Page 40 of Snag
I laugh quietly. “With this posse of shifters? It doesn’t get much more secure.”
“And with you,” Presh murmurs reverently.
Just this one time, I don’t brush that whispered benediction away. I share a glance with Rought over my shoulder and let this feeling merge with the tiny ball of light, of warmth, that’s taken up residence in my chest. Then I ease my hand away from Precious’s hold so her senses aren’t overwhelmed, and I focus back where I know I’m supposed to be. Here in thenow.
FIVE
RECK
Zaya fucking Gageis sitting at the fucking bar attached to the fucking hotel the Outcast MC has commandeered as a temporary clubhouse, since fucking Rath took the fucking roof off their regular local last night.
The bane of my fucking existence and the object of all my beast’s desires is playing on her phone, sipping some pinkish-orange slushy drink in a martini glass, legs crossed and swinging one foot. Seemingly permanently attached to her drink via her fucking straw, cheeks hollowing with every pull of those lush fucking lips. Just like at the club last night.
Zaya. Drinking. In the middle of the fucking day. As if she isn’t the one responsible for the chaos unleashed on this town last night, fucking destroying most of Main and First Streets. And shredding another hunk of my tattered soul right along with the other destruction.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, I would have swornthat my soul didn’t have a shred remaining to be sundered. But Zaya fucking Gage is on the loose, and she’s going to destroy all of us stupid enough to stumble into her path.
The Outcast MC pledge still setting up the bar keeps stealing glances at Zaya like he might try to shoot his load. He probably saw her dancing last night at the clubhouse. Like her privileged fucking cunt is obtainable for anyone in this backwater town, let alone some shit barely out of his teens. He probably shifts into a fucking donkey or muskrat.
I hover like a moonstruck moron in the doorway of the corridor leading back into the office spaces and then into the hotel itself — even as I blame my fucking beast for getting caught up at the mere sight of our duplicitous bond. The Outcast MC have leased out the entire hotel for the next couple of months, bar and laundromat included. I doubt it was busy in the offseason anyway. The main building is set back from the ocean’s edge, but still close enough to hear the surf and catch a glimpse of the beach through any west-facing windows.
After having been unusually active all day, infusing power through me that I haven’t felt in years, my beast is oddly quiet in Zaya’s presence. Even now, with her in our sight, the cu-sith is pressed into the back of my mind. It was so present even after I wrestled control of my body back from it right before dawn that I’ve been fighting its instincts all day. Mostly instincts to maim or outright slaughter anyone standing between us and her. Zaya fucking Gage.
The only thing currently keeping me away from the estate property is the two Authority agents, Shaw and Wilson, I’ve got posted there. Those corrupt assholes are a most effective deterrent to me storming the house— and, if the cu-sith had its way, prostrating myself at her fucking feet.
My reawakened beast loathes both Shaw and Wilson, but that’s not the only reason I don’t want them knowing anything about Zaya or my connection to her. They— the Authority— don’t need more leverage with which to cage me.
Once again, Zaya has left the estate without those fuckers noticing or notifying me.
I’m not sure why I’m fucking bothering involving Shaw and Wilson, or with even feigning that any of this surveillance is officially sanctioned. Not on the Outcast or on Zaya.
Except … I know.
I fucking know the Authority is always working both sides of anything having to do with me. Ever since I blasted through their academy in record time and requested Cascadia and the Federation for my official placement. Leveraging what remained of my … my what? My morality? My worth? The last vestiges of anything good within me?
Fuck me. I just wanted to keep eyes on my family — those who need my protection and those who deserve my vengeance — so I took any and all assignments, no matter how corrupt, no matter what I had to do, to gain position and authority.
As such, while Shaw and Wilson might officially be assigned to me, I’m continually aware that they’re also my watchers.
The cu-sith that makes up one half of my permanently destroyed soul presses its claws into my brain. Metaphorically, obviously. But it still hurts like fuck. The beast is trying to get me to focus on something specific.
I sweep my gaze across the room, not getting the hint.
Last night, the cu-sith ceded my human form to me only after Zaya was carted off by my brotherRought. She passed out— again— from whatever the fuck she did to cut down Chains like he wasn’t a senior shifter in the Cataclysm MC, with all the power that comes with such a position within the structure of an essence-tied pack. Each shifter essence-bound through fidelity oaths or blood or bitten bonds. Through that web of bonds, the more powerful filter strength to the lessers, and the lessers provide stability to leaders far more powerful— and more likely to be unhinged.
Zaya didn’t even have to touch Chains to drop him.
My memory of last night, after being nearly suffocated by a spell so fucking malignant that my beast voluntarily rose to save my undeserving ass, is hazy as fuck. I might not have been in control of the cu-sith’s actions, but even pressed into the background of my own mind, I can see and sense what my beast can.
Zaya cutting Chains’s strings and him dropping to the pavement, dead before he hit, is clear as fuck.
I don’t know what kind of power that is, but I know there’s no fucking way someone as fundamentally irresponsible as Zaya should be the one to wield it. Not unchecked.
I mean, just walking away from the three people pulled from the primordial ooze, shaped by the fundamental energy that fuels the fucking universe, and destined to be yours to protect, to cherish? Who the fuck does that?
Zaya fucking Gage does that. Did that.
Not that I believe any of that ‘soul bound’ shit. She might have hoodwinked me as a child, manipulated all three of us as teenagers until we could barely stand to be out of her presence. But I’m not that naive now. I’m not that easily coerced. Her essence-twisted tricks won’t work on me. Not again.
