Beast Within (Loup-Garou Series Book 3)

by Sheritta Bitikofer

  Katey’s chest ached as if Darren had shot her. “Why can’t Logan stay with me?”

  “Because Logan has been through an evacuation like this once before,” Darren replied. “He knows the routine as well as I do and Dustin is our beta. Ben is strong and can protect you if something happens. He has military training. They’re beginning the first wave of evacuations in a couple of hours, and we have to get ready.”

  Katey looked between them all, eyes begging for a reconsideration, but they all had turned their attention to the weapons and Darren as he began to brief them on the progress of the evacuations. Even Logan had turned his back to her to inspect an antique looking pistol with a revolving chamber.

  Their voices became like deadened rumbles in her ears as she let the idea sink in that Logan would not be with her. Even her wolf whined and whimpered for an alternative. She would have sooner gone with them on their mission rather than sit at home like a helpless child. Wasn’t this what she was born for? To protect and aid the loups-garous?

  Though she wasn’t sure what exactly she could do, Katey thought once she was in the situation, it would all come to her as if she were riding a bike for the first time in years. Trouble was, she didn’t know how to ride that bike. Apart from the mediation she did in the castle between the loups-garous and vampires, she knew nothing about what it took to protect her kind against a menace as serious as hunters, but she had to try. She needed to accompany the Devians, not Logan.

  “What if I lose you?” she whispered, staring vacantly at the rug in the middle of the living room, a numbness dominating her body in response to the overwhelming fear.

  Her words caught Logan’s attention and he rushed to Katey’s side to wrap his arms around her. “You won’t lose me,” he whispered back in her ear, his breath feathering her skin.

  Katey only gripped his shirt tighter, bunching it in her fists and refused to let go, her insides roiling with emotions she couldn’t begin to name, let alone control. “What if something happens to you?”

  “Nothing will happen to me,” he assured her.

  Katey felt tears gather at the corners of her eyes as she shook her head. “No, I need you here with me,” she demanded, calling on her wolf for strength. “I’ll go in your place. This is what I’m alive for, isn’t it?”

  Darren turned, and she felt an upsurge of power pulsate in the room. “You will do nothing, Katey. We can’t afford to lose you. We will look after Logan.”

  Katey lifted her quivering chin and met Darren’s glare. “How dangerous are the hunters? Don’t lie to me.”

  The alpha’s face softened, and he heaved a sigh. “I won’t lie. They have the ability to exterminate our kind. If you thought the vampires were advanced in their technology, the hunters are beyond experts in their field. They’ve had just as long to perfect their techniques as the vampires with twice the motivation. Some families have been hunters for generations, passing the craft down to their children to ensure that one day, we will no longer exist.”

  “The sooner we get the Devians out of here,” Logan added, “the sooner we can leave as well.”

  “Leave?” Katey said, muttering the word as if the idea was unthinkable.

  “You don’t suggest we stay in Crestucky when it could become the next Devia, do you?” Dustin asked as he leaned the pool stick into the crook of his elbow so his hand would be free to inspect the straight blade of a devilish looking dagger.

  “But, my school… What about Lily and Beth? What about – “

  “There’s no time to worry about lost friendships at a time like this,” Ben cut in. “The longer we stay here, the more likely the hunters will find us.”

  “We will not discuss this any further, Katey,” Darren ended before he turned back to the pile of weapons and holstered a gun or two on the belt he had donned a few moments earlier.

  Katey shot from her place on the couch and took a defensive stance against her pack. “I’m not leaving Crestucky!” she shouted.

  Everyone turned to her in alarm—all but Darren. His face went hard, intolerance written so clearly in his features that Katey couldn’t mistake it. She fought the urge to withdraw into submission to her alpha.

  For a second, she recalled how strange it was that she should want to defy him on this one thing so earnestly. A few months ago, she would have wanted nothing more than to leave Crestucky, but she had the new life she wanted so badly. Her pack and her friendships were even more valuable to her in the last few weeks than they ever had been before. Katey couldn’t fathom the idea of leaving all of it behind.

  “I said we will not discuss this further,” Darren growled, baring his teeth in a way Katey had seen before, but she had never been on the receiving end.

  “I say we will,” she barked, letting her golden wolf eyes glare back at her alpha.

  Katey watched as Darren’s shoulders tightened and hands curl into fists. His own golden eyes appeared, taking the place of the brown puppy eyes she admired so much. All warmth and gentility were gone from him.

  “You dare to challenge me at a time like this?” he snarled.

  Logan and Dustin dashed forward to stand between Katey and Darren. Logan took her by the shoulders and forced her back with little effort while Dustin simply stood close by to serve as a shield of flesh and muscle to intercept any blows.

  All went rigid as the two glared at one another, their first major confrontation since she moved under his roof. Everyone seemed ready to come out of their skin from the tension.

  Darren’s nostrils flared, his eyes fixed on Katey. “You will learn your place, Katey.”

  Katey took a bounding step forward, but Logan’s arm pulled her back. “I won’t leave Crestucky. I don’t want Logan going out there where he could get hurt. I am the chosen one to fulfill the prophecy. I should have a say in this.”

  Darren’s lips dipped into a deep frown. “You think just because you were born special, you have the right to defy my judgments? You’ve been spoiled for long enough, and you will do as I say. Logan will help in the evacuations, and as soon as we know every Devian is out of Crestucky, we will follow them as the rear guard. If the hunters move on, we will return in a few months, but no sooner.” Darren leaned closer. “Do I make myself clear?”

  Katey didn’t want to give into him. The air in the room was thick with the ire they had created, and Katey was still too sensitive to its negative energy. The wolf within her had little fight left after the outpouring of dominance from Darren’s wolf.

  She let her body relax, and eyes return to their normal green hue. Darren would not recover so easily, but turned away to continue assessing the weapons. The others did the same after ensuring Katey would not spring upon Darren unexpectedly or try to bring the subject up again.

  Logan gave her a tight squeezed, kissed her with a notable lack of passion and gave her a few more reassurances before joining the others in arming themselves for the task ahead. Even Ben was giving instructions on how to use certain weapons that were unfamiliar to Dustin and Logan.

  Katey returned to the sofa and sat down heavily, knowing there was nothing more she could do to change the course of events that would unfold. She eyed the weapons cagily for a few silent moments before asking, “Are you going to kill the hunters?”

  Darren glanced over his shoulder and she saw that his deep brown eyes had returned as the wolf in him had settled back down. “We will kill if they try to kill us first. We have never fired the first shot and never will.”

  From the gentle tones of his voice, Katey could sense the balance between them had returned to something resembling normal. Though, she couldn’t help but wonder if Darren’s sudden aggression had more to do with the circumstances than with Katey’s futile stab at mutiny. He had never been so quick-tempered before.

  “Until this is all over,” Darren announced, “everyone is going to drop off the map. Logan, you’ll be dropping out of school. Katey, I’m going to have you registered as away on a medical condition.
As for us, we will be gone on extended leave pending a notice of resignation to the school. No one is to have any contact with anyone outside of the Devians and other loups-garous.”

  No one contested or questioned his decisions this time and Katey kept her lips held tight, even though she wanted to oppose every bit of it. What about Beth? What would happen to Lily? Who would Katey talk to besides those of her own pack? What would she do with all of her spare time stuck in the house?

  As she watched them plan and examine weapons, Katey would have given anything to see the smiles return to their faces. This morning, they were oblivious to the presence of the hunters in their part of the state. This morning, everything was all right, and as far as she was concerned, they would stay that way.

  Now, as the ground beneath her perfect world began to crumble like parched earth on the edge of a precipice, Katey didn’t know what to think anymore. All she knew was that nothing would remain the same after this. There was no way to know if the hunters were out for blood, and no way to know whose blood they would spill first.

  Chapter Three

  Katey scowled at the wooden chess pieces, her upper lip curled in disgust. Ben had her trapped where if she moved one way, he would take her king, but if she moved another way, he would have her in check. This was the tenth round they had played since the day before, when the others left for their first evacuation trip with the Devians. Ben taught her the game in hopes she would be distracted. She wasn’t.

  The gnawing ache of loneliness and worry for Logan and the others still filled her gut like an acidic poison. Probably the reason she hadn’t won a single game yet was that Katey couldn’t stop thinking about her fiancé and all the ways their attempt to help the Devians could go disastrously wrong. Either that, or Ben had been honing his skills for the last century, and he was too good to beat.

  With her chin nestled in her stacked fists on the table, she glanced up to Ben through her lashes. He seemed amused – as he always did – whenever she realized there was no way to win.

  “Do you know where you made a mistake?” he asked as he folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair with a smug look of victory plastered on his face.

  “I agreed to play this stupid game,” she mumbled.

  Ben chuckled and pointed to the board. “You used your queen far too much and relied on her to protect the king when you should have positioned the other pieces to guard him.”

  “Is that some heavy-handed metaphor that I should let Dustin and Darren take care of Logan and stop worrying?”

  Ben grinned. “I didn’t mean to make it into a metaphor, but it certainly fits.”

  Katey sighed and tipped over her king to end the game. Ben laughed again and rose from the dinette table in the breakfast nook. “It’s close to lunchtime anyway. Let’s eat.”

  “I thought loups-garous were supposed to be geniuses,” she wisecracked as he walked into the adjoining kitchen.

  “We’re not geniuses. We just think faster than the average human. You still have to earn the skills.”

  Katey groaned and tilted her head so her forehead rested on her arms. It had only been a full twenty-four hours into the evacuation and Katey was bored out of her mind. Bored and scared. Every minute that ticked by felt like hours of agony while Logan was away. The house was cold and hauntingly empty while the men were on their mission. Darren called the evening before to report on their progress, but he only spoke to Ben and passed along no messages.

  She wasn’t sure whose decision it had been to stay the night away from the house during the evacuations. Perhaps it was necessary or an order from Jacob, but Katey hated it. If the days were long, the nights were even longer. She hadn’t been able to sleep that first night, and she dreaded the one to come as long as Logan was away. Each time she managed to drift off, images of loups-garous trapped in silver cages snapped her awake. Knowing Ben was close by did little to ease her troubled mind and heart.

  While Ben prepared two sandwiches of roast deer, Katey felt the unbearable dread consume her. Any word, even one spoken in hate, would have been better than this silence from Logan. How could she know he was alive? Was Ben trying to distract her because Darren had reported Logan to be wounded in an ambush by the hunters? Was Logan angry at her for trying to defy Darren yesterday morning? Had he met the daughter of a Devian loup-garou and become sucked into a whirlwind romance and had totally forgotten about Katey?

  The air in her lungs seized, and she wondered if she would ever breathe again.

  Katey whipped out her phone and punched out another hasty, pleading text to Logan. It was the fifteenth in a long string of unanswered messages since late last night. It was likely Darren had taken his phone away, or it had gotten smashed somehow, but Katey had to try and reach him, to remind him that she was still there waiting. Certainly, he could feel their bond just as deeply as she did, but what if he had blocked out such a nuisance so he could focus on his job or the pretty girl he escorted to safety?

  “That’s only going to make things worse,” Ben said from the kitchen.

  Katey finished the text, sent it, and tossed the phone onto the chess board, sending some of the playing pieces rolling across the glass tabletop or clambering to the floor. She could feel Ben’s disapproving eyes on her, but she didn’t care. This ordeal was nothing short of torture.

  “I just need to know he’s okay,” she said, fighting back the impulse to raise her voice in frustration.

  “I know. I understand how you feel, but sending him messages he won’t see for another few days will do no good.”

  Katey swiveled in her seat to face him, her hands wringing the ironwork back of the chair. “Why do you say that? What do you know about how I feel?” she countered.

  Ben gave her an apathetic glance and continued pouring their glasses of water. “Darren told me to keep Dustin and Logan’s phones in a safe place while they’re gone. Logan didn’t even know he was missing his phone until after they left the house.”

  Indignation boiled in Katey’s chest. “What right did Darren have to do that? What if we needed to get a hold of them?”

  Ben brought their sandwiches to the table, then went back to fetch the glasses. “He wants Logan to focus on the job, not spend every moment talking to you. He knew you two would feel this way about the separation.”

  He sat down heavily in his chair and began to pick up the scattered chess pieces. “And I know quite a lot about heartache. Much more than you do, anyway.”

  Katey wondered if this was a ploy to get her mind off Logan and the resentment she felt toward their alpha. It was a lure, tempting her to ask questions about what exactly he meant. Out of all the guys, Ben was the most cryptic. He hardly showed a flair of personality the way the others did. He was closed off from the world in nearly every way. Katey had read that in him from the very beginning when she listened to him lecture on the first day at school.

  He was closed off, yet comfortable with not belonging. She knew the least about him. He was always the last person to speak unless it was truly necessary. Katey often thought he was devoid of genuine emotion. All she knew of him was what he had told her that first day when she learned about the existence of loups-garous.

  Ben was a soldier in the Civil War, turned by Dustin on some battlefield. The decades between the time he parted ways with Dustin and when he reunited with the pack were a complete mystery. Not even Logan knew what the old soldier had been up to in those years. After he had joined the pack, he enlisted in the army and fought in nearly all the wars of the twentieth century.

  Katey hadn’t thought about it until just then, but Ben had probably seen some gruesome things in those wars. Perhaps his flat personality and seemingly calm exterior were the results of training himself to cope with the horrors of war and unspeakable violence. What about his early years? Was he a tender person? Was he sensitive? Did he have a family?

  Katey wanted to know, and at the risk of taking his bait, she asked, “What do you me
an?”

  Ben finished chewing what was in his mouth and then he turned to her with an indiscernible look.

  They locked eyes for an indeterminable amount of time before Katey raised her brows. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?” she said.

  One corner of Ben’s mouth slowly pulled up into a pleased smile. “I can, but how much should I tell you?”

  The sinister glint in his expression gave her pause. Were there things about his past that he kept hidden for a reason? What deep, dark secrets were lurking behind those amber eyes? Katey began to detest her curiosity. “Isn’t your job to take care of me?” she asked. “A long story will help me stay distracted from Logan and the idea that he could be dead in a ditch right now.” She took a bite of her sandwich to show Ben she wasn’t as nervous as she really was to know the truth.

  Ben snorted and leaned back in his chair. “Logan’s not dead. Darren assured me of that last night.”

  Katey felt the balloon of anxiety begin to deflate in her gut and she knew she would survive for another day. “Well, tell me the whole story, so I don’t have to play another game of chess with you.”

  Ben looked away, staring aimlessly into space. “Not even Dustin knows the whole story.”

  If Dustin, who was as close as a brother to Ben, didn’t know everything, Katey knew he wouldn’t dare to unfold his entire life story to her. Crestfallen, Katey continued to eat in silence while Ben kept his gaze fixed on a random spot on the opposite wall.

  Just when she was about to finish off her glass of water, Ben said, “I was born in Georgia in 1840 outside a town that’s probably not on the map anymore.”

  Katey set down her glass and folded her legs beneath her, eager to hear the rest, but keeping very still as if one wrong move would end the moment.

  “I had an older brother, and our family worked on a farm owned by a wealthy tradesman. We lived in a little cabin down in a valley by the farm, and our employer’s family lived in a mansion on the crest of the hill. They had a daughter named Abigail.” His throat worked as he spoke, but when he said the girl’s name, there was nothing but gentleness in his voice.