Page 16

“So, tell me about yourself, boy,” Maverik said while he drove toward Vince’s Place, intentionally driving as slow as he could to give himself more time to talk to the gator-shifter who claimed to be Hellen’s mate.

“I’m an alligator shifter. I’m usually alone by choice. Not much else to say.”

“Heard tell the big gators tend to stay alone.”

“Yep. Either that or bite the other in half.”

Maverik laughed. “That’d be convenient when somebody irritates you. Except you’d feel bad later.”

“Or not,” Lucien said.

Maverik nodded thoughtfully as he glanced over at Lucien.

“Tell me why the hell you’re here. I want the whole story.

Not the bullshit you’re feeding everybody else.

I want to know how Hellen found you. Why you were left for dead and by whom, and why you followed her here if you’re not fully sure you want a mate. ”

Lucien turned his head toward Maverik, surprised that he’d read him so well. “Who says there is any other story?”

“Lucien, let me be straight with you. You bring your trouble to my daughter’s door and get her or anybody else I love in the crossfire meant for you, I’ll kill you.

Slowly. Do not fuck with the safety of my people.

Not to mention, if what you’ve managed to survive once finds you again, especially before you’re strong enough to fight them off on your own, you might appreciate a little support.

Tell me exactly what the fuck you’ve selfishly exposed my daughter to. ”

Lucien opened his mouth to deny he’d exposed her to anything, but then realized he most likely had. And suddenly, he didn’t have the will power to play games anymore. “I didn’t mean to expose her to anything, and didn’t realize I might have until just this minute.”

“Let’s start with why you’re here at all,” Maverik said.

“Couldn’t not be here. Can’t get her out of my head. And I’ve tried. Don’t want a mate. Was never part of my plan, but can’t let anybody else have her either.”

“So what’s your plan about that?”

“Stay until I get her out of my system, then disappear.”

Maverik smirked at him before focusing his eyes back on the road. “How’s that working for you?”

“Not worth a fuck,” Lucien said, shaking his head. “The more I’m around her, the more I need to be around her. Thought maybe meeting her people and putting myself in the cross-hairs might be enough to make me want to make a break for it. But damned if I don’t like you people.”

“Us? You like us?” Maverik teased.

Lucien chuckled. “You’re… colorful,” he finally settled on for a description. “Ain’t that some shit?”

“To say the least.”

“So, Harley informed me you’re Poppy,” Lucien said with a genuine smile.

“Yep. That’d be me. For a while when Cristie was little, they thought she was saying puppy,” Maverik said fondly.

“Which is funny because you’re a Wolf,” Lucien said with a rich bout of laughter.

Maverik laughed with him. “That it is,” he agreed. “Val, though, is just Val, but it’s more special than a Poppy.”

“What do you mean?” Lucien asked.

“Grandmothers are Grandmomma, or Mamaw, or something, right? She’s Val.

Everybody calls her Valerie except me. I call her Val.

When Harley was a little bitty thing, she heard me call Valerie ‘my Val’.

And piped right up with, ‘no, hers my Val’.

Naturally, I had to antagonize her and we had about a fifteen minute no-my-Val back and forth kinda thing before I finally conceded.

I tried explaining that I called her Val because it was my special name for her.

And I could have a special name for her because only I would ever love her like I do, and Harley said she loved Val even more than that.

Eventually I gave in as long as Harley agreed that I could continue to call Val, Val, and now Val will ever after be known by her grandchildren as Val, rather than Memaw or some such thing because Val means that they love her more than everybody else. ”

Lucien smiled, nodding thoughtfully. “I love that. It’s just a shortened version of her name, but it means so much more than her name. It means pure unmatched love.”

“That it does. It’s not the name boy, it’s what it means,” Maverik said. “If you watch Val, each time Harley calls her that, she about tears up because it touches her so deep.”

“Goals,” Lucien said.

“If you last that long. Not sure you’re gonna last long enough to get grandbabies from this clan. You don’t trust enough. Not sure you can give enough of you to make it.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. But you only partially here. You’re holding shit back.”

They rode in silence for a little while, before Lucien started talking of his own free will. “I worked for and with some shady people. Shifters, just like us.”

“Doing what?”

“Security mostly. Mule every once in a while. I don’t give a damn what they bring into the bayous at night.

No skin off my back. Make a few grand by standing guard while they unload and ship it out to other locations.

If they got a location they can’t manage to get to, I can usually get it there for them, make another grand or two for my trouble. ”

“You steal from ‘em?” Maverik asked.

“No. I started noticing they were shipping out as many packages as they were shipping in. And that wasn’t the way it was before. Kept an eye on things, started poking around. And stumbled over a death scene like in the movies. Only, it was animals, not people.”

Maverik stayed quiet and let Lucien gather his thoughts.

“I mean, carcasses everywhere; thrown on top of each other, just rotting in the sun. I can understand hunting to feed your family, you know? But this wasn’t hunting.

This was just killing. And the carcases had been skinned, leaving the rest of the body to decay.

In some instances the teeth were pulled out.

The heads had been removed. The paws and claws removed. ”

“They were harvesting the hides for the black market,” Maverik said.

“Yeah. Gators, wolves, nutria, beaver, foxes, panthers, bears, anything you can think of that lives in the bayous and swamps. I told them to move their operation somewhere else, and stop murdering the animals, or I’d make them pay.”

“They didn’t like that.”

“They laughed. For a little while.”

Maverik shot a look his way, waiting for the explanation.

“Told them every time I found new bodies, I’d take one of them in trade. And I did. I’d move up behind them, lock onto them and take ‘em to the deep water. I stored their bodies in the beaver dams and the gator holes underwater.”

“That’s all kinds of fucking freaky,” Maverik said. “But fully understood.”

Lucien grinned. “Scared the fuck out of them. I was about six in before they came to find me.”

“They waited until you took six of their friends?”

“Yep. But don’t get confused thinking anybody is their damn friend. All they wanted was me to stop killing people so they could find more people to work for them.”

“Did you?”

“Hell no. But things got real when I happened to grab one of the ringleader’s brothers.

They started hunting me. It was fun,” he said with a shrug.

“But then I got another one. They figured out they couldn’t stop me, and if they didn’t stop killing the animals, they’d all be dead.

They knew I was a shifter; they were, too.

But they were foxes, cougars. None of them were at home in the water like me.

I thought I had the upper hand, but then they found a way to get to me. I never saw it coming.”

“Too arrogant for your own good.”

“Yep. But don’t tell anybody I admitted it.”

“What’d they do?”

“They dropped two sticks of dynamite into the swamp. They’d just seen me and knew where I went under.

I thought I’d swim away in time. But I didn’t realize they had people spread out.

They all dropped dynamite into the water, too.

Created a huge fucking kill everything in the water circle around me.

I remember an ‘oh fuck’ moment as the explosions started, but then nothing, until this female was trying to bury me alive. ”

“Hellen.”

“Yep. Turns out she found me floating belly up in the water, pulled my ‘ungrateful ass’ as she puts it to land and dumped me in a hole. I woke up when she started shoveling dirt on top of me.”

“How bad was it?”

“Well, last I was aware before the explosions, I had two eyes. There’s a scar in the back of my head where the bullet went in, so luckily it missed my brain, but took my eye.

And people think gators having a walnut sized brain is a bad thing,” Lucien said, laughing at his own funny.

“I’ve got slashes across the mid section of my body, I’m not sure, but I’m thinking they’re where the propellers got me.

Which I’m sure was done on purpose. Couple of more bullet holes through my chest and belly. ”

“Damn, they really wanted you dead.”

“Seems that way. They’ll probably be pissed if they figure out that I’m not. Can’t imagine how they’d know that, though. So, while it wasn’t very smart to come here for that very reason, I don’t see how they’ll find me alive. I really think Hell’s safe. As is everyone else.”

“Except those animals,” Maverik said.

“Yeah. It’s been eating at me. And Hell said that she’s going back out to cover her territory in a week or so. I don’t want her stumbling on them. They’ll take her out for sure. But I can’t tell her about it either. She’ll go hunting them all.”

“She let you call her Hell? Usually only lets her brother and me get away with that.”

Lucien grinned. “Nope. Really pisses her off.”

Maverik chuckled. “Here’s the thing, or a few things, if you will. I like you. I think you’ll be good for Hellen, which is why she’s so pissed off you’re here.”