Chapter One
Chuey
The vibration of the music boomed through Chuey's body, reminding him of the sudden storms during the rainy season in Mexico. Each bass bump inside the packed bar bounced off the dancing bodies and dark paneled walls like it was a crack of thunder. Every beam of light that flashed over Chuey's face and off the faces of the locals around him was like lightning.
It helped for him to imagine he was in the middle of a storm and not moving his body to the beat along with so many other humans, shifters and hybrids. Chuey understood weather, to an extent. He knew that when dark clouds appeared, rain may fall and with rain, thunder and lightning. He understood that in a way that often didn't translate when it came to Chuey making sense of his new surroundings.
He didn't want to seem ungrateful. He appreciated his padre and his padre's mates for finding him and bringing him to live with their pack. He appreciated it more that no one in the pack wanted to kill him. No one hurt him at least, which was more than he could say for how things were when he was younger.
Chuey had even managed to make friends. Even if those friends were currently sitting on stools at the bar, trying to decide which of them could get drunk the fastest.
He turned to check on them, colliding with a young female as he did. Chuey grabbed her arms to steady her, not wanting her to fall because of him.
"Oh, hello there," the woman slurred. She was no longer in danger of falling but had grabbed onto Chuey's arms anyway. She squeezed his forearms before sliding her grip up and rubbing his biceps. "Well, aren't you just a handful? You remind me of a colt with all your coiled muscles and enthusiasm."
"Thank you," Chuey replied, remembering the lesson he'd received from his padre the week before. He let the girl go and turned to where Garth and Stannis were sitting.
"Polite too. I'll see you around?" the girl asked.
They'd been to this bar before. It was owned by the hybrid pack in the area, and Chuey's pack had an alliance with them, so it was likely he'd be back again at some point. "Probably, yes."
The girl's eyes lit up. "I look forward to it."
As Chuey took a seat next to Garth, he couldn't help but suspect that yet again, he was missing something. If he could go through life without feeling that way again, he would die happy. "Garth, when girl says, 'I look forward to seeing you around,' what does that mean?"
Garth slammed his pint glass down with more force than was necessary. The hybrid bartender gave him an annoyed look that Chuey didn't think Garth even noticed. That happened a lot. For as unaware as Chuey felt in social situations, Garth simply didn't care to observe. People gave him that same look the bartender was giving him very often. "Means she wants to bone," Garth said. He spun around on his stool and almost fell over in the process. Chuey caught him and steadied him. "M'fine, m'fine," Garth said, waving him off. "Who wants to bone you? That one over there?"
Uncomfortable with Garth's speaking volume, as well as the way he was wildly pointing at the females in the room, Chuey shook his head. "No one. She left," he replied.
Garth lifted a booze-heavy hand and dropped it on his shoulder. "It's okay, buddy, you'll get her next time," he said, patting Chuey's shoulder as he did.
Chuey did his best not to lean into the touch. There was nothing sexual about his feelings towards Garth, but after nearly ten years of living alone in the Mexican desert and nine years before that of hardly any pleasant physical contact, a polite handshake still had the ability to give Chuey goosebumps. Though, sometimes people in his pack touched too much, and it became uncomfortable. Before that could happen, he shook Garth's hand off his shoulder.
Whether it was because of his unobservant nature or because he simply didn't care, Garth made no indication that the move had hurt him. Instead, he leaned back, revealing Stannis, who was sitting on the other side of him, furiously scribbling on a coaster with a golf pencil.
"What is he…?" Chuey asked.
Garth rolled his eyes. "Just wait."
One minute later, Stannis straightened with an audible, "Ah-ha!" He lifted the coaster to Garth and Chuey.
Chuey couldn't make sense of the drawing: it looked like a sport's play maybe but with a circle, Chuey decided it was a face, with X's instead of eyes. The face had a stick-man body and was holding a rounded rectangle.
"This is proof. Let me show you, just let me show you," Stannis said, his words as slurred together as the girl Chuey had spoken to on the dance floor. "Look here. An astronaut isn't nothing without his suit. Without it, he's nothing. Just a man. But, with his suit, he becomes an astronaut."
Chuey looked to Garth for a clue about how he was supposed to react to this information. Garth was still leaned back, a finger rubbing around the top rim of his beer as he listened.
"You put one of these men, all dressed up, against a caveman and the astronaut would absolutely win! S'no question," Stannis said proudly, flipping the coaster so that it landed directly on top of Garth's beer. It toppled off since Garth's hand was there.
Chuey studied the coaster. "What is astronaut?" he asked.
"Chuey, my man, the curiosity of a child, I love you," Stannis said, indicating to the bartender that he wanted another drink. "Astronauts are people who travel into space. They aren't just smart though, people forget that. Astronauts are top physical specimens. They have the brains and the brawn," Stannis said, nodding his head as if that was all there was to be said on the matter.
"A living caveman is a stronger motherfucker," Garth replied. "Think about it, cavemen lived with the dinosaurs—"
"They didn't actually—"
"I didn't interrupt you!" Garth replied hotly. "I even waited for you to draw your stupid picture."
As Garth got that look again, Chuey brought the picture closer. Now that he knew more about astronauts, he saw where Stannis had attempted to illustrate one. "This is a caveman?" he asked, rubbing his fingertip over the circle with X's for eyes.
"Yeah, buddy. Cavemen were the first men. They lived isolated a long, long time ago. They may have been primitive but— Hey! They're kind of just like you. When Logan found you, you were a caveman."
"I am Chupacabra," Chuey replied.
"No, no, that's just what Logan called you since you don't have a name. And since that's what the ranchers called you."
He did have a name, but he didn't want to be called that name ever again. Chuey didn't know if he always wanted to be the Chupacabra, but he never wanted to be what his first pack called him.
"If this Chuey," Chuey said, pointing at the caveman in the picture. "And this, astronaut? I beat astronaut," he said.
Garth whooped his victory, but Stannis was already shaking his head. "It isn't Chuey vs. Astronaut. Besides, Chuey is a shifter, he'd beat most things."
Garth launched into a counterargument as Chuey smiled to himself. That was his favorite thing about his new pack. They may be confusing, and they may get irritated with him for reasons he didn't always understand, but they called him a shifter, they knew he was strong. They accepted him.
"I think you could handle an astronaut," the man sitting on the other side of Chuey said. There was an empty chair between them which either meant the man had been leaning over to eavesdrop on their conversation, or it meant he was a shifter. Chuey inhaled, letting the air pass through his mouth and down his throat. He could taste musty remnants of cigarette smoke from when the bar allowed smoking inside, sour beer, and so many pheromones bouncing around the small space it was enough to drive a person wild. What he couldn't smell was the man's inner beast, which either meant he was able to hide it well like most coyotes could or it meant he was human.
"Thank you," Chuey replied politely. He turned back to his packmates, but the man moved into the vacant seat between them. He gestured to the bartender who brought them two glasses of dark, frothy beer.
"You look like you can handle the dark stuff," the man said.
Chuey looked him over from the top of his cowlick down to his dusty cowboy boots. He reminded Chuey of the ranch hands he used to spy on back in Mexico. When they didn't know Chuey was around, they were nice enough.
"I don't drink that," Chuey replied. He'd known that his padre would get upset when he discovered that Chuey had gone out with the other guys. Chuey had asked permission plenty of times before and had been denied. This time, Garth had told him a valuable life lesson: It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Chuey had thought Padre would be happy for the free time anyway. He knew that he often got in the way of his padre's relationship with his mates, and while everyone tolerated him, sometimes they didn't want him around. He'd been doing them all a favor by coming out, but drinking alcohol was a different thing altogether. That, his padre strictly forbade.
"Not a porter type of guy? I guessed you wrong. No worries, it happens. Bartender, get my new friend here a Long Island Ice Tea," the man said, leaning into Chuey's side as he did. He was warm, but also moist, like the air around him was humid.
The bartender seemed to be waiting for an answer from Chuey. He'd had an iced tea before, and while he'd ended up crawling from rooftop to rooftop in his camp after only a few sips, he'd enjoyed the flavor. "I like that," he replied, and soon the bartender set a glass down, the tan liquid garnished with a lime and lemon wedge. He took a long sip and swallowed it down enthusiastically. This tea was sweeter than the one he'd previously tasted, and he took another long drink.
"I knew you looked thirsty," the man said, clearly pleased with himself.
Chuey noticed his packmates because it was difficult for him to ever pay attention to just one thing. As the man began asking him questions about where he lived and why he'd never seen Chuey at that bar before, Stannis was ordering another round and Garth was grabbing another coaster with the intent of drawing something that he said would prove everything.
Chuey would have liked Garth or Stannis's advice on what to say back, but they were so engrossed in their conversation that to stop them and ask them would have been an ordeal. "I was doing a lot of dancing," Chuey replied. After his third sip, he started to feel a little woozy and wondered if maybe it was time for some food. The three of them had eaten dinner with the pack before sneaking out, but that had been at least three hours ago.
"I saw you moving out there, I liked the way you looked when you shook that tight ass," the man said, and Chuey felt his entire body go still.
He got this way when he hunted, or more often, when he thought he was being hunted. His stomach began to churn, and he leaned back, trying to find a spot of air that wasn't chock full of so many smells. He needed the fresh mountain air that he got just by walking outside of his cabin. He'd get it now if he just left out the entrance, but would that make people look at him weird? Would it be too odd?
"What do you think?" the man asked, rotating his body so that Chuey felt trapped between the man's legs. There was no way for him to leave without touching the man or brushing up against an intimate part of him.
Would that be so bad? he wondered. When he'd first been rescued by Padre, Chuey had been more concerned with learning the new world, learning how to communicate and discovering the dangers of his new surroundings. Now that he'd been there for a while, he was beginning to realize he had other needs beyond food, shelter and safety. His body was small, but he was strong. Men and women alike seemed to enjoy looking at his muscles. It wouldn't be so bad to let one of them touch his muscles and then, if that felt good, perhaps more than that?
Except, when Chuey imagined that moment, in his mind he was always in a dark room and the other person, sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman, was touching him all over, breathing so loudly that it was the only thing Chuey could ever hear. Lately though, the other person in his fantasy hadn't been a faceless shadow of either gender, it had been one man that Chuey had only ever seen from a distance.
He sensed that person in the space that very moment. Not his actual presence, but Chuey could tell he'd been to that bar before and spent a lot of time there. That was partly why Chuey had been so eager to join Garth and Stannis after he learned where they were going.
All this meant to Chuey was that he was more confused about how to proceed. He wanted to be touched, he longed to experience what he'd only ever overheard his padre and his mates doing. But, with anyone else, like the man sitting next to him for instance, it felt… wrong.
"There he is," an angry voice cut through Chuey's thoughts, and he perked his head up, staring over the crowd like a mongoose toward the source of the angry tone. Chuey ducked down a second too late as his padre, Logan, came stomping toward him, one of his two mates in tow. "Look at that, sitting with Garth and Stannis," Padre said, gesturing his hand toward them in frustration.
Chuey tried to move to reach his padre and his mate, Hugh, before they reached him, but moving only tangled Chuey's legs up with the man sitting next to him. He'd just gotten to his feet when padre stood before him. He was shorter than Chuey by at least an inch, but he didn't seem shorter in that moment. His hands were on his hips and his red hair looked brighter, like his anger was seeping into his hair.
"Padre, I—" Chuey began, his hands in front of his body in a gesture of surrender. Garth and Stannis hadn't even noticed Padre there yet.
"Don't, young man. I don't want to hear your excuses," his padre replied. "How did you even get in here?" He looked over Chuey's head toward the hybrid bartender who had crowded near when he noticed a bear shifter and his mate stomping a line through his customers. The bear shifters and the hybrid wolf shifters were allies but had only been that way for around a year. "He's nineteen, you know, last I heard, that's not old enough for him to legally drink. Unless, you all don't abide by liquor regulation rules," Logan snapped. He'd timed his words perfectly; it seemed to be loudest right when the music was switching. In the quiet between the songs, everyone heard Logan shout about how Chuey was underage.
The next song started, but someone must have been worried because it screeched and then, all was silent except for the ambient sound of around forty bodies moving and breathing. And staring.
"Padre, I just wanted to—" Chuey began quietly. He really wished there weren't so many eyes on him. He wished the music would start again and that everyone would start dancing.
"I told you, I don't want to hear it. You asked if you could go out with the boys and I said no. That was last weekend, why do you think my answer would have changed?"
"C'mon man, lay off him—" Garth began, but he was cut off by a growl from Hugh. Garth rolled his eyes and spun away back toward the bar. "I think we all need another round," he said, but he was so drunk already, his words slurred together.
"How were you planning on getting home?" Logan asked, his face had gone white. "Stannis and Garth are wasted, you don't have a license. If you had been pulled over…" Logan stopped speaking and looked as though he was simply imagining all the horrible things that could have happened to Chuey. Then his eyes landed on the drink that was unmistakably in front of where Chuey had been sitting. "What is that?"
"Iced tea," Chuey replied. Logan stomped the few steps between them and reached past him for the glass. He brought it to his nose and sniffed the contents.
"You're drinking?"
By now, every person was looking their way. The man who had been responsible for buying Chuey the drink was slinking back into the line of people while the girl who had talked to him earlier was smirking. She lifted her hand and said something to the girl next to her. If Chuey had been a human, he wouldn't have heard what she said, but he wasn't.
"How embarrassing, that kid's dad showed up."
Humiliation and anger built inside of him, rumbling around in his already upset stomach and upward until it filled his limbs with frenzied, latent energy. Chuey snatched the glass back and upended the contents into his mouth. Much of it dribbled out the sides of the glass and his mouth and soaked down, creating dark spots in his shirt. When it was gone, he set the glass down and stared at his padre defiantly.
Logan didn't back down. If anything, he made himself seem even larger, his anger staining his hair a brighter shade of red. "Get in the car," he seethed.
Chuey had felt the effects of the drink almost immediately. Now that he knew there was alcohol in the drink, it was like it was rushing through his bloodstream at a quicker rate. His brain felt just a little foggy when the door to the bar opened again and he walked in.
He pushed his chin length dark hair back from his eyes and surveyed the scene in front of him. When Chuey locked eyes with the older man, his stomach clenched. He wore a dark t-shirt with a black leather jacket and worn jeans that hugged his lower half in a way that Chuey wanted to.
"Oh, good, Ryder, you're here," Logan snapped. "Did you know your employees are serving underage teens?"
Before Ryder could answer, Chuey felt something inside of him snap. He grabbed the glass that now only contained ice and chucked it at the space behind his body while screaming, "I am a man!"
The bartender had to duck to avoid getting hit by the glass as it sailed through the air with all the force of an angry shifter. It slammed against the wall shelves behind the bartender that had been stocked full of liquor bottles. Some of the bottles toppled over on impact, a few simply broke there on the shelf. When the glass settled, Chuey looked from the mess he'd made, to his friends who were trying their hardest not to look at him, to his padre whose shocked expression seemed permanently affixed to his face, and then to Ryder, whose expression never changed except to show the merest hint of pity.
Chuey turned from Ryder, from his friends, and from his padre and ran. He pushed through the people into the kitchen, jumping over a crate of bread before bursting out the back door and disappearing into the night.