Page 31 of Bad Blood Bear

Chapter 14

When they got back to the compound, Xander got out of the truck and walked off without another word. A minute later, as Tank was getting Lissa’s boxes out of the back of the truck, he heard the wooden ‘thwak’ of Xander’s throwing knives, as he hurled them toward the target he’d set up near his trailer.

When he got into the house, Flynn was up in the loft, leaning on the railing and gazing out the huge windows at the apex of the roof. From the level of liquor in the bottle he was holding, it looked like he’d been drinking since they’d left.

He was drinking too much lately. Or maybe he always had; Tank hadn’t known him before they got stuck in Grant’s cells together. All he knew was it wasn’t good for him. It made him morose and defeated.

Tank hesitated, yearning to go to Lissa, but he could hear soft guitar music coming from his room, so she must still be asleep. And Flynn was his friend, and he was hurting too. Tank put down the boxes and climbed the stairs to the loft.

The whole thing was a master suite, with an office/sitting area where Flynn was standing, and then the door to the bedroom and bath beyond. The bedroom and bathroom walls were glass, with a remote-control tinting feature that could be darkened for privacy, or lightened to allow the occupant the full view out the windows.

Tank walked over and leaned on the balcony railing next to his friend. Flynn took a long swallow of booze, and this time he didn’t offer the bottle.

“You believe in past lives, Tank?” he asked. “I’m thinking I must’ve fucked up big in one of mine. Because all that happens in this one is me losing everything, and getting headcase shifters dumped in my lap in return. I’m fucking moving to Tahiti, and I’m not taking anyone with me.”

Tank nodded. You couldn’t reason with a drunk person, so he went with it. “Okay. Can I have your room after you’re gone?”

Flynn snorted. “Only if you want to be alpha. Which you don’t. I don’t even want to be alpha.” He took a deep swallow.

“Want to know what my week’s been like?” he asked. “Jasmin and Xander get into at least two or three brawls a day, half of them because Xander goads Sloan into Changing and then Sloan starts getting his ass kicked because he’s a fucking submissive. How the hell he survived the Professor’s shit I’ll never know.”

Tank remained silent. Flynn didn’t talk much about his feelings, and if he needed to vent, Tank wasn’t going to stop him.

“Then Xander goes over to your construction site every time you’re not around, and steals half your shit, and I have to go over to his trailer and make him take it back so you two won’t get into it any more than you already do. He knows we have a fucking budget for lumber and supplies to make improvements, but will he ask me for his share? No, of course not. I can’t tell if he’s too proud or is just having too much fun messing with you.”

“Both, probably,” Tank said. “I should go buy everything he needs, pile it up and put a sign on it saying ‘Tank’s special project, do not take.’ He’d have his place fixed up in no time.”

Flynn gave a snort of laughter. “See, I should have thought of that. All I can think of is holding him down by the throat until he’s flailing like a mackerel on a fishing line.”

It was an amusing image, but Tank was feeling a little more charitable towards Xander at the moment. “Did you know he was Turned against his will? By a woman he was in love with.”

“Shit,” Flynn said. “No, I didn’t.”

“He told me when we were driving back from Lissa’s squat.”

“Shit,” Flynn said again.

He went quiet for a few minutes.

“See?” he said finally. “If I were a real alpha, I’d know this stuff. I’d fucking figure out how to talk to these people. But all I can think of is that I haven’t slept in three nights, because I’m having nightmares about Alexander Grant’s cells. Last night I sleep-changed and found myself back there at that goddamned abandoned bunker. My lion tried to dig up the bones of those fucking guards so I could kill them again.”

Tank winced. He hadn’t known any of this. He knew Flynn roamed at night, but not why, or where he went.

They all were suffering in silence. They all should be talking to each other more. They just didn’t know how.

Flynn gazed out the window. “You know what they call us, over at the Nashville pack, and up at Shifter Council headquarters? The Bad Blood crew. All tainted. All fucked up. They’re taking bets on how long it’s going to take us to implode.”

He took another long swig of liquor and sighed. “Tank, I can barely keep my shit together, let alone everyone else’s. I’m about at the end of my rope here.”

Tank knew he was the only one Flynn would admit that to. He kind of wished he wouldn’t. Tank needed a strong alpha right now, somebody he could lean on, somebody who could settle his bear. And Flynn’s lion was on the ragged edge. Hell, they were all on the ragged edge.

“You need to make them pledge to you,” he said. “Right now, they’re still a bunch of fucked-up shifters thrown together by happenstance. They have to become a crew.”

Although Flynn was the owner of the territory, and theoretically the alpha of the crew, he only had a limited influence on the other shifters unless they acknowledged him as their alpha and pledged their loyalty to him.

Right now, he was expending way too much energy trying to keep them in line with the strength of his presence alone, without the alpha bond to augment it.

Tank knew why Flynn had been hesitating. Although lions usually roamed in prides, this crew wasn’t Flynn’s family. Tank didn’t know Flynn’s past—he never talked about it. But all of them had lost everything in their lives, and if Flynn had a pride to go back to, he would have done it by now.