Damon Read online

  Or maybe I was just too damn stubborn. I wouldn’t leave. Not after waiting all this time. Not after everything I’d done, been forced to do just to stay.

  I felt like I was giving up pieces of my soul, but some things were worth that, and more.

  Weren’t they?

  Chapter Three

  I’d hoped I was done.

  But after the shower, when I was face down on the narrow, miserable bed that was that was just barely big enough for my frame, I heard the floorboards creaking under his weight.

  He was just now learning how to move quietly but he hadn’t yet seen the point in doing it all the time, especially at home, where he felt safe, comfortable.

  Because I loved him, I hadn’t felt up to telling him that sometimes home was the last place a kid like him could feel safe…comfortable.

  “Damon.”

  I sighed, knowing he’d hear.

  “Why do you let her beat you?”

  Let…I didn’t bother to ask him how he knew that crucial detail. I let her beat me. I even let her think she was my superior, my Alpha in truth. Only a few people likely knew she was about as much my Alpha as Doyle was. That Doyle had figured it out was mildly surprising, but he’d always been sharp. The big question—was he clever? Did he have the wisdom to hide that important bit of information?

  It was something Annette would kill over.

  She’d killed any number of people she’d seen as a potential threat.

  I wasn’t a potential threat. I was probably one of the biggest threats she’d ever dealt with and here I was, a leopard in sheep’s clothing and she had no idea.

  “She’s the Alpha, Doyle. You know that.”

  His laugh was a strangled, quiet noise in the bedroom and under it, I heard something that made me uneasy.

  Pushing up, I swung my body around and stared at him in the darkness. I had no trouble seeing him and judging by the way his eyes tracked, he was seeing me just fine.

  His senses were becoming more attuned by the day. I’d noticed earlier the entire fridge had been cleared out and I’d just taken care of restocking, too. He was so fucking close.

  “She’s not your Alpha, Damon. Don’t keep lying to me about that. You’re stronger than her and you let her...”

  There was an odd, trailing sort of way he ended that sentence. Almost like he was leaving something off. Let her…what? I wondered. Beat me? Be…

  Aw, shit.

  Bracing my elbows on my knees, I leaned forward.

  Doyle braced his back against the wall and slid down. His eyes were a vivid blue, but just then, spiking whorls of green and gold began to bleed through before the blue became solid once again.

  “Have you started running the fevers yet?” I asked calmly.

  “No,” he snapped. “I told you I’d let you know.”

  I just nodded.

  He continued to stare at me and I could see the questions, the accusation in his eyes.

  “You’ve got things you want to say to me,” I said levelly. These four walls, this house, shitty as it was, it was the one place where Doyle felt safe to talk to me. If he had to talk, he needed to do it now.

  “You can beat her. You’re the stronger one.” A muscle pulsed in his cheek as he said it and his eyes were so wide, I thought they just might pop out of his skull. Anger forced his voice higher than normal, although it cracked halfway through, deepening into what would probably be closer to the voice he’d have once he went through the spike.

  As I continued to stare at him, he closed his hands into tight fists. Bones pressed tight against his skin. He couldn’t keep weight on these days. He’d shot up nearly a foot in the past six months, and I think he’d actually put on another inch or so just in the past week, but all that growing made it damn near impossible for him to put any weight on.

  “Damn it, stop staring at me like I’m a bug under a fucking microscope!”

  He leaped to his feet as he growled it—and it was a growl. Full-throated and deep and when he moved, it was with the speed of a true shifter, not just a kid with shifter genes.

  Fuck.

  “Doyle.” I held out a hand. “You need to calm down.”

  “I want you to fucking answer me!”

  “You ain’t talkin’ to me like that, kid.” The muscles in my neck went tight as he paced closer, eyes spinning back to that weird green and gold before the blue swallowed up the stripes again.

  “Why not? You’re not my dad,” he said, voice going back to normal. He sneered at me, lips peeling back. Then I saw his teeth.

  They were lengthening. For just a split second. But it happened.

  “You’re not my dad. You’re not my alpha.” He choked off a strangled sort of laugh that sounded almost as much a sob as anything else. “You keep talking about me hitting my spike and as soon as it happens, she’s going to make me join her enforcers. Then you won’t be anything to me. I’ll be just another one of her thugs and I’ll have to kill just…”

  He stopped, giving me a look of betrayal that punched a hole through my gut. Acid climbed its way up my throat as he continued to watch me.

  “She’ll turn me into you, Damon. This whole fucked up clan…I’ll be just like them.” He took a step toward me, his thin frame shaking. He reached up to knuckle at his eyes and I saw something I hadn’t noticed until just that moment.

  He no longer had the hands of a skinny, gawky teenage boy.

  Sometime in the span of a few days, the hormone surges that precipitated the spike had started the first of the changes. His hands were bigger, wider. The strong hands of a man. They looked strange on the end of his skinny arms.

  He lowered that one hand and I watched as it closed into a fist.

  “I can’t decide what’s worse, Damon. Following her…or staying here with you when you and I both know you could take her blindfolded and fix every fucked-up thing that’s wrong with this clan.” He turned away.

  “Doyle, damn it!” The acid, sick feel shifted and spread, turning into something hollow.

  He flicked a look at me. “I’m tired.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot more to being Alpha than just killing her.” I stalked up to him, driven by guilt, feeling a million other things crumbling under me.

  I thought of the girls I’d been tracking, wondered how many more there might have been. Yeah, I'd saved some, but I hadn’t saved them all. They’d died because the fucker who killed them had known Annette wouldn't care about weaklings who had nobody to speak for them.

  You were weak once…

  The voice whispered in the back of my mind as I stared at Doyle.

  Everybody was weak at one point. You toughen up or you die.

  That’s not why you lived. You lived because somebody saved you.

  Unaware of the storm brewing in my head, Doyle’s mouth twisted in that same disgusted smirk. “Yeah, I know there’s more to it. There’s actual leading. It would require you do something instead of just…whatever in the hell it is you’re doing here. I guess that’s asking too much.”

  He turned and walked away.

  This time, I didn’t try to stop him.

  Chapter Four

  Doyle sat at the table, sullen and silent, as I fixed his breakfast.

  When he thought I wasn’t looking at him, he kept shooting me dark looks and the glint in his eyes spoke louder that any words could.

  If I was smart, I’d address it. Considering what he had breathing down his neck, that attitude could get him killed, but the words he’d thrown at me had really hit a mark.

  Worse, he had me thinking.

  I didn’t want him turning out like half the cruel, crazy sons of bitches here in the clan.

  Men like the one I had thrown under the bus to distract Annette.

  He didn’t want to be like them.

  I didn’t want him to be like them.

  Hell, it was an unending battle to keep from becoming a to
tal monster myself. I was doing my best to keep from going too far down that road although I was slipping a little farther away from myself all the time. I’d known it would happen and I’d decided a long time ago it was worth the risk.

  But then I’d met Doyle.

  I’d watched how some of the kids here gathered around Chang. Somehow, he managed to keep a part of himself still…himself. He carried just as much a monster in him as I did, but it was…hell. There was a part of Chang the world couldn’t touch, a part the monster inside him couldn’t touch.

  I don’t know how he did it, but he managed to keep himself intact and he could reach out to the kids who needed him.

  Maybe he could reach Doyle.

  I needed to talk to him.

  We tried to avoid meeting unless there was no other choice. It wasn’t a big secret that we’d known each other before we came to Orlando, but we’d downplayed our connection and it had proven to be a wise idea. Annette had a habit of killing anybody she thought be staging a coup.

  We weren’t.

  Annette would die if and when she got in our way, but for now, her stomping grounds were just were we needed to be. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have even made a pit stop.

  As it was, this stop here had turned into ten years and we were still waiting.

  Ten years.

  How had that happened?

  That long ago conversation haunted me even now.

  “What exactly are we supposed to find in Orlando, Chang?”

  “Answers, cub. I don’t know when, where or how. But a man I trust told me that at some point the answers we need would be there. We just have to be patient.”

  Patient. A cat knew how to wait, but just how much longer was it going to take?

  Doyle finished up his breakfast and I scowled as he stomped off, leaving next to nothing for me to eat, but it was more of a knee jerk response than any real irritation. As he disappeared into the shower, I started frying up another ham steak and some bacon, hunger a knot in my gut. Shifters burned calories easily four times faster than any human did—at least that was the latest calculation. I couldn’t even begin to guess myself. I’d never been human.

  I fried up half a dozen eggs while the meat was cooking and guzzled some water, brooding over the rim as I stared down the dark hallway. Doyle was finished in the shower before I managed to even start my breakfast and by the time my food was done, he was heading down the hallway to leave.

  I called his name.

  He ignored me, banging out the door without a single word. Staying where I was, I shouted, “Bye, Doyle!”

  There wasn’t any answer, but I hadn’t expected one.

  “Get Chang to talk to him,” I muttered. Sometimes, he could get through. Chang had ways of getting through the most impenetrable walls.

  After all, he’d gotten through to me.

  * * * * *

  Nothing went right that day and a meeting with Chang wasn’t in the cards.

  I’d called him to set one up for the next day, but he hadn’t answered and when he finally did get back to me, it wasn’t until the following morning that I even heard from via text.

  We’ll have to meet tomorrow, unless it’s urgent.

  Guess I couldn’t really say it was urgent. I hadn’t even talked to Doyle for the past two days. He’d left a note on the table that I’d found when I’d finally gotten home at almost midnight.

  He was crashing with a friend for a couple of days. He hadn’t left a number, something that pissed the shit out of me, but I’d deal with that later. There wasn’t a shifter in the city that was safer than Doyle right now.

  Even though shifter kids were off-limits anyway, nobody would mess with the Alpha’s nephew.

  Not yet anyway.

  He’d added a line at the bottom. Out of food.

  I’d gone to bed hungry, woken up hungrier and pissed off.

  My regular routine kept me busy, although I kept an eye out for Doyle while I worked. It was summer so they weren’t in school. The area school for shifters was funded and run by the two shifter factions. Humans weren’t about to contribute to the welfare of our kids. That being the case, shifters got to mandate the rules and guidelines and the kids had something that actually resembled a summer.

  None of the teachers wanted to be trapped inside a building with a bunch of hyper shifter kids as the days stretched out and grew hotter.

  It was a recipe for disaster, putting too many of them in one room at a time.

  None of them suffered from the shortened school year shifters had adopted, though. Shifter kids, by and large, were quick to learn and retained information at a rate far above their mortal counterparts. Not that it mattered. Outside in the mortal world, it didn’t matter how smart a shifter was, or how well they’d done on tests or in college.

  There were only so many jobs open for somebody who grew fur and occasionally growled or howled.

  “Hell.” My mood had soured as the day dragged on and I wondered how much of Doyle’s depressed outlook was starting to affect me.

  It wasn’t just Annette that had him on edge.

  It was the way his entire life looked, stretching out from here until whenever it ended. That could be within weeks after his first shift if somebody decided they wanted to get one up on the alpha. Or he could be looking at a long, lousy life serving that crazy bitch.

  As I pulled the car I’d borrowed from the Lair into a small, pot-hole ridden parking lot, I pushed thoughts of Doyle out of my head. We’d talk. He’d talk with Chang, then we’d talk.

  We’d make something workable. Not just for him, but for both of us.

  But for now, I needed to get my guard up and focus.

  Rarely a week went by when somebody didn’t pick a fight just for the hell of it and too often, some wise-ass decided he wanted my place in the chain of command.

  Now that Leon was dead, those bullshit fights were going to get worse.

  It was how things went.

  The busted-up store on the corner looked more like a prop for a bad horror movie rather than an actual business. Eyes slid over me and the car. We were right on the edge of cat and wolf territory. Personally, I’d rather deal with the wolves. Alisdair MacDonald was a stiff piece of work and he needed a sense of humor, but he was fair.

  A few times, Annette had insinuated that she’d appreciate it if I would kill him.

  MacDonald talked to me. He didn’t talk to any of her other enforcers.

  I wasn’t going to return that courtesy by stabbing him in the back. Annette didn’t know what she was asking for anyway. MacDonald’s people loved him, would die for him. She didn’t know anything about pack loyalty. If he died, her wolves would make the ground run red to avenge him and it was possible they could take Orlando from Annette. She didn’t know shit about building a cohesive clan. MacDonald, though…well, to him, the pack was everything.

  One of the wolves caught my eye and nodded. I nodded back even as one of the cats I had to deal with that morning curled his lip at me.

  “Why you always making nice with a bunch of mangy dogs?”

  Casey looked at me as I strode up the busted pavement to his convenience store, two windows boarded up and taped in place, while the open signed flashed—just the p and the n. He wasn’t much on keeping the place up. Or himself. His shirt had stains that had to be a few days old—stains on top of stains—and he didn’t look or smell like he’d taken a bath any time recently either.

  “Mangy, huh?” I stopped in front of him and crossed my arms over my chest, staring him down. “I don’t think you got any reason to be talking mangy. When was the last time you combed your hair or brushed your damn teeth, Casey?”

  Beauford Casey showed yellowed teeth as he smiled. “You ain’t here to compliment me, are you, Damon?”

  “If I could find something worth complimenting, maybe.” I skimmed the terrain and my ears picked up on something coming from inside his store. Well,
fuck.

  Biting back a sigh, I looked over at him. “You really want to do this?”

  “I ain’t doing nothing.” He jerked his head back over his shoulder toward the store. “The tithe’s in there.”

  “Why don’t you go inside and get it?”

  “I’m taking a break.” His smile widened, revealing his decaying teeth in any further glory. “You want it, you go in and get it. Otherwise, I’ll have to report to the Alpha you were being derelict in your duty.”

  “You’re too chickenshit to even talk to her.” I had to laugh at the idea of it and his face went white, then red. But he didn’t lie.

  It wasn’t a surprise. If he pushed me, I would have dialed her up and handed him the phone. I’d done that before. I don’t like being pushed. Word had gotten around about that.

  Slowly, putting one booted foot in front of the other, I made my way over to him and paused, bending down far closer than I liked. I caught the full punch of his rancid body odor. He wasn’t a strong shifter, but he still had the senses. He had to know he stank. He just didn’t care. “You and me, Casey, we’ll go a round for this.”

  “Sure we will.” He smirked. “As soon as you come out.”

  “You think I won’t.” I laughed then.

  I had the pleasure of watching the smirk slide off his face as I headed toward the store.

  On my way, I paused. There was a discarded piece of chain lying there, probably used to secure the doors at one point. Grabbing it, I wrapped one end around my fist, once, twice.

  From one corner of my eye, I saw something—pale hair, catching the watery sunlight. I glanced over, instinct. One of those mental pauses when you take stock of everything.

  It was a woman.

  Something about the look of her made me hesitate further.

  She didn’t belong here.

  That was written all over her.

  It wasn’t anything about how she looked or how she stood there, one hand braced on the roof of a beat-up car, or how she looked at Casey, her lip curled up. It wasn’t even that she wasn’t a shifter—and I could tell that within a second.