Page 9 of Renegade Queen

“This is bullshit!” hissed Dean after the door had sealed Alyssa away from us.

Sighing in exasperation, I sunk down in my seat. Damon was my brother by blood, but he might as well have been theirs, too.

We grew up in one of those neighbourhoods where making it to adulthood without being shot was an achievement. Not a single one of our high school class had gone to college. Fuck, about half of them were probably dead by now. The gangs in the area had a tight hold on the community. It was a miracle if you made it out of there without joining a gang or being targeted by one. Damon had been that miracle for the three of us. We didn’t know how he did it, and he would never tell us, but we all owed him our lives.

He was four years older than me. Our dad ditched when we were too young to even remember his face. I wasn’t even sure he was both of our fathers. Mom had stuck around for as long as she could cope. It was the typical story that everyone had heard before. She used the drugs to escape her pain, and then eventually, they consumed her life. It wasn’t even a surprise when we got home from school one day, and she wasn’t there. It was even less of a surprise when she still hadn’t come home a week later. We didn’t sit at the window waiting for her to walk down the street. We didn’t jump at every noise, expecting it to be her walking through the door.

But Damon stepped up. He got a part-time job. He kept a roof over our heads and food on the table. When I was old enough, I got a job, and I helped as much as I could. Between us, we survived. We didn’t have much, but we had each other.

Ryder and Dean were my best friends. Ryder was the first to turn up on our doorstep one night when he couldn’t take living with his father any longer. I doubt the drunk even noticed he was gone until he didn’t have anything to slam his fist into anymore. Dean turned up a couple of months later. We found him sitting outside the trailer one morning with a black eye and blood covering his shirt. Even now, we didn’t know what had happened. Well, Damon did. Damon fixed it all, and Dean lived with us after that.

We became one big family. Everyone contributed, and even though there were a few bumps in the road, we all got each other through. Damon got us through. We owed him everything.

“We find another way,” I said with determination. This wasn’t the end; it couldn’t be. “Alyssa can’t be the only fae around. We find someone else, and we keep looking until someone agrees to take us.”

It was a stupid idea, even I knew it. But what other choice was there?

“So, what? We wander the streets, asking everyone we meet if they’re secretly a fae. Or maybe we could take out one of those coded classifieds that only fae will know what it means.”

I could see the smirk on Ryder’s face as he spoke. Yes, I was being ridiculous. I didn’t need him pointing it out.

“What other option do we have?” I sighed, the feeling of defeat crushing me.

“We make her take us,” Dean said simply.

“Yeah, sure, let’s force the girl with the giant boyfriend who can turn into a bear to do something she doesn’t want to.” Ryder laughed again.

At least it wasn’t just me he was mocking now.

“Well, what’s your idea?” Dean sneered. We both knew he didn’t mean it. Out of all of us, Dean felt like he owed Damon the most, and he was taking this feeling of uselessness we all had, the worst.

“We can’t force her. We need to find some way to persuade her,” Ryder told us, a calculating look crossing his face that made me uncomfortable. “There’s a reason why she doesn’t want to go back, and we need to find out what that is.”

Ryder, the casanova of our group. If I had to guess, his solution would involve trying to get in her pants. There was some merit to his idea, though. If we got her to talk to us, to empathise with us, she could be swayed, or at the very least, she could put us in contact with someone who could help instead.

“So we’re decided then?” I asked, looking at the two men that were closer to me than nearly all my family. The men I chose to call brother.

Dean scowled, but there was nothing new about that, and Ryder gave me an answering smirk, which was also pretty true to form. We might be a bunch of fuck-ups, but at least we were fuck-ups together.

Chapter 4

Alyssa

Alyssa

It took a few hours for Tank to calm down enough to shift back. He was the typical hot-headed bear shifter, but I had no idea what could’ve set him off this time. He was acting strange, and we needed to talk, even though I hated having to do all the touchy-feely shit.

“Welcome back, big guy,” I murmured from where I’d curled up against his side. One pro of Tank being stuck in his shift was that his bear was such a cuddly fucker. Seriously, people should consider petting bears because if they were anything like Tank, his fur was the pinnacle of snuggle material. Although, maybe that wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.

I felt the rumbling growl echo through Tank’s chest under my head. He wasn’t all the way back yet, his mind still twinning around that of his bear.

Even without the fur, though, Tank was still the best snuggle buddy around, so I just got myself comfortable, waiting for when he’d cleared his head enough to try and talk with him.

The gym floor wasn’t too uncomfortable, but when he rolled onto his back, pulling me on top of him, I was definitely grateful.

“They gone?” he asked, the rumble in his voice proving that he was still struggling with the bear.

It wasn’t like him to have this much trouble pulling back from a shift once he’d returned to his human form, and it had me worrying about him even more.

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