Page 7 of Ignited

She didn’t trust him. “I’m serious, Tucker. That shit ends up on the internet, no more fights for the Tiger Queen. Except one, which is gonna be with you. And we all know who the undefeated champion is.”

Tucker went a little pale. “Geez, babe, you don’t have to get like that.” He put the flyer away. “But think about the next couple weeks, okay? We’re gonna rake it in.”

Mercenary little weasel. “Fine, I’ll think about it.”

She grabbed her jacket, slung her bag over her shoulder, shoved her feet into her rubber clogs and banged the locker door shut. Tucker waddled back into his office, and Karisma went out the back door to her car.

The night was frosty and clear, stars blazing down out of a velvety black sky. Deep inside her, her tiger pricked up her ears. She loved the cold, and especially she loved the snow. She wanted to roll around in it under the stars.

Not now, Karisma told her. She loved the snow too, but she couldn’t let her tiger out. Too much of a risk. This constant struggle for control was not how it was supposed to be, with shifters.

As she did every night, she cursed Maximilian Stone, the sorcerer who’d done this to her.

The one who was someday going to pay for the lives he’d destroyed.

But first she needed the next link in the chain, who had a certain item that would help lead her to Maximilian.

A mysterious man known only as Thanatos.

Inside the club, Tucker was at his desk, his chubby fingers flying over the keys of his laptop.

He pulled up the PDF of the flyer, found the internet sites he was looking for, and hit ‘upload.’

Karisma was going to be pissed at him, but this was business. And when she saw how much money came rolling in, she’d get over it.

Money always talked.

Chapter 4

By ten o’clock the night of the mission, Boomer had eaten the few snacks in their fridge that weren’t moldy, and discovered he and Bro were out of beer.

So he headed down to the new recreation center, created out of an old ruin of a barn and dreamed up by Breanna, along with Michelangela Connors, Gunn’s mate, as a place for the pack to hang out and hopefully bond and shit.

The jury was still out on how well that was going to work.

Boomer kind of missed the old barn. He’d once used it as target practice for a medieval catapult he’d built up at the testing field, shooting a half-frozen pig meant for a pig roast instead of the traditional giant boulder. The pig had gone right through the roof—bullseye.

They’d eaten it afterwards. Good times.

He pushed open the door to the rec center and stood just inside, looking around to see who was here and if there were any brawls brewing he wanted to steer clear of. Or join.

The place was so brand-new he could still smell the fresh wood, underneath the scents of wolf and alcohol and snacks from the kitchen menu.

There was a bar all along one end, plus a sports watching area with comfy couches and a wall full of screens, pool and air hockey tables, and an entire wall lined with axe-throwing targets, with guys throwing pretty much anything with a blade or a point at them. The two haylofts had been renovated too—one was a lounge area, and the other was a game room with poker tables.

It was crowded, since it was Friday night, but nothing especially interesting was happening, so he began making his way across to the bar. A three-foot-high metal waiter mounted on a Roomba rolled by, carrying a tray of beers and heading for a table by the wall. Boomer reached out to swipe one of the beers, and it swiveled the tray out of reach. As it rolled away, a tinny voice intoned, “Don’t be an asshole. Get your own fucking drink.”

Which made Boomer laugh. It felt good to laugh, even if it was only for a second.

On the way to the bar, he passed the Shrine of Stabby the Knife-Wielding Roomba, who had been inspired by a story one of the guys had read on the internet. When the rec center first opened, Breanna thought Roombas would be a good idea, to save on having to do so much cleaning.

She had not counted on the extent of the assholery of the guys in the pack, or the fact that her mate, Switch, could not keep from tinkering with anything electronic.

Stabby was the first Roomba, and one of the guys had decided it would be fun to duct-tape knives to it, so it was like a random ninja rolling around the floor. And of course nobody took the knives off, because it was so fucking funny watching people having to jump out of the way, or else getting their ankles stabbed if they were too drunk to pay attention.

Pretty soon Stabby had an Outlaw Ridge combat patch, a little speaker that played the Star Wars theme every time he stabbed somebody, and a scorecard on the wall.

It was all fun and games until Mickey from the motor pool got his new custom cowboy boots all cut up by the ninja knives. In a fit of rage, he’d emptied his sidearm into Stabby, killing him instantly.