumbly to be a good sign.
“There was a breeder board down there. The Darby Clan made these pictures.”
Colton couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her fabricated picture, and by the second, his face grew redder and redder. “Did you take them all down?” he asked, flipping through the first few before he looked disgusted and ripped his gaze away from them and back to Karis. And he. Looked. Pissed.
“I got them all. I’m going to burn them, or shred them, or I don’t know…” She frowned when he pulled out a Harley Davidson Zippo lighter. “What are you doing?”
“I’m gonna set this shit on fire,” he said plainly. He flicked the flame on and held it at the corner of the paperwork. And then he dropped the burning stack on the floor and walked away.
“What if it sets this place on fire?” Karis called after him.
“Then this place was supposed to burn, and who am I to stop Fate? She knows what she’s doing just fine. I know this is all too much,” he said, turning and walking backward. He looked like he wanted to retch on the last words. “This is your out. You have no obligation to me. Bye, Karis.”
She watched him walk away, and she was torn. Okay. He was giving her an out. Probably best because he was a killer. But…he was a killer for good reason. He was a protector. He’d gone empty and did what he had to do when his sister and Alpha were threatened. And something about that made her want to stay. What did that say about her that she saw his inner, out-of-control monster as a positive?
Con: has a pet squirrel.
Pro: is a murderer.
God, she was so broken. Maybe she should go. Maybe this out he was giving her was a sign. He was letting her go, no more questions asked. She could go back to her life… Shit, she couldn’t go back to her life. Just the thought of going back for another lonely holiday, watching her brothers all paired up and in love, making families and memories while she sat in the same place on the edge of the couch, year after year, growing older, growing jaded, growing lonelier… She couldn’t do it. Maybe she could call Sarah and ask for a re-do. A re-match.
But from here, Karis had a perfect view of Colton at the table, standing over their food with his back to her, running his hand over and over his hair. He’d hung his cowboy hat on the back of the chair, and his shoulders sagged like he carried the weight of the world. And maybe he did. She didn’t know the burdens he carried yet. Not all of them. But something inside of her wanted to. Curiosity, perhaps. This man was a walking enigma. He’d seemed surprised when she’d gotten protective of him with Cooper. He joked a lot, had an easy smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Not quite. It was as if he was a man trying to be happy, but he hadn’t figured how yet. Or maybe life had just beaten him down so that he didn’t remember what happiness was. She understood that on a basic level.
He locked his arms against the table for a second, his shoulders heaving with a sigh. And then he bumped his fists on the surface gently and sat down. “Fuck,” she heard him mutter. “Didn’t even keep her a day.”
Karis frowned. He was still in this then. And he wasn’t some chauvinistic, dominant male that assumed she was his based on a contract. He was giving her free choice to stay or to go.
What a polite murderer. What a considerate Warmaker.
And okay, truth be told, those nicknames were pretty hot. Her animal was a beast on a good day, but this man? Maybe his monster could match hers. Maybe she wouldn’t have to pretend to be submissive and normal, like she had to do with Jackson.
Just the thought of her ex made her heart drop to her toes. He’d hurt her. Hurt. Her. She’d thought he was the one. Had no doubt. Was so confident in him, but Jackson had other ideas, and apparently so did Fate. Now she just had to figure out if Fate was laughing at her, or if she was pointing her in the direction of something sustainable. At a decent life. Not a big one, but a decent one. One she could settle for.
Killer. Killer. Killer. Colt had helped
kill a War-Bear and half a Clan of mountain lion shifters.
She strode into the main room and past him, scenting the air as she did. All she smelled was sadness. There was no dominance or anger. Just…resolve.
Killer. Killer. Killer. Colt had helped kill a War-Bear and half a Clan of mountain lion shifters—for good reason.
If she’d been there and it had been one of her brothers in danger? The polar bear inside of her wouldn’t have stopped with half a Clan. She wouldn’t have stopped hunting until every last one of them was snuffed from the history books.
With a sigh, she stopped at the exit door, her fingertips resting on the cold metal of the handle. Slowly, she turned to find Colt’s gold gaze locked on her.
“This doesn’t feel finished,” Karis admitted.
“What does it feel like?”
She offered him half a smile. “It feels like the beginning.”
He searched her face for a few moments, and then slowly, he kicked out her chair from under the table with his boot and tilted his chin at it. “I’m better at beginnings than I am at endings. Come here.”
Chills lifted on her arms, and Karis was thankful for the sweater she was wearing so he didn’t see her reaction to him telling her what to do. She liked it. Liked that he’d given her the option to leave, but that he could still keep control. Interesting boy. Scar-faced boy. Killer boy. She wanted to figure him out. Wanted to know what made him tick.
She hesitated only moments before she eased down into the chair he’d pushed out for her.
“I sniffed your food,” he said, his gaze flickering to her tray of barbecue.
Eyebrows arched, she drawled out, “Whyyy?”
“Because you shouldn’t eat or drink something you weren’t watching closely. Especially in this town. Nowhere here is safe except the Two Claws Ranch.”
