The man I was wanted the ground to swallow me so I could die without him looking at me like I was pitiful because I’d given myself away.
What made everything worse was that here, on L’Ange, Roman, his mate, was so kind to me. When I first arrived, he’d hugged me tight and told me over and over how glad he was that I was alive. And now, whenever he saw me, his eyes were soft and kind. I wanted to die. It was easy to see he felt sorry for me.
“I’m so glad to have you here,” Roman said when he visited my room.
He was. That much was evident on his face and in the way he clutched my hand and sighed deeply, in actual relief. Everyone else on the property utterly and completely hated me, but not Roman, and that somehow made everything worse. Like it would have been cruel to hate me, as pitiful as I was. When I called Garrett, he tried to argue.
“They don’t hate you; nobody hates you, idiot,” he assured me. “You’re too nice, too quiet, too pretty, and too gentle.”
“Pretty?” I griped at him.
“Oh c’mon, Tuck, you’re the prettiest guy I know, other than that mate of Arman’s.”
Therein lay the original problem.
Years ago, Quade had been thrown out of our jackal pack by his father. We all knew why. It was because he was gay, and his father couldn’t imagine anything worse than a gay alpha. But because Quade was a seer, like the alpha of your dreams, the best kind of leader, one who both cared for and led their packs, his father did far more harm than good. By breaking the line of succession, sending his son away, Quade’s father put our pack in danger. Once he lost the pack in a challenge, we fell into ruin and were eventually led by a true beast.
The good part was Quade had returned, vanquished the evil, and taken his rightful place. The bad part was he didn’t live with us full-time. Not that it really mattered that he spent half the year in Maine on the sanctuary he and his mate had created for all kinds of disenfranchised shifters and the other half with us in Arizona, tending to the affairs of running a large pack. I didn’t care about that. What I cared about was that I’d fallen, hard, for the hyena shifter who provided security for the manor house—château—and the property.
I had met Arman de Soto when he arrived in Phoenix to protect Quade’s mate before he killed his challenger and retook leadership of the Kos Epirus pack. Arman was dangerous and deadly, and he oozed sex appeal. I had tried every trick in my arsenal to get him into bed. When I was rebuffed, I reacted poorly—I could own that—but Arman should have been honest and not led me on. Had he said, even once, that he loved Linus Hobbes, possibly the most perfect specimen of ice and beauty I’d ever seen in my life, I would have backed off gracefully. As it was, once they were mated, that was it for me. As the caretaker of L’Ange, if Linus didn’t want you there, you weren’t welcome.
Normally I stayed in Phoenix. Quade was safe on L’Ange; he didn’t need me or Garrett there. He had Arman to guard him against anything external, and Kelvin to keep the peace on the refuge and make sure all the shifters played nice together. But now, due to my brush with death, I was here, on the property, with people who loathed me.
Quade had originally put me in a room down the hall from him and Roman. I didn’t last a day in the house, underfoot. In an effort to not be seen by Arman or Linus, I’d turned a corner too fast, lost my footing, and flipped over a stone balustrade on the third-floor landing. Quade could fall thirty feet and land well. I broke my left ankle.
Alphas healed quickly, normal shifters did not, which was why I was there convalescing in the first place. The ankle would take weeks to heal, and I was left on crutches. Roman asked Linus to make sure either he or one of his staff took care of me.
The week after I’d talked to Quade, I knew if I didn’t make a change, I’d go stark raving mad. I’d asked to see Roman instead of my alpha, and asked him if I could please move out of the château and into one of the cabins down by the river.
“It would be better,” I said, lying through my teeth, “if I could be out where I could walk in the woods until my ankle gets stronger. The stairs aren’t really helping.”
Roman looked at Linus. “Will you make sure his refrigerator is stocked and that he has all the linens and everything else he needs out there?”
“Of course,” Linus told him graciously, his voice icy.
Roman sighed deeply. “I know I don’t have to tell you that Tucker is important to me, and to Quade. I know you two had issues when he first learned Arman was a hyena, but we’ve all grown since then, haven’t we?”
Linus’s opaque eyes flicked to me, and I knew he wished I was dead.
Had I reacted badly after learning that Arman, the guy I’d lusted after, was the one shifter that was the mortal enemy of my species? Yes, I sure had. Was it one of my prouder moments? No, it was not. Would it be the same today as it had been then? Without question, yes.
“Linus?” Roman prodded him.
“Yes, of course, water and bridge and all that.”
Roman groaned and then turned to me. “I think a cabin is a marvelous idea.”
I picked the empty one, far from Jon Slade and Kelvin MacCurdy’s, but still, it was Kelvin who had the task of dropping off my groceries, picking up my dirty clothes and delivering them back, and, it turned out, now listening to my outrageous contention about a new predator on L’Ange.
“I’m telling you,” I told Kelvin as he turned for the door, “something is scaring the animals out of the forest.”
He grunted.
“You and Jon are out here too; you haven’t noticed the animals acting weird?”
“No,” he assured me, and I reminded myself that he was on the side of the river closer to the back of the château, near the edge of the garden, whereas I was on the other side, the back of my cabin facing the small meadow that ended at the deep wood.
“Well, if you think it’s a waste of time, I’ll call Quade and––”
“Ye ken that botherin’ yer alpha is whit’s to be done?”
“I just want someone to go look.”
He tipped his head at me. “Aye, guardian,” he told me, “dinnae fash.”
God knew what that was. “So you’ll go look?”
“I weel,” he assured me.
“And you’ll come back and tell me what you find?”
Quick nod.
“Maybe you should take Jon with you so you’re safe.”
The eye roll combined with the indulgent nod was not lost on me. He was going to be really sorry when he was eaten by whatever was scaring apex predators out of the forest. It was all fun and games until the hunter became the hunted.
Two
I was not really that surprised when Jon, not Kelvin, came by to visit the following morning, and informed me that the only animals in the forest bordering L’Ange were the usual suspects.
“You’re sure,” I pressed him.
He sighed like I was the most tedious person on the planet.
“You don’t believe me either,” I replied irritably.
He put up his hands. “I’m not saying that at all. It’s just that Kelvin is an amazing tracker, and if there were anything in those woods other than what one would expect, he’d know.”