by May Sage
“I don't know what you been smoking, but I don't want you. Never have, actually; you were just there.”
Cruel, but she'd gone too far when she’d come to his room and put her fucking hands on him without permission. It was past time to make it clear what her place was. By that, he meant that she had none. She hadn't taken any duty in the pride, she didn't even cook or clean; she just hung with them, using their resources like a damn parasite. He put up with it because Jas, her twin, did far more than her share, but enough was enough. He wasn’t going to let Kim get away with that sort of shit.
A lot of prides, and packs, kept official sluts onboard, both male and female - shifters weren’t shy about sexuality, and it wasn’t always easy to meet their needs outside of their territories. Having one or two members ready to fuck when they needed to made things simpler.
The notion was old fashioned and, as far as Rye was concerned, disgusting. Animals also licked shit off their peer’s ass - it didn’t mean that they had to do it.
He mostly ignored it. Kim was more than willing; she’d reduced herself to being their whore, voluntarily, and he knew his enforcers had never crossed the line - they never even went to her, she was the one doing the seducing.
She looked confused, which in other circumstances might have been fucking hilarious; he hadn’t exactly minced his words. Anyone with self-respect would already have been out of the room, but there she stood, with a pot of make up on her face, too much perfume and her huge tits hanging out of her negligée.
She was surprised because shifters weren’t prudes - they loved sex, and her advances were probably welcomed whenever she bestowed them.
“It’s about her, isn’t it? The loner.”
A growl formed in his throat.
“No, Kim. It’s about you having screwed every single male of the pride. It’s about you not pulling your weight, and it’s about me not being into you.”
And perhaps it was a little about Rye wanting Ace so much his somnolent appendage, repulsed by Kim’s hands, twitched as he thought of her.
“I’m going to go take a shower. Get out of my room before I come back.”
Played
Now they had a better idea of what was going on, finding more details about their enemies wasn’t hard for Coveney.
He looked into the Vergas Pride, and came back with a somber expression. He explained the basics.
Apparently, the pride was humongous, with over five hundred adult members overall; it practically took over a whole town down in Texas. No wonder they had no issue fighting them on two fronts.
“So far, they haven’t sent their full force, presumably because they haven’t confirmed Lola is the kid they’re after. They’re targeting a few different prides and packs with children fitting her description. For all we know, it could be that she isn’t the hybrid.”
Rye wasn’t so sure; after Ace had pointed out their toddler had a faint lupine scent, he’d been able to notice it, too.
“Not all of them are fighters, though, right?” Christine asked, but Coveney shook his head, pushing another stack of printed pictures in her hand.
The submissive gasped and let the documents drop to her feet.
The details he printed made everyone sick to their stomach. What the fucking hell was that?
“Are those… skeletons?”
It was hard to tell, because they’d been burned to a crisp and stacked together, but Coveney nodded.
“They kill their own members; the ones they see as useless. As far as they’re concerned, only the strongest have the right to live - the others are lesser beings. They don’t want them to reproduce, so they take the problem out of the equation. So, only the fighters survive.”
“They murder the submissives?” Ola sounded lightheaded, faint.
“Not all of them. Those pretty enough are kept, and used as slaves, if anyone wants to claim them. They see it as the survival of the fittest.”
How fucking barbaric. It didn’t make a bit of sense, no animal in the world acted that way.
This pack of degenerated fanatics had to be stopped, but how? They had considerably more members than them, and that was without considering the fact that they might have some allies who’d join them in an open conflict.
“If we talk at the Fest, we might find other prides who want to join us against them,” Tracy suggested.
Rygan shook his head. It might have been an option, if the next summer gathering wasn’t months away. They didn't have the luxury of time, not while those monsters were on their trail, hunting their youngest, most vulnerable child.
“We can't wait,” he replied.
“How about contacting the Alphas we know online?” Dante proposed.
Rye nodded his agreement; that was a viable option. There was a fair chance that his father might even agree to help them, given the circumstances…but he didn't have the best relationship with his family, so he couldn't count on it.
And frankly, even if every single feline in his acquaintance agreed to lend them a hand, they would still be outnumbered.
“We need to show this to Ace,” he decided, weirded out by the fact that he felt compelled to share the details with her.
“I can go talk to her,” the Beta offered, but Rye was quick to reject that option.
“I don't think so. I’ll go after the auction.” His answer was cold, possessiveness dripping from each word, making him uncivil towards his Beta. “Speaking of, we need to head out now.”
The house they had their eyes on was getting auctioned off in Lakesides that day.
Rye felt the gaze of everyone on him, his Beta and his Enforcer as they walked into the town hall. They were all human which explained why he sensed so much fear and suspicion.
He could guess what the whispers said. They wouldn’t let them win if they could help it; they didn’t want them in town. He paid the humans no mind, taking a seat at the back. He’d buy the house - that’s all there was to it. Feeling unwelcome wasn’t a foreign concept anyway. It wasn’t like there was a better alternative elsewhere - according to recent censuses, there were about two hundred humans for every supernatural creature out there. That meant there was no place where his pride would really be unanimously accepted.
Some people kept it civil, nodding towards them - he returned the greeting. Those who openly glared, he ignored.
All of a sudden, the atmosphere completely changed; it almost felt like everyone in the room sighed in relief. As for Rye, he felt the corner of his mouth curve up. He hadn’t expected Ace to come.
A middle-aged man, slightly rounded around the edges, and with greying hair, greeted her with enthusiasm.
“Aisling, dear. Are you here to bid on the house? It’s a beauty. I had it done up by the best of the best.”
The owner, then.
There was an eagerness to his words; he was clearly hoping that the group of newcomers he didn’t trust would find some competition.
Ace smiled sweetly, dazzling the poor unsuspecting human, and playing him like a damn violin.
“I’m not,” she confessed, “I’m just here to see if my friends get it. Come, let me introduce you.”
She entwined her arm with the old man’s and made him follow her to the back of the room, where the pride members had chosen to sit.
“Guys, this is Andrew Turner. He knows everything there is to know about Lakesides’ history, if you have any questions.”
The man lifted his chin proudly.
“Andrew is the mayor of this town, and the owner of the house you would like to buy.” She looked up at him, her big amber eyes shining as she batted her long lashes. Fuck, the woman was lethal. “This is a few members of the Wyvren pride. They’re a new pride of feline shifters - like me - and they’ve encountered some trouble. You see, they adopt orphans, and it turns out some people want to harm one of their children.”
Rye wasn’t exactly happy that she’d divulged their affairs so openly, but the mayor frowned.
“Children?” he repeated, turning to the pride.
Rygan nodded. “They’re after a two year old.”
The other humans, who were shamelessly eavesdropping, gathered around them; the glaring had stopped, replaced by curiosity and, if Rye wasn’t mistaken, protectiveness. Holy fuck. Humans were being cool with shifters. What the hell was happening with the world?
“This is Rygan, the Alpha,” Ace introduced, pointing to him. “And Daunte, the Beta. You’ve met him a couple of times in the past, right?”
“Aye,” a guy in the crowd said, nodding. “You came to my pub last year. Pretty good at pool, aren’t you?”
She played them so damn easily. In a minute, she’d established that the Beta - one of the highest authorities in the pride - had already come to their town without causing any trouble, and she’d also made it clear that they needed their help; something the small town people apparently responded to.
“Tracy is a bestselling author,” she added; that seemed to impress - Rye guessed the town didn’t see many celebrities. “They’ve stayed at my place this week, and they want to buy your house because of the security measures you’ve taken. The windows are reinforced, aren’t they?”
“Yes; it was originally made for my daughter, when she was single,” Andrew explained. “Only the best for my girl. The fences are electrified, too.”
When the auction started, the humans sat around them; they all glared at the couple of investors wearing suits. The pride won - they weren’t going to let this opportunity pass, even if they’d had to overpay for the house - and everyone clapped.
“You can move in today, it’s empty,” the mayor told them. “We’ll take care of the paperwork by the end of the week.”
Others said a variation of, “You got a problem, you call. No one should target kids.”
Rye just stared at Ace, dumbfounded. She winked before getting up.
“Right. I’d better get back to work - poor Clary has been alone for over an hour.”
Tease
Rygan was annoyed, and more annoyed yet, because quite frankly, he had zero reason to be pissed at all. They’d won the house they wanted, buying it for a pittance; if they left, they could flip it and make a decent profit. His keen sense of business should have put him in a good mood, but instead, he wanted someone to punch.
If. He’d thought if they left the house - when it was a question of when. They were going to leave. Thinking otherwise was just going to set him up for disappointment.
The problem wasn’t as much leaving Lakesides - although he’d taken to the quiet town and its weird inhabitants - as it was knowing that he’d leave a certain loner behind…
“What’s the matter?” Tracy asked, frowning.
He noticed that he was growling low, threateningly.
Dammit. He and his tiger had never been as unsettled as they had been since their arrival in Lakeside. The animal had wanted him to follow Ace around like a damn lost puppy, and had started to sulk when Rygan wouldn’t give in.
It was as though…
No. He wasn’t going to start thinking nonsense now. He was attracted to and intrigued by Aisling, no doubt about that, but attraction happened every day. Having a hard on for a woman didn’t mean that she was his mate, his other half, shaped by nature to complete him.
Matings had been studied over the three decades since the paranormal community had revealed themselves to the rest of the world. Shifters, angels, demons, vampires, and everything in between had fated mates, and no scientist had come up with definite information; they just had theories, at best. Some said mates were the results of an evolutionary thing: nature picked two people who were likely to have strong children, and bound them together. That theory was destroyed by the fact that sometimes, true mates were of the same sex, and therefore unable to reproduce.
Rye didn’t care about the logic behind it. All he knew was that, as a shifter, he had two choices - getting married and blood-bound to someone he cared about, some day, or waiting in the hopes of meeting that one person designed for him, and share everything, heart, soul, and blood.
He was already stronger than he cared to acknowledge, and patience had never been his forte. Besides, he was thirty-one. Like many before him, he was more than happy to go with option one: find someone to spend his life with. Find someone who wouldn’t be in his head constantly - someone who couldn’t control him. He might already have settled down if his damn tiger had been more compliant. But no, out of all the women he’d met, the stupid animal had to pick that one. The one who came with a warning label.
Still. That didn’t mean that the woman was his mate.
It didn’t. Most other feline shifters he knew were attracted to women left, right, and center. Their animals sometimes agreed with them, letting them form relationships, temporary or otherwise. Ace might have been the first that the grumpy tiger found fetching but it meant nothing.
Nothing at all.
His head snapped left as his nostrils took in a scent that shouldn’t already be so familiar. Wood, earth, spices, currently mixed with butter and honeycomb. There she was, behind the window of a pretty, elegant bakery, giving a frosted cupcake to a little girl. Then, she leaned over the counter and handed one to the human guy accompanying the child, along with her most open, dazzling smile.
He didn’t like that at all.
“Rye?”
“Go ahead,” he told Daunte. “Start packing. I’ve got to speak to her about the Vergas wolves.”
The Beta nodded and walked away; when Rye turned back, the customer and his daughter had also left the bakery, and Aisling was cleaning the counter. A tall, pretty woman in her twenties appeared from the back, and Ace gave her a few boxes, as well as a cupcake - a yellow one, this time.
He was staring like an idiotic creeper and he didn’t like it, so he shook his head, and walked in.
The instant he pushed the door open, the woman snarled and when she lifted her eyes to his, they were golden. Dangerous. Sexy as fuck. Take your pick.
“What are you doing here? I thought we’d agreed to stay away from each other.”
He could have pointed out that she’d been the first to ignore her own rule when she’d turned up at the auction, but he just replied, “The angry look doesn’t work on me, kitty cat. It just turns me on.”
She dropped the snarl and sighed, muttering, “Weirdo.”
He couldn’t deny that.
“So, you’re really into sweet things, aren’t you?”
While she had some savory rolls and breads on one side, the star of the show was her impressive display of cupcakes, mini pies and muffins.
She crossed her arms and mumbled defensively, “It sells. What are you doing here?”
“The smell led me here,” he said truthfully.
Only it was her scent rather than cupcakes that had forced his steps.
“Well, what can I tempt you with?”
He waggled an eyebrow, because if he wasn’t mistaken, that qualified as flirting.
“What’s on the menu?” Rygan shot back, his eyes fixed on hers.
The woman was going to be the death of him; he knew it for a fact when she took another cupcake and plunged her finger in the frosting. She lifted her finger to his mouth, saying, “Open.”
Rygan obeyed. He didn’t have any other choice.
Then, she brought the same finger to her own mouth and licked it clean, before sucking it for good measure.
Fucking. Hell.
“What do you say; a little too spicy for you?”
He was this close to jumping on the other side of the counter and throw her on his shoulder, but something told him that little show wasn’t seduction as much as a display of dominance. Glaring hadn’t worked, so she showed she was on top by manipulating him, instead.
“You don’t want to play that game with me, pretty girl,” he warned her, edging over the counter. “It’ll end with your ass reddened by my palm.”
“Aww,” she shot back, wit
h a condescending and adorable moue. “I didn’t know you were delusional. There’s a really good shrink in town, if you want the contact details.”
A bell rang and the door of her bakery opened; he didn’t have to turn to hear the three sets of heavy human footstep, or smell the overly flowery perfumes. Aisling’s gaze lost its amusement, and she regained a professional demeanor.
Rygan got the message; he wasn’t going to mess things up for her at work. Reluctantly, he took a step back.
“I’ll take a dozen cupcakes.”
“Which flavors?” she asked, shooting him a fucking infuriating forced, professional smile.
“Two of each.”
“Coming right up.”
She carefully placed the cakes in a beige box and wrapped it with a blue ribbon, before handing it to him.
“How much do I owe you?”
“It’s on Daunte’s tab,” she replied with a shrug.
Somehow that annoyed him.
“Not necessary. I can pay myself.”
She glared but replied, “eighteen dollars.”
“They’re two dollars each.”
She was giving him a discount? Did anything make sense about that woman?
“Twenty-four dollars then!”
She didn’t stamp her foot, but she visibly wanted to. Rygan smiled, ridiculously glad to be able to get under her skin.
He popped some money at the counter, leaving his card on top of it.
“Call me when you’re done here. I actually came on business.”
“Dammit, Ian, watch where you’re going,” Rye growled at the poor schmuck who was carrying a box so large he couldn’t physically see a thing.
Rygan knew he was being a dick, but he couldn’t help it. He was in a foul mood, no point denying it. Preparing to leave Aisling’s home felt…wrong. His tiger was roaring in protest, not letting him catch a break.
