Braden

“’Cause it’s the most wonderful time of the year!”

“Shut up.”

Braden snorted as he cast a glance over at Gray. The big shifter was leaning against one of the walls, looking sullen.

“And what’s got your panties all in a bunch?” he shot back.

“Christmas was over a month ago. No more carols.”

Braden just laughed. “I bet you’re just a hoot over the holidays, aren’t you?” he teased. “Does Kelly even get to play any Christmas songs?”

The look Gray shot him told him all he needed to know. Which resulted in Braden laughing even louder. Which meant that Gray frowned even harder. In response Braden broke into peals of laughter. And Gray frowned even more.

“Oh come on,” he said, finally getting himself under control. “It’s not that bad. And don’t forget,” he told his boss, wagging a very un-subordinate-like finger at him. “It was you who initially told me that these weekends were the fun weekends.”

Gray’s head twisted slightly so that he could both glare at him and lift one solitary eyebrow as his response. “You don’t get the concept of sarcasm very well, do you?”

Braden barked a laugh, loud and explosive as he walked over to his superior, mentor, and a man he very much considered a friend. “You’re not usually so mopey,” he commented. “What’s got you extra bothered today?”

They were standing in the lobby of a former motel that had been converted to the first ever—to their knowledge—formal embassy between shifters and humans. The majority of their peers lived across a mountain range to the east, in the large shifter territory of Cadia. Braden, Gray, and several others, however, were assigned to the embassy to protect the Cadian ambassador.

Braden knew that Gray loved his job. He was the senior Guard, and he took his duties very seriously, despite the little byplay going on. He also had a wonderful mate named Kelly and a solid grouping of friends. There was little that should be bothering him. At first Braden had thought he was just putting on the grumpy old man act, but now he wasn’t so sure.

“Rumors,” Gray replied after looking over his shoulder to ensure they were alone. “Nothing more.”

The smile vanished from Braden’s face as he heard the tone. “What kind?”

“Some more of the same, that people are clamoring for Andrew’s removal. Those are the loudest. It’s the others that concern me,” Gray said, pushing off the wall as a vehicle pulled up out in front of the building.

Andrew Raskell was the ambassador, and as far as Braden could tell from his very limited interaction with him, a damn good one. There was no reason for him to be removed from his position.

“What others?” He too turned, rolling his shoulders and readying himself. This is what they had been waiting for.

“Darker stuff. That certain elements are upset about what happened to their little spy. That they’re ready to escalate.”

“Escalate?” Braden snorted as the rear door of the large truck rolled up and figures started pouring out. “How are they going to escalate from sending a damn spy?”

Two months earlier, the shady Cadian Intelligence organization had sent a spy to the town of Cloud Lake, in an effort to ferret out information about shifters living there illegally. The spy had eventually been outed and then killed by another of the Guards, Noah, in a close-fought battle. Since then, everything had been peaceful, and he’d just sort of assumed it would continue that way.

“Yeah. No more looking for information. Just…solutions.”

Braden felt a chill run down his spine at the word. He was talking about killing. Assassination. To a shifter the act of killing was far less abhorrent than it was with humans. Being that they were only half-human, this was only natural. They were very in-tune with their animal side, the feral, untamed beasts that allowed them to transform into titanic beings much larger than anything found in the wild. This meant that the death of a shifter wasn’t viewed the same, nor was someone who ended another shifter considered an outcast and terrible person.

But that was assuming that the death happened on the field of battle, in combat. That the person who died deserved it. To send someone simply to kill another shifter because they wanted them gone was…foreign. And unacceptable. No shifter should act that way. It would threaten their entire society.

“Well, now you’ve gone and ruined my mood,” he replied at last as the figures outside gathered their packs and ascended the stairs. “Here we go.”

“Like you said,” Gray muttered. “The most wonderful time of the year.”

The double doors flew open as excited voices shattered the near-silence the duo had been sharing. The noise bounced off the tiled floor and columns that decorated the interior, filling it with a general hubbub that only calmed slightly at the sight of the two figures awaiting the group.

“All yours,” Braden said, letting Gray take charge as the senior of the two.

“Gee, thanks,” the big shifter said, raising thickly muscled arms as he stepped forward, bringing the oncoming shifters to a halt.

He waited like that until the noise died down. It never quite stopped, however, and Braden decided to intervene before Gray got mad. He’d seen how that played out, and with the extra tension his friend was under today, he didn’t want to provoke him any further.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he snarled, stepping forward intimidatingly. He called upon his bear, letting the animal’s red-rimmed eyes surge to the surface as he growled. The deep foreboding sound emanated from within his chest, far louder and more vicious-sounding than anything a human could reproduce.

The silence that followed could have given way to a symphony composed of pins hitting the floor, so stunned were the new arrivals.

“Thank you,” Gray said as if the whole scene had never happened. “Now, I know you’re all excited to be here, so as long as you let me talk, we’ll be brief.”

Braden glared to reinforce the point that they should keep their traps shut.

“You’ve all been granted the privilege to come to Cloud Lake for two weeks of rest, relaxation, and exploration.” Gray paused to let the words sink in. “That’s right. It’s a privilege. Not a right. If you fuck up, that privilege will be revoked, and you will get sent home.” He grinned. It was not a nice sight. “And trust me, that will just be the beginning of your troubles. Be smart, and don’t fuck up, okay? The rules are pretty simple. One, don’t hurt a human. Male or female. That means pushing yourself on them if they say no, punching, anything. You are to behave like proper polite citizens. You are in their world now, and…”

Braden tuned out the welcome speech. He’d heard it before. Instead, he scanned the assembled group of shifters, eighteen in all, wondering which one of them would be the first to fuck up. There were, generally speaking, two to four per session who fucked up. Most of the time it was simply getting too drunk and needing to come home. That was punished by being confined to the embassy for a few days. Not the biggest of deals, as long as they were just mouthy and didn’t get physical.

It was the ones who forgot they were in Cloud Lake, amongst humans. Those were the problem ones. On average, there was one of those a session. He’d learned almost immediately to try and spot them. They could usually be identified as the ones paying little to no attention during Gray’s welcome speech. Braden’s eyes scanned them from left to right, and then back again.

Every one of them seemed to be paying rapt attention as Gray listed off the rules, curfews, popular locations, and then got to rooming assignments. That was his cue, and he stepped forward.

“Klinger, Dale!” he called.

One of the shifters, a tall young male probably in his very early twenties, stepped forward.

“Here you go,” he said, handing the man a ring that had two keys and a plastic tag that contained all his information in it. “Keep this on you at all times. Understand? If you’re caught without it, you will be confined to base for two days.”

The shifter nodded and accepted the keys.

“All your rooms are up the stairs and to the left or right,” Braden said loud enough for everyone to hear. “Rooms ending in fifteen or below, you take the staircase on your left,” he said, gesturing with his own right hand to the stairs behind him.  “Those with sixteen and over, you take the staircase on your right.” He repeated the gesture with his left hand.

The two stairwells were attached to the walls of the lobby, and they curled up as they went, until they spilled out into a wide little balcony that overlooked the majority of the lobby. As Braden began to pass out the keys, the stairs started to fill with shifters as they went looking for their rooms.

“We shall reconvene back here in thirty minutes,” Gray announced before any of them disappeared. “At that time the ambassador will say a few words.”

There was muttered understanding, and then Braden resumed handing out the keys.

“Vorkisan, Donnie!” he barked. “Urman, Bragh.” He almost made a comment about the unfortunate name, but decide better of it. Today wasn’t a day for joking around.”

That was the last of them. He and Gray turned to watch them file upstairs.

“Go keep an eye on them, and in twenty-five start chivvying them down to the lounge,” Gray ordered. “I’m going to go tell Andrew.” He turned to go, but paused. “Did you see any problem cases?”

“No. They were all paying attention.”

“Damn,” Gray said, then strode off.

Yeah. Damn.

They were still going to have a problem child. They always did. Only this time it meant they probably weren’t going to see it coming.

Braden shrugged. There wasn’t much they could do until trouble reared its ugly head, so he made his way up the stairs and started checking in on the newbies. There were, invariably, problems. Mostly it was friends wanting to be next to one another. Braden couldn’t believe sometimes how shifters in their twenties, thirties, and even forties could be so obsessed with having a room next to their buddy, but inevitably it happened. He simply said no changing, they’d just have to walk between rooms like adults. If that didn’t quell the requests, he reminded them that they would be spending very little in the way of time in their rooms, so what did it matter?

That done he wandered the halls answering questions until the elapsed time was up. “Okay,” he said. “Head back down to the lobby. Go to the back, and follow the signs that say ‘Lounge’ on them. Gray should be waiting for you in there. If you can’t follow those simple directions, because you’re illiterate or just plain dumb, follow someone who can.”

Some of the shifters laughed at his insults, others pretended that they applied to them, but overall the mood was good. He stood by the stairs and counted as they went down. He got to fifteen. Frowning, he peered down the hallways. They were empty. He didn’t have them all memorized yet, so he couldn’t tell who was there and who was missing.

“Let’s go!” he shouted, but no bodies materialized. Getting angry, he took the hallway on the right, walking down it and opening door after door with his master key. After he’d inspected all the assigned rooms on that side, he moved to the other. This side had the Guard rooms and such on them, so he could bypass most of them. He found his missing trio at the very final room at the end of the hallway.

“There you are,” he said, mildly irritated but not letting it get to him as he strode inside.

The three of them were hunched over, and as one they spun to face him. Braden came to a halt, a smile on his face. “Well, what do we have here?” he joked. “It looks like you guys are plotting something big.”

It was supposed to be a joke, a way to lighten the mood. But the look that crossed the faces of two of the three shifters set off all sorts of warning bells, and he dropped into a fighting pose a split second before the middle shifter launched himself at Braden.

“WHAT THE FUCK?!” he bellowed as they went down in a heap. He hadn’t had time to fully set himself, and so he rolled with the attack instead, pulling his knees in, planting his feet on the lead shifter’s chest and then kicking him off as hard as he could mid-roll. This had the effect of sending the shifter hurtling through the doorway, removing the heavy wooden door as he went.

Braden had no time to admire his handiwork however, because two more large, violent shifters came at him. Neither of them were angry, which a detached part of his mind found unusual; instead they were simply calm and collected. That was not good. That meant they were trained, and expecting a confrontation.

The other two, the ones whose expressions had given it all away, pounced before he’d even recovered, and for several very long seconds all Braden could do was cover his face with his arms and try to deflect the blows. Part of it was a defensive strategy, giving him time to recover from his surprise.

But the second was to draw their attention to his upper body, so that when he scythed his legs around, it caught them by surprise. The shifter on his left went down with a yelp. Braden didn’t sit around waiting though. Instead he yanked back his left leg, rolled up onto his right side, and smashed his left foot into the knee of the sole remaining attacker. With a bone-crunching snap, followed a split-second later by a shriek from the shifter, the entire joint reversed itself.

The sound was nauseating, but he focused, pushing through it. He managed to get to his feet at the same time as the shifter he’d dumped on the floor. His arms were sore and aching from all the blows they’d absorbed, but that didn’t stop him from closing the gap between the two of them and finally going on the attack.

He caught an incoming right hook with his left forearm, deflecting it aside even as he stepped close, twisting until he was side-on with his opponent. Then Braden drove his right elbow into the shifter’s face. Hard. Blood spurted from his nose and mashed upper lip, while a tooth fell free and landed on the floor. Without hesitating he came back around and slammed his left forearm into the shifter. The one-two combination was enough. Glassy-eyed, the shifter went limp and fell into his arms.

The fight was even at that point, numbers-wise. But Braden was angry. Really angry. He’d been attacked. With a roar he stopped the shifter from falling to the floor, grabbed him by the collar and the groin, and lifted him clear of the floor.

“Get out,” he spat, and threw the shifter out of the window.

Glass shattered and the limp form fell two stories below, landing with a rather sickening thump on the concrete below. Braden was about to go see what had caused the noise when the shifter he’d tossed through the doorway came rushing back inside.

“You’re a dead man,” the shifter sneered, and launched himself at Braden.

All he had time to say was a quick “Oh fuck” and the two of them went over the ledge and out the broken window.

Braden landed painfully on the body of the unnamed shifter. Mostly. His tailbone hit the concrete hard, and he felt something give in his ribcage. Pain flashed through his body as stars clouded his vision for a moment.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” he snarled, climbing to his feet, shoving the pain to the side like it was a mere inconvenience. “You’re going to pay for that.”

The bitter cold of the early February air whistled through the loading bay out behind the motel. It wasn’t snowing, but the strength of the wind stirred up the snow drifts and tossed the individual flakes into the sky anyway, reducing their vision until all he could see was the shifter he was going to kill.

Braden lunged forward, and unleashed his bear. A massive beast of purest ash-gray ripped from his skin, long thick fur exploding everywhere. In the blink of an eye he’d become a two-and-a-half-ton killing machine, barreling forward at his enemy as hind legs the size of tree trunks propelled him across the distance. His foe had time to recognize what was about to happen, but his reactions were too slow. Braden saw him call forth his own beast, but by then it was too late.

He flashed by as the midnight-furred beast appeared, and that was it. He spun, spitting the object in his jaws out until it landed on the ground, coloring the bits of snow and beige concrete a dark color.

Eyes full of battle-lust, Braden watched his opponent try to turn and face him, only to have his legs fail to respond. There was a gurgling that might have been a scream, and then the bear pitched forward face-first into the ground. A pool of blood formed under it as the bear bled out from the remnants of its throat, the rest of it on the ground next to the ash-colored bear, blood still dripping from its mouth where it had torn the other shifter’s neck out on the way by.

Screams of pain from back within the room greeted his ears. In a flash Braden put his bear away and leapt for the open window, grabbing the sill and hauling himself inside in one leap, ignoring the cuts he gave himself from the glass still remaining in the frame.

“You fucked with the wrong guy,” he said, though the injured shifter probably didn’t hear him.

When Braden reached down and wrapped his hands around the other man’s neck, however, he clearly understood what was about to happen. Terrified cries emerged from his mouth, but Braden paid them no heed. He simply gave the doomed attacker one last look of contempt, then he snapped his neck.

A second later Gray burst into the room. He took one look around the room and came to an abrupt halt.

“What happened to my invitation?” he said after working his jaw for a moment

“It must have gotten lost in the mail,” Braden replied wearily, sitting down on the bed.

As he did pain shot up his tailbone and he leapt up with a mild yelp of surprise.

“What, is the bed attacking you now too?” Gray asked dryly.

Braden rolled his eyes and pointed at the broken window. Gray, his face still showing no reaction to what he was seeing, walked over to the window and peered out at the two bodies below.

“Seems like a terrible start to their vacation,” was all he could say.

“Really? You don’t say!” Braden replied, probing his rear end gingerly. Agony pounded long nails into his head with a hammer as he touched his tailbone itself. Yep, definitely broken. That was going to be annoying for a few hours until it healed. Thank goodness that’s all it would take though. He couldn’t imagine having to deal with it for weeks on end like a human would.

“You okay?” Gray asked at last.

“Nothing a few hours and a steak won’t fix,” he muttered. “But Gray, something tells me that these guys weren’t here on vacation.”

There was a muffled snort. “Whatever gave you that idea?” his boss asked, looking around at the destroyed room once more.

Ignoring the sarcasm, he told him all about what had happened. As he did Gray’s face grew even more closed. To a stranger he might look stone-faced, but Braden knew him well enough by then to recognize the signs of anger building.

“Get some rest. I’ll take this to Andrew.”

Braden followed him from the room, wondering if he was even going to be up for a steak as the adrenaline faded and the pain started to truly sink in.

Who are you kidding? It’s steak!