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It wasn’t the threat that she would kill or maim them that held the guards at bay.
There were too many windows looking down, too many sets of human eyes. Too many human ears that might have heard her alpha’s roar. Too many human hands that were reaching at that moment for their cellphones and quickly swiping over to their camera app.
Go, Mosa! Now!
Her energy tapped at my heart and at my head.
With tears streaming down my cheeks, I shifted the car into reverse and tore through the parking lot, my immediate destination Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.
CHAPTER5
DOONE
Butt parkedon a barstool and a cold mug of draft beer in my hand, I watched as every patched member of the Woodsmen filed through the set of doors in the clubhouse leading to what they called “church.” The meeting left me alone with Fletch, the bartender, and Rita, the club’s single waitress.
“Single” as in the only one running drink orders to the tables and single as in she was the club’s sweet butt, available to any unmated patched member who wanted to take her. I still found the concept hard to accept, but early attempts at forming a pack of mostly male shifters with different animal forms and a lot of them alphas had caused enough bloody fights in Night Falls that threatened to spill into the mortal world.
So a rule was made. Unmated female shifters who didn’t have a male relative with them had to find a mate in the first month, or become a sweet butt and bend over for any unmated patched male who had an itch in need of scratching—or a cock in need of sucking. It was, indeed, completely misogynistic, making the female shoulder the burden of males who couldn’t control their behavior.
I knew as much about Fletch as I did about Rita. In both cases, that wasn’t a lot. Fletch had started as a Woodsman in the motorcycle club’s only other chapter. It was two hours away in a middling sized town called Buckley. Only problem, all the Buckley bikers were supposed to be human and totally ignorant of the existence of shifters. When Joshua, the club’s Veep, went to check out the newest prospects, he was just as surprised as Fletch to find a shifter associating so closely with humans.
Joshua had promptly hauled the jaguar’s ass to Night Falls and, from what Mallory told me, subjected him to a twenty-four hour interrogation with the club’s alphas taking two-hour turns.
That was a few months ago.
“You’re going slow on that,” Fletch observed, a towel in hand as he randomly wiped at the bar top. “You know there’s no charge, not even for prospects.”
He winked at the last word. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe to remind me that we were in the same boat, only he was technically several months closer to the shoreline.
“Could be he wants something other than a beer to wet his whistle,” Rita cooed, her lips uncomfortably close to my ear as one breast pushed against my bicep.
Fletch emitted a low growl of discontent and walked off.
“You trying to get me kicked out before I earn my patch?” I asked as she pressed a little harder against me.
Rita was a deer shifter, white-tailed judging by the scent. I knew there were mated pairs in Night Falls consisting of different types of shifters. It wasn’t completely unheard of in shifter communities across the world given low population numbers, but it was always just a matter of one type of cat hooking up with another, or a coyote and a wolf getting their groove on. Here, not even predator with prey was unheard of—and it definitely wasn’t forbidden.
Rita’s only reply to my question was a provocative lick of her lips.
“Next round,” Fletch interrupted, his growl growing in volume as he passed an ice-filled bucket loaded with bottles of beer across the bar. “Hustle that ass.”
She complied with a snort, taking the bucket and disappearing behind the closed doors.
“Little trouble maker is what she is,” Fletch said through teeth that seemed to be clenching a turd while trying not to get the taste on his tongue. “You know neither one of us can touch her, right?”
I offered a quick chin lift in reply then slid my glass at him, the gesture a simple reminder that he was at the club to serve me despite my status as a prospect. There was also the intended undertone of my being an alpha shifter. From the smell coming off Fletch, he was a beta. A tough nut if he really was grilled as hard as Mallory said, but a beta nonetheless.
“You got a job yet…other than running around in whatever direction that old wolf pisses?”
“He does now,” Braeden barked, coming through the double doors as church ended. Without warning, he pulled a metal ring with keys on it from his pocket and fast balled it straight at my face.
I caught the keys before they would have collided with my nose. A quick glance showed one clearly for a vehicle, one for something like a small lockbox or padlock, and a common door key. With the lack of an electronic fob, I figured the ride was on the older side.
I nodded at Braeden before my gaze slid over to Mallory standing next to him. The old wolf had a glum expression. I figured, whatever the job was, it didn’t include me being at his beck and call as I had been 24/7 since my arrival. He’d have to find a new handyman-cook-housecleaner-yard worker for at least some of that time.
“Seeing how you’ve turned Mallory’s heap into something habitable in just a few days,” Braeden said, pulling his cellphone from his pocket and turning the screen in my direction. “You’re going to fix up the Outlook.”
A red dot hovered over a section of land on the opposite side of the valley. He magnified the view to show an abandoned logging road that led up from the state road.
