Chapter One

“Where are you?” Corey Gable murmured into her phone. “Call me back.”

She hung up, shaking her head. She scanned the café and checked the front door again, but her cousin, Hallie, still wasn’t here. Was she really standing her up for their weekly Wednesday breakfast date? Again?

There was no way. After last week’s edition of no-show-Hallie, she’d sworn she wouldn’t forget again.

Corey took a sip of her coffee and checked her phone for a return text, but there was still nothing. She’d texted Hallie three times before the call.

Dangit, she’d dressed up extra cute today. Why? Because her social life had been suffocated since Hallie had shacked up with her boyfriend, or mate, or whatever shifters preferred going by. Hallie wasn’t just her cousin. She was her best friend! Now who was she supposed to hang out with? She had work acquaintances, but they weren’t as fun and trustworthy as Hallie. She could tell Hallie anything, safe in the knowledge that she would never judge her.

Who was she supposed to talk to now? Debra the Rumor Spreader? Or Daisy the One-Upper? Ugh. She saw them enough at work, she didn’t want them to be a part of her after-work life. She only wanted to continue with Hallie, but her life had taken a different turn, and now Corey was being left behind.

That thought made her heart sag, because she felt the truth of it.

Hallie had found herself a hot-as-hell shifter from Damon’s Mountains, and even though they had moved one property over from Corey’s house, they might as well be a hundred miles away.

Hallie never made time for her anymore.

She had her new shifter friends.

Okay, what were her options? Go quiet and pout, and hope that someday Hallie would remember she existed? Get angry and ignore Hallie until she figured out she was hurting her feelings?

Or…did she listen to what her counselor said about communication, and tell Hallie exactly how she felt?

Yep. That option.

She pulled her phone up and began typing out a scathing text to Hallie for standing her up, but then stopped a few sentences in.

This wasn’t right. This wasn’t emotional growth.

She should do this in person, while throwing the bagel she’d ordered at her.

Yes. That felt right.

Corey stood so fast, her chair scooted noisily across the wood floor. She was hurt and angry and hadn’t really thought this through. She hadn’t time to get a to-go cup, so she chugged her room-temperature coffee like a stiff drink, then grabbed Hallie’s bagel with a napkin and marched out of the small café.

She strode right for her car, parked in the front row of the small lot, set the bagel-weapon on the passenger’s seat, and aimed for 1010 Winding Creek Way.

It was Hallie’s day off work, so she would probably be home, smooching her stupid boyfriend and forgetting she even existed!

This was against the rules. They’d had this discussion before. They weren’t supposed to ditch each other for boys, but what was even worse? Hallie had been hanging out with the women from Gunner’s old Crew. She was getting close with them, and leaving Corey in her dust.

It wasn’t fair. Corey hadn’t done anything to become invisible like this.

It was a twelve-minute drive back to the property next to hers, and that probably should’ve been plenty of time for her logic to kick in, but nope. She was still every bit as angry and stung as she pushed her whining car higher and higher up the winding dirt road to the single-wide trailer Hallie and Gunner lived in.

She’d been there for Hallie.

She’d given her a safe place to live while her crazy ex-boyfriend had been stalking her.

She’d made sure she was good, and put in a good word for a job, and was there for Hallie when she was falling apart. And as soon as her life took a different direction, Hallie forgets about her completely?

It hurt. It freaking hurt.

When Corey crested the final hill and her car nosed into the clearing in front of Hallie’s trailer, she slammed on the brakes in an effort to miss the crowd of men gathered there.

“Hey, watch where you’re going!” one of them yelled, his middle finger reaching for the sky on instinct.

“Sorry!” she called. “I…” She frowned as she scanned the enormous crowd of strangers. “I didn’t know Hallie was having a party.” Another wave of hurt flooded through her.

She didn’t know anything anymore.

She threw the car in park right there, blocking the exit. She shoved the door open, got out, remembered the bagel, and slid back into her car just long enough to grab it and get out again. She slammed the door and aimed for the trailer.

“Your car smells like oil,” one of the men called.

“You smell like beef.” What? Why had she even said that?

The man frowned, but didn’t say anything else. His eyes were glowing green. Shifter. That’s all Hallie cared about anymore.

Corey weaved through the crowd toward the front door that was propped wide open.

Hallie chose that moment to come out with a clipboard in her hand. She looked frazzled as she scanned the crowd and called, “Captain…Oh shit.” She frowned at the clipboard. “Captain Walker.”

“What?” came a growling demand from inside the trailer. “Tell him to fuck off!”

“Hey!” Corey yelled from the middle of the crowd.

Hallie’s attention snapped right to her, as did the complete attention of the quieting crowd.

“Corey?”

“Oh my God, I’m so happy you remembered my name.” She held up the bagel. “Forget something?”

“Um, I…” She looked around fast. “I had something come up.”

“Yeah, obviously. A call would’ve been nice.”

“I texted you hours ago!”

“Oh yeah, right. I sat at that stupid café for an hour, Hallie. I still exist!” This was the part where she was supposed to launch the bagel at her, but instead, she shook her head and looked around. She had to concede, right? This was what Hallie wanted to do instead of spending time with her?

“I almost lost my job yesterday,” she said.

“Oh my gosh, Corey. What happened?”

“It’s fine now. I got into it with Debra the Rumor Spreader for saying I’m the one stealing our boss’s yogurts out of the refrigerator, and then I was the one who got in trouble for popping on her.”

“You’re allergic to yogurt,” Hallie pointed out.

“Yeah, I know. I just really wanted to hang out. I was going to tell you at breakfast.” She shook her head again, and looked up to the closest person beside her. He was a tall man, lean but muscular. He wore a dark blue shirt that made his bright-blue eyes even brighter. His hair was pitch-black, and he wore a slight frown as he stared at her. “Here,” she said, handing him the bagel.

His impossibly-bright eyes drifted to the food she offered, and he took it gently from her fingertips. “You shouldn’t do that,” he murmured.

“I’m not hungry,” she murmured, and then turned and walked back toward her car.

“Corey!” Hallie called, and she could hear her voice was closer.

Corey rolled her eyes and pushed through the crowd faster.

“Corey, wait!” Hallie caught up and grabbed her elbow, pulled her to a stop.

“What?” Corey asked.

“Look, I texted you!” she said, poking around on her phone. “Damon put it out there that we are starting a Crew, and everyone started showing up this morning, and I didn’t know! I texted…oh. Uh-oh.” Her hazel eyes darted up to Corey, and back to her phone. “I accidentally sent the text to Cadence.”

A lash. That’s what it felt like. Hallie’s words were a lash against her heart. It was rubbing salt in an open wound. “You accidentally sent your text to me to your new friend, and stood me up to build a new life with your new friends, and you didn’t even tell me any of this was happening?”

“Corey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know this was going to happen, and—” Crash! The sound of breaking glass came from the trailer.

“Get out!” someone roared.

“Oh, that’s Gunner,” Hallie murmured, running for the trailer. A giant man came flying out the front door and landed in the yard, and Gunner, Hallie’s boyfriend, launched at him with an animal-like grace and began fighting. At least that’s what she assumed, because the crowd was merging inward, chanting, “Fight, fight,” like they were back in high school.

“This is a shit-show,” she murmured to herself.

“They’re all shit-shows in the beginning,” a man said from beside her. When she looked up, it was the tall man with the black hair and blazing-blue eyes. He was irritatingly hot.

“What do you mean?”

“All Crews form from disaster.” He jutted his chin up toward the fight. “This Alpha is going to be messy.” He slid his too-bright gaze to her. “You should really take this back.” He offered the bagel.

“I don’t want the stupid bagel back.”

He cleared his throat. “Trust me when I say, you can’t give this to me.” His eyes bored into her soul, saying something she didn’t understand.

“Yes. Yes I can. Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.” Just like a man to start ordering her around in the first sixty seconds they met. Obnoxious.

“You’re hot,” someone said off to her left.

“Hot and bothered by the male gender right now,” she called.

“You like ladies instead?” he asked. “That’s hot too.”

“No! I like dick…you know what? For the sake of this horrid conversation, sure, I like ladies. Bye.”

“Can I get your number?”

She clenched her fists and screamed at him as long and as loud as she could, until her throat hurt and got scratchy, and she had to stop yelling to cough.

“A simple no would’ve done.”

Bagel Boy chuckled beside her, and she jerked her attention up to his stupidly-high-up-in-the-air face. “What are you, seven feet tall?” she muttered.

“Six-nine.”

“Is that a line?”

“What?”

“Sixty-nine. Really?”

He just stared at her. “Would you like a tape measure?”

“Oh.” He was serious. Must’ve been a giraffe shifter or something. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”

“It’s eight a.m.”

“I’m going to go now, bye-bye then.” She continued her eternal freaking journey to her car, but the man kept pace right beside her.

Corey glared up at him and walked faster.

So did he.

She pumped her arms and walked even faster.

So did he.

“Stalker!” she accused him, skidding to a stop in the loose gravel. She would absolutely fight a man.

“I am not stalking you,” he growled in a voice that said he definitely wasn’t a human. “I just need you to take this fucking bagel back. It will simplify both of our lives. You can’t give me a gift.”

“I’ll take your gift,” the other guy called.

“Fuck off!” she yelled at the exact same time that Bagel Boy yelled the same thing.

With a huff of frustration, she yanked the bread from his hand and chucked it into the woods as hard as she could. A humongous raven dipped down, snatched it out of the air, flapped its enormous wings, and landed on a low-hanging tree branch. The branch sagged under its weight.

“That’s not a normal raven,” she said to Bagel Boy.

He huffed a sigh, his hands resting on his hips as he glared at the bird. “That was unfortunate. Look, lady, you should tell him that’s not a gift.”

“What are you freaking talking about?”

He leaned closer, and his face wasn’t so friendly. His teeth were gritted and his eyes even lighter. “Some shifter species take a gift as a sign of a bond. It’s commitment. If you want to leave here without an actual stalker, you’ll tell the bird that’s not a fucking gift.”

Her mouth had fallen open somewhere in the middle of the speech. She clacked it closed and cleared her throat. “Raven…man? That isn’t a gift. I have no interest in dating you, that is just a discarded breakfast.”

The raven kicked the bagel off the limb, took an actual bird shit, and then flew away. Lovely.

“I’m going to go home now,” Corey mumbled, watching the rude creature fly off.

“It’s probably best.”

Emotional, she turned to him. “Thank you for helping me stay single forever.”

He huffed a long sigh and rolled his eyes closed. “Are you going to tell me your problems?”

She lifted her chin higher into the air. “I have no problems, my life is perfect. I don’t need attention or affection or companionship or a cousin who pays attention to me—”

“So yes, you’re telling me your problems—”

“I’ll listen to your problems!” the other man called from the crowd.

“I will kill you,” Bagel Boy assured him.

He and the man glared at each other, and then the man disappeared into the crowd.

Bagel Boy, with his godlike beauty and eyes that had probably felled a hundred women, looked back down at her. “Would you like to unload your feelings?” he gritted out, enunciating each word slowly.

“It doesn’t sound like you even want to listen,” she groused.

He clenched his fists at his sides. “As a thank-you for unpairing us, I will sit still and not roll my eyes over your fragile human emotions while you talk about yourself. That is my offer.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glanced back at the trailer, where Hallie was calling a new name. She swiveled back to Bagel Boy. “Promise not to judge me?”

“No.”

“Fair enough. It all started the day my parents were super horny in the summer of 19—”

“No. Start with why you’re angry, not at the day of your conception.”

“Fine. My cousin called me out of the blue five months ago, and I was there for her during a really hard time, and now she’s the mate of Gunner, the next Alpha of Damon’s Mountains, and I’m…I’m…”

“Nothing?” Bagel Boy guessed.

“Yeah.”

“Fantastic, do you feel better?”

Corey scrunched up her face. “Literally no.”

“Okay, well, I hear journaling your feelings is helpful,” he said as he turned and walked away.

“Thank you, stranger, for making me feel even worse,” she called.

“Thank you for unpairing us,” he said over his shoulder.

She didn’t know what it said about her, but it was only eight in the morning and she could already use a drink.

“What is this?” she asked.

The man stopped walking, and she could see the tension in his shoulders ease. He turned. “You know, if you want more time with your cousin, you could apply to be in the Fastlanders.”

“Fastlanders?”

“It’s the Crew.” He gestured to the crowd. There had to be seventy or eighty people gathered here. “People are flooding this place for a chance to be chosen.”

Okay. She was interested.

Corey meandered over to him, her arms still crossed over her chest. “Why do they want to be chosen for Hallie’s Crew?”

His nostrils flared, and now his hands were on his hips again. He looked around and lowered his voice. “It’s not for the human. They’re here because of Gunner.”

She frowned. She knew him personally. He struggled with his animal. He had been rough on his last Crew. “Why?”

“The son of Haydan and Cassie of the Saw Bears, one of the original Crews in Damon’s Mountains, has been listed by the blue dragon as the one who will be the beginning of the expansion of his territory. The blue dragon is needing more. No one knows why, but being in one of his Crews means safety. It means protection.” He gestured to the others. “They’ve traveled from everywhere just for a shot at being one of the few who will live here.”

She looked around at the milling crowd. This was different than she’d thought. Here she’d been worried about a missed breakfast date, and Hallie was trying to manage a mass of monsters meeting with her man. Corey dragged her gaze to Hallie on the front porch. She looked uncertain as she talked to one of them.

All right. She was overwhelmed, and Corey had gotten pushed to the back burner. It didn’t mean she didn’t love Hallie. It didn’t mean she didn’t want the best for her.

She felt like crap. Sure, she was going through a lot, but if Hallie said she hadn’t known her home would be flooded with these shifters this morning, Corey believed her. Hallie was an honest woman.

And here were the choices again—she could stomp out of here and be mad for days and eventually call a cousin-meeting with Hallie and try to fix what was broken.

Or…she could do what they had always done for each other, and just be there no matter what.

She inhaled deeply, and exhaled her anger. There was no use for it today. They could deal with her feelings another time, but right now? Hallie could use a friend.

“Thanks for explaining,” Corey murmured, striding past him.

“Are you going to sign up for the Crew?” Bagel Boy asked.

“No.”

“Wait,” he said. “What are you going to do?”

She turned and forced a smile. “I’m going to help my cousin interview you monsters.”

A slow smile took his lips. “I’m Ace.”

“Corey.”

He nodded. “Good to meet you, Corey.”

“You aren’t getting free points in your interview,” she called as she walked away.

“I wouldn’t expect it!”

“You threw away my bagel-gift!”

The sound of his deep laugh followed her, and she smiled as she locked eyes with Hallie.

Help, Hallie mouthed.

I’ve got you, Corey mouthed back the words they’d always used for each other.

She weaved through the crowd and climbed the stairs to the trailer, the one Hallie and Gunner always called ten-ten.

She took the clipboard from Hallie’s hands and twitched her head toward the door. “Go help your man interview. We all know men make the worst decisions.”

Hallie threw her head back and laughed a relieved sound. “I will make up for breakfast.”

“Damn straight you will. You owe me drinks tonight.”

“I’ll go with you!” a shifter called from the crowd. It was the man who had been hitting on her earlier.

“You want me to kill him?” Bagel Boy…no, Ace…asked.

“Tempting!”

Hallie bumped her in the shoulder, and said softly, “I owe you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She watched a man come out of the front door and jog down the stairs, and she looked at the clipboard for the next name that didn’t have a checkmark by it.

She smiled at the name.

“Ace Longdong.”

Bagel Boy pointed two fingers in the air and approached the stairs. “That’s me.”

“Nice name,” she teased.

“Thanks, I thought it suited me.”

He didn’t know it yet, but after this was all done, she was going to check the shifter registration database for information on him. Why? Because he was fine as hell, had a sense of humor, smelled like hot-boy cologne, was sensitive to human emotion, and had made up his last name for an interview with no cares given.

He was a walking red flag.

Unlucky for him, her favorite color was red.