Keeper of the Alphas - Complete (24 page)

The Camaro coughed and sputtered as Jayce twisted the key in the ignition.

“C’mon, baby,” he coaxed. The frame was still a twisted, misshapen hunk of metal, but if he could get the engine running, then maybe, just
maybe
, there was hope that the car could go back to normal. The way she
used
to be.

Instead, the engine gave an ugly gargle and shorted out.

“Shit!” Jayce slammed his palms on the dashboard. He tossed himself back into the driver’s seat, trying to come up with his next plan of action. He could stop by the mechanic and see if he could beg his way into cannibalizing one of their wrecks for a few spare parts, but the thought of groveling to
anyone
right now made his skin itch. Plus, he knew a couple hunters worked there and he didn’t fancy a meeting with a silver bullet today.

Not that he could blame them. The hunters were just doing their jobs. He would probably have done the same damn thing if one of them had turned.

Jayce’s train of thought derailed when he spotted Marcus leaving the house. His eyes followed the burly older man as he stepped into the woods and vanished behind the chokecherry.

His hunter instincts kicked in. “What’re you up to, old man?” he muttered. His glove compartment was fused together, but with one solid kick it popped open. He reached inside and pulled out his Colt .45. A flick of his wrist revealed six silver bullets still tucked snugly in the chamber. He shoved it in the back of his pants and he followed the man-bear into the shadows of the woods.

Jayce walked straight into a puddle of clothes—Marcus’s pants and flannel shirt discarded on the ground. Heavy-footed bear tracks led away from the clothes.
This
was familiar. He licked his forefinger and stuck it out; he could feel a cold wind coming from the northwest. Jayce stepped to the right of the tracks so he’d be downwind of the beast, moving lightly over brittle twigs so not to make a noise as he followed paw prints and golden tufts of fur.

The trail went on for nearly two miles. He passed the waterfall, trailing the base of the Siskiyou Mountain where the woods got thicker and the evergreens blocked out the sun. He was deep in bear territory now. Jayce knew this area well. He and Pam had cased it not long ago, discreetly hanging and nailing down traps.

Then he heard it. A sharp bark, a roar, a snarl.
Bear fight
. Jayce crouched and slowed his pace, slinking behind a thick pine tree.

He could see a small clearing, hidden by dense pines and cedars. Two bears—both grizzlies—were locked together, teeth snapping, claws swiping. He recognized the larger one as Marcus’s beast, but the smaller one…

Jayce’s heart sped up.
Was this the one they were talking about—Aldric?
He felt a heavy purpose thrum in his veins. The .45 Colt found its way into his hand and he clicked the safety back. Carefully, quietly, he got the smaller bear in his sights.

Just in time for Marcus to flip it over, covering it with his arched back. Jayce retracted his aim to avoid clipping Marcus and inhaled sharply between his teeth.
Dammit
. At one point, he wouldn’t have had any qualms with killing two bears with one bullet. But now…

Now all he could do was watch as the bigger bear wrestled the smaller one to the ground. Just when it seemed that Marcus had the full advantage and Jayce’s intervention wouldn’t be necessary, the smaller swiped its paw along the ground. Red dust and dirt flew into Marcus’s face and he roared, stumbling back.

Bones crunched. Jayce flattened back against the tree as Marcus—
human
—rose from all fours. Naked and clutching his eyes. “Dammit, Onya!” he barked. “You could have blinded me.”

The smaller bear molded into a human woman—stout, ginger. Curtains and drapes. She sat on a flat slab of stone and frowned at him. “You’ve spent too long as a human, Marcus. You’re losing your instincts.”

“My instincts are fine,” Marcus snapped. “You’re playing dirty.”

“And you think Aldric
won’t
?” she countered, getting to her feet now. “You’ve got to be prepared for everything if you’ve have any chance of fighting him one-on-one.”

One-on-one?
So Marcus planned to go up against Aldric alone. The phrase
suicide mission
flashed through Jayce’s mind and he tightened his jaw in swallowed protest.

“I know,” Marcus said, the anger deflated from his voice, replaced with something deep, like dark waters.

“You’re distracted,” Onya said. Only a brief pause before she answered her own question: “It’s that Keeper girl, isn’t it? You smell…
domesticated
.”

Marcus bristled, but didn’t argue. Onya gasped. “Wait…you didn’t…”

“It’s none of your business,” Marcus said.

“Isn’t it?” Onya’s voice was sharp now, her tone nearing
shrill
. “You’re about to challenge Aldric for the spot of
Alpha
. You don’t think it’s going to come up that you’ve made a
human
your mate?”

A human—?
It clicked.
Cami
. The thought of this bear laying claim to Cami made Jayce’s muscles lock up. He shifted in his spot, keeping himself from launching forward, and his boot slipped on mud-wet leaves.

Onya continued, “Of all the stupid things—”

“Quiet,” Marcus said suddenly.

“I will not—”

“
Quiet
.” Marcus turned and—

Shit
. He was looking directly at Jayce. Jayce tried to slip behind the trunk but it was too late. Marcus whipped around the tree and grabbed him by the front of his shirt, slamming him up against the trunk. Jayce gritted his teeth and struggled, but the man-bear’s grip was strong. Marcus’s gaze landed on Jayce’s gun and then back up to his eyes, questioning. “What were you planning to do with that?” Marcus seethed.

Jayce shrugged—as much as he could, half pinned to the tree. “Back up?”

Marcus’s expression twisted as though he’d hit a bad smell. The smaller—still naked—girl poked around the tree. “Who’s this?” She sniffed, and then brightened. “Oh! You’re the new wolf, aren’t you? Or the only wolf, seeing as all the others…well. Welcome to the clan.”

“I’m not a wolf,” Jayce said with conviction.

Marcus—if possible—looked even more displeased. He dropped Jayce and turned to Onya. “I have to walk him back. Make sure he makes it out in one piece.”

“See you tomorrow,” Onya tittered as Marcus grabbed Jayce’s shoulder roughly, pulling the other man back towards the house. “Nice to meet you, wolfie!”

Cami heard the lock unlatch before the door swung open. A look fluttered over Jenny’s face—surprise?—and quickly dissolved into hard lines. “Hey.” Jenny was already defensive, her entire demeanor prickly, cold. The same Jenny that Cami had initially met, poring over her phone.
Bitchiness as a defense mechanism; must run in the family.
“Mom’s in the den,” Jenny said and stepped out of the way to let Cami pass.

“Thanks,” Cami said. She dug deep into her purse and pulled out Jenny’s scarf. “Here…think you wanted this back.”

That cracked Jenny’s demeanor, but she struggled to look unaffected. She shrugged. “Keep it. It looks better on you anyway.”

“You sure?” Cami asked. Jenny nodded. She tucked the scarf back in her purse and stepped through the house. She hadn’t been to Aunt Sadie’s since she was a kid and it seemed smaller than she remembered it. The place still had a neurotic grandmother feel to it, every inch covered in old world tchotchkes. Sailboat-in-a-bottle, cracked-eye china dolls, and at least three different cuckoo clocks lined the walls and cabinets. The place smelled of cats, even though Cami couldn’t detect the presence of an actual living cat anywhere in sight.

“Cami,” Jenny’s voice rang out before Cami got too far. Cami could tell she was struggling to form the right words; her face looked twisted in guilt. “I was just trying to help. But I should’ve gone about it in a better way.”

It sounded rehearsed, but Jenny clearly wasn’t the kind of woman who was used to apologizing. Coltranes weren’t good at admitting their wrongs, but Cami knew that look in her eyes. Genuine remorse.

“Yeah,” Cami said. “You should have.”

“And I’m sorry,” Jenny blurted out. “You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in…well…ever. To everyone else I’m just…that crazy girl from that crazy family who lives with her crazy mom. I don’t expect you to forgive me, ever, but…I just want you to know that.”

Jenny’s porcelain-white cheeks went scarlet. Cami softened. She stepped over to Jenny and wrapped her arms tight around the other woman. She gave her a squeeze and stepped back, her hands on Jenny’s shoulders. “We are a crazy, fucked-up family. But we’re family. And no one—especially a boy—is going to get in the middle of that. Okay?” And then, a little firmer, “Just don’t do it again.”

The younger cousin lightened up at that and laughed, barely. “Don’t worry about it. He’s not my type.”

“Liar,” Cami said. But she pressed a kiss to Jenny’s forehead and said, “We’re okay. Squirt.”

Jenny rolled her eyes but grinned softly. “Thanks.”

“Is that Camilla?” Aunt Sadie popped her head out of the arched kitchen doorway. Cami could see she was going through the motions of cleaning the kitchen without really making a dent in the stack of dirty dishes in the sink. “Oh, dear, I’m so sorry about the mess. We’ve just been so busy here with everything that’s going on, you understand.”

“Don’t worry about it, it looks fine,” Cami said. For as long as she could remember, Sadie had some kind of excuse for the mess every time she came over. “What
has
been going on?”

“Well, Jenny and I have been doing our best to keep the peace, but things have been positively
erupting
in town. Things that make gossip, mind you. Bar fights, break-ins—you know, someone looted Kramer’s Fine Jewelry last night—stole all their silver, left everything else. If that’s not a sign of hunters, I don’t know what is. Come in, come in,” Sadie said, bustling around. She grabbed Cami’s face, smudged a lipstick kiss on her cheek. “It’s so good to see you, dear. Now come, sit down, we have no time to waste.”

She urged her onto the couch, but not before grabbing a handful of books and clothes and shoving them off the couch, all while tittering, “Oh, Jenny,
honestly
, didn’t I tell you to pick up your things? Sit, sit.” Everything was said twice, as though Cami hadn’t heard her boisterous voice the first time.

Cami sat across from Aunt Sadie as Jenny kneeled by the table next to them and began lighting the sage. “I usually do this with Jenny,” Cami said. Not that she had a problem with Sadie, but considering the fact that her “meditation” tended to drift towards daydreams of having Jayce and Marcus between her legs, the thought of Sadie looking over her shoulder was vaguely concerning.

Sadie interlaced her hands with Cami’s and dropped her voice to an important whisper. “Yes, and ideally, we would have a couple more weeks to get you to this point. But graduation is going to have to come early. With the way the shifters have been acting, it’s only a matter of time before something snaps. Are you ready?”

Sadie’s eyes were piercing. Cami nodded. “Yes.” Her heart felt stronger; the muscles in her chest felt thicker. She was ready to dive into the parts of her memory she’d kept caged away.

“Then close your eyes.” Sadie’s lids drooped shut and Cami followed suit. She took in a deep breath, exhaled, and smelled the soothing peppermint-and-herb smell of the sage drifting through the air. She felt herself floating, detaching from the weight of her body.

Sadie began to hum. A low, gentle sound. Cami had heard that song before. But where—?

Cami gasped. She was there, suddenly. Standing in the doorway of her old room, watching her young self throw a temper tantrum. Even as a little girl, she’d always gotten violently upset, a tiny ticking time bomb. The more her mother had tried to bottle her up, the worse it had gotten.

But this was a vivid memory. Cami was fifteen. It was the night her mother had sent her away. “I saw it!” little wild-haired Cami screamed. “It was real!”

She
had
seen it, she knew that now—the bear, huge, hunched in the woods. The gleaming red eyes. The way he’d smiled when he’d turned into a man. The image that her mom, and everyone who came after, had tried to convince her wasn’t real.

“Calm down,” her mother said. Cold, still as ice. She hadn’t noticed then how her mother’s voice shook slightly when she spoke. How her eyes shimmered with unfallen tears. “This is for the best, honey. I know the doctor personally. He’ll take care of you—”

“I don’t want to go!” Cami screamed, shrill. Then she started destroying things. She ripped pictures of her friends off the walls. Smashed a handmade pinch pot on the floor. Threw a jewelry box, clothes.

“Cami! Stop—stop—” Lynn grabbed her then, wrapping her arms tightly around her tempest of a daughter. Cami screamed, struggled, but Lynn just held on. And began to hum. A low, soft song that eventually settled her down. “I love you, darling. It’s for the best,” her mother murmured.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” Cami said. A teenager caught up in a fit of rage.

And that was the last thing she said to her mother’s face before she died.

Cami’s eyes flew open. She tried to catch her breath as her eyes readjusted to the clutter of Sadie’s house. Her gaze landed on a figurine on Sadie’s bookshelf—a small, misshapen clay pinch pot, crafted by tiny child’s fingers. Carefully, meticulously glued together.

Sadie followed her line of sight. “Oh, we found that while cleaning out your mother’s rental. Do you want it?”

Cami shook her head. And then she burst into tears.

“There, there…it’s alright,” Sadie cooed, cradling Cami against her chest. “You did excellent.”

“Nothing happened,” Cami sniffed.

“That’s just because there are no shifters here,” Jenny said. “Trust me, I felt it. It was powerful, Cam. You’re ready.”

Cami choked on her tears. “I should have told her that I loved her,” she said quietly.

“She’s your mother, dear,” Sadie murmured as she petted Cami’s hair. “Mothers always know.”