by Kim Fox
Contents
Copyright
About
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Bonus Chapter
More Books by Kim Fox
The Wilde Crew:
Rhett
The Shifters of Wilde Ranch Book One
By KIM FOX
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Contains explicit love scenes and adult language.
18+
www.AuthorKimFox.com
Copyright © 2016 by Kim Fox
Skin Shifter, Rhett Jones, is the new shifter cop in Colwood, Montana. His first day on the job has him going toe to paw with a truly dominant grizzly bear shifter and the beautiful girl who is desperately trying to keep the fierce animal under control. He thought the bear was tough but she was nothing compared to the feisty girl hiding inside.
Bear shifter, Joan Heller, is just trying to find a new home but her out of control grizzly bear is ruining everything once again. She’s one phase away from being kicked out of town until she meets up with the sexy cop with the entourage of ravens who offers his help and his home to her.
Things get wild when the Wilde Crew get thrown into the mix and threaten to make the unstable situation explode. Will the new boys in town be the new family that Rhett and Joan need? Or will they be the detonator that blows everything to pieces?
one
“Where are all of these fucking birds coming from?” Mitchell asked, looking around the used car lot with his hands on his hips and a frown on his face.
“I don’t know, boss,” Rhett said, rubbing his black goatee as he cringed. There were dozens of ravens sitting on the roofs, fenders, hoods and trunks of the cars for sale.
“They’re everywhere!” he said, running at a car and throwing his hands in the air like a crazy person. The three black ravens sitting on the roof of a used Mazda Six burst into the sky, flapping their wings and cawing angrily at him.
Mitchell grunted in frustration as he pulled out his handkerchief and wiped away a streak of shit that one of the birds left on the windshield.
Rhett just watched with his heart pounding. He could not afford to lose this job, but what had he been thinking when he applied for a job as a salesman in a used car shop? Of course his feathered friends would have followed him here every day and made his life a living hell. They had been doing it for over a decade.
“And you don’t know anything about this?” Mitchell asked, turning back to Rhett. His boss crossed his arms over his cheap five dollar tie as he narrowed his eyes at him. “Because we never had this problem before you started working here.”
Rhett just shrugged.
“And they seem to come to my shop when you arrive for work,” Mitchell said, eying him. “And they always seem to leave when you do.”
“That’s strange,” Rhett said, running his hand through his dark black hair. “I’ve never noticed.”
“Oh, really?” Mitchell said, stepping closer with heated eyes.
Rhett swallowed hard as he dropped his eyes to the pavement. There was bird shit on Mitchell’s shiny shoe. Maybe now wasn’t the best time to bring it up.
“Something is going on with you,” he said, leaning in close. Rhett cringed at the stale smell of his coffee breath. “And I’m going to find out what it is.”
No, you won’t. Because I’ll never tell.
Rhett knew exactly why the birds were following him. It was the same reason why his entourage of fifty or so birds followed him everywhere.
He was a skin shifter.
“We open in ten minutes,” Mitchell said, looking exasperated. “Wash them again.”
“Yes, sir,” Rhett said as his boss stormed inside. He sighed as he got the hose and bucket for the twentieth time this week. He squirted some of the soap into the bucket and shook his head as he filled it with water.
It was hard starting back at the bottom after where he had come from. Rhett was second in charge back in the skin shifter community of Creston Falls. He was someone important, someone that people looked up to and listened to. That was until Jacob went on a power trip and fucked it all up.
“Oh, how the mighty have fallen,” he muttered to himself as he dunked his rag into the soapy bucket. He carried it over to the cars on display that he had cleaned over and over again.
“It would really help me out if you guys hang out across the street,” he said to the dozens of ravens watching him. They were standing on every car that was for sale in the lot, tilting their infuriating heads as they watched him, always cawing, never leaving him alone.
Rhett was a skin shifter. Rarer and more powerful than regular shifters, skin shifters had no animals living inside them. What made them special was that they could slide their energy into other animals and control them, in a process that they called channeling.
But if a skin shifter spent too much time in the skin of an animal, as Rhett knew painfully well, their energy patterns would become synced and the animal would become so attached to the skin shifter that they would link-up, and follow them around for the rest of their days.
It was very common to see skin shifters walking around with a linked-up animal. Even his cousin Tyler, the skin shifter in the Clawed Squad, had a wolf that he linked-up to. She was never far from his side.
“Fucking birds,” Rhett said as he sprayed the hose, aiming for the birds who tormented him every day. They exploded into the air in a fury of angry caws. He grinned as he pointed the hose into the sky, soaking them in a watery vengeance.
Rhett would have given anything to trade these annoying birds in for a cool wolf like Tyler had but he was stuck with them. When a skin shifter spent too long in the skin of an animal who was in a flock or a herd, it wasn’t just the animal that the skin shifter was channeling who would link-up to them, it would be the whole flock.
Those animals’ energies were linked and if a skin shifter linked-up to one, they would link-up to the entire group of animals.
That’s what happened to Rhett. He was channeling a raven as a teenager and accidentally spent too long in the bird’s skin. He had linked-up with the bird and as a consequence, linked-up to the entire flock. The fifty or so birds had been following him ever since, for the past fifteen years.
I have to get a new job.
How many times could he wash bird shit off of these c
ars? He was going to wipe off the paint pretty soon with all of that scrubbing.
And it wasn’t just the bird shit causing him problems. He hadn’t sold one car in the three weeks that he’d been there. Any customers that did come, left all freaked out when they saw an army of black ravens on the cars. They looked like a bad omen, rather than the annoying nuisances that they actually were.
He plunged a sponge into the cold water and cursed as he slapped it onto the hood. Ten minutes later he was done. One down, twenty-eight to go.
A large raven landed on the hood of the clean car and stared at him. “Don’t you dare,” Rhett said, raising the sponge in the air in a threatening manner. “Don’t do it.”
The raven tilted his head as he watched Rhett. He jiggled his dark wings and then let out a white, watery shit on the shiny hood.
“Fuck you, bird,” he yelled as he threw the sponge at the raven. The bird jumped out of the way and the soapy sponge smashed onto the spotless windshield behind him.
Rhett dropped his head as he exhaled in defeat.
Someone cleared their throat behind him and Rhett whipped his head around. Mitchell was standing there with a young couple who looked horrified as they watched the strange scene.
“We’re leaving,” the woman said with a disgusted look on her face. “I’m not giving my business to anyone who throws things at birds.”
Rhett sighed as they stormed out of the dealership. If that woman had been through what those birds had put Rhett through, she would have strangled each one of them with her bare hands.
Mitchell didn’t look too happy. “Rhett,” he said with a drop of his shoulders, “we have to talk.”
***
“I can’t believe you got fired,” Nathan said, laughing as he cracked open a beer.
“I can’t believe he lasted this long,” Emry said as he plopped down on the ripped up sofa beside Rhett.
“You two shouldn’t laugh,” Rhett shot back, glaring at Nathan. “You got fired too.”
“Yeah,” the huge skin shifter said with a shrug. “But that wasn’t my fault. They hired me to fight. I fought. And they fired me.”
“You were a bouncer,” Rhett said, shaking his head. “They hired you to break up fights, not start them.”
Nathan had picked a fight with the biggest and baddest member of the Clawed Squad, a polar bear shifter named Stetson. Rhett was there for the fight. Nathan had got a couple shots off on the big guy but then Stetson threw him through a window. And that was the end of that.
“You still owe me for that window by the way,” Rhett said, taking a long gulp of his beer.
“Put it on my tab,” Nathan said with a smile. He sat down on the broken lazy boy that they had picked up off of the side of the road. One of the arms was ripped off and the other had springs sticking out. It looked like the previous owner’s cat had gotten to it, if the cat was a full grown tiger.
“We have to get our shit together,” Rhett said, looking around the trashed house that they were renting. The kitchen counter was full of empty beer bottles with old dishes piled up in the sink. The fridge was empty except for a bottle of mustard and a dead possum that was in there for some reason. Rhett didn’t want to ask.
The three of them had arrived at the charming little town of Colwood, Montana with nothing but a few dollars in their pockets. It had been some rough times since the three of them got excommunicated from the skin shifter community of Creston Falls and it wasn’t looking like it was about to get easier anytime soon.
“Did either of you pay the rent?” Rhett asked, sighing as he emptied his beer.
Nathan and Emry both looked up at the water stained ceiling, the cracked tiles of the floor, the peeling wallpaper on the walls, anywhere but at Rhett.
Rhett sighed. Why do I have to take care of everything?
Of all the people that Rhett could have hitched his wagon to, the two Chevy brothers, Nathan and Emry, were probably the worst choices.
“When are you getting paid?” Rhett asked, turning to Emry. The younger, better-looking brother bit his bottom lip.
“About that,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“No,” Rhett said, dropping his head forward. “What happened?”
“I got fired,” Emry said with a shrug. “But it wasn’t my fault.”
“What happened?” Rhett repeated with more force this time.
Emry sighed. “My boss is a drama queen,” he said, his voice racing. “I got in one little altercation with a customer and he freaked out.”
Emry had gotten a job as a waiter in the small diner in town. It was a decent job and it helped keep the lights on. Shit! The electrical bill is overdue.
“What kind of altercation?” Rhett asked, not really wanting to know.
Nathan chuckled, his huge shoulders shaking.
“Shut up, Nathan,” Emry spat out at his older brother. “You’re no better. I served a guy a bowl of soup and he was being a total dick, complaining that it was cold, so I took care of it.”
“You took care of it?” Rhett asked, narrowing his eyes on him.
“He slammed the guy’s head into the bowl of soup,” Nathan said, laughing. “He wanted clam chowder but he got slam chowder instead.”
“Great,” Rhett said, dropping his head back on the couch. “Well, we have no money for rent now.”
“Something will turn up,” Emry said with a shrug. “It always does.”
“We could get jobs as strippers,” Nathan said as he jumped up to get another beer.
It wasn’t the worst idea but unfortunately, there was no male strip club in the cozy town of Colwood, Montana.
“Who is going to pay to see you naked?” Emry asked with a laugh. “I think you’ll make more money if you promise to keep your clothes on.”
Someone pounded on the door and the three boys froze, not making a sound.
“It’s him,” Emry whispered. The man they all feared the most: their landlord.
“Open up,” the voice called out from behind the door. “My feet are killing me!”
“That’s not the landlord,” Rhett said, jumping up. It was a woman’s voice. He opened the door and gasped when he saw the Sheriff standing in the doorway.
Kylee Black was the very pregnant Sheriff of Colwood, Montana. She was also the wife of Stetson, the bear shifter who Nathan got in a fight with.
“Is this about the other night?” Rhett asked. “Because we paid for the window.”
“No,” Kylee said, pushing past him into the house. “If I had to make a house call for every fight that Stetson got into, my car would have half a million miles on it.”
She waddled over to the couch and sat down with a grunt. “Sorry,” she said with a huff. “I don’t normally let myself in but my feet are killing me. If you ever decide to carry a polar bear shifter’s baby, don’t.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhett said, sitting on the broken chair beside her.
Kylee tilted her head as she touched a spring popping out of the couch.
“We’re going to get that fixed real soon,” Rhett said nervously.
“Right,” she said, looking around at the mess of a house that they lived in.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Nathan said from the kitchen. “Want a beer?”
“I’m working and pregnant,” she said, staring at him in disbelief.
Nathan looked confused. “So is that a yes or a no?”
“It’s a no,” Kylee said, staring at him like he was an idiot, which he totally was. “But thank you.”
“More for me,” Nathan said, taking a long swig of the beer.
“What can we do for you, Sheriff?” Rhett said, rubbing his hands together. He was just hoping that she wasn’t going to pull out a warrant for one of them.
She sighed as she looked into Rhett’s dark eyes. “I need some skin shifters on the force,” she blurted out.
“Oh,” Rhett said, leaning back in surprise.
“There are more and more shif
ters coming to Colwood every day,” she said, rubbing her forehead. She looked so tired. “They’re starting to cause problems and we’re getting overwhelmed.” She shook her head and sighed. “I’m way too pregnant for this shit.”
It was true about the shifters. An amateur video made its rounds around the Internet a few months back with some shifters changing into their animals on camera in the middle of town. The press had stated that it took place in their town of Colwood, Montana, which it did, and now it seemed like every shifter in the country was moving in.
“The cops on my force are good,” Kylee continued, “but they’re not equipped to deal with a furious grizzly bear or an out of control gorilla shifter.” She turned to Rhett. “But you guys are.”
Rhett nodded. A skin shifter was just as strong as a shifter in their human forms and they could easily handle any out of control animals. All Rhett had to do was channel the bear or gorilla, sliding into its skin to take it over, and then calm its energy down.
“I’d like you guys to join the force,” she said, holding her breath as she waited for their answer.
“Will we get to fight anyone?” Nathan asked, walking over as he took the last sip of his beer.
Kylee turned to him and grinned. “You’ll be a special shifter cop, so yeah, probably.”
“Sweet,” Nathan said, crushing the empty beer can in his hand. “I’ll do it.”
“How much would we get paid?” Emry asked, leaning in.
“We’ll get paid?!?” Nathan said, looking at her in shock.
Kylee glanced at the old black and white TV that was propped up on an old stack of TV Guides. “Enough to get your own places and have some nice things,” she said, biting her bottom lip as she looked up at the light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. They had no fixtures over them.
