Deva put her finger to her lips and looked around as she tapped her ears, reminding me that these shifters had excellent hearing and I shouldn’t say anything negative about our surroundings. The reminder was a good one though. The last thing I wanted was to piss off a bunch of shifters.
Except that the place looked more than a little run down. Paint, on what was probably cedar siding on the houses, was peeling or gone completely. The thatches on the roof of each cottage looked like they were about to leap from their perch to their deaths by choice just to get away from the rundown state of the cottages. One was even missing a front door. A bead curtain that looked like it was from the seventies hung there instead, like this was some sort of hippie commune, except hippies would have taken better care of their things.
My gaze traveled over the smaller buildings, eventually landing on the larger one that sat in the middle. It looked like it could have been a meeting house of some kind with all the windows, or what would be windows if they weren't broken and boarded over. The place was long and could have fit a good-sized cafeteria inside. On the side closest to us, I noticed a large stone chimney that had been built. With the way the mortar was missing from between the large, naturally-shaped rocks, though? I wouldn't go anywhere near that thing.
In the central clearing between the cottages and the meeting house, there was a large fire pit and multiple charcoal grills around, along with lawn chairs that had clearly seen better days. My guess would be that they were left out come rain or shine and mother nature had taken her toll on them. There was also a trash barrel, one of the huge fifty-gallon ones, sitting over by a tree that was overflowing with beer cans and amber bottles of various shapes and sizes. And when I say overflowing, I mean there were piles on the ground next to it, along with what could almost be described as a carpet of cans leading up to it.
Someone had either thrown a massive party and not cleaned up yet, or, my better guess, was that there were raucous parties every night and no one ever cleaned up. At least that was my hope, since it would explain the disrepair of the houses as well.
As I looked past the trashcan tree, I realized that it looked like they’d been playing paintball all over as well, with the trees serving as their targets, or maybe they were just all shitty shots and the trees caught all the badly aimed paintballs. When Deva killed the engine of the car, music blared in my ears, only getting louder as we stepped out of the car.
Ugh.
When we got out I noticed that my shoulder didn’t hurt, like, at all, which was crazy. I paused and slipped the sling over my head, stretching my arm out, which felt amazing. I caught Deva watching and smiled before pointing to my shoulder and giving her a thumbs up. I had no idea what she did to those cookies, but if they could fix my shoulder that well then maybe I could get a constant supply for my back as well?
As we walked around the various trucks and cars that were parked haphazardly and moved closer to the group of men hanging out, I noticed that Deva had a box in her hand with her restaurant logo on it.
I froze when one of them took a running start and jumped off the cliff. He screamed as he fell, then his yells cut off with a distant splash. Without waiting nearly long enough for the first jumper to swim out of the way, another one sprinted toward the edge of the cliff, launching himself in the air and posing for a split second before falling out of my line of sight. Honestly, this place felt more like a frat house than anything else. It almost smelled like one as well, the faint tang of stale beer and blood on the breeze, along with old, sweaty socks.
Where were the parents? Where were the responsible adults? Did shifters even have any?
Suddenly, I wished I’d asked Deva more about them. Heck, I wished I’d asked her more questions in general. With everything that had happened with my ex, I’d been feeling low in general. But with my brother going missing, it felt like the cloud that had shadowed me for weeks was suddenly all around me. And if I didn’t fight through it, I was just going to handle this search for my brother in a daze.
I couldn’t do that. I needed to do better and keep my wits about me.
Silently, I promised myself I would.
The three of us moved forward with most of the guys ignoring us. Standing off to the side, I glanced at Deva then at Carol, waiting to see what the protocol was for something like this, or for anyone to acknowledge our presence.
Eventually, I got tired of waiting. I'm not the most patient person at the best of times, and this was most definitely not the best of times. “Hello?” I called. “Could I please speak to the person in charge?”
One young man stood up from a lawn chair, large, imposing, and mean-looking. His hair was dark and left a little long, and he had a scruff of beard on his almost-attractive face. He seemed to be maybe in his early twenties, but his massive build made him appear deceptively older. There was also something unsettling about the way his pale gray eyes seemed to narrow in on me before a snarl twisted his lips and he began walking toward us.
My stomach flipped, and I tried to remind myself my son was probably nearly the same age. I still saw twenty-something-year-olds as children. And yet, I’d never been unsettled and a little frightened by a child before.
I reminded myself it was probably because he was a shifter, even if he didn’t appear to have long claws and fur sprouting from every inch of him. My gaze slid around to the other young men. Some of them drank, eyes glazed over. A couple tossed a ball back and forth, but there was no heart in the game. And many studied us, but with an almost complete lack of interest. I looked back at the man heading toward me. What was this place? Some kind of Neverland where kids grew to become young men without any goals or guidance?
“The alpha died. This is his son and the new alpha,” Deva whispered, as if reading my thoughts.
“That’s right,” he said in a growly voice, even though he should’ve been too far away to hear her quiet words. “So show some respect.” He bared his teeth like a dog about to attack.
Show him some respect, because he inherited a position? Unlikely. I arched one eyebrow. Sure, he was big and scary, but he was also like twenty. He should’ve been showingmesome respect. He had nothing on me when it came to life experience. Hell, most of these guys were still dressed like they were in college or high school. All hoodies, baseball caps, and torn jeans.
Evidently raising an eyebrow wasn't showing respect, though. He noticed my facial expression and snapped one finger. The rest of the guys, mostly his age or younger, jumped to their feet and the next thing I knew, we were surrounded, with the boys—totally not men,boys—slowly closing the circle.
Fear bloomed in my gut. Damn my resting bitch face! It wasn't bad enough that even when I wasn't particularly upset I looked pissed but why did my every single damn emotion have to show on my face? I could never play poker.
The thought reminded me why we were there in the first place. Henry. The group he'd sicced after us moved ever closer, and the alpha’s expression was purely murderous, even though he was still standing well back.
Oh man, we’d made a huge mistake coming here.
If Deva or Carol got hurt because of me and my bullheadedness or my resting bitch face, I'd never forgive myself. They had only just come back into my life. I wasn't ready for them to be gone, or for me to bite it at the jaws of some punkass shifter kids. I could feel my heart galloping in my chest as though it was trying to break through my ribs and take the shifters on itself, or run away. Actually, probably the latter. It was the urge to turn and run that I was having trouble ignoring at that moment. But if running from a shifter was anything like running from a wild animal, especially a wolf or something like that, then my actions would only increase the danger we were in. It was that fact that kept my feet firmly planted where they were.
“Enough of this,” Deva snapped as she stepped forward. “Have you lost your damn mind?”
The alpha stopped and I realized that he'd been emitting a low growl the entire time. It was only as he stopped and stared at Deva in shock that I noticed the lack of it. When he hesitated, so did the rest of his pack.
Deva wasn’t done. “You stop this right now.” She strode forward, shouldering her way through the circle of shifters that had been advancing on us, and put her finger right in his face, and the enormous, towering man-child actually shrank back. “Your father would be ashamed of you, Nathan. Absolutely mortified. He never ran his pack like this. It’s not a party.”
