Chapter 5
They met like two freight trains rushing head-on, and the shock jarred Tank all the way up his spine. He bellowed in pain and outrage as the lion’s weight bore him to the ground, claws raking across his shoulder. He rolled over and snapped at Flynn’s hind leg, but missed. The other two cats were frozen, crouched low, eyes wide and tails lashing.
Flynn stood over Tank and gave a thunderous roar, hurting his eardrums. The enormity of his alpha presence pressed down on Tank’s body and mind. Tank’s bear rolled to his side, panting, pinned to the ground by the sheer weight of it. Gradually, his anger dissipated, the red haze fading until his head bowed in submission.
Flynn stood over him a moment longer, then stalked back toward the house, his tail twitching. He gave Tank one more claws-out swat as he passed, drawing a bit more blood just to make his point. He changed back just as he reached the porch and swiped his jeans up off the floor, still obviously pissed off.
“You two!”
He turned and pointed at the panther and the jaguar. “Change back and unload the lumber. And Xander, put the chestnut paneling you stole from Tank’s project back down at the construction site. I would have bought you your own, but now I’m not gonna, because you’re such an asshole.”
He stomped back into the house, shaking his head. Even his black dreadlocks looked annoyed.
Xander Changed back and gave the finger to Flynn’s retreating back. “Didn’t want it anyway,” he muttered.
Tank snatched up the remains of his clothes off the ground. He started for the cabin, but changed direction before he got to the front door and went around the back. Flynn was pissed off enough, and Tank didn’t want to get into it with him.
He and Flynn shared the main cabin. The rest of them lived in makeshift outbuildings and trailers dotted around the property. Their territory was a hundred and sixty acres of forest bordering on parkland, purchased from Grant’s lawyers and gifted to them by the Nashville wolf pack as restitution for an unprovoked attack. The paperwork had just been finalized, and now they were mired down in permits and all kinds of other official bullshit. One of their main projects before winter hit was to get everybody into adequate housing.
Then they had to find a way to make this bullshit conglomeration of bloodthirsty misfits into some kind of functioning crew—preferably one where the members had jobs. Otherwise the money was going to run out pretty fast.
Tank went in the back door, throwing his mangled clothes into the trash bin on the way, only pausing to fish his wallet and his phone out of the pockets of his jeans. Note to self: beef up wardrobe. Being an out-of-control shifter was hard on the fashions.
He went straight to the bathroom and started the shower running. It was a luxury shower with glass doors and fifty million shower heads, and there was a separate soaking tub. Since the cabin had formerly belonged to a psychotic billionaire with excellent taste and a weakness for luxury, it was one of the few showers that Tank actually fit into comfortably.
He leaned his head against the tiled wall, watching the blood and mud swirl down the drain. The hot water stung the slashes across his back and thigh, but most of them were already closing, thanks to his accelerated shifter healing.
Shit. Was this what his life had turned into? Brawling with a bunch of idiot misfits and living from day to day? He’d had everything once—a loving mate, a decent job building custom homes for a developer, a snug, laughter-filled home, and plenty of room to roam when he needed to Change.
A sudden wave of homesickness washed over him, nearly buckling his knees. A vivid picture of the cabin he’d lived in with Angie, filled with special possessions they’d found at antique stores and craft fairs. He could feel the cool granite of the kitchen counter under his hands, smell the scent of the wood fire and Angie’s special pot roast cooking, feel her arms sliding around his waist as she snuggled up behind him and kissed his shoulder blade.
He’d had all that, and it had all been destroyed because he hadn’t been able to protect the woman he loved. And yet his bear still hungered for connection, so much that it still drove him to want to protect broken souls and damsels in distress.
Even if it killed him. And it nearly had.
With a great effort, he pulled himself together and turned off the shower. One of the slashes on his back was still oozing blood—he could feel it. He wrapped a folded towel around his upper chest and tucked the ends in to absorb the blood.
Note to self: buy black towels so the bloodstains won’t show. Lots of black towels.
He wrapped another towel around his waist and went back to his bedroom. He didn’t know why he bothered, really—Flynn was always walking around with his dick hanging out, and the rest of them brawled so often that somebody was always naked from ripping out of their clothes in an uncontrolled Change. But he felt less vulnerable with the junk covered.
On the way to his room he passed the spare bedroom. Tristan’s room—his best friend. He and Tris and Flynn had stuck together after they got out of Alexander Grant’s cells. They’d taken over this cabin after Grant was arrested, figuring nobody would be using it for a while.
But Tristan was in Idaho now, trying to heal his broken mind. He’d been in captivity far longer than the rest of them, and his psychological scars ran deeper. He’d recently found his sister and was living with her and the Silverlake wolf pack, probably as happy as any of them would ever get.
Tank missed him like hell. Hanging out with Tristan, and watching his back when his wolf went crazy, had taken Tank’s mind off his own problems and made his bear feel a little better. Now, once more, he had no one.
Tristan had left some stuff in his room—what little he had. None of them had much. They’d all been ripped away from their homes, their old lives, starting over from scratch, and Tris had been on the run longer than any of them. For a while Tank had hoped the left-behind belongings meant Tris was coming back, but now he wasn’t so sure. Tristan had family in Idaho—his sister and her mate, and a little boy who was a distant cousin. Silverlake was a new pack, struggling to establish themselves, but it was a haven of sanity compared to this crew.
Why would anyone stay here if they had somewhere else to go?
He pulled clean underwear and jeans out of his dresser and put them on, then sat down on the edge of the bed with a sigh. He was just so damn tired of it all.
He picked up his phone and balanced it in his hand. When he’d bought the new phone and signed in with his old account password, the phone had unexpectedly downloaded the backup data—all his old contacts and information. Friends, work, bank app. To his shock, he still had money in his accounts, and the auto-pay had kept the mortgage and utilities current on his old house. What condition it was in, with no maintenance and no one living there, was another question altogether. Probably by now, vandals or shifter hunters had broken in and destroyed everything.
But it meant he did have somewhere else to go, if he could live with the ghosts of his old life.
For the hundredth time, he thumbed through the contacts until he found his next-door neighbor’s phone number. Ben and his wife weren’t shifters, so Tank and Angie hadn’t been close to them, but they socialized now and then, lent each other tools, helped each other with big repair projects.
He could ask Ben what state his house was in.
If he wanted.
He looked at the number a long time, thumb hovering over the ‘call’ button.
There was a knock at the door, and he looked up to see Flynn filling the doorway. He’d put his pants back on, which was a small mercy. And he was carrying a bottle of Alexander Grant’s top-drawer single-malt whiskey, which was even better. They’d all be sad when that shit ran out.
“Hey,” Flynn said. “How you doing?”
“Healing,” Tank said. “My back will stop bleeding in a little while, probably.”
Flynn gestured, and Tank shifted so Flynn could see his back. Flynn walked over and handed Tank the bottle, then pulled the towel away. He hissed between his teeth. “You need a couple of butterfly bandages,” he said. “Got any?”
“In the dresser.”
Tank took a couple of good pulls of whiskey while Flynn went over and rummaged in the dresser drawer until he found the bandages, then came back and sat down on the bed behind Tank. He wiped the blood off, and Tank felt him pulling the edges of the wound together and anchoring them with the bandages.
When he was done, Flynn laid his hand on Tank’s back for a second. “There,” he said. “Give it a couple of hours.”
Tank nodded.
Flynn turned until they were sitting side by side on the edge of the bed, their shoulders just barely touching. Shifters needed touch, to settle their animals and reassure each other. Tank knew Flynn wouldn’t apologize for cutting him up—it was his job as alpha of the crew to keep everyone from killing each other.
But this touch was his way of saying ‘sorry.’
Flynn picked up the damp bloody towel off the floor, looking at the splotches of blood staining the light gray fabric. “This stain ain’t coming out any time soon,” he said, holding it between his hands. “And we’ve been going through a shit-ton of towels, brawling so damn much.”
None of them were completely in control of their animals—not after what they’d been through. Flynn was the closest to it, but even he had a short fuse, not to mention the occasional berserker death wish.
Tank gave a huff and a half-grin, passing him the bottle. “I was thinking we should go with black after this,” he said. “Or maybe burgundy. Something that doesn’t show the blood.”
“Fuck yeah,” Flynn said, taking a drink. “Make a note. Now that we have money, we can order about six dozen off the internet.”
They sat there for a couple of minutes in silence, passing the bottle back and forth.
Finally Flynn said, “Have you given any more thought to starting that business we talked about?”
Tank took another pull of whiskey, thinking about how to answer. He and Flynn had discussed opening their own construction business, doing renovations on people’s houses and maybe small additions, decks, stuff like that. It would bring in income and help make the crew self-sufficient.
It would be good to work again, but Tank had been putting off doing anything about it. He had enough money to carry him through for quite a while, so there was no rush. But there was more to it than that. He didn’t know if he had enough control over his bear to be going out, working in people’s homes. He’d had another idea, but he didn’t know if it would pan out.
And he knew the real reason went beyond that. Starting a business meant putting down roots here. Pledging to Flynn—a lion—as his alpha, committing to this fucked-up crew, leaving his old life behind for good.
He knew he couldn’t go back, but he somehow couldn’t seem to make himself go forward either. He was stuck in this limbo, and he didn’t know how to get out.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Still thinking about it, I guess.”
Flynn nodded, taking a sip of whiskey and handing the bottle over. “Thinking about the business, or thinking about whether you want to stay here at all?”
That was the question they’d been dancing around for the last few weeks. And Tank didn’t know what to tell him.
“This has been a fucked-up day, Flynn,” was all he could manage. “Not a good time to be making decisions.”
Flynn nodded, then got up with a sigh. He stopped at the doorway and looked back. “I need you to help me with this crew,” he said. “You’re the only halfway sane one out of all of them.”
Tank gave a laugh that didn’t really have much humor in it. “If I’m the sanest one, we’re in worse shape than I thought.”
Flynn gave his famous crooked grin. “You just figuring that out?”
Tank held up the bottle questioningly. Flynn shook his head. “Looks like you need it even more than I do, today.”
Tank just nodded.
Flynn opened his mouth as if to say something else, then shook his head again and walked out, leaving Tank staring at his phone once more.
But this time, instead of an empty cabin full of ghosts, his mind’s eye saw a lively face with vivid blue eyes, dark and shadowed. A shabby figure with her head held high, knife in hand, ready to fight the world.