The Lord of Near and Nigh: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 2) (2 page)

We Pureblood’s aren’t immune.
 

I’ve learned that the hard way.
 

But Purebloods have the cure to all that bullshit. It’s living inside us.
 

The animal. He knows what’s important. What really matters.
 

I place the heel of my Dayton shit-kicker boots on Soren’s neck, lean down, and say, “Meow.”

Soren glares up at me, his eyes burning with hatred.
 

“Let him yield,” someone says. It’s a woman’s voice, soft and sexy, and I’m curious enough to glance up and take a look. She’s pale and blonde like Soren, a bit too slim but with a nice set of tits and a decent ass for a Euro-trash chick. She’s wearing a skintight white leather riding outfit. I sniff in her direction. Her barely disguised fear and the scent of her warm cunt makes my cock surge.
 

I flash her a wolf-grin then look down and say, “That your girl, Soren?”

Soren answers with a throaty gurgle.

I press my boot down harder.
 

Soren’s got a minute, maybe two, before he bleeds out in the dirt.
 

Not much can kill a Pureblood. But this will.
 

I pause a moment, remembering the dogfaced spirit-eater and that Skin bitch Lily Thompson. AKA Sparkles the Cop.
 

All right. Maybe there are more things that can kill us than we’d like to admit.
 

“I’m his girl,” the Euro-trash whore says, her voice faltering.
 

Soren looks to her, then up at me. Closes his eyes.
 

Alpha. The job’s overrated, but there are a few perks.
 

“Come here,” I tell her, not lifting my boot from Soren’s neck.
 

Soren’s girl rubs her hands together at her waist and looks back at her former MC. She’s frightened. She should be. Then she steels herself, swallows hard and walks to within a few steps of me and her dying boy.

“Closer,” I whisper.
 

She shuffles forward. Soren moans and gurgles and even thrashes a little, which is almost impressive, all things considered.
 

“What’s your name, pretty?” I say, making sure to spit blood with every word.

She shudders and says, “Annelise.”
 

Quiet as a mouse.

“Annelise? Huh.”

I reach up, grip her chin and drag her toward me, conscious of the Purebloods studying my every move. I hear a hissing breath behind me.
 

Mia. The thought of knotting her panties makes me smile.

“Annelise,” I say, holding the chick’s chin in my clawed hand. “Yeah. That’s real pretty. Tell you what, Annelise. You have a new alpha. That much is pretty fucking obvious. Yes?”

Annelise nods.

“No, no, Annelise. I want you to say it. Say you have a new alpha.”

I grind my foot into Soren’s throat for emphasis.

Annelise looks at Soren. I jerk her head up to meet my eyes. “Not him, sweetheart. He’s
finished
. Understand? Good. Now. Say it.”

“I have…a new alpha.”

I flash her a toothy smile. “Yeah. You do. Now why don’t you show your new alpha how loyal you are?”

Annelise glances at Soren again. I jerk her chin up, drag her to within inches of my snarling face, then lean hard onto Soren’s throat. “Do that again and I gut him while you watch. Then I take whatever I want from you. Then I gut you. Now. Are you with me, pretty Annelise?”

She nods. Tears track down her cheeks, settling warm against my fingers.

“Show me,” I whisper.

Annelise brings her lips to mine. She has lovely, full and pale-pink lips, and I imagine how her nipples will taste, small and pink and pretty, and her sweet little cunt like a treasure waiting to be raided. The Euro-trash asshole Soren didn’t fuck this one like she needs to be fucked. I know that for a fact. I can scent it on her—her unfulfilled desire. She’s making a show of not wanting it now, but get her alone for a few seconds and the bitch’d be stripping off that white leather outfit faster than you can say
alpha’s girl.
 

Annelise’s trembling lips meet mine. There’s a tiny flower that grows on the northern tundra, dainty and white like a daisy, called the Mountain Aven. It grows in twenty-four hour sunlight only four months a year. My wolf remembers the scent of that flower. And that’s what this woman smells like: pretty and brief. Fragile.
 

At first she’s hesitant, afraid. Then she gets the scent of me, my strength and dominance, and maybe—the kinky bitch—maybe she likes the taste of her former lover’s blood on my lips, because soon she’s pressing into me, her lips searching, her tits soft against my bare chest, and I reach down and grab her ass and pull her tight.
 

Annelise moans softly, trails her fingers down to stroke my stiffening cock.

That’a girl.

I give Annelise one last kiss, thrust her aside so hard she staggers to her knees, then lean over Soren and say, “Well, putty-cat. Do you yield?”

What man would? Fuck that. If it was me on the ground watching my girl stroke some dirtbag’s cock I’d let him murder me and be thankful for the favor.

But Soren isn’t made of what I am. Fact I think he’s more Skin than Pureblood, and the thought worries me a little, because if this weak-ass bitch was the
alpha
of the SoCal MC they’re not gunna last long around here. The Collazo Cartel are next on the kill list, and that’s the least of our problems.
 

We got heartless Stricken whose blood burns and who’ve learned to breed in human vassals. We’ve got cult whackos proclaiming the First Fallen’s imminent Becoming. And that
is
a problem. Shit’s about to get ugly. I scent it. That’s why I need a united Pureblood MC, although I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I would have been better off just rolling with Sorry and Nash and Mia and springing Blue from prison—

“He yields,” Annelise says.

I sigh. That figures. A bitch answering for her alpha. What’s next? Female alphas running MC’s? The thought makes me remember the night Lily dematerialized us through that fucking RV that was about to splatter us both into roadkill. Female alphas. Stranger things have happened, and if the old stories are true…

“Do you yield?” I ask Soren again, ignoring Annelise.

Soren looks me in the eyes and nods.

Damn. I was looking forward to murdering him. Truth is I was
craving
it. Stricken, Skin, Pureblood…recently it matters less and less. My animal’s prowling right beneath my skin. He doesn’t give a fuck who or what he kills.
 

Death is its own reward.

But that’s not all. Truth is I’m not at my best. I mean
me
. Not my animal. Not the biker asshole known as One-Eight-Seven. Just me. Aaron Arud. Whoever the fuck he is. I’m on edge, barely keeping my head above water. Whenever I slow down I feel Lily’s fingers against my cheek, how she looked at me before she turned toward her burning apartment.
 

Not angry. Sad. Hurt. Betrayed.

My chest tightens. That’s been getting worse as well. The feeling like I can’t draw a full breath. Like I’m suffocating slowly in my own life. I think…I think the last time I took a full breath was when Lily and I were alone in Tate’s mountain den—
 

I snarl and stare at Soren. I haven’t taken my boot from the dude’s neck. I’m still killing him. But now I can’t breathe. It feels like there’s this weight on my chest, pressing down—
 

Fuck, do I ever wish Lily had gotten angry. Screamed and smacked at me.
 

That would’ve been so much easier to deal with—
 

“Release him,” Annelise says. “Please.”

Annelise. What a pretentious bullshit Euro-trash name. “From now on your name is Annie,” I tell her. “And you belong to me.”
 

Annelise nods.

I don’t want her. Not in the slightest. Too fucking skinny. Too…catlike.
 

But I’ll take her.
 

That’s what an alpha does. Claims his territory. It’s natural law. Except I’ve got this thing about wanting what I can’t have. And what I can’t have is that fucking Skin girl Sparkles, because I don’t think she’s truly a Skin girl. Not at all. I think she’s something much more dangerous. Which means I
really
shouldn’t have her—

I lift my boot from Soren’s throat.
 

A delicate blood arc shoots into the evening air.

We’ll see if this Euro-fuck is really going to submit. It must be tough, being knocked from alpha right down to the bottom of the pack and having to live with that humiliation and shame. Some guys never recover. They try and undermine their new alpha’s authority in scheming, backstabbing, chickenshit ways. Cats are especially prone to turning into toxic little bitches.
 

I have a feeling Soren’s gunna be one of them.

“Wrap this asshole’s wound up,” I say to no one in particular. Then I lift my head and scrutinize my new MC. Our ranks have grown by six, including Soren and Annie. I could ask the new members to get on their fucking knees.
 

But I don’t have to. I see the submission in their eyes.
 

“I hope you useless fucks have more fight than your former alpha,” I say, then I whirl on my heel and lope toward the safe house. It’s tradition to hunt Stricken after an alpha death-match. A celebration of blood.
 

“We ride in an hour,” I tell the MC over my shoulder.
 

Then I glance at Annie.
 

She gets to her feet and follows me into the house without saying a word.

Like the SoCal MC, Annie’s going to be a disappointment.
 

I like a little fight in my women.

B
EFORE
SHE
WAS
murdered my mother, Sarah, used to say we don’t have as much control in our lives as we think we do.
 

I never listened. Now I wish I had.
 

“This where your ghost ship was moored?”
 

Seattle homicide Detective Al Kusch. Still an ugly bastard. Still riding hard and long up my ass. This job-shadowing bullshit is getting old. And it’s only day three.
 

I nod, scanning the docks. Water-worn fishing boats and yuppie yachts sealed up tight against the winter rains. The
Guardian
, the boat my abductors held me in, the boat Aaron painted in blood, is gone.

I hate being here. It reminds me of how fast things go to shit. Not that my life before Aaron the biker Prez was all sunshine and chocolate. Nope. But at least, before what happened with him I still had…faith in people. Like I believed yeah, life’s hard, but people can still make good choices. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe people are just plain shit. Maybe we’re all shit. Aaron and his jerk-off MC crew dumping me in the street in front of my burning apartment…it not only hurt…it’s like it stole something from me.
 

Maybe you get hurt bad enough you just lose the will to connect with people, you know? Why take the risk? You fall into yourself. Shut the world out.

I hug my arms around my waist and shiver against the mist-rain blowing in off the ocean. That boat. There might be more girls out there. Chained to metal pipes in engine rooms—
 

“Tell me why we’re here,” Detective Sandra Bernard says. She’s wearing her usual plain slacks and Seattle Bombers jacket. Her collar’s turned up against the chill. She looks as rough as me: like she hasn’t slept in days. What’s going on with her? And how she keeps staring at me…suspicious as all hell.

I don’t like it at all.
 

Then again, I have good reason to feel jittery and unnerved. Several good reasons.
 

“I already told you,” I snap, immediately regretting my tone. These two detectives hold my future in their hands. They decide whether I get into the Seattle P.D. Detective academy.
 

Bernard stares at me with her humorless grey eyes and says, “Tell me. Again.”

“I canvassed the dock last night like you said. Talked to a fisherman named…” I dig out my notepad and pretend to read the scribble there. “Allen. Said he saw a ship that doesn’t usually moor here. A fishing trawler, bigger than most. Said it came in a couple days ago. Said he saw some odd shit: guys coming and going at all hours carrying boxes and other cargo.”

“At all hours? Allen doesn’t sleep?” Kusch asks.

I smile. “Allen might’ve been a tad tipsy.”

“Perfect. So a drunk fisherman has a grudge and we’re here sniffing around for him.”
 

“Where’s this Allen guy now?” Bernard asks.
 

I look across the dock. My face crumples. Damn, I should have gone to acting school. “His boat’s gone as well.”

“Spec-fucking-tacular,” Kusch mutters.

“You got a last name for this Allen individual, I hope?” Bernard says.

“Yeah. ”

“Good. We’ll need to talk to him again.”

I nod, but this is trouble. I didn’t canvass the docks last night. I was enjoying the fuck of my life with an outlaw biker Prez who also turned out to be a world-class douchebag.

Shocker, right?

 
Oh yeah, and getting in motorcycle crashes and hideous fighting dogfaced creatures. Y’know, just blowing off steam.

The thought makes me smirk. Detective Bernard looks up from the coffee she’s cradling to warm her hands and shoots me a seething glare. I press my fingers to my eyes like I’m fighting off a real bad headache, which I am. I could use an Adderall and some Vitamin Water and about a week of sleep. Shitty thing is I have no where
to
sleep.
 

Truth is there’s no fisherman named Allen. And that’s very easy for Bernard to find out if she starts sniffing around. I needed something to account for my time last night and canvassing the dock seemed to make sense. I didn’t think Bernard would be so interested in the boats. But she is now. Did she learn something I haven’t heard about?