Chapter Two

“You killed me,” King muttered.

“I’ll probably do it again.” Truth.

King narrowed his eyes at Wreck Itall. Oh, he knew who this asshole was. If the flames in his eyes hadn’t given him away, the fire-spewing phoenix that went to war with him outside the prison would’ve been a dead giveaway. “Why did you bring me back to life?”

“I didn’t.” Wreck tossed a paper bag at him. “My mate did.”

“Where’s the woman?”

“Katrina is where she’s supposed to be, unlike you. You’re supposed to be back in the prison, rotting.”

“You’re the one who brought me to…” He frowned as he looked around. He had no clue where he was right now. “Wherever this is.”

“Not my choice. My old Crew said we needed to bring you.”

“Why?”

“Because Katrina said you’re her mate, and apparently, I’m cursed to have a fucking Holland in my new Crew because some seer named Lucia said so, and also her old friend, Silver, called in about a million favors. You are here because Katrina wanted you to live. Period. Doesn’t mean you will be given a place with us.” Wreck jammed his finger at him. “I know what you did.” Wreck turned in the open doorway and slammed the door of the hotel room so hard, the floor rattled.

King glared at the door for a three-count, then dropped the paper bag in between his feet, leaned forward on the edge of the bed, and peered inside. There were folded clothes in there, stacked on top of a package of underwear, and a pair of thick wool socks. He checked the tag on the light gray, long-sleeved thermal shirt on top. They’d gotten his size right. He checked the thick work pants next. The tags were still on them, and this size would work as well. Huh. There was a flannel in there too, and a beanie to keep his head warm in the harsh Alaskan winter.

Bare-ass naked, he stood slowly to his full height and caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror. He was covered in the scars of his Challenges, but there wasn’t a single burn on his skin. He remembered Wreck killing him though. Remembered the pain of death, but even worse? He remembered the pain of being brought back. He’d wished for death on the come-back. King shuddered just thinking about it, and his skin broke out into a thin sheen of sweat. Inside of him, his animal was quiet and very small. They’d probably drugged him.

Katrina. Pretty name. He hadn’t known it before now. She’d refused to tell him back when…

He winced, and rejected the memory.

Why had she called him her mate? He wasn’t. King had been able to feel the hatred and confusion roiling off that woman when she’d freed him from his cell. They weren’t a match, so why had she pretended they were?

Nothing made sense.

His head was pounding, and the light hurt his eyes. He’d never had a headache that wasn’t a hangover before, and this one felt different. Big. Deep. The ache stretched into his neck like he’d been in some car accident or something.

He got his pants on before there was a knock on the door. He reached back on instinct for his knife, but he didn’t have one. His knife was still at the prison with the belongings the police had brought him in with.

He zipped up his pants as he padded to the door. There were no peepholes here. He opened the door a crack. A man with longer blond hair stood there, looking at something down the hallway. “I’m telling him!” He swung his gaze to him. “Hey man, meeting outside in five. Wreck’s in a piss mood. Don’t be late.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m your worst nightmare if you Change. I’ll have you gutted in thirty seconds, and that accounts for the time it takes me to get to you.” Truth. Geez, this guy was intense, and actually believed he could gut him.

King narrowed his eyes at him. “Boar?”

“Good guess. I’m Owen.” He shoved his hand through the crack in the door to shake.

“Owen!” a man barked down the hallway. “Don’t touch the inmates.”

“Sorry bro, no hand-shakies today.” He let his hand fall and disappeared into the hallway. A knock sounded next door. “Five minutes, be outside. Meeting.”

King pulled the door open wider and looked out into the hallway. Next door, a tall man ducked under the doorframe and watched Owen knocking on the next door over. He looked back at King, and looked him up and down. His hair was buzzed, and his harsh facial expression didn’t change as he met King’s eyes. He felt heavy, but King had no guess what he was. His eyes were bi-colored—one bright blue, one brown. His pupils were shaped oddly—like ovals.

Hmm. He wasn’t the only monster Wreck had picked up. As he looked past the tall dude, he could see others filing into the hallway. Three doors down, a familiar face turned to look at him. Katrina wore a pair of skintight leggings, a black shirt, and a thick, smoke-gray Carhartt jacket that was unzipped. She wore snow boots and a black beanie that looked like the one Wreck had given to him.

She didn’t smile, or wave. She looked…troubled. He didn’t like it. He nodded a greeting, but she disappeared into her room without returning it.

Right.

He pulled back too, and finished dressing. Just beside the door was a pair of thick-soled boots that were size fourteen. Perfect fit. Whoever was running the wardrobe department around here was slaying it.

Katrina looked pretty in street clothes. A flash of her body washed through his mind, but he flinched away from it, shook his head, and focused on pulling his beanie low over his forehead in the mirror. That day had been so fucked up.

He grabbed the key card off the dresser and shoved it into his back pocket. It was so strange just freely walking out of this room and into the hallway. Others were filing out of their rooms, and the hallway smelled strongly of fur. A rumble emanated from his chest and his animal perked up, stretched, and grew inside of him. His head was throbbing so bad. He shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights above him. At Katrina’s door, he hesitated. It was closed. Had she already gone outside?

Someone bumped into his shoulder. “Keep it moving.” Power crackled through the air as King laid eyes on a dark-haired man.

He gestured up the hallway, where everyone else was heading out a door at the end and into the snowy night. “If you’re thinking of running, there’s a bunch of our people waiting on the outskirts of town. It’s a kill-on-sight order. You’ll have the dragon eating your ashes in minutes. Move.”

A part of King wanted to throttle him for talking down to him, but he didn’t know what was happening. Yet. He needed to be patient and fight when the time was right.

All right, so there were guards set up on the perimeter. Noted. Now he needed to figure out where they were, and where the nearest transportation was. He needed to track down a train, or a bus, and get as far away from here as he could. He wasn’t going back to that damn prison, that was for sure.

He walked slightly in front of the dark-haired man, and glanced back once to check Katrina’s door again.

“She’s outside already,” the man murmured under his breath.

King cleared his throat. “She ain’t mine.”

“Katrina says differently.”

King pushed the swinging door open, and held it open for the dark-haired man. “I’m King.”

“Everybody knows. You weren’t part of the plan.”

“What plan?” he asked as he flipped the collar of his thick flannel up to protect his neck from the frigid wind. Clearly they were still in Alaska.

“Wreck will explain all that.” The guy clapped him on the back. “I’m Ace of the Fastlanders. You want to stay near Katrina? Don’t fight unless he tells you to fight.”

“Who?”

“The phoenix.” Ace gestured to where Wreck was standing on a rock ledge in front of a crowd of about a dozen people.

Ten males and two females were gathering in front of Wreck, one of which was Katrina, and the other was the pregnant shifter she’d been protecting. Katrina was standing on the edge of the crowd, biting her thumbnail like it was a nervous habit. There was a firepit that separated Wreck from the crowd. To the side, the guards were sitting on the rock ledge, looking over at Wreck, waiting for him to speak.

Katrina was staring at the fire. At his approach, she glanced his way, and then back to Wreck. There was no invitation in her stance, and he understood. Truly, he did. What had happened was…

He flinched away from the memory again, walked to the opposite side of the crowd, and stood on the edge near the guards.

“That’s close enough, buddy,” one of the females said.

“My apologies,” he rumbled, but his damn voice was more gorilla than man. “Shit.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Sorry.” Still gorilla. His head was throbbing harder. “Must be the meds you gave us,” he gritted out.

He was a gentleman to women, and didn’t want her scared of him.

“We didn’t give you meds,” Owen offered.

Wreck was starting to address the others, but King was stuck on Owen’s words. “Wait, what?”

“The meds the prison gave you should be working their way out of you. Especially you, you big motherfucker. You Changed at the prison, remember? I shot you with like eight tranq darts, and then Wreck burned your gorilla to a piece of charcoal.”

“Geez, man, okay. I remember, mostly.” King swallowed bile at the vision of his body as a piece of charcoal. They weren’t suppressing the animals? If they weren’t suppressing the gorilla, who was volatile on a good day, they weren’t suppressing the others either. King scanned the crowd, but didn’t recognize any of the males. He was the only breeder here. He couldn’t tell any of their animals from smell.

The tall guy from the hallway with the oval pupils was staring back at him over the flickering light of the firepit. He was blocking his view of Katrina, until she stepped forward and held her hands out to the fire. She must’ve been cold.

He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. She could have his flannel, but it would smell like him. She wouldn’t like that, he didn’t think.

“As you all know, with the help of the Fastlanders,” Wreck was saying as he gestured to the guards sitting along the stone wall, “we have broken you out of prison. For a lot of reasons,” Wreck said, looking at each of them. “Each of you, save a couple that weren’t on the original list,” he said, casting a steely glance at King, “have different qualities that I am told would be useful for my new Crew.”

“Wait, you’re starting a Crew?” one of the shifters asked. He was a barrel-chested man clad in only jeans, and his sweater with the sleeves rolled up.

“Yes,” Wreck said. “Where’s your jacket?”

“I don’t get cold,” the guy said.

“Yeti shifter,” someone said under their breath.

“I wish,” No Jacket muttered. “Yetis are escape artists. I wouldn’t be here with you dipshits.”

“Want to square up?” the other guy asked, puffing up.

“Who says ‘square up’ anymore?” No Jacket asked, standing to his full height. “No squaring, but I’ll knock your fuckin’ teeth out. We’ll see if Wreck’s pretty little mate can cure that for you—”

A fireball blasted from Wreck’s outstretched fingertips, and No Jacket was blasted backward. He hit the icy walkway hard and yelled in pain.

“Enough,” Wreck murmured, squatting down on the rock ledge, his narrowed eyes on No Jacket, who was writhing in pain. The burns on his arms looked awful. “Rule number one—mention my wife, and I’ll set you on fire. Rule number two—if you do something that drags the fire from me, you better take it well. I don’t want to hear anything about it hurting. Suck it up. Learn a lesson. Don’t get burned again.”

No Jacket was gritting his teeth now, eyes squeezed tightly closed, trying to be quiet about the pain.

“May I pack snow on his burns?” Katrina’s friend asked.

“Are you a healer?” Wreck asked.

“No. I’m a feeler. Don’t like when people hurt, is all.”

“He’ll be fine. You have an accent. Are you from down south?”

“Louisiana. Bayou country.” She said the last part with a little quirk to her lips.

“Well, Louisiana, why don’t you go first. Tell everyone here your name,” Wreck said. “And your shifter animal, if you’re comfortable sharing that information.”

The woman looked around at the others, and then cleared her throat delicately and lifted her voice. “Name is Raynah. I would say my shifter is none of y’all’s fuckin’ business, but half of y’all already know. Crocodile. I can snap a man in half, bones and all, just not right now on account of the…” She gestured to the small swell of belly that protruded from the open flaps of her pink-and-black flannel jacket. She shrugged. “Can’t Change until the baby is born, but you all know how that works. Don’t gotta explain.”

“How are you pregnant?” Owen asked. “You were in prison. I thought the males and females were separated.”

It was then that Katrina glanced up at King, and busted him looking at her. Her pretty eyes were haunted. He was a part of those ghosts inside of her. The long scar down her cheek was stark in the firelight. He hadn’t noticed how deep it was before. Maybe she’d been clawed?

He shifted his weight and gripped his wrist, felt his tripping pulse there with his fingertips. If he didn’t have meds in him, he needed to keep his adrenaline down so he wouldn’t wake the silverback. Calm. Be calm.

“You smell like fur, bro,” Owen whispered.

“So do you,” he rumbled in an inhuman voice. “So does everyone here.”

“Bet Raynah doesn’t,” Owen spouted.

King rolled his eyes closed and tried to concentrate on Raynah’s explanation about the experimental breeding program. It was hitting a little too close to home, and his headache spiked, making his vision collapse. He paced away, and back.

“Be still,” Wreck ordered him.

He clasped his big hand around his other wrist again, felt his racing pulse. His skin was starting to tingle. Shit.

“Bro, you good?” Ace asked.

“I’m fine, bro .” He ticked his head hard, jerking his neck.

“Be. Still!” Wreck ordered.

“Can we talk about the breeding program later?” he asked sharply before he could stop himself. “Or never. Never works for me, and probably a couple other people here.”

“You were in the breeding program?” Wreck asked, his eyebrows arched up in surprise.

King didn’t answer, just held his gaze and wanted to rip him apart for trying to pry information from him. King didn’t talk to friends. Why the hell would he talk to this asshole?

“Was anyone else here a part of the breeding program?” Wreck asked the group.

Katrina lowered her gaze, and King knew she didn’t want to raise her hand.

“Why did you break us out of Cold Foot?” King asked.

“I’ll ask the questions,” Wreck barked out.

King glanced at Katrina, and she was melting back behind Raynah, who looked pale as a ghost. He could see it so clearly in the firelight. Raynah wrapped her hand around Katrina’s and held it, like she was comforting her.

Wreck sensed something though, because his fiery eyes darted straight to the women.

“Who. Else?”

He expected Katrina’s voice to come out all meek and scared, so he was surprised when she squeezed Raynah’s hand and stepped out from behind her. Slowly, Katrina lifted a pissed-off look to Wreck, lifted her middle finger, and held it there for him to see. “Me.”

King had to lower his gaze to the ground to hide the smile he was trying to bite back. Spicy woman, facing off with a monster and holding his gaze like she would fight him.

The murmurings from the other males grated on King’s nerves.

“When you said King was your mate, what did you mean?”

“I meant what I said.”

“Explain,” Wreck gritted out, low.

She was clenching her teeth so hard, a muscle twitched in her jaw. “If I say I love him, will you keep him here in the running? That’s what this is, right? It’s a competition? Winners get sanctuary in your new Crew? You need guards to protect you and your mate in case someone gets the hairbrained idea to do what my King did, and drag you to war?” Katrina offered him an empty smile and stepped forward. “You killed me in your mountains. I came there to kill as many of the people you love as I could reach. Why the fuck would I want to guard you?” She twitched her head toward King. “He probably doesn’t have the history I do with you and the Fastlanders. Keep him. What do you want me to say to secure his place? Huh? That I love him? Okay, I love him. He’s the light of my life. I wish I could have a dozen of his little gorilla babies.” Her tone was empty, and it stirred up a nauseous feeling in his gut. She lifted her chin higher into the air and laid her furious gaze on King. “He bred me and I fell in love with him, and now we are mates.” Lie. Anyone here could tell she was lying. But some of those admissions had been truthful. Her king? So she had to be a big-cat shifter. She’d gone to war with Wreck? She’d died by his fire, like King had? If she was here, popping off to the phoenix, it meant she’d been brought back to life, like King had been. The memory of the pain nearly buckled him in half. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Katrina was a tough woman. Tougher probably than anyone else here who was chuckling at her antics could fathom.

The pain in King’s head was piercing, slashing through his mind like a knife.

He squatted down and looked away from the fire. The light hurt his eyes and seemed to make the headache worse.

“Make her stay in his room,” a woman’s voice rang out from behind them.

King turned to see a woman leaning on the side of the hotel, which looked to be made of massive shipping containers from the outside. She pushed off the wall and walked closer, and King could see it so clearly now—the long scar down her face. It looked just like Katrina’s.

“Silver?” Katrina asked in a hushed tone.

“You want to throw this gift away, you ungrateful heifer?” Silver jammed a finger at her. “You will answer Wreck’s questions. You will lose your attitude. You will listen to what he is offering you, and you will shut the fuck up.”

A rumble escaped King before he could stop it.

“No!” Silver yelled at him, her eyes blazing gold. Her face was sharper now, her cheekbones chiseling out with her anger. Probably a big cat like Katrina. Lionesses, if he had to guess. She swung her attention back to Katrina, who was standing there in absolute shock, eyes wide. “Since you want to be a little liar, we can all go along with your lies. You can stay with your…what did you call him? The light of your life?”

“I’m not rooming with King,” Katrina ground out.

“You are now,” Wreck said softly. “The only reason we dragged you out of that prison was because Silver wanted it. She knows you. You used to be friends. She’s making the calls on you. King,” Wreck said. “You’ll be respectful with her.”

King ducked his chin. “She’ll be safe.”

Katrina’s eyes were filling with tears, and he hated it. Hated that the thought of being near him made her cry. He didn’t hurt women. He protected them. That’s what silverbacks did. They took on huge family groups and kept them safe. Everything that was happening was going against his animal instincts. It was too fast, too harsh.

“Fuck this,” Katrina said thickly, and shoved the guy that had been inching closer to her.

She stormed toward the door, but Silver blocked her path. “Key.” She held her hand out.

Katrina dashed her hand across her tear-streaked cheek, pulled the key card out of her jacket pocket, and slapped it into Silver’s hand. She lurched forward like she would hit her, but Silver didn’t move. She only arched her dark eyebrow and held Katrina’s gaze. “Don’t fuck this up. Just be honest.”

Katrina’s chest rose and fell in quick succession with her hurried breath. “King,” she said, inches away from Silver’s face, eyes locked on her. “May I please have the key to our room?”

King stood to his full height and sauntered over slowly, pulling the key from his back pocket. When he was an arm’s length away, he offered the key card between two fingers, knowing damn well she wasn’t going to let him in that room once she was secured inside.

Katrina’s tear-rimmed eyes gutted him as she snatched the key card and darted inside.

King swallowed hard and returned his attention to Wreck. He stood there by Silver as Wreck explained about the creation of a new Crew that would be forming in Montana and expanding Damon Daye’s territory. All of this should be interesting, but he couldn’t keep his attention on the only living phoenix, who was offering them a shot at life outside of prison. His attention was on the doors to the hotel behind him, where Katrina had disappeared. She was probably crying.

Wreck had said he’d known what King had done, and he knew what the phoenix was talking about.

He’d killed someone, and in front of humans.

But that wasn’t the worst thing he’d done.

Katrina had seen him at his worst, and he had seen her at her worst, and neither one of them was going to be able to escape it.