Mating Instinct: A Moon Shifter Novel (3 page)

Jayce gave her a hard look before fishing her phone out of his pocket. Wordlessly he handed it to her, then opened the front door, but before he closed it, he paused and turned back to her. “Don’t test me,
Katarina
. I don’t think you could live with the knowledge that you got someone killed.”

As the door shut behind him she pushed out a long breath and grabbed the stair railing to brace herself. Somehow, with him gone, the pain and loneliness eating at her were almost impossible to bear.

Which was stupid. She’d left him more than nine months ago. Or almost a year, she reminded herself. It sounded better when she rounded up. Why oh why couldn’t she get him out of her system? When she’d first met Jayce she’d been utterly entranced. Not because of his looks—though she loved the dark edge to him—but because of the raw, untamed power that practically rolled off him.

Since she’d grown up with an arms dealer for a father, she’d never been intimidated by anyone. Until Jayce. Of course she hadn’t let him see it. She’d called him a puppy even then, completely taunting him. He’d been so surprised. She would never forget the shocked look on his face as she’d teased him. He deserved the taunt, of course, after saying something rude to her. She couldn’t remember the exact phrase, but he’d insinuated that he wanted to do something sexual to her and she’d laughed at him.

From that point on he’d chased her with a single-minded focus. Not that she’d minded. Being on his radar had made her feel empowered and sexy in a way she hadn’t imagined possible. Before Jayce men had either been too scared to approach her because of her father’s shady dealings—and his violent reputation—or wanted to get close to her
because
of her father. Not Jayce. He’d just wanted
her
. She’d made him wait six months before agreeing to go to lunch with him. At the time she’d thought she could drag out her teasing even longer, but they hadn’t even made it to her parked car at that restaurant before he’d kissed her.

And oh what a kiss. He’d told her everything she’d needed to know in that one very long kiss. He was claiming her, making a statement that she was his. Or at least that’s how she’d taken it. But it hadn’t been a permanent thing. That knowledge made her stomach turn sour. She’d wanted to make a life with him, but when she’d broached the subject of their future, he’d told her that the chance of a human turning into a shifter from a bite was one percent. What he’d failed to mention was the fact that if he’d taken her as his bondmate she would have changed into a shifter without any issues. He’d lied because he hadn’t wanted her as his bondmate. He’d never actually admitted it to her, but what other reason could he have had for lying? Swallowing hard, she ignored the sudden sting of tears.

Instead of heading directly upstairs to her room, she made a beeline for the kitchen. Sleep had been elusive the past month, and even though she hadn’t wanted to, she’d seen a doctor just to get a prescription. After taking two sleeping pills she prayed she would finally get at least a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Once in her room, she didn’t bother to take off her clothes; she just slipped her boots off and slid into bed.

The moment she closed her eyes Jayce’s face appeared in her vision, mocking her. It made her want to scream. Or maybe cry. She turned onto her side and curled into a ball. She would
not
think about him. She couldn’t afford to give him any power over her when all she wanted was some control in her life. Well, control and revenge.

Chapter 2

C
rouching low, he kept to the shadows as he crept along the side of the house. A few streetlights illuminated the quiet neighborhood, but he stayed hidden in darkness. His wolf coat was dark, making it easy to blend in, and his victim’s house didn’t have any working floodlights. He’d busted them earlier.

Dried grass and dead foliage crunched lightly under his paws as he approached the privacy fence surrounding the backyard, though no humans could hear his movements. After a glance around, he saw that he was still alone. The cold January night gave away no other strong scents either. It was the perfect time to hunt.

Giving himself enough room, he ran full speed at the fence. At the last second he used all the strength in his back legs to propel his body over. He landed with a quiet thud on the brittle, icy grass.

His canines ached and his claws extended as he neared the back door. Despite his human side battling him, telling him this was wrong, his beast was winning. It was hungry and this type of hunger couldn’t be denied.

The human must die.

For his woman, this male had to die.

His inner wolf roared and clawed and demanded blood. Killing this human was the only outcome tonight, no matter what his weaker human side wanted. His wolf would take blood.

Creeping closer, he peered through the windowpanes of the back door. Wearing pajama pants and no shirt, the male was in his kitchen, looking into his fridge. He pulled out a beer and slammed the door. The stench of annoyance rolled off the human, strong enough that it trailed outside. It mixed with the equally strong stink of booze, which practically saturated him.

Guilt swamped him as he watched the male open a cabinet and pull out a bag of chips. But he pushed it back down and locked it up tight.

There was no room for weakness in him tonight. Channeling all the rage he possessed, he loped across the yard, then turned back toward the house.

He let his power and hatred funnel through him as he launched himself at the door. Glass and wood splintered around him as his large body broke through.

The human let out a startled shout as his beer bottle slipped from his hand and shattered against the tile.

Without giving the male a chance to cry out or run, he lunged, jaws open and claws extended. Despite the slight remorse he felt, his beast craved the spilled blood. The taste of it and the human’s fears fueled his rage. The second his jaws clamped around the male’s neck, he released a pent-up growl of satisfaction.

It drowned out any and all guilt from his weaker human side.

* * *

Parker McIntyre unzipped his tan and brown standard-issue sheriff’s jacket as he entered the one-story home. It was much warmer inside—as if someone had turned the heat all the way up—and that only increased the stench of death. Even before seeing the body that was inside, he knew it would be a brutal sight.

The patrolman who’d been sent to check things out after the anonymous call about loud shouting had already retched twice in the front yard. Parker continued down a hallway to where another patrolman stood guard outside what he assumed was the kitchen.

“He in there?” Parker asked.

Tillman, the blond-haired rookie, glanced over his shoulder through the open door, then back at Parker. Tillman’s face was pale as he nodded. “Yeah. You, uh, mind if I get some fresh air?”

Shaking his head, Parker stepped past him, but froze in the doorway. What had apparently been a wood table had been smashed to pieces, chunks of wood splintered and scattered across the floor. A stainless-steel refrigerator had been ripped away from the wall and toppled on its side, the door open and the contents spilling across the black-and-white tile floor.

But that wasn’t what made Parker’s stomach heave. It was the blood and gore covering almost every inch of the oddly bright room. Sunlight spilled in through the open blinds, illuminating a man’s decapitated head. It looked like a macabre spotlight shining on it.

The rest of the tile was littered with body parts. Two hands, a torso, one foot mixed in with a ripped-open bag of rotting lettuce. . . . The coffee Parker had drunk an hour ago swished around sickeningly in his stomach.

Crimson splatters covered almost every surface of the kitchen. The counters. The fallen fridge. The broken chairs and table.

It was a massacre. As if an animal had torn the victim to pieces . . .
Shit.
Parker scrubbed a hand over his face. The only good thing about this scene, if he could even use that word, was that it had been left undisturbed. Even though his men had been trained not to touch anything until he or Detective Chance Kinsey arrived at a scene, they didn’t have many murders in Fontana or the surrounding county in any given year, so he occasionally had to reprimand a rookie for charging into a scene.

Not today. No one wanted to set foot inside the house, which explained why all of his men had been loitering on the front lawn when he arrived.

He felt a presence behind him before a familiar voice spoke. “Holy shit,” muttered Chance as he stopped in the entryway next to Parker.

“Exactly.”

After a few moments, Chance said what Parker had been thinking. “Any possibility this is a shifter attack?”

“Don’t know.” But as he stared at the carnage, he
did
know. This attack was too vicious to have been done by humans. Not that humans weren’t violent—he’d been shot a little over a month ago by an abusive husband—but this kind of attack was purely animalistic in nature. And Parker didn’t know any humans who could rip off someone’s head with their teeth. Though they hadn’t examined the body . . .
parts
yet, he was pretty sure this guy’s head had been snapped off with large teeth. Something Parker had seen before. But he brushed that thought aside. This wasn’t the time for a trip down memory lane. Not when he had a job to do.

“I want to check out the backyard, see where the blood trail leads.” Parker nodded toward the smashed glass of the windowpanes of the back door. “After we section it off I’ll talk to the neighbors. Can you handle this by yourself until Bonnie gets here?” he asked even though he already knew the answer.

Chance took a cautious step inside the room, careful to avoid any blood spatter, though it was difficult. “This isn’t the worst thing I’ve seen, boss.”

Sadly Parker knew it wasn’t. Chance had served in the U.S. Marines for eight years before joining the department, and he had spent most of those years in various war zones.

In addition to Parker and Chance, there were three other trained crime scene investigators in the department, so it narrowed down who would be working this case. With the current budget and the lack of violent crimes in the county, the department couldn’t afford to have full-time civilian employees on the payroll solely for processing crime scenes. The job definitely wasn’t like the bullshit on television. The department also didn’t have private labs to process fingerprints and DNA. All that was outsourced.

And that was going to make this job that much harder. Sighing, he headed out the front door and motioned to Tillman, the first responder. “Come with me.” He walked around toward the back of the house. After putting on gloves, Parker pulled the latch on the gate of the high wooden privacy fence and opened it.

A trail of blood led from the back door, across the yard, then thinned as it tracked over the back of the fence. Which meant that their crime scene had just gotten that much bigger. “Section off this entire backyard and see how far the trail leads. If it leads into the neighbor’s yard, explain why you have to section off their yard too.”

The officer, now recovered from his earlier nausea, nodded. “Sure, boss.”

As Parker headed back toward the front of the house, he clenched his teeth when he saw a local news van pulling up. One of the neighbors had probably called them. Or maybe that bulldog reporter, Julia Martin, had a police scanner she listened to.

It wouldn’t surprise him if she slept with the damn thing on her nightstand. Right now the last thing he needed was news of a shifter attack leaking to the media. A couple of months ago he wouldn’t have particularly cared, but now things were different. His sister was mated to the brother of the local pack’s Alpha. Not only was she mated, she was pregnant, which meant she was as vulnerable as if she was still solely human.

With all the bullshit his department and the Armstrong-Cordona pack had dealt with lately from a radical hate group, the Antiparanormal League, he didn’t want the locals getting riled up. For almost two decades they’d lived in peace with the shifter pack, and he wouldn’t stand for anything or anyone screwing up the dynamics of his town. Or putting his sister in danger.

Ignoring the presence of the media, he made his way toward a man wearing blue pajama pants with white moose heads on them and a faded black pullover sweater, standing behind the cordoned-off section of the front yard. The college-aged guy waved Parker over, then rubbed a hand over his face. By the time Parker reached him, the stench of booze surrounded him. The guy had a couple of days’ growth of stubble and smelled like a brewery.

“Do you need something?” Parker asked, getting right to the point.

The guy nodded and yawned, then said, “My name’s Blake. I live down the street.”

“And?”

“And I know Scott, Scott Ford, the guy who lives here. What the hell’s going on?” he demanded, though it was hard to take him seriously when he wore frog slippers.

“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation. Please stay behind this tape.” There was no way he could tell anyone what had happened until the victim’s family was notified, least of all a nosy neighbor.

“Listen, Sheriff, I
just
saw him last night. What’s the deal with the ambulance and all these uniforms? Is he all right?”

Parker’s eyebrows rose. “You saw him last night?”

“Yeah, he’s a bartender down at Kelly’s Bar and Grill. I was hanging out with some buddies and saw him chatting up some hot chick.”

“A hot chick?”

“Yeah, tall, sex on legs, man. I’ve seen her around before, but I can’t remember where. I do know he left the bar with her.”

That could describe too many women. “Around what time was this?”

“I dunno, midnight maybe. I was pretty messed up last night.”

Parker took a step back and motioned for the guy to walk with him so he could take an official statement. He hadn’t been to Kelly’s in a while, but he was pretty sure the bar had video surveillance. If he could find out whom Scott Ford had left with, they might have their first lead.

* * *

Jayce made his way toward the main house of the Armstrong-Cordona ranch. After last night he was edgy and still pissed off about his confrontation with Kat. Telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself made him feel guilty, but she had to snap out of what he knew was a downward spiral before she got hurt. Or someone else did.

And if she decided that sleeping with random males was a way to purge whatever issues she was having, then someone was definitely going to get hurt. If anyone touched Kat, that person would die. It was as simple as that. The territorial animal inside him wouldn’t allow it. But more than anything, his feelings for her had never died. Just because she’d left him didn’t mean he’d been able to cut those ties to her. He wished to hell he could. Every damn day he wished it, but it just wouldn’t happen.

His wolf and his human side were in agreement. Man’s laws could shove it. So could pack laws as far as Kat was concerned. His inner beast would draw blood before his human side even had time to
think
if he smelled a male on Kat.

But he shouldn’t have told her to stop feeling sorry for herself. Maybe he should have used kid gloves, but it hadn’t seemed like she needed that. She would probably have thought he pitied her. Which he didn’t. He hated what had happened to her—even though he didn’t know all the details, he could guess—and he just wanted to
fix
it. But he didn’t pity her. She was tough, and if she allowed herself time to heal, she could survive anything. But he wanted her to let him help.

Shoving those thoughts aside, he opened the door to Connor and Ana’s home. Once inside, he veered toward the living room and found he was the last one to arrive. Something that shouldn’t have happened, but he’d been distracted this morning. Cursing his lateness, he nodded at Connor, Liam, who was the Alpha’s brother, and Brianna, the fae warrior who’d infiltrated the APL and helped save Kat a month ago. Brianna had gone to Ireland for a few weeks to talk with her leaders and had just returned to Fontana.

Sitting on the edge of a love seat, the petite blonde nodded politely at him. Liam, who sat on the long leather couch across from her, grunted a hello. Connor pushed off from his position where he leaned against the fireplace mantel and gave him a look that told him he understood exactly what he was going through with Kat. That just pissed him off. He wasn’t used to anyone knowing his business, but it seemed that everyone in this pack knew he’d gone to see Kat last night.

Though all he wanted to do was pace, he kept his body loose and dropped onto the couch next to Liam. “So what did I miss?” He was in Fontana for a multitude of reasons and this meeting should cover the APL business. Afterward he needed to talk to Connor about the possible vampire-blood-trafficking bullshit.

Connor shot an annoyed look at Brianna, who shrugged. “I’m going to infiltrate the APL again and your wolf friends don’t like it.”

Wolf friends?
Despite the tension humming through him, Jayce had to resist smiling. Brianna was part of the Fianna, legendary fae warriors from Ireland that most people thought were complete myth, and as far as he knew, they usually stayed with their own kind. Her presence here was abnormal, but they could use her, even if she didn’t understand pack laws. “So what’s the problem?” He directed his question to Connor.

“I’m not sending anyone in to work undercover with those assholes, especially a female.” Connor’s deep voice was resolute as he looked at Brianna.

The blonde simply gave Connor what Jayce considered a patronizing smile. “My brethren disagree. I appreciate you giving me shelter for the time being, but I don’t
need
it. In fact, if this is representative of your pack’s attitude toward
teamwork
, I am not interested.” She rose slowly, the action almost regal, as if she were addressing peasants.