1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Jayce

"Jayce."

I hated the sound of disappointment in my friend's voice. I moved the phone away from my ear and counted to five. When I put it back, he was still talking.

"You were supposed to be here two hours ago. What are you doing? Is that music I hear and a pool table? Are you at a bar?" Great. He sounded pissed, or was it worried? In any case, I should've called him.

"Corey, I didn't give you an exact time that I would arrive. You're the one who told your brother I would be there by seven. I never made that promise." Although I didn't exactly correct him, either.

"I know you didn't, but you had all day to drive. I just assumed that you would make it here by now." Not worry. Disappointment. Ugh. I was being a crap friend.

"Sorry. Not calling you was a dick move. It's no excuse, but I found this cute little bar that's not far away, and I stopped for dinner, and—"

"Are you done with dinner?"

"Well, there was a delicious snack of an alpha at the bar, but I was pretty sure he was mated." Everybody seemed to be mated these days. Meanwhile, I was living the single life. "I did eat dinner, and then I started playing pool with these nice gentlemen."

The nice gentlemen were currently shooting glares in my direction. I had definitely overstayed my welcome at this bar. It wasn't my fault. They assumed that since I was an omega, I couldn't play pool or darts. I had beaten them both out of a hundred bucks in both games. It wasn't my fault they were designationist jerks. We didn't live in the 1800s. Omegas had full rights and could do anything they put their mind to. Full. Stop.

The skunk-looking man—who, by the scent of him, was an actual skunk shifter—had a gray streak exactly where his stripe would go through his hair. How was that possible? I almost wanted to see his animal form.

"Listen, Corey, I'll be heading out pretty soon, and I'll see you when I get there. Okay?" He didn't need to know about my pool sharking, that was for sure. "Tell that stick-in-the-mud brother of yours to calm his tits."

"Please don't call him that. He's the Alpha."

"He's a dick." The two were not mutually exclusive, but I wasn't getting into that… not here.

I'd never met his brother, but I knew enough about him to know that he and I were going to butt heads. I was probably going to get kicked out of this den before I even arrived. There was probably no use in me unpacking my suitcase when I got there.

My happily mated best friend was doing renovations on their house, so I couldn't stay with him. Somehow, he conned his brother into offering up his spare room. Living with the stick-in-the-mud Alpha of the den was not going to go over well. I gave it a week tops before I was out on my ass, and only that long because I was going to try to get along.

Maybe this skunk clan would bring me in. Clan, herd, group... What do you call a group of skunks?

I put my phone to my chest. "Hey, man, what's your group called?"

The man looked around like I might be talking to someone else. "What?"

"Skunk groups. What are you called?"

"Surfeit," he said.

Yeah, I wasn't going to be able to pronounce that. Meanwhile, Corey was yelling. I put my phone back to my ear.

"Corey, I'm leaving now. I'll be there, okay? Can you just take a deep breath for me? I'm leaving now. I've only got an hour left in the drive. If your brother doesn't want me to interrupt his beauty sleep, I'll sleep in my car or as my beast outside." I did enjoy that on occasion, and the weather was pretty decent.

"All right. But don't sleep in your car or outside." He let out a long sigh. "Just drive safe. But get here as soon as you can. Aydan likes to be in bed by ten."

Of course he freaking did. In bed by ten and probably up by five. What the hell was he? Some kind of schoolteacher? "I won't interrupt his beauty rest, okay?"

Somehow, I didn't think the beauty rest was working. Whenever I pictured Aydan, it was always as a pinch-faced hunchback with gnarly fingers that he pointed at the children who were being too loud, yelling, "Get off my lawn."

The vision made me giggle. "I'll see you soon, Corey." I hung up the phone.

"Where were we, fellas?"

"You were just leaving." The skunk sounded dead serious. So much for making more money. He grabbed my pool cue from my hands. "We don't take kindly to hustlers here."

Take kindly? What backwater place had I stepped into? Maybe I was in the Twilight Zone and had stepped into the wild west but didn't realize it.

"Listen, I wasn't trying to hustle you. It's not like I played terribly for a few rounds and then kicked your ass. I kicked your ass on the first round." Which made it 1000% not pool sharking in my opinion. "You assumed it was beginner's luck. That's not my fault. If you want, you can have the money back." Because I sure as shit didn't want to get my ass beat and then have to drive an hour, and that was the vibe I was getting from him, for sure.

"Don't need your pity." He pushed me, nearly to the ground. Great. This was going from bad to worse.

"I'm not—" I clamped my mouth shut. I was not about to get into a fight with an alpha in a bar. "I'm leaving. All right?" I picked up my jacket and walked out the door.

That was apparently not good enough for the skunk, though. He followed after me, shouting about how I cheated. I ignored him. I needed to get to my car and get out of here before I caused any trouble that would really get Aydan riled.

I didn't want to make things more difficult for Corey, and I didn't want to get kicked out of the den. I might try to put on an I-don't-care facade but that's all it was: a facade. I just didn't understand why we had to have so many flipping rules and that had me puffing out my chest like an emu.

"Hey, I'm talking to you, muthafucker." The skunk pushed me again, this time the only thing between me and the ground was that I somehow caught myself on the side of my car.

I righted myself and whirled around. "Listen, man—" Only he wasn't there. He had shifted. I looked down at my feet to see a tiny little skunk. "Oh, you're cute," I said and bent down.

Big mistake.

He turned, lifted up his tail, and let out the most foul stench I had ever encountered in my life. I got a face full of spray. I turned to get away from it, but it just kept coming, and now my whole body was coated in that stench. I'd been worried about a physical fight, when I should've been worried about chemical warfare. I knew these fuckers stank, but a direct spray was a million times worse than anything I'd ever encountered before.

He shifted back, standing there, naked as the day he was born.

"Are you kidding me?" I said. Thank goodness this was a shifter bar, or else we'd all be in trouble. "You have to resort to foul play?"

He hissed. Was that his skunk side? Did they do that?

"Don't come back."

How the— I leaned against my car. Fuck. Now I was going to show up at my brand-new den reeking of skunk, and if the rumors I'd heard were true, it was nearly impossible to get a shifter skunk's scent off you.

Fuck.

Why did I have to play pool? Why did I think it was a grand idea to stop for dinner? Why didn't I have a motorcycle so I didn't stink up my car?

For a half a second, I contemplated going inside and trying to clean up, but even if they let me in and even if those guys didn't have a problem with me coming back, the watered-down hand soap in there wasn't going to do a lick of good. I was screwed.

I opened the car door and rolled down every window before climbing inside and driving the hour to my new home, as temporary as it might be. At least it wasn't raining.