by Amelia Jade
“True,” he agreed. “But I haven’t really given you guys a fair shake.” He saw all the other occupants tense at the sudden bluntness, but nobody spoke up. “I’ve been rather standoffish and a bit of a dick.”
He noticed Cole open his mouth to speak, but he cut him off. “I’ve had my moments where that hasn’t been true,” he said, addressing the truck as a whole but speaking to Cole in particular. When the smaller shifter had been going through some troubles earlier, Corey had reached out to him, but that had been a one-time thing. “In general,” he continued, “I’ve been rather aloof.” He took a deep breath. “I want to try and change that.”
The only sound was the truck engine as Russell guided them along the snow-covered road.
“As you know, I was assigned to the Jade Crew, but I wasn’t part of either of the two Crews that were merged to form it.”
There were nods; most of them knew that.
“What you probably don’t know is that I was in another crew. I wasn’t new to the Valley.”
That held their attention. A few of them had been around for a while, and most of the shifters tended to know each other.
“I kept a very low profile, but I used to be the second for the Diamond Crew,” he said, at last admitting what he’d been hiding for so long.
There was muted astonishment, but no outcry, which was appreciated.
“I was kicked out, and forced to join a new crew.”
“You were kicked out of the Diamonds?” Joel asked, astonished.
Corey laughed, entertained by the look of disbelief on the others face.
Damn, that feels good, being able to laugh at it all.
“And how,” he drawled sarcastically, drawing some chuckles from the others. “I’ll tell you all about it inside,” he said as they came within a few minutes of the bar. “I don’t want to tell the story twice.”
***
“They kicked you out?” Garrett asked as the first part of the story was relayed to him.
His truck had arrived first and he already had a seat. Corey had offered to get a tray of beers while the others filled the Alpha in. Now, as Corey sat down, the Alpha was keenly interested.
“They did,” he admitted. “Then Damien swore me to secrecy so as not to ruin the image the Diamonds had cultivated both amongst the shifters and Origin as a whole.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “Why are you telling us this now? We’ve been a crew for seven months. What changed?”
“I did,” he said.
“You did?”
“Well, I mean, Jenny called me out on the way I was acting. That may have had a little something to do with it,” he said, attempting to make light of the situation.
To his surprise, the others looked at him with a split second of shock before all the mated couples burst out laughing, women and shifters alike.
Joel just looked confused. He almost took pity on the sole remaining single shifter, but he didn’t.
The sole remaining shifter among us, you mean.
He winced internally at the correction. There was another single shifter in the Jade Crew, but he was rarely thought of these days. Evan Mosier had been caught helping those who sided with their mysterious enemy, the person or persons responsible for repeated attacks on the shifters of Genesis Valley. He was currently sitting in a highly secure prison at the LMC headquarters, along with several other shifters who had been imprisoned instead of ended.
“So why did they kick you out?” Darren asked as the laughter faded.
Here goes nothing. He took a deep breath. “I disagreed with the elitist attitude that was forming within them, about how much better they were than the other shifters. It was getting on the verge of extremism.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “How extreme?”
Corey looked around as the focus on him suddenly ratcheted up several notches. “It was bad.”
“To the point where they might, oh I don’t know, align themselves with a group that thinks that only a certain species should reign? That all others who refuse to bow to their demands should be cleansed?”
Corey’s jaw dropped. He hadn’t considered that angle before. “Holy shit. How did I not see that before?” he slapped his forehead with the butt of his palm, before looking up at his Alpha. “That’s exactly it. It has to be.” His eyes flicked down as he recalled some of the things Travis had been saying in the texts. “That would explain so much,” he whispered, sitting back into his chair in shock.
He took a sip of his beer, trying to calm himself. Running his fingers through his hair he looked up at the faces around him, all of which were looking at him with concern. He focused on Garrett.
“I wouldn’t put it past them. Holy shit,” he cursed, still shaking his head. “How could I have been so blind?” he asked plaintively.
“What do you mean?” Garrett asked softly.
He pulled out his phone. “One of my old ‘friends’ has been texting me lately, probing me for information on you. Us.” He corrected himself quickly, hoping to include himself in the group.
There was no way he would consider going back to the Diamonds now. He had been resigned to just ignoring the attitudes if he went back, but if they actually were aligning themselves with this “True Form” like Garrett seemed to think, then that was no longer an option. Anger rose up from within him as he realized that Travis had just been using him.
He snarled, unlocking his phone and preparing to tell him off.
“Wait, what are you doing?” Russell said, intervening.
“I was going to tell him to go fuck himself,” Corey growled, angry at himself and at the Diamond Crew, not Russell.
Garrett exchanged a glance with Russell and with Darren. “Why don’t you hold off on that,” he suggested. “Maybe we can use this to our advantage.”
Corey looked back and forth at the others. This was all moving so fast. One moment he had just been trying to open up and truly talk to his crew, to give them a glimpse of who he was. Now they were on a mission to deal with the Diamond Crew by the sound of it.
“I need another beer,” he announced, and promptly removed himself from the conversation. He approached Ferro. This was actually the first time he had been in the bar since reading his note, and he wasn’t sure what to say. Garrett had forbidden them from doing anything until Gabriel informed them of what Marcus had said, and as far as Corey knew, that was still at a standstill.
That didn’t prevent the bartender from having a beer ready for him as he approached. He decided to try and probe a little, by referencing what they had talked about when he slipped him the note.
“Thanks,” he said gruffly as he snagged the beer. “Sorry I didn’t pay off the tab last time like I said I would.” He thought wildly, trying to tell Ferro that none of them knew what the message meant.
“I know you’re good for it,” the shifter replied, much to Corey’s surprise.
It wasn’t the content of the reply that surprised him. The Jade Crew always paid their tab, even if they went several weeks between settling up. Ferro always kept it sorted and fair. No, it was the fact that he spoke. It always seemed to catch him off guard, since it rarely happened.
“What’s going on over there?” Ferro asked, briefly looking past Corey at where the rest of the Jade Crew were currently hunched over, discussing things amongst themselves.
Corey fought hard to keep his eyebrows from narrowing as the reclusive dragon shifter not only spoke again, but actually asked him a question. There had to be a meaning behind that. But what?
“Ever had a friend who turns out wasn’t actually a friend in the long run?” he asked, irritation rising as he felt embarrassed about how easily Travis had been manipulating him.
As if the Diamonds actually wanted me back.
Ferro stared hard at Corey, then back at the Jade Crew. Then he nodded once and spoke. “Don’t forget about that tab now,” he said and moved away.
What the hell? Why would Ferro suddenly jump top
ics again, referencing the note he gave me?
He was trying to say something, to tell Corey that something about that was important. Then it clicked. For the second time that evening, Corey’s jaw wanted to hit the floor. His eyes tried to stray past Ferro to the other man seated at the bar. He fought down that instinctive urge with every fiber in his body, forcing them downward to look idly at his beer before taking another long sip.
“Is there any rush on the tab?” he asked Ferro, trying to keep his voice gruff and angry like it had been before.
“Not really,” Ferro replied immediately. “There are a few things I’d like to do with it, but it can probably wait a bit. If you can pay up within two weeks, that would be good.”
Corey nodded, raised his beer to the bartender and moved back toward the Jade Crew, his blood singing with excitement. He had figured it out!
But what did he do now? He still didn’t know what was going on. He just knew who Ferro’s note had been about. First things first, he had to tell Garrett. Somehow. Without making it look suspicious.
The Alpha had other ideas, however, speaking up before he even sat down.
“Do you think you could lure the Diamonds out from their home so that we could confront them, find out what’s going on?” The Alpha was intent and focused.
Corey thought about it. “Maybe. What do you have planned?” he asked suspiciously. “I’m not overly comfortable with the idea of doing to them the exact thing they may have wanted me to do to you.” He shrugged. “Even if they are using me, this is the same thing.”
“We’re not going to do anything,” Garrett assured him. “We just want to be able to talk to them openly, on neutral ground, where they don’t have any sort of territorial or force advantage over us in case things do go south.”
Corey sat forward, resting his arms on the armrests of the leather chair. “I’ll see what I can do. But we may have bigger problems.”
“What do you mean?” Russell asked, jumping back into the conversation, having been doing nothing but listening until then.
“There’s something else going on, regarding to that note I told you about.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed. “I thought I told you not to do anything with that.”
“I didn’t,” Corey said, holding up his hands. “Not really, at least. I just mentioned the topic we had been discussing when I received the note. Through what was said, I think I have an idea of who, although definitely not a what. But from what I understand, we have less than two weeks to solve this thing with the Diamonds and prepare.”
“Prepare for what?” Garrett asked slowly.
“Something big. Perhaps the big one. Let’s go back to the lodge. I’ll fill you all in there,” he said, draining the last of his beer.
Without objection the others finished up their drinks and made to follow him. There was no hesitation, no complaints. Just simple knowledge that they should trust him. It was the first time Corey had felt something like that with them.
He liked it.
Chapter Ten
Jenny
“Wait wait wait. Slow down!” she told him. “I’m not as up to date on all this as you are. So much of this is brand new to me. You’re confusing me.
Corey stopped talking and took a deep breath, exhaled, and then resumed speaking—this time at a much slower, sedate pace.
“Okay, so you understand that someone is attacking the shifters of the valley, the miners in particular.”
She nodded. That much she had understood when Corey began to explain his crazy plan.
“We don’t know who it is. But it has to be someone powerful, because they’ve managed to neutralize not only the Kedyn brothers, who are powerful shifters on their own, but also Ferro, who is a dragon shifter.”
“Right,” she said, nodding as they drove through town toward her place. She wasn’t supposed to know that Ferro was a dragon shifter, but Corey had let it slip by accident, and she had promised never to tell anyone. Corey, it seemed, was willing to believe her word.
“Well, a few days back I asked Ferro randomly if everything was okay. He reacted strangely, leading me to believe that not everything was. As it turns out, I don’t think anyone had ever actually flat-out asked him that question. I hadn’t meant it in terms of the conflict, but more in terms of his everyday life.” Corey was very animated behind the wheel, and it sounded like they had made a major discovery. She was just trying to piece it together. His first version had been rather… haphazard, to say the least.
“I’m with you so far,” she said. “Then there was a note or something, right?”
Corey hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “Exactly! He slipped it to me one day, and I, being the idiot I am, went and tried to get drunk and forgot about it until recently. It said ‘Sometimes things are not as they seem.’”
“What does that mean?” she asked aloud. “That could mean so many different things. Why is it so cryptic?”
“I never did understand that,” Corey admitted. “But I was talking to him last night. When I mentioned how Travis had been using me and asked if he understood that, he looked at me hard, said yes, and then said ‘Don’t forget about my bar tab,’ changing subjects right away.”
Jenny looked at him blankly. “And that’s cause to get excited…why?”
Corey sighed and leaned over, carefully keeping his eyes on the road, and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry, there’s so much to tell I’m leaving parts out without meaning to.”
“Well you’d best start filling them in, mister,” she admonished him with a violent wag of her finger.
“Yes mistress,” he teased. “When Ferro first handed me the note, he referenced my tab. It became kind of a code word, I guess, for the note. So when he referenced it right after I mentioned having a ‘friend’ who isn’t really a friend, he means that’s what the note was referencing!”
Jenny frowned. “Okay, I follow that logic now. But—”
“He’s referring to Luthor!” Corey all but shouted. “This mysterious person who showed up, who we all assumed was his friend, really isn’t! He’s using Ferro somehow, manipulating him into staying neutral.”
“So what do we do about it?” Jenny asked as comprehension dawned on her. She vaguely remembered hearing that name before.
“Nothing. Yet,” Corey said firmly. “I asked Ferro if there was a rush on paying off the tab, and he said he’d need it within two weeks. So whatever is going on there, we have two weeks to figure it out. In the meantime, we have to deal with the problem we already have.”
“The Diamond Crew,” she said bluntly. Jenny knew that much already. Corey had told her about their plan to lure them out into the open, where Corey would pretend to want to rejoin them in exchange for whatever it was they wanted him to do. There, the combined might of the Emerald and Jade Crews would be present while they grilled the Alpha, Michael.
“Are you sure that everything is going to work out that way?” she asked. “I mean, dragon shifters sound like a pretty big deal. Shouldn’t you deal with that first? To get his help?”
Corey took his eyes off the road for a moment to look over at her. “Your logic is sound, but there’s one flaw in it. Not that you would be expected to know it yet.”
“And what’s that?” she asked, curious to know more.
“Ferro is a dragon shifter. Typically dragons are only friends with a certain type of people,” he explained.
All of a sudden Jenny got it. “Other dragons,” she breathed slowly. “And dragons are bad news, yes?”
Corey snorted softly. “That’s putting it mildly. Ferro could wipe the floor with the entire Jade Crew without breaking a sweat if he chose to. So, if Luthor is a dragon shifter, we need to move carefully.”
She frowned. “You don’t know if he is? I thought you could smell them? Scent their animal or whatever?”
Corey returned her unhappy and somewhat confused look. “Normally you’re correct, we can. But with Luthor, we can’
t.”
“So he’s human then,” she said emphatically.
Her mate—she was still getting used to thinking of him as such, but there was no point in denying it now—shook his head. “No, that’s just it. He doesn’t have a scent. At all. Nothing. Not human, not shifter, nothing.”
“What does that mean?” Jenny was trying to keep track of everything going on, but it was hard, and the more Corey revealed to her, the more she felt overwhelmed by it all.
“I wish I knew,” Corey said softly. “I wish I knew.”
***
She hated this. Corey had dropped her off at home, refusing to have her anywhere near the coming confrontation. Jenny knew she wouldn’t be of much help in a fight between bear shifters, but she hated feeling helpless. She had needed to do something productive.
That’s why Jenny was now making her way over to her mother’s house, likely in another misguided attempt to reconcile things with her family. It irritated her that she had to make the effort every time. Her mother hadn’t shown a single sign of remorse since their fight, which hurt Jenny far more than she was willing to admit, even to Corey.
Her phone began to ring the moment she got onto the street. She ignored it though as a feeling of dread settled over her. Her mother lived in a small two-story house built nearly half a century earlier. Although her father was no longer in the picture, her mother had managed to keep up with the place, maintaining it as immaculately as possible.
As Jenny pulled to a stop, she felt her arms shaking. Surveying the property she noted the debris in the yard, the smashed white picket fence, the front door that was rocking from its hinges and smashed windows. It all came to her in a sort of detached manner, as if she couldn’t truly believe what she was seeing. Her hand strayed toward the door handle, but another thought occurred to her before she exited the vehicle.
Without taking her eyes off the outside of the SUV, she grabbed her phone from the console and took a glance at who had been calling her. The phone blinked the name: Corey Baleski. Trembling, she hit the redial button and held the phone to her ear, continuing to keep aware in case whoever had ransacked the house was still around.
