Piece of Tail: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance

by Milly Taiden

  Alastair shook his head. “Not everything, but we are about to rectify that.”

  “What are you really doing here, Alastair?” Her words were clipped. “Haven’t you hurt us enough?”

  “I’ve come to collect my claim, Becca. Surely you can’t deny that you and my brother Nick were mated? You wear his mark on your neck.”

  “Nick is dead, Alastair. He’s been dead for twelve years. Your family exacted your revenge on me and my family when you tried to push this same issue with my brother. Charlie threw you out on your ass then and I have every intention of doing the same now.”

  Alastair laughed and the sound was cruel. “With what army? Your males are either senior citizens or cubs. I saw to that when I last visited.”

  “You raided our homes and murdered our men.” Anger bubbling in her chest, she stalked toward him, shoving him back. “Get out before I shred you myself!” Heat skittered across Becca’s skin and a feral snarl left her throat as claws ripped through her fingertips. She lunged and one swipe left Alastair’s smug expression dripping blood.

  “You bitch!” Angry eyes flashed, but he held himself in check. With a snide set to his jaw, he ripped his sleeve from his shoulder and pressed it to his bloody cheek, his gaze a scheming, greedy flicker.

  Alastair slid his eyes to Lucilla as she pressed her fingers into the table. “Like you, I had hoped Becca would be willing to negotiate, but after this—” he lifted the bloody rag from his face. “Do you want to tell your Prowl Leader or should I?”

  The older woman’s eyes narrowed. “You bastard! That ruling is two hundred years old.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I claim it, nonetheless.”

  Becca pushed her cat down and sucked in a breath, her gaze flying between Alastair and Lucilla. “What are you two babbling about? What ruling?”

  “The Levirate. It’s sort of a right of first refusal,” the elder answered.

  Becca snorted. “If that means I have the right to be the first to refuse whatever bullshit this conniving murderer is trying to sell, then count me as a hell no!”

  Alastair’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll let you have your moment, Becca, but I will have what’s mine, and that includes you.”

  “This game is old, little boy. As far as I’m concerned, you’re still the sniveling ten-year-old that cried when he didn’t get his way. Get out, Alastair, while you still can. One phone call is all it will take to remove you from our territory permanently.”

  He chuckled. “If you mean your wolf and his pack, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume, Becca.” Alastair leaned back on the council table. “Who do you think contacted me about your pending alliance? Not everyone in the Deep Water pack is as thrilled with their Alpha mating a cat as you’d like to think.”

  Inhaling, Alastair’s smirk faded. “Why don’t you put your talented tongue to use and give yourself a bath? There’s nothing worse than a cat that stinks like the dog that had her.”

  Becca jumped to lunge again, but Lyssa held her.

  “My child—” a gravelly voice began, only to cut short in a serious cough.

  She forced her eyes from Alastair’s smug face to turn toward the oldest of their council. Jasper Crowe was frail and wheelchair bound, but his gaze was bright and full of knowledge. He was beloved and well respected and even Alastair straightened at the man’s soft but commanding voice.

  Becca poured the old man a glass of water and moved to place it in his gnarled fingers. “I’m sorry you had to witness my lapse in decorum, Jasper.”

  The timeworn elder shook his head, his eyes almost invisible inside the layers of wrinkles. “You are your mother’s daughter, Becca. Fire and ice and everything nice.” This time he coughed out a wheezy chuckle.

  “The Levirate is an old rule made when shifter clans were young and needed to breed,” he continued. “It is a rule that gives a man the right of first refusal in mating his brother’s widow. It is something I never thought to see again. You cannot fight this fight, my child. I wish you could, as much as I think your wolf would be the better choice for you…and for us.”

  Lucilla’s gaze snapped to the wheelchair-bound man. “Her wolf is the better choice? Why the sudden change of heart and mind, Jasper? After all these years?”

  Becca watched the interchange with a strange feeling she missed something unsaid between them.

  Jasper blinked at the woman, his milky gaze soft. “Sometimes old leopards can change their spots, my dear. Even if it takes fifty years.”

  Becca stared at them. “Lucilla, please. Who cares why Jasper changed his mind? It doesn’t change my choice.” She shifted her regard to the old man. “With all due respect, Jasper, I will fight this rule with everything I am. I will never acquiesce to mate the man who killed my brother!”

  Jasper shook his head. “Then it will be a blood challenge.”

  Becca’s eyes assessed Alastair, her mind running the odds in her head before turning back to Jasper. “And if I die in the fight, is it my right to name my successor?”

  Jasper’s mouth opened and he reached for her cheek. “No, my child. The blood challenge is not for you to fight.”

  Confused, she looked at him for an answer. “If not me, then who?”

  His old eyes found hers and he nodded. “Your wolf.”

  21

  “You smell even better than I remember,” Jaylon whispered, sweeping Becca into a one-armed hug on the train’s platform.

  “It’s been two days since we last saw each other, Jaylon. Not two years.” She kissed him with a smile, her insides singing that he was here and still hard at the sight of her.

  “Uhm, I’ve got us booked at a hotel in Burlington.” Becca stepped back from him to catch his reaction.

  “A hotel? Why?” He frowned.

  Becca winced inside. This was it. “I need to talk to you, and to be honest I have a sneaking suspicion you have something you need to say to me as well.”

  “That obvious?”

  She shrugged. “Well, we did say we would give it a week or so before springing each other on our respective clans.”

  “There is something we need to discuss, in fact, my father was supposed to come with me today, but he’s ill and I didn’t want him to make the trip.”

  “I’m sorry, Jaylon. Is it serious?”

  “Multiple Sclerosis. Shifters don’t usually get sick like that, but for some reason we’ve had a rash of auto immune maladies. Our doctors seem to think it has to do with living where we do. Long Island is as over-populated and full of toxins as the city.” He inhaled. “Certainly not like here.

  Becca tightened her arm in his. “This is nothing. Wait until we get to the Leap.”

  He chuckled. “You make it sound like you’re living off the grid or something.”

  She nodded. “Almost.”

  Jaylon followed Becca into the parking lot. “It looks like a used car lot for pickup trucks.”

  She gave him a soft laugh. “Country mouse, remember?”

  “Which monster vehicle is yours, then?”

  She pointed to a red Ford F-150 Lariat. Impressed, Jaylon nodded, tossing his overnight bag into the back cab, raising an eyebrow at the muddy tires and splatters along the truck’s sides.

  “Off-roading much?” he asked with a brow raised.

  She looked at him and laughed. “I told you. It’s a two-hour drive through rough terrain just to get here. You’ll get used to it.” The words “I hope” were her silent prayer.

  Jaylon climbed into the high cab and watched Becca do the same on the driver’s side.

  “What?” she asked, a little self-conscious at his stare.

  He chuckled as she strapped in and moved the seat all the way up. “You look like a little girl sitting in her daddy’s truck.”

  She fixed her shirt, adjusting the seatbelt between her breasts. “Yeah, well, little girls don’t have my boobs and big butt getting in the way.”

  He leaned over, pulling her close for a hungry kiss. “They can get
in my way any time.”

  She closed her eyes. Please God, don’t let him hate me.

  Becca started the truck and pulled out of the station to head the thirty minutes to town. They drove in relative silence until she turned into the parking lot of a quaint Bed and Breakfast in the town’s historic district. Pulling around to the back lot, she turned into a space and cut the engine.

  “I’ve already checked us in, so we can head straight upstairs. No waiting.” She gave him a close-lipped smile.

  Getting out of the car, Jaylon looked at the Victorian structure. “Beautiful. Like something from a movie.” He pulled his bag from the backseat and closed the door, looking at Becca as she waited for him on the brick path, room key in hand.

  “You ever get the feeling this is more like an illicit affair than the beginning of a legitimate relationship?” he said, falling into step beside her.

  She laughed. “Why? Because we’ve known each other for a week and this is our second hotel in as much time?”

  “Yup.”

  Becca handed him his key and then swiped hers through the outside door. “We’re on the top floor.”

  At their room, Becca snapped on the light, gesturing for Jaylon to put his bag on the suitcase rack next to the closet.

  Sliding his duffel into place, he turned with his hands in his pockets. “What’s this all about, Bec? We could’ve talked about whatever we need to hash out on the two-hour ride to your place.”

  He looked around the pretty room with all its period touches. “Don’t get me wrong. This place is nice, but totally unnecessary. Unless, of course, you couldn’t wait to get me in the sack.”

  As much as she wanted to let Jaylon think she booked the room to jump his bones, that wasn’t the case. If anything, that would be a fringe benefit, and only then if things went the way she hoped.

  She met his teasing smile. “That thought did cross my mind, but no. I really need to talk to you and thought this was a better option than back at my Leap. It lends a level of privacy we wouldn’t have in Pineland, plus it’s close to the train in case you decide not to come back with me.”

  Jaylon took his hands from his pockets and slipped them onto Becca’s shoulders. “Why on Earth would I want to do that?”

  She sunk onto the end of the queen bed and motioned for him to do the same. “Because of this.”

  Holding up a hand for him not to interrupt, she swept her long hair up into a knot at the top of her head and then slipped her fingers to the nape of her neck, leaving them there.

  It didn’t take Jay long to realize what she was trying to tell him. “It’s true, then,” he murmured almost to himself.

  Becca’s eyes widened and her hand dropped from her neck. “You knew?”

  He shook his head. “No, not until I got back to Montauk.

  Dumbfounded, she blinked, but before she could ask how, her eyes went even wider. “Oh my God. Now it makes sense.”

  He looked at her, questioning. “What does?”

  Wrapping his hand in hers, her eyes searched his. “There’s someone working against us, Jaylon, and I need to set the record straight. I have to tell you the whole story. Not bits and pieces like I did before, and not the slanted facts I’m sure you were fed. I should have told you everything back at the Plaza, but I honestly didn’t think it mattered.”

  “Becca, stop hedging and just tell me.”

  22

  Becca bit her lip. “You mentioned your pack wanted a scenting ceremony. Do you know much about how a rite like that is run?”

  He shrugged. “Only what I’ve read in our history over the years.”

  “A scenting ceremony can be a weeklong event, at least for us, and it ends with intended couples mating.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “That sounds pretty exhibitionist if you ask me.”

  She had to laugh. “They don’t do the physical act in front of the crowd. It’s a private affair that ends with the female being claimed with a mark at the nape of her neck.”

  “And?”

  “Like you already guessed, I have such a mark. Technically, I was mated to a cougar. Nick Reece. His clan was from the same area in the Rockies where my Leap originated.”

  “Was this an arranged mating?”

  She shook her head. “Far from it. The scenting ceremony had been planned for months and Nick’s pride, Wind River, was one of many invited. There were at least two dozen males and females circling each other like sharks in heat. Nick was a participant in the ceremony.”

  “And you?” he prompted.

  She shook her head. “I was too young. I was barely eighteen and since I wasn’t of age by the cutoff date, my father told me I had to wait for the following year.

  “Nick ignored the other females, setting his sights on me. I suppose I got caught up in the attention.” She looked at Jaylon, her mouth suddenly dry. “I got in over my head. It was stupid and adolescent, but that’s what I was—a stupid teenager.

  “Nick kept the mind games going,” she continued. “Telling me we belonged together, that not only was I his, but my inheritance was his as well. It didn’t seem real. It was fun at first, intoxicating even, until that moment. I tried to shrug it off, telling him I wanted to go back to the gathering, but like a wild cat he held me and marked me as his, knowing that in the eyes of everyone at the ceremony we were as good as mated.”

  Jay balked. “Regardless of your choice in the matter?”

  Becca nodded, scrubbing her eyes. “Nick bound me to him against my will. I had no idea this was what he planned all along. I was his ticket to land and power. He had no standing in his Pride other than he was young, strong and good-looking.

  “By that point, my father noticed I was missing and executed a search. A storm had blown in from the beaches south of us. I remember the wind and rain were furious. I had never seen lightning like that.

  “I got away and ran farther into the woods thinking I could hide, but Nick caught me just as my father rounded the trees to where we were. The two fought, and it was as if my dad’s anger brought down the heavens. Lightning struck, splitting the tree behind my dad. It burst into flame and fell, crushing both my father and Nick.

  “The fire spread like quicksilver and I was lucky to get out alive. The next morning, searchers found them both and I’ve lived with the guilt ever since.”

  Jaylon’s shoulders bunched as his fists clenched at his sides. Anger rose in a feral snarl and his t-shirt strained, tearing across the back.

  “What are you doing?”

  Jay sucked in steadying breaths. “If he wasn’t already dead, I’d kill him. The bastard marked you against your will.”

  “Yes,” she answered, her voice edged with guilt. “I guess being naïve made me easy prey.”

  “Of all the cowardly, despicable, underhanded things, this is one of the worst things for one shifter to do against another. Even as far removed as we are, my pack would never consciously accept this sort of act.”

  Becca got up from the end of the bed and went to him. She hesitated before putting her hand on his tense back, unsure of how he would react.

  Jay would never hurt her. Of that she was sure. But would he reject her now that he knew her history? That she didn’t know and it scared her silly.

  “See why I got the hotel so close to the train?” she said with a half-hearted chuckle.

  He froze, but not because she touched him. “You think I would turn you out that easily?”

  She leaned against his back, slipping her hands around his waist. “Certain members of my Leap would. In their eyes, I’m damaged goods.”

  His fists clenched again and he turned so they were face to face. “Never say that. Never think it. Ever. Whoever made you feel that small is an ass. You were a kid. You made a stupid error in judgment. Half the teens in my pack have done as bad.”

  She shrugged. “Your teens don’t have an archaic council hanging over them like a steel fist.”

  He took her in his arms and held her
tightly. “Well, now you have my steel fist to hit back.”

  Her eyes searched his. “You’re staying?”

  Laughing softly, he slipped two fingers under her chin. “How can you honestly ask me that?”

  She shrugged again. “Easy. A week, Jaylon. That’s all we’ve got between us.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not all we have between us. I know you’re mine, Becca. I feel it in my bones. In my very skin. My wolf wants you and only you. For the first time in my life, my dual natures agree.” He kissed her nose. “How can I deny that? Shifters aren’t like humans. You know that better than anyone. Our instincts know when our mates find us. It’s why you ran from Nick Reece all those years ago. What you felt was physical. Adolescent wild oats. We’ve all done the same, Bec.

  “Humans may have trouble separating sex and love, but our animals certainly can. It’s why after only a week, you live in my very skin, a part of my being.”

  She flung her arms around him. “Thank God, because I feel the exact same way. My cat won’t leave me alone. Her damn purring is keeping me up at night. I’ve got luggage under my eyes!”

  He chuckled. “Your eyes are beautiful, now if you would just get rid of the worry, we’d be golden.” Kissing her nose again, he gave her a soft grin. “Is that everything you needed to tell me?”

  She pressed her face into his chest, “Unfortunately, no. There’s more.” With a shiver, she pulled away and took a steadying breath.

  “Nick had a younger brother. His name is Alastair. At the time, he was about ten years old. He worshiped Nick, even though his older brother ditched him every chance he got. When they carried Nick’s body out of the woods, Alastair lost it. He blamed me and swore he would make me pay for killing his brother.

  “The boy waited, biding his time. Two years ago, Alastair showed up at the Leap and demanded my brother hand me over as retribution. Charlie laughed at him, and of course, refused. However, Alastair came prepared. He pretended to leave with his tail between his legs, but it was a lie. He and his friends raided our camp later that night. He killed my brother, but Alastair didn’t get what he came for.”