Page 12 of Cold Foot King

He got his pants on before there was a knock on the door. He reached back on instinct for his knife, but he didn’t have one. His knife was still at the prison with the belongings the police had brought him in with.

He zipped up his pants as he padded to the door. There were no peepholes here. He opened the door a crack. A man with longer blond hair stood there, looking at something down the hallway. “I’m telling him!” He swung his gaze to him. “Hey man, meeting outside in five. Wreck’s in a piss mood. Don’t be late.”

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m your worst nightmare if you Change. I’ll have you gutted in thirty seconds, and that accounts for the time it takes me to get to you.” Truth. Geez, this guy was intense, and actually believed he could gut him.

King narrowed his eyes at him. “Boar?”

“Good guess. I’m Owen.” He shoved his hand through the crack in the door to shake.

“Owen!” a man barked down the hallway. “Don’t touch the inmates.”

“Sorry bro, no hand-shakies today.” He let his hand fall and disappeared into the hallway. A knock sounded next door. “Five minutes, be outside. Meeting.”

King pulled the door open wider and looked out into the hallway. Next door, a tall man ducked under the doorframe and watched Owen knocking on the next door over. He looked back at King, and looked him up and down. His hair was buzzed, and his harsh facial expression didn’t change as he met King’s eyes. He felt heavy, but King had no guess what he was. His eyes were bi-colored—one bright blue, one brown. His pupils were shaped oddly—like ovals.

Hmm. He wasn’t the only monster Wreck had picked up. As he looked past the tall dude, he could see others filing into the hallway. Three doors down, a familiar face turned to look at him. Katrina wore a pair of skintight leggings, a black shirt, and a thick, smoke-gray Carhartt jacket that was unzipped. She wore snow boots and a black beanie that looked like the one Wreck had given to him.

She didn’t smile, or wave. She looked…troubled. He didn’t like it. He nodded a greeting, but she disappeared into her room without returning it.

Right.

He pulled back too, and finished dressing. Just beside the door was a pair of thick-soled boots that were size fourteen. Perfect fit. Whoever was running the wardrobe department around here was slaying it.

Katrina looked pretty in street clothes. A flash of her body washed through his mind, but he flinched away from it, shook his head, and focused on pulling his beanie low over his forehead in the mirror. That day had been so fucked up.

He grabbed the key card off the dresser and shoved it into his back pocket. It was so strange just freely walking out of this room and into the hallway. Others were filing out of their rooms, and the hallway smelled strongly of fur. A rumble emanated from his chest and his animal perked up, stretched, and grew inside of him. His head was throbbing so bad. He shielded his eyes from the fluorescent lights above him. At Katrina’s door, he hesitated. It was closed. Had she already gone outside?

Someone bumped into his shoulder. “Keep it moving.” Power crackled through the air as King laid eyes on a dark-haired man.

He gestured up the hallway, where everyone else was heading out a door at the end and into the snowy night. “If you’re thinking of running, there’s a bunch of our people waiting on the outskirts of town. It’s a kill-on-sight order. You’ll have the dragon eating your ashes in minutes. Move.”

A part of King wanted to throttle him for talking down to him, but he didn’t know what was happening. Yet. He needed to be patient and fight when the time was right.

All right, so there were guards set up on the perimeter. Noted. Now he needed to figure out where they were, and where the nearest transportation was. He needed to track down a train, or a bus, and get as far away from here as he could. He wasn’t going back to that damn prison, that was for sure.

He walked slightly in front of the dark-haired man, and glanced back once to check Katrina’s door again.

“She’s outside already,” the man murmured under his breath.

King cleared his throat. “She ain’t mine.”

“Katrina says differently.”

King pushed the swinging door open, and held it open for the dark-haired man. “I’m King.”

“Everybody knows. You weren’t part of the plan.”

“What plan?” he asked as he flipped the collar of his thick flannel up to protect his neck from the frigid wind. Clearly they were still in Alaska.

“Wreck will explain all that.” The guy clapped him on the back. “I’m Ace of the Fastlanders. You want to stay near Katrina? Don’t fight unless he tells you to fight.”

“Who?”

“The phoenix.” Ace gestured to where Wreck was standing on a rock ledge in front of a crowd of about a dozen people.

Ten males and two females were gathering in front of Wreck, one of which was Katrina, and the other was the pregnant shifter she’d been protecting. Katrina was standing on the edge of the crowd, biting her thumbnail like it was a nervous habit. There was a firepit that separated Wreck from the crowd. To the side, the guards were sitting on the rock ledge, looking over at Wreck, waiting for him to speak.

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