Page 4 of Destined Predator
He almost smiled at that, but the words stung. They’d never seen him come home in anything else. When you were alpha, moods didn’t belong to you, they belonged to the pack, and every flicker of irritation risked starting a storm.
Casey raised an eyebrow at them both, even though half of that was true. He was the principal reason TJ&M Construction was doing so well, with Old Tom and Mac working less and less as the months went by, their reckoning being that they’d put in their dues, in founding the company and building it up. Casey’s salary reflected the amount of work he did, for which he was grateful—what with him in charge of his brothers and sisters—and he believed the guys’ assurances that he’d be brought in as a partner, with his name on the company, within a couple of years.They wouldn’t dare stiffme.
Anne’s implication that he was taking his irritation and tiredness out on them wasn’t accurate, though. As alpha of the pack and the eldest of the family, Casey was in charge—of the rest of them and his emotions and reactions. He was in control.
“When a guy works from sun-up, he don’t like coming home to a pigsty,” he replied. “And shouldn’t someone be cooking dinner so it’s ready for later?” He didn’t need his shifter senses to detect nothing was happening in the kitchen.
“Ben. But he’s—”
“Not here,” Casey finished along with Anne. “No prizes for guessing where he is. Double T, right?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Lacey gave him a round of applause.
“I said, no prizes,” Casey deadpanned.And none for guessing what he’s getting up to there with the younger Tucker brother.
Casey scowled at his sisters until, rolling their eyes and sighing like they were trying to help make Wyoming drop its title of the Cowboy State for the Windiest State, they got up to help carry dirty dishes into the kitchen and straighten the den. Heaving a pile of discarded coats and hats to the pegs in the entrance way, Casey thought about the Double T ranch, his brother Ben’s second home these days.
The ranch had been the site of a recent massacre. Wolf and coyote shifters had teamed up against the coywolves, and lived to regret it.Well, not that they lived long.They’d been killed as easy as breathing. Some nights he still heard it, the wet crack of bones, the screams that ended too fast. Ernesto—the Barghest, that hellhound out of nightmares—had done what had to be done. Casey knew that. But he carried the smell of that blood in his memory like it was worked into his skin. His thoughts soon swung around to the other owner of the ranch, Jack’s elder brother, Rhett.
Rhett the rancher.It could have sounded like a kids’ book, the sort he’d not that long ago read to his younger brothers Robin and Emil—who were playing a video game in their room, by the hollering—except Rhett wasn’t some silly cartoon. He was a big tough rancher, tall, broad and muscular, with the strong, silent image to go with it. Strong, yeah, Casey would give him that. But silent?Not for long.I’d make him holler.
And that was the problem. Every time he pictured Rhett Tucker, his body went hot, but his mind threw up walls. The man was human, steady as bedrock, a walking test of Casey’s self-control. Wanting him felt like standing on a cliff’s edge—half thrill, half terror.
That the dark-haired, broad-shouldered elder Tucker was attracted to Casey, he had no doubt. The heated way they argued every time they got to talking was proof of that, and not proof of the contrary, as some folks might think. And in any case, Casey’salpha status gave him more developed senses than most, plus his coywolf abilities carried over into his human form for a while after he’d shifted back, and he’d scented Rhett’s arousal.
Maybe that wasn’t playing fair, but tough shit. Fair had never kept anyone alive. Still, part of him hated that he’d used his senses that way—taking something private from a man who’d never offered it. If this thing with Rhett had a chance of being real, it had to start with honesty, not instinct. It also wasn’t fair that the eldest Tucker brother was so pragmatic, a son of the soil who only felt comfortable believing what his eyes and ears told him, not anything more…mystical. His awakening had been rude, to say the least, and Casey wouldn’t be that surprised if Rhett didn’t try to shut his eyes again to his new reality.
“Guys?” Casey hammered on his youngest two brothers’ door—Ben had a room to himself, as did Casey. “Bring out your dead.” He gave them a moment, then pushed his way into their room. “Dead meaning all the used dishes and this charming collection of old takeaway containers y’all got going on in here, Like, now?”
Emil threw his game controller onto the floor. “Fuck it, Casey! You made me flub that bull rush.”
“Don’t cuss.” Casey’s words were automatic. Their mom had never liked it. Robin wasn’t playing. He was just staring at the TV screen. He didn’t seem to realize the football game Emil was playing had paused, proof he hadn’t been following it anyway. Casey stepped over to Robin’s nightstand, to gather up a dirty cup there…and to peek at Robin’s sketchpad. The picture his brother had been drawing stopped Casey’s breath in his chest.
The huge, ferocious wolf seemed about to leap from the page. Its head was thrown back and its mouth was open, showing evil-looking fangs. Casey could almost hear its roar.Hadheard its roar, when the hellhound had dispatched more shifter carcasses than Casey could count. Oh, not their family. The hell beast hadbeen careful to slaughter those attacking them, monsters who’d lost their souls.
As alpha, Casey should have felt weak or shamed that he wasn’t doing his job and protecting his family, but that hadn’t been the case. The situation had been extreme, and Ernesto something else—a creature out of nightmares to keep rogues in line…or mete out frontier justice to them.
Robin snatching the book away made its pages flicker, allowing Casey to see that more leaves of the sketchpad held similar pictures. Ernesto, taking on a wolf shifter in one hand and a coyote in the other. Ernesto, on his hind legs, his huge fists beating his chest.Ernesto.Casey met his little brother’s eyes and tried to read what he saw there.
It would only be natural that having witnessed the slaughter, Robin would be traumatized, and trying to deal with it by exorcising it, drawing sketch after sketch to get it out of his system. Or maybe that was crap—Casey was hardly a shrink. Did shifters have their own psychiatrists? Coywolves didn’t—the Akers were the first coywolf shifters, so Casey should know.
He should also be able to help here…except he didn’t think Robin was dealing with trauma. This looked to Casey more like a crush, and as such, would work itself out, without Casey having to do anything…right? He sighed, disguising it as a general lament for the state of the bro cave by pointing at a pile of dirty clothes and shaking his head.
Protecting them used to feel simple: food on the table, roof over their heads, keeping hunters off their trail. Lately it felt like something bigger, holding together the first coywolf pack anyone had ever known. There wasn’t a rulebook for that. Just him, guessing, hoping he didn’t screw it up.
“Know what you need?” he asked his brothers. Before they could jump in with any wise-guy ‘a bigger allowance?’ or ‘Chris Evans moving in next door?’ quips, he continued, already halfout of the room, “a pack run. And you know what else? First to the grounds gets to choose the pizza for after…and the loser gets to clean the kitchen. So,move!”
“That’s not fair!” Emil railed, when he and Robin scrambled out of his battered little Jeep at the meeting point ten minutes later.
“Not fair that we beat you?” Lacey asked, indicating herself and Anne, who’d gotten there before their brothers.
“Or that I did?” asked Ben, who’d been waiting.
“No, that he started first, and his bike’s quicker, oh and yeah, that your car’s better and—”
“You gonna run at all or you come out here just to whine?” Casey cut in, starting to strip. None of them had any hang-ups about undressing or being naked in front of the others. He wondered if any shifters did. They probably couldn’t afford to. If he ever got friendly with any, he’d ask. But right now, they needed this, the pack bond, to feelfamilyin a different way than they did as a human unit.
“Last one in’s a rotten—” Theeggcame out in thought—he’d already shifted into his coywolf form, a large black and silver animal with yellow eyes. Casey kept watch over his brothers and sisters while they followed suit and shifted, then took in the world around him.
