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Chapter One
Killian
“If you don’t back the fuck up, I’ll have no damn floor manager tonight,” Rafe seethed in my ear, pushing his beast out to rake his semi-formed beak against my neck.
I ignored the wedge-tailed eagle’s trash talk, opting to slip my leg beneath my boss’s in a broad sweep that took his lean form to the mat. “Apples, mate. Apples.” I pointed a thumb backward at my own chest, then laid out a middle finger upright in his direction. “Oranges.”
“I’m not here to make a fucking fruit salad,” my best friend and ownerof Fray, our local shifter BDSM club, muttered.
“Nope. But I’ll put you out with the rotten ones later.” I traded barbs, maintaining a cheerful smile just to fuck with him.
“Yourenthusiasm is noted. Now fucking hit me, fur-face.”
“Granted.” I slapped him upside the ear for fun, then slipped past his decent block to aim a direct jab at his nose.
Breath hissed between Rafe’s teeth as blood issued from both nostrils.
“All right. Fight’s done,” Josiah called. The owner of the local shifter gym and boxing ring Reserve folded his arms over his barrel chest. “If you stain my shit with blood, I bill you. Twice.” He threw both thumbs over his shoulders. “Get the fuck out. I have to clean my equipment.”
I made the mistake of looking at him. Or more precisely, lookingpasthim. A swank of pink and pale gray feathers flitted past the glassed windows that lined the street front and disappeared around the corner that led to the office. The one thing that could steal my attention.
Long enough for Rafe to clock me in the chin and give me a matching bruise.
“Who’s going to be the bitch on frou-frou night now, Killian?” he gloated, hovering over my prone form.
I stared at the swaying fluorescent lights behind his head that bobbed in a mesmerizing rhythm. “If you say so.” I pressed back and used my weight to handspring back into position. “Frou-frou night, you say?”
Fray hosted themed nights for significant birthdays and other events. This year would be Lux’s twenty-fifth. The emu shifter was averse to pirates, drunks, and assholes, a talent for a bartender. In true fashion Rafe made sure the entire club knew it by theming a night in honor of her favorite color, pink.
“Notup to the task?” Rafe jabbed in my direction as I ducked and weaved.
Still trying to catch a glance of the lithe emu I was certain I’d seen a moment earlier, my distraction gave Rafe the opportunity to lay me out a second time.
His broad form leaned overme, hand extended.
I knocked it away. “Think we’re finished,boss man?” I leered at him, bringing out my inner asshole because he was my club manager, best friend, and because I could. Rafe wasn’t the only one who could trash talk, and I made sure he knew it.
“Enough!”Josiah shouted from the edge of the mat.
“Fine. Get your ass to work on time tomorrow.” Rafe tossed sweat-riddled hair out of his eyes with his glove. “And I need more information on a certain drug ring.”
I dropped my hands and stopped dancing. “Are they in the club?”
Before Rafe had gotten himself all distracted with a certain fluffy ass quokka, we’d looked at drug runners rampant within the shifter community. He worried about the effects on our shifters.
Plus, it was a little hard toexplain why a local wallaby had X in its system to a paramedic who didn’t know shifters existed.
Knowing we were more robust than the regularhomo sapien,I let it go. Our metabolisms worked fast enough to combat most drugs and besides, the choice came down to the person, not the organizer.
Rafe liked to stick his head into the community, the great protector. And while I envied the support and awe he generated, I also knew when to back off and leave well enough alone.
Sort of.
My gaze flicked back to theglass, straining to see the flock of pink feathers that would herald Lux’s arrival, though she shouldn’t be here in the first place.
Rafe muttered something that sounded likebullshitbehind his fist.
I shot him a glare and ducked out of the ring, thanking Josiah with a half bow.
