Twisted (Rogues Shifter Series Book 3) (32 page)

I opened the door, turned on the light and stepped into the large walk-in closet, closing the door behind me for privacy.
My clothes didn’t even begin to fill up the shelves or the racks, but Garrett loved to buy me beautiful things and swore that he’d fill it up eventually. There was a small chair in the middle of the room, making it easier to put on shoes, so I sat down, feeling confused and unsure of what I should wear to this meeting. Across from the chair was a mirror so I stared at my reflection again.

My eyes were different. They were still emerald green, but they were empty
. Empty of energy.  I forced myself to smile, to see if they brightened up, took on a little more life. Still dull.  Maybe it was because I wasn’t sleeping well or not eating enough. Was I vitamin deficient? Or was I just dead inside?

I tried to open myself to the lines, but then stopped as soon as the power started to flow into me. What was the point?  Yeah, I could pull in the magic and I could use it to destroy or to heal, that hadn’t changed. But it wouldn’t heal my scars, the ones inside of me, the ones that made me scream at night or punch my friend or cling to my mate so I wouldn’t be alone.

Hunching over, I wrapped my arms too tightly around my stomach to try to hold in the sadness and the frustration that was threatening to explode from my heart. Why couldn't I stop dreaming about him and thinking about him? Sometimes I'd see concern or pity in the eyes of my friends and I wanted to scream, “I’m fine! I haven’t changed.” Only it was a lie. I wasn’t fine. I just kept wishing that I was; pretending that I was.

I was terrified. What if I never found myself again? What if Kennet followed me around like a ghost, ready to show up with a dark mem
ory anytime I let down my guard? I’d started to cry
again
. At this rate I was going to run through the tissue supply of the local supermarket.

I was so fucking pathetic. My heart was hammering in my chest and I was sweating and having trouble breathing. I closed my eyes and tried to sing my mantra to calm myself, but even that brought me no peace
, since it reminded me of what I’d done to try to ignore the horrible pain when he whipped me.

Huge gasping sobs were dragging themselves up through my throat and hurling themselves out of my mouth as I slid from the chair and onto the floor. I curled up into a fetal position and the sobs continued. The door opened with a loud crash and strong arms wrapped around me to carry me to the bed and lay me down. Garrett curled around me cradling me and whispering gentle, soothing words, most of them in French.

“Je t'aime.
Il ne peut pas te faire de mal,
mon amour.” I clung to my mate and to the words he whispered; telling me I was safe from Kennet, spoken with love and understanding and more patience than I deserved.

His scent and his comforting phrases soothed me enough to speak. “I’m so sorry. I seem to be falling apart. I was fine helping Aedus, but since I’ve been home I seem to be getting worse. I can’t control my feelings at all. And I had a flashback.” I told him about my vision in front of the mirror.

“We’ll cancel the meeting and go to Faerie tonight and we’ll get you well.” He kissed away my tears and brushed my salty, wet hair out of my face.

“We promised Bridgett. We’ll go to
the meeting and we’ll help her pack. When it's all resolved, I'll go to Faerie. ” He started to disagree but I put two fingers on his lips. “I have to do this for her, Garrett. I’ll be okay. You’ll be with me.” He kissed my fingers and nodded.

Still wrapped in the blue towel, I scooted to the edge of the bed and stared at the closet. Garrett sprang up and went inside pulling
out black jeans, a tank, underclothes and a cardigan. He laid them on the bed next to me and helped me dress, all the while telling me that I was beautiful and that I looked stronger than when I'd first come home, and any other sweet thing that came into his mind. He brushed my hair, commenting on how lovely the color was, and then kissed me so very gently.

I placed my hand on his cheek and he covered it with his own. “Garrett, have I told you since I’ve been home, how I adore you? Your love saved me. I felt you there with me all the time.” His smile lit up my heart.  I leaned against him. “I promise you that I’m going to get better. I won’t always be in this pathetic state.”

“You’re doing fine. It’ll take time and love and we have both.” His expression turned serious as he distractedly ran a hand through his thick hair, his habit when he was worried. “I spent every minute that you were imprisoned praying to the spirits to get you back alive, and here you are, smiling at me.” He pulled me closer and whispered into my hair.”To me, this is paradise.” This time his kiss was deeper, reminding me that he needed some comforting too. We were both feeling vulnerable from the ordeal.

“When I’m well, I’m going to take care of you the way you’ve been taking care of me.”

“Will I need to cry?” He teased me.

I hit him gently in the shoulder and laughed. “No. Anyway I’ve used up all the tissues.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him through the be
droom door. “C’mon. We have wolves to rescue.”

Chapter Fifty-nine

Garrett:
8:45 PM Monday

We arrived at The Wild at 8:45
PM, so I left Sasha and Kyle in the parking lot to wait for the weres to show up while Bridgett opened the door with her key, turned on the lights and we traipsed in to have a look around. The place hadn’t been used in over a week. Maya had made arrangements with a service to clean the club and Bridgett’s former home right after the death of her father. Bridgett had only been to her home once, to pick up whatever things she'd wanted to take to Maya’s and she hadn’t been back to the club at all, so I watched her walk around, touching tables and pictures on the wall, lost in her memories.

I walked to Bridgett. “If there’s anything you want to keep before you rent it out, you should take it tonight.”

“Just this, I think.” She showed me a picture of her mom and dad and a very young Bridgett standing in front of the club. “They took this the first week we opened. My dad had just been accepted as Alpha.” Jackie had come up next to her and put her arm around her sister. “I still miss them.”

“I have something for you two.” Sinc was holding out an envelope and smiling.

Jackie took it and opened it, pulling out a letter. She read it over and laughed, handing it to Bridgett. “It’s official. You’re my sister. The DNA test proved it.” The team gathered around to congratulate the pair, some more enthusiastically than others. Kyle and Sasha sported a pair of pained expressions, but Ethan and Sinc seemed happy with the news.

Bridgett was surprised when I hugged her.
"Welcome to the family, little sister."

She grinned back. "Are we already starting in with the height jokes?"

I smiled. "You have a large personality, so I don't think of you as small."

"I guess that's a nice way of saying I have a big mouth, huh?" Everyone laughed, including Jackie, who hadn't laughed much in the last few days.

We heard a car pull up outside and a few seconds later, Fred was walking in through the doorway, looking confident and very much like a pack alpha. He was dressed in a plain navy suit with a button down shirt open at the top as if he'd just come from work. His dark brown hair was cut short and his hazel eyes took us all in with an intelligent assessment. He turned to me and extended his hand. “Mr. Cuvier, I’m Fred Capshaw, the new pack leader.”

“Please call me Garrett. Would you introduce me to the rest of your pack?”

“This is my second, Mike Shield, Douglas Rabinowitz, and Clive Harper.” He indicated each were and I shook their hands, which surprised them all a little. I have a reputation for being a powerful, dangerous badass, a reputation that has taken me many years and a lot of hard work to create and maintain, and so most people I meet for the first time don’t expect even common courtesy, let alone a handshake. Having a reputation as a lethal opponent, earned or not, manages to keep challenges few and far between.

“This is my mate, Jackie Crawford
Cuvier, you all know Bridgett, who we’ve just recently discovered is Jackie’s fraternal twin. This is the rest of my team: My second, Sasha Vodinski, Heinrich Schultz, William Carlyle, Our shifter team leader, Ethan Hamilton,  Sinclair Blakefield and Kyle Daro. You may also know Robert Valerio who’s busy with another assignment.

Fred looked curious. “I thought that Ms.
Cuvier was a cheetah. Bridgett’s a Jaguar.”

“Dad told everyone that so the pack wouldn’t want to kill me. I’m a cheetah.”

“And you can read our minds?”

“Not really, I’d need training. But I
wouldn’t do that to someone, not without their okay." I noticed her glance at Jackie.

He nodded thoughtfully. “Some of the pack was pretty
paranoid. I guess Kent was smart to keep it a secret.”  He turned to look at Jackie, smiling. “I’m very glad to see that you’ve gotten back safely, Ms. Cuvier.”

“Please call me Jackie, and thank you.”
She moved away toward the back of the club. It was time for us to get to work.

Fred and I
looked each other over for a moment. This man was nothing like Kent Brownlow. He had a quiet energy about him that had nothing to do with appearance and everything to do with inner substance. Probably overlooked in the hierarchy of the pack because of his tendency to hold back and deliberate before making a decision, he’d survived Liam’s wrath where most of the others hadn’t. He’d stayed out of the frying pan, but the fire was apparently still closing in.

I glanced at Jackie, who’d go
ne to sit with Ethan at a private booth, her shoulder pushed against his. She probably shouldn't have come, but I knew that Ethan's proximity would comfort her. Heinrich, Will and two of Fred's pack took positions near the door and Bridgett and Sinc sat in the booth in front of Jackie's.

I
gestured for Fred to sit across from me at a small square table near the bar. Sasha and Mike took the other two chairs, their eyes locked on each other in silent warning. Tension rolled back and forth between them, as was typical in meetings of this sort. Your second would always be watching your back, and at the same time letting the other side know that he was more than capable of protecting me if they made any aggressive moves. Mike was big and burly, more like Heinrich than Sasha, and I’m sure that he could do some damage, but there were few shifters, weres or even vampires who could beat Sasha in a fight. His speed and his ability to anticipate his opponent’s next move made him deadly.

I heard a quiet hiss escape through Sasha’s gritted teeth
as they took in each other's scents. Trust between vampires and weres was rare. This would take a leap of faith.

“Fred, I can’t offer you an
official alliance at this time because of my close connections with the fae, however, I am willing to offer you some protection, for Bridgett’s sake and for the safety of the other supernaturals and humans in the area. I’d be willing to back you up at your negotiations or to fight beside you if you are attacked without provocation.” Fred watched me carefully, eyes narrowed, perhaps waiting for some kind of catch.

“As payment,
I want the club run as a viable business. We'll form a corporation. Bridgett would be assigned 35% of the profits and Rogues, Inc. will take 20%. Your pack will have 45%. I’ll cover the club’s expenses until it begins to make a profit and is able to support itself.  Bridget will remain the owner of the property and would collect a reasonable rent.

Fred’s mouth twisted into a frown.
“You'll have the lion's share of the profits."

“Remember
, Bridgett was raised by the pack and feels loyalty toward you. She was ready to help you whether I stepped in or not. I won't pressure her to vote one way or the other. The other options are either for you to simply pay us in the usual way for our services, or face the pack alone.”

Fred
looked around the room at the five shifters and the three vampires that made up my team, most of them trained to handle exactly these kinds of circumstances.  He knew that he couldn’t protect his small pack and their families on his own. I’d more or less backed him into a corner and he didn’t like it one bit. There was no way he could come up with the money to pay us out of pocket. He saw me looking at his men.

“It isn’t just us and our families. It’s
also the families of the men who were executed by your fae friend. They’ve received threats as well.  I feel that they’re also my responsibility. But the club isn’t going to be able to support all of us, especially if we’re only keeping 45% of the profits. I figured I’d be hiring a lot of them to work here, but now our income will be much less, so I won’t be able to hire as many.”

“Are those families safely out of town?”

“Yes. I did what you suggested.”

“Remember. I’m paying expenses until the club can afford to cover its own. That includes salaries, even yours.
"

I motioned for Will to join us. "Will has worked out the number of employees and the salaries that the club will eventually be able to support, including yours..He's based it on past figures under Kent, but we all feel that you can do better. I think that we can get it stocked and up and running again in two weeks. Can you hire a staff by then?"