BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset)

by Parker, Kylee

  Saxon made a small grunting noise and then ran to his father. He hadn’t looked at Jenna once, not even a glance. Bruce picked up his head, sniffed the wind, and then turned. Saxon followed like he’d been summoned, and the two bears disappeared between the trees, leaving Jenna alone in the darkness.

  She felt the magic drain away with them until the air was empty, almost a vacuum. She started shivering and turned back to the cabin.

  She walked through the darkness, stepping around the tree trunks that suddenly felt like they were deliberately getting in her way. The ground underfoot felt unsteady, almost like it was moving, but Jenna kept her arms wrapped around herself, scared that if she let go she wouldn’t have anything to hold onto anymore.

  Up in the mountains, on the plateau, her son was going to be inaugurated as part of the Family. He was going to draw power from Tara, who was going to be his alpha now too.

  The idea of that woman kindled anger inside of Jenna, anger like she hadn’t felt in a while. She’d been after Bruce first before Jenna had told him how she felt about him. It had been bad enough then, even after Jenna and Bruce had gotten together. It had hurt to find out that Tara was a shifter too, and that technically she had more in common with Bruce than Jenna did.

  Now that same woman was going to be Saxon’s alpha. She was going to not just rule over her husband, but her son too. And there wasn’t anything Jenna could do about it, no way she could protect her men from a woman like Tara because she wasn’t a shifter.

  She couldn’t do anything now, and her family belonged more to the pack than to her, because she wasn’t a shifter.

  If only, she was.

  The idea dawned on her slowly. Shifters were created, weren’t they? Obviously, they were born, too. Saxon was proof of that, but Bruce had said that they were made as well. If someone made Jenna a shifter, she could fit in again.

  She had no idea how that worked, how shifters were made. Bruce hadn’t gone into detail. It was like he didn’t want to talk about it, and Jenna had assumed it was because his past had been difficult for him. Surely he must have wanted to be normal more than once.

  Jenna had a family of shifters, a threats out there. It suddenly struck her that now that Saxon was a bear too, a shifter, the Assassins were a threat to him as well. She thought back to the war where the Assassins had used her, her bond with Bruce, to get to the Family with the intent to kill them all.

  They would have succeeded, too, if she hadn’t stepped in. As it was they’d already lost Stephen, and Rosa was just barely hanging on after losing her mate.

  Jenna felt that handle of the blade between her hands again, the balanced white of the silver metal that gleamed in the light of the full moon. The sound the blade made slicing through the air, honing in on its target. The blade had slid through the Assassins skin and crunched through the bone, and there had been so much blood.

  Jenna felt sick to her stomach. Nausea always accompanied the memories of that night. Six years and she still hadn’t come to the terms with the fact that she’d killed a man.

  Killed one to save many, as Tara had told her time and again. But it was still murder. And it had been very precise and very intentional.

  Jenna thought of Saxon, with his dark hair and his striking green eyes, his skin like marble. She pictured his hands that left imprints in her skin every time he touched her, the curve of his neck, the dimple in his cheek when he smiled.

  And she knew that she would kill like that again, for Saxon. And she would do it without even thinking about it. No matter what it cost her, she would do that for her son, and her husband, again and again.

  And that made her part animal already, didn’t it? Yes, she wanted to be a shifter now, too. She wanted to be one of them. She wanted to truly belong.

  She wanted the power to be able to take care of her Family, the same way they all took care of her.

  The night was going to be long. The cabin felt dark and the moon in the sky, bright as ever, didn’t help. But Jenna was at ease. She knew what she wanted now, and she was going to get it. She just had to talk to Bruce. If she could convince him, everything was going to be perfect.

  Jenna crawled into bed, and with that knowledge, she fell asleep.

  They came back after sunrise. The sky was painted in shades of pink and orange and the sun peeked over the ridge of mountains, bringing color to the evergreen trees and the purple of the mountainside. Jenna had been up for an hour, watching the world around her change from shades of gray to a spectrum of life.

  Bruce came out of the trees first, and next to him was Saxon. Both human. They walked side by side, Bruce’s hand at the back of Saxon’s neck, and the boy was smiling. Jenna searched Bruce’s face, hoping to find a clue about how the night was. Bruce’s eyes were soft and warm and when he made eye contact with Jenna, a smile spread across his face and she felt that same warmth inside of her.

  It had gone well. Everything had been fine.

  When they reached Jenna Bruce pulled her against his body and kissed her. After breaking the kiss, Jenna kneeled in front of Saxon and wrapped her arms around him. He smelled of forest and sunlight and animal. Still Saxon, and at the same time, he wasn’t anymore.

  “I’m just like daddy,” Saxon said and beamed. Jenna glanced up at Bruce, who’d looked so terrified the night before. He didn’t look terrified now. He shrugged like it was something he had accepted because he couldn’t change it, and then smiled.

  “Oh baby, I’m so proud of you. You’re such a big boy,” Jenna said to Saxon. He knotted his hands in her hair and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I’m special too, now.”

  Jenna laughed because if she didn’t she was going to cry.

  “You’ve always been special, darling,” she said. “But I want you and daddy to get cleaned up and then have a nap. Okay?”

  Saxon nodded and ran into the house. Jenna stood up again.

  “What did they say?” she asked.

  “Dwayne wasn’t surprised. Apparently he knew.”

  “Would have been nice if he gave us a heads up,” Jenna said. “Tara’s okay with him?”

  “She is. She didn’t like the idea that he join the pack, but what’s the alternative? He’s too young to find a new pack and she can’t leave him unprotected. The rest were happy about it.”

  Jenna nodded. It was pretty much what she’d expected. She turned and Bruce followed her into the house.

  “Maybe you can start coming with us again,” Bruce said. Maybe, Jenna thought. Maybe not just as a human.

  “I wanted to talk to you about that,” Jenna said. She looked over her shoulder to the bathroom where Saxon was brushing his teeth. For a moment, she wondered what he’d eaten, and who’d caught it for him – when he was going to start hunting himself.

  Bruce sat down on the couch and leaned back. He looked tired. The full moon always took a lot out of him, but the night had been different than usual.

  “He should keep coming with me,” he said. “I know you think he’s young, but he’s a bear now. It will be better for him to learn from someone else.” The words he didn’t say hung between them. Bruce hadn’t had someone to show him how to take care of himself and his animal, how to stop himself from being a monster.

  “That’s not what I wanted to talk about,” Jenna said. “I agree that he needs to go with you now.”

  Bruce opened his mouth to argue and then only registered Jenna’s approval after he took a breath.

  “What is it, then?” he asked.

  Jenna took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. She was suddenly scared to say it, scared to think about it. Scared to do what she’d been thinking all night. But her reasons were still the same. Saxon was in that bathroom, cleaning up after a night of being a bear. Bruce was one too. Life would be like this from now on.

  “I want you to change me,” she said, getting it out in one go.

  Bruce frowned at her, searching her face for some kind of explanation. She looked at him
, and after a moment, the meaning dawned on him.

  “Jenna…” he started and she knew he was going to fight her about it.

  “I want to be a shifter, Bruce,” she said again. “I’m the only human. I won’t fit in no matter how hard I try, not with the pack, and now not even with my own Family.”

  “You’ve always fit in with us, Jen. You always will.”

  Jenna wasn’t sure who Bruce meant when he’d said ‘us’, but the fact was that he was wrong. On both counts. She wouldn’t fit in.

  “Everyone’s a shifter now, Bruce,” she said. “Everyone’s fighting a war, living a life, surviving with magic. Everyone except me. And I can’t keep being the odd one out. I don’t want to go to bed for the rest of my life after you and Saxon and the rest of the Family set out to live the other half of your lives. I wanted to be one of you guys. I want to be a part of you.”

  “And be a part of a war where you can be killed?” Bruce asked.

  “I already am. You said yourself Darren was going to kill me as soon as he’d gotten to you. I’d already killed for the pack, for god’s sake. This is as much my war as it is yours. The least you can do is give me the resources to fight it.”

  Bruce leaned forward in his seat. His face was serious, eyes bottomless pits of black and he looked rougher like his bear was rising to the surface. Well, let the damn animal come. Maybe if he changed and he fought her, he could pass on that infectious strand of lycanthropy, or whatever it was as a bear, and she could be one of them, too.

  “The answer is no, Jenna,” Bruce said and got up. The conversation was over. He was dismissing her. He walked into the bathroom where Saxon was, ready to help him out.

  Jenna felt anger rise up in her throat like a bubble. She swallowed hard, swallowed again, and couldn’t get it down.

  Who was Bruce to tell her what she was and wasn’t allowed to do with her life? She could be a shifter if she wanted to, it was her choice, wasn’t it?

  She’d left Bruce when she’d had to hide from all people when it had come out that she – a human – knew about the shifters. She’d gone to a city after they’d already been married and lived her own life. What stopped her from doing something like that again, getting what she wanted?

  She wanted to do it for them, anyway. For Bruce and for Saxon and for the Family. For herself.

  And Bruce couldn’t tell her no. There was a whole pack of shifters up in the mountains. One of them was bound to help her if she explained. Maybe Rosa.

  But then she wouldn’t be a bear. She would be a wolf. She still wouldn’t fit in with her family, after it all. The only other bear in the pack that could do it was Lori. And Lori was hostile and shut off from her. Lori wanted nothing to do with her because she was a human.

  No, that wasn’t going to work. But Jenna just needed a bit of time. And she had time. She’d been doing the human routine among the shifters for years, she could keep up the act another month or so. Until the next full moon.

  That was when she wanted it all to be sorted.

  One month. Enough to make plans.

  Chapter 3

  Bruce was furious. Instead of getting into bed and catching up on sleep when Saxon went to bed, Bruce left the cabin again. The full moon always took a lot out of shifters, and Bruce could feel the toll it had taken on his body, despite the hunting to make up for the loss of energy.

  It always cost him a lot more not to lose all control. But he was too angry to sleep. Angry and scared. In fact, he had to admit that he was terrified. And as the man of the house and second in line to the alpha, he couldn’t afford to be this scared.

  Jenna wanted to be a shifter. A shifter. She didn’t realize what a precious gift it was for her to still be human. She held onto something the Bruce had wished he could have for years, and she wanted to just throw it away. Why would she want to throw away her humanity, her compassion and her control of herself, to become a monster?

  Bruce hadn’t always been a shifter. There had been a time when he’d known what it was to have more. To have just himself to worry about, and nothing else. Nothing extra. If he’d known he would lose it he wouldn’t have taken it for granted. He would have relished in his humanity, in his sense of right and wrong. Because when he’d lost it, it was gone forever.

  Parents were the worst. They were always out to ruin Bruce’s fun, to tell him that he couldn’t do grown up things until he really was one. But Bruce could be an adult. He was mature. What did his parents know about drinking and drugs, anyway? It’s not like they ever went out or did anything fun.

  The best nights were the ones where he snuck out and got to spend time with the brothers. The three boys were much older than Bruce. Nineteen, twenty and twenty-three. And he’d just turned sixteen. But that was alright because they liked it when he tagged along. He didn’t know why, but he wasn’t going to argue with it.

  “We’re going out to the lake tomorrow night,” Thomas had told him. Thomas was the youngest, and he looked out for Bruce. “You’re coming, right?”

  “Sure,” Bruce said. He knew he was going to have a problem with his parents. They wouldn’t let him out with a bunch of kids they said were trouble. But there was a danger about the brothers that drew Bruce. Something dark and ominous that was exactly what his parents had warned him against, so it was exactly what he wanted.

  Whatever, he could sneak out. He’d done it a hundred times already.

  “We’ll meet you just after dark at the vacant lot. Don’t be late, we’re not waiting,” Daryl said. He was the eldest and he was scary. It was like he was the leader, something about him that was more than just his age. Bruce nodded. He wouldn’t be late.

  It had taken him an hour to get his parents to let him go to his room. Bruce had ended up breaking his mom’s vase just so that she would send him away. The moment he closed his door he climbed out the window and walked down the street. He had a backpack with him with a fresh change of clothes instead they stayed the night, and a bottle of alcohol that he’d jacked from his dad’s liquor cabinet. They were going to have a hell of a time at the lake.

  “You’re late,” Daryl said when Bruce got there.

  “I had to get out,” Bruce said and shrugged. Ryan was the middle brother. He stood in the shadow of a clump of trees, dragging on a cigarette. The orange glow of the cherry lit up his face and his eyes were so big and so black they almost didn’t seem human. Of the three of them, he was the scariest. Bruce tried to ignore Ryan.

  “Let’s go,” Daryl said and they headed out. The moon was full, a large silver orb hanging in the sky. The night felt different like it was breathing around Bruce, and the wind ruffled his hair.

  They got in a car and started driving. First on concrete roads, but, later on, dirt roads, and finally just on a dust trail between the trees. Bruce was starting to get nervous. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

  “Do you guys have a place out here?” he asked, forcing the fear out of voice. Ryan looked over his shoulder at Bruce from the passenger seat and smiled. His teeth looked sharper than usual, almost pointed. Or was Bruce imagining it?

  “No, we don’t,” Ryan said. His voice was creepy, and the car filled with a feeling Bruce didn’t want to fight anymore.

  “Maybe this isn’t a good idea,” he said.

  “Too late now, Brucie boy,” Thomas said next to him. He smiled, but it didn’t seem too friendly, either.

  “Just let me out here, I’ll find my own way home,” Bruce said. He was starting to get really scared. Thomas shook his head.

  “You don’t want to be a human alone in these woods, my friend. Trust me.”

  A human? The night was getting weird. It had a different quality like it was alive in its own right. Bruce could almost feel the darkness outside pressing against the closed car windows.

  The car came to a stop and Bruce was the first one out. The moment he was in the tall grass he wished he’d stayed in the car. But the car lock clicked shut and the b
rothers started walking toward the water. Bruce stayed behind. He didn’t want to be with them. He was starting to wish he’d listened to his parents.

  “Come on,” Daryl called over his shoulder. Bruce started shaking his head no, but then he became aware of something in the bushes close by. Something that was not a person. Something that wasn’t even an animal. Something like a monster.

  He ran after the brothers, propelled forward by a fear that crawled onto his skin from all sides now.

  When they reached the water Daryl turned and looked at him. His eyes were different now. Scarier. And then something happened to him. His body started changing, contorting, twisting. Fur crept over his body and he grew in size until he was four times as big as he was, and not human anymore.

  Daryl was a bear.

  “Shit,” Bruce said. He looked for the other two brothers, but there were two more bears where they’d stood. Bruce shook his head, started backing up. They bear that was Daryl made a growling noise, and it was enough to push Bruce over the edge. He turned and ran.

  At the edge of the forest where the car was parked men appeared from the trees, men with long curved blades and a menacing way about them. But they were human.

  “Help!” Bruce shouted. “Help me!”

  He heard a growl behind him and one of the bears tackled him down. Bruce hit the ground hard. The bear was on top of him, but one of the men came running with his blade and sliced it through the air. It sunk deep into the bear’s flesh and the animal reared up. Two more men attacked it, and this time, a blade hit home.

  The bear slumped forward, onto Bruce.

  He squirmed under the dead weight of the animal, trying to get out. The bear was dead. All Bruce could think was that this bear was one of his friends. One of his friends had just been killed.

  He fought until he was tired, and then he just waited. The sound of fighting was in the air for a long time, and then finally it stopped.