“My lion is. You were in my den, too. That was a share.”
“What happened to your mom? How did she die?”
“Who said she was dead?”
“You did. You said she was human.”
“And now she’s a lion.”
Relief washed through her, and her shoulders sagged with her heaved sigh. “Oh, thank God.”
Kamp’s face was perfectly stoic. “If you talked to her, you wouldn’t be thanking God.”
“What do you mean?”
“Me Turning her wasn’t a purposeful thing, and the lioness didn’t take well. Beer or shot?”
That was terrible. Tragic. He’d Turned his own mom. Had it ruined her? Had he ruined her?
“Why are you here, Kamp?”
He snarled up his lip, and one of his eyes turned gold while the other stayed green. When he leaned back in his seat, it creaked under his shifting weight. Crossing his arms over his chest, he glared at her. “You know what a Last Chance Crew is?”
“I’ve heard of them, yes.”
He twitched his chin toward the open door. “Well, now you’ve met one. We don’t fit anywhere else, and we aren’t safe to the public if we’re rogue. The three of us will kill each other up here eventually. These mountains are a graveyard, Novak. This is where we’ve come to die.”
Her stomach curdled. “That’s ridiculous.”
“What?”
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say. You’re fine. You all are.”
Kamp huffed a humorless sound. “If you only knew.”
“I know enough. I know crazy, Kamp, and you ain’t it. Neither is Grim, and neither is Rhett.”
“You’re gonna make that judgement after knowing us for a few hours?”
“Yep,” she said, standing. She made her way to the door. “Maybe you could’ve convinced someone else you were unsalvageable, but not me.”
“And why’s that?”
She paused, leaned her cheek on the open door frame, and smiled. “Because I’m the daughter of Beaston. Everyone is salvageable. Especially you. Goodnight, Kamp.”
And as she walked away, she heard him murmur, “Goodnight, Remi.”
Chapter Five
A deep, deafening, terrifying noise woke Remi from her sleep.
She’d been sleeping better and harder than she had in weeks, but she shot up in bed when a second, long roar shook the trailer. Something was wrong. She could feel it in the air—the tension, the rage.
She kicked off the covers and bolted for the bedroom door just as the third roar vibrated through the floor, through her feet, up to her shin bones and knees, and struck her right in the heart. This was a roar of anger and infinite pain. The kind that lifted chills on her arms and made her stomach curdle. The floorboards of 1010 were striped with blue moonlight that sifted in through the cheap, open blinds on the windows. Remi sprinted for the front door just as another lion answered the first’s call from miles away.
“Shhhit,” she heard Rhett say from near the firepit in front of Kamp’s trailer. Façade dropped, the jokester was pacing tightly, holding his hands over his ears.
“Rhett?” she asked over another roar. “What’s happening?”
“Same shit,” he answered. “Same shit, different day. Hate it here. Hate it here.” When he lifted his eyes to her, they reflected oddly in the dim porch light—like an animals. They were blue as ice, and he looked…tortured.
“He’s bringing in the monster again. He can’t fuckin’ help himself.”
Another roar sounded from inside Kamp’s house.
“Oh no,” Remi whispered. “He Changed in his trailer?”
“Don’t worry, Princess Werebear, he won’t be in there for long.” An answering roar sounded, much closer now than it had been. “The Grim Reaper is coming.”
“The Grim Reaper?”
Rhett looked like he wanted to puke. He gave her a shaky smile. “That’s his name. That’s our Alpha. The Grim fuckin’ Reaper. And your man’s calling the beast. Again.”
Her man? “But they fought earlier!” she yelled over the roaring, jogging toward Rhett. “They were in control.”
“That was Grim during the day. He turns into the Reaper at night. You should get back inside.”
“What are you going to do?”
Rhett shook his head and swallowed hard, eyes shining brightly. He lifted his shirt and showed her the deep scars over his ribs, crisscrossing in different shades of red, different stages of healing. “I’m gonna do what I always do. I’m gonna stop them from killing each other. They won’t remember in the morning. This is my real job in the Crew—keep them from putting each other down too soon.”
Horrified, she asked, “Why are they doing this?”
“They can’t help themselves. Grim just doesn’t give a fuck, but Kamp? He has a glitch. At night he goes to sleep and dreams of the day he lost someone, and then he wakes up Changed and needing a fight. And the Reaper is always ready. Little by little, they’re killing each other. It’ll be just me up here soon. You should go inside, Novak. Seriously.”
The roaring was constant now, getting closer and closer.
The door to Kamp’s trailer creaked as he pushed it open with his massive head. He didn’t even look at her or at Rhett. His glowing gold and green eyes were on the woods. Gads, he was enormous. Tawny coat and full mane only a few shades darker. His body was pure power, his muscles flexing with every step he took down the stairs. He trotted toward the edge of the clearing, and there was the Reaper.
“Who did Kamp lose?”
“Novak, get inside,” Rhett gritted out, pulling his shirt off as he jogged toward the impending fight.
“Rhett! Who?” she yelled, because it mattered. Kamp’s mindset mattered in fights like these.
“His cub!” Rhett yelled without turning around. A massive white lion ripped out of him just as the other two titans charged each other at full speed. And now it was a trio of powerhouse big cat predator shifters about to clash.
His cub?
Kamp had lost his cub?
Tears burned her eyes as everything clicked into place. That’s why he was with a last chance Crew. This was something he couldn’t recover from. He was hurting. So fights like these weren’t just a challenge to take up time and ease the ache. They were a shot at an honorable death.
“Fuck,” she whispered, pulling off her sleep shirt. The weeds prickled and poked her tender city feet as she bolted toward the fight. Grim and Kamp slammed into each other like two colliding cannonballs. The force of their impact hit her with a wave of energy that knocked her to the side. Arms pumping, legs burning, she let the bear have her. Big, silver bear, just like her father’s, and she had a shot at keeping more scars off Rhett’s ribs, had a shot at breaking up the fight, had a shot at saving Kamp…at least for one more day.
She landed hard on all fours and dug into the dirt with her long claws as she pushed her body faster. She was quick in this one, able to run down just about anything, but the three seconds it took her to reach the lion fight were the longest of her life.
Kamp and Grim were fighting to the death. She could see it in their eyes, in the way they sank their teeth into each other and wouldn’t let go. They spun and countered so fast they were a blur, and all she could do was run right through them and try to shock them out of the blood lust.
Rhett took a massive swat to his body and went flying a few steps before she reached them. Smelled like blood already. She didn’t slow down, just ran right into them and slapped Grim off Kamp. He snarled as he slid in the dirt, claws extended as he tried to get traction. His face was so scarred up, like his whole life had been forged in violence.
Kamp tried to get around her, but she clipped his legs just as he went to charge the Alpha. They were desperately clawing their ways back to each other, as if she wasn’t even there.
Enough! Remi let off a roar as long and as loud as she could, right in their faces. She let it rattle their ears. They dropped down to the dirt on their bellies and winced. She glared at the Reaper. I fuckin’ dare you to charge me.
