Claiming His Fire

Shadow of the Feral Breed earned his road name by being a sneaky combatant—quite fitting considering he’s been hiding the truth about his heritage for decades. With his life wrapped in secrets and lies to protect himself from the judgment of other shifters, he’s become a master at keeping people at a distance. He’s got a job to do, one that could potentially save the lives of the missing Omega females, and he refuses to let a little thing like honesty get in his way.

Fire witch Scarlett left her coven voluntarily after her sister’s banishment, but she can’t get over the pain of being shunned by the people she saw as her extended family. She keeps her relationships casual, avoiding any real commitment on the chance others may let her down again. But with her powers out of control and her element burning her from the inside out, she’s on a path that can only end in ash.

After a chance meeting leads to a fiery clash, Shadow and Scarlett work hard to break themselves apart as the thread of destiny pulls them closer together. But secrets and lies aren’t a stable foundation for a relationship, and the walls between them are easier to build higher than to tear down. When the truth comes out and the smoke clears, will their fragile connection be burnt through or tempered by the heat? And can their fated bond survive the war brewing in their world?

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Anbizen

Term for turned shifters, or those born as humans. Anbizen shifters are a bit rare as the rush of instinct can only be handled by the strongest minds. Most Anbizens end up packless or feral.

Bagger

A type of motorcycle equipped with permanent saddle bags and other touring accessories. Once thought of as a bike for older, first-time riders, these bikes are now being used by many riders for long-haul riding.

Bobber

A type of motorcycle originally called such due to the shortening of the rear fender. Bobbers tend to have a stripped-down style, where the owner customizes their bike by removing all the unnecessary accessories.

Borzohn

Term for the men and women born with the shifter gene. Usually raised in a pack culture, these shifters sometimes believe they are superior to the shifters who began their lives as humans.

NALB

National Association of the Lycan Brotherhood; a form of government for wolf shifters throughout North America. There is one president who runs the various jurisdictions within the group, which are each run by a Regional Head. Regional Heads control local packs, assign territory, and handle any minor NALB rule infractions. The President of the NALB is also the National President of the Feral Breed Motorcycle Club, the group called in to handle situations the Regional Heads can’t.

Wiccan Rede

A long statement laying out the morality of the Wiccan religions. Many modern Wiccans follow what is known as the eight words couplet:
An it harm none, do what ye will.

The numbers on the page ran together into illegible black lines. Dates, times, and identifiers no longer recognizable through the heavy anchor of exhaustion pulling me deep. I’d been staring at the same pages for hours, been trying to deduct reason and order in the details they represented for days, but I’d accomplished nothing. Nothing that made sense, that clued me in to where or how or why. I had reached a point where the numbers on the paper only made my head hurt.

“Yo, Shadow. Where ya been?”

Cringing at the thought of all the work left to do, I grabbed a flyer and slid it over my documents before spinning at the familiar voice. A true smile spread unbidden as one of my favorite Feral Breed denmates—one I didn’t mind taking a break from work to catch up with—strode toward me.

“Hey, Gates. How’s it going?”

The big shifter gave me a traditional welcome—grabbing both my forearms and nodding—before pulling me into a sideways hug. Three solid backslaps later, he pulled away and looked me over, smile falling.

I readied myself for an inquisition. I knew what he saw—I’d lost a lot of weight and a bit of color over the past few months. My work, the missions I was being assigned to outside of my Feral Breed responsibilities, had taken their toll on me. Hell, they’d taken their toll on all of us involved in the investigation of the numbers on those pages.

Still, I kept my head up and my game face on. If Gates sensed weakness, he’d be all over my ass, which was the last thing I had time for. I needed him to believe that I was fine. Tired and a little stressed, but fine. Strong. Ready. When in reality, I was just too damn stubborn to quit.

“Seriously, man, where have you been?” he asked, still looking concerned. “I haven’t seen you since you split off on the road back from North Dakota in February.”

I glanced at the paperwork on the bar, the information I’d been reading when he arrived. Columns of numbers in varying lengths, seemingly random. But there was nothing random about the information on those sheets. Each number related to a case, each case to a female shifter who had gone missing, each one important to someone somewhere and possibly in a lot of danger. I couldn’t talk about them, though. Not to anyone in my den, at least.

But the secrecy wasn’t what made my gut knot and my palms sweat. It was one particular number, one line item, which related to a shewolf named Kaija. A shewolf mated to the man in front of me. Though her kidnappers had failed—thanks in no small part to Gates himself—there was no guarantee they wouldn’t come back for her. Something I was sure Gates worried about, and something I couldn’t let him know worried the team investigating the kidnappings as well. I just hoped he didn’t ask me about the jobs I’d been running because I’d have to lie. And there was no way I could look him in the eye while I lied. Any other man, sure…but not Gates.

I shrugged, intentionally casual. “Nothing man, just working on a couple of things out in Chicago.”

The weight of Gates’ stare brought my eyes up to meet his. I kept my face solid, giving nothing away as he watched me. The other guys might joke about Rebel’s intense stare, how he seemed able to see right inside of them, but Rebel had nothing on Gates. When you caught the interest of the Gatekeeper, you knew it. Hell, I could feel his look all the way down to my toes.

Gates knew the basics of why I’d been spending so much time in Chicago. Blaze—or President Blasius Zenne, leader of the National Association of the Lycan Brotherhood—needed me to help search out information on the missing Omega females that had been popping up. All the guys in my Feral Breed denhouse knew that much. But the rest…well, that was a different story.

The missions I was a part of remained a secret for now, the search methods and data gathering we were using going against a whole hell of a lot of laws, both human and shifter. My objectives were cloaked in secrets, bathed in misdirection, and coated in falsehoods. All things I had experience in. I’d been hiding the truths about myself practically since birth, keeping my heritage a secret so as not to be seen as different or less. What made me
me
could never be public knowledge. Hell, not even Gates could know those truths.

Finally, with a single nod, Gates surrendered to my silence. “So, when did you get back?”

“Last night.” I yawned, covering my mouth with the back of my hand. “Sorry. I barely slept. I haven’t even had time to unpack my bag yet. Rebel was all up my ass at like seven this morning. Doesn’t the man ever sleep in?”

“Charlotte must not be in town.” Gates grinned as I huffed a laugh. Everyone knew our club president could be a grouchy old fuck when his mate wasn’t around. The couple decided to move her and her teenaged brother Julian to Detroit to live with him, but she’d asked Rebel to be patient until Julian finished the year out at his school. I’m sure Rebel accepted that reasoning, but acceptance didn’t mean liking. He wanted her in Detroit…period. Which made him a total pain in the ass to be around when she wasn’t.

Gates pulled out a barstool and sat down. “Been riding much yet?”

I pulled up a stool for myself, my shoulders relaxing as he changed the subject. Not that I wanted to lie to my Feral Breed brothers, but when the president of the NALB tells you to keep your mouth shut, you keep your mouth shut. Something I was pretty good at anyway, so it wasn’t as if the rest of the guys would notice. But Gates…he noticed much more than most. Especially about me.

“Yeah. I was tooling around Chicago as soon as the snowpack melted.” I leaned back and shrugged one shoulder, playing supercasual even as I wanted to dance around like a kid on Christmas morning. “Plus I got my new skid from Yard Shark Customs back in March.”

Gates smirked. He knew how much I’d been waiting to get my hands on that bike. It had been the subject of just about every one of our discussions over the last year as his brother tweaked and rebuilt a classic World War II-era ride for me. My wait had seemed endless, but bringing an old Harley-Davidson XA into the twenty-first century without destroying the feel of the ride I remembered from my soldier days had taken precision. Beast was the best, and my new bike was a testament to that fact.

“You been tearing it up out there?”

“A little.” I grinned and pointed to the paper at the top of the pile. “And I can’t wait to take it out for this. Detroit to Chicago with both dens of the Feral Breed Great Lakes to celebrate Blaze’s birthday? Hell yeah, that’s my kind of ride.”

“Kaija’s looking forward to it as well.” Gates got the look on his face that he always did when he spoke of his mate. A look that screamed of happiness and love, of lust and desire, with just an edge of I’ll-kick-your-ass-if-you-even-think-of-fucking-with-her. Badass in love…that was Gates.

“How’s the munchkin doing?” I asked, truly concerned. Kaija, or Princess as we called her, was the first female Feral Breed Motorcycle Club member and topped out at maybe five feet tall on a good day. Tiny but mighty, that was our Princess. She’d only been riding with us for a few months. I’d seen her and Gates on a mission in North Dakota when we had to run a snatch and grab on a human mated to Gates’ brother. I’d been too busy with the Omega fiasco to stick around much longer than it took to follow the team back to Chicago, only stopping off to deliver a baby along the way. The others continued driving to Detroit, and I turned off for Merriweather Fields to get back to work.

“Don’t let her hear you call her that” —Gates shook his head and grinned— “but the munchkin’s doing well. She’s taken to this life better than I could have imagined. Though, if she doesn’t stop volunteering for every fucking job Rebel needs done, I’m going to have a heart attack.”

“Still a little overprotective, bro?”

His eyes turned lighter, nearly glowing, and a soft but menacing growl rumbled out of him. “She’s my heart. Wouldn’t you be?”

I nodded, agreeing just to make the conversation end. I had no idea what it was like to have a mate. I’d yet to find that other half to my soul, and maybe I wouldn’t. My mother’s ancestral breed had no such legends of magic and fate tying two people together. They were more the choose-your-own-adventure type than fate-chooses-for-you kind of shifters. They chose their mates, claimed them with their bite, and bonded to them in a more human fashion…if they even chose to stick around. Many didn’t, like my mother, who never exchanged claiming bites with my father and left him not long after I was born. Different breed, different standards, apparently. Not that I ever talked about my family history. It was a bit too…unusual, even for a group of men who shifted into wolves at will.

Gates glanced at my paperwork again, frowning, and then purposely let his eyes wander over my face. I sat straight and still, waiting him out. He could probably see the shadows of bruises I’d been sporting, but hopefully he wouldn’t ask about them. There was nothing I could tell him about the past few weeks. Not a single, solitary word.

Gates took a deep breath and seemed to tuck away whatever he wanted to say. But his jaw remained stiff, and his eyes still held that hard edge to them, putting me on the defense.

“Think you’re going to need to head back to Chicago any time soon?” he asked, not meeting my eyes, his words way too clipped to be casual. “Outside of the ride, of course.”

I stiffened instinctually, wary of how far he intended to dig. “That depends.”

Gates waited, his long stare feeling much more like a challenge than I wanted to admit. He’d been my friend for years, been my biggest supporter when I began hanging around the den. This sudden friction between us didn’t feel right, but it wasn’t something I knew how to avoid.

Eventually, when I refused to back down, he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. Frazzled. Very un-Gates-like.

“Look, Shadow. I know you’ve been given orders by Blaze not to talk about what you’re doing out there, but—”

“You’re right,” I interrupted, my voice flat and my words crisp. “I have. Which means I can’t talk about it.” I held his gaze, fighting to keep my face as expressionless as I could, refusing to show him even a hint of emotion. Of weakness.