Page 1 of Taming the Beasts (Crooked Point #3)

Thursday

Zoey

If you had told me ten years ago that vampires and werecats existed, I never would have believed you.

My feet were so firmly rooted in reality and my own hell.

I’d been so scared watching everything I thought I wanted crash and burn because of one mistake.

One leaked sex tape. And all the hurt that followed.

The world had felt so small. And I’d been so stuck. It felt like the worst thing possible had happened to me. But I knew it wasn’t even close to the worst thing.

I’d seen it now.

All of it.

And I knew I didn’t know what hell felt like.

I stared at the vaults that my boyfriends locked themselves in when they shifted into werecats. They were cursed. And they were the ones that were stuck now. But not for long.

I clenched my fist around the ancient silver coin.

It felt warm in the palm of my hand. The power hidden inside of it tingled my skin.

It held the cure. For my boyfriends. I turned to my best friend Emma.

It held the cure for Emma’s boyfriend too.

Callum had been searching the world for centuries.

He didn’t want to be a vampire. He didn’t want to crave blood.

He wanted a normal life. With her. She wouldn’t have to hide the bite marks on her skin for much longer.

And the engagement ring sparkling on her finger wouldn’t come with so many strings attached.

“We’re going to get arrested, Zoey!” Emma shouted and grabbed the bottle of champagne out of my hand.

Right. We were technically in a bit of a pinch.

In order to get the cure, we’d broken into my boyfriends’ bank.

And stolen the cure from their locked vaults.

I didn’t really see it as a problem though.

I was holding the cure in my hand. They weren’t going to be mad about a little breaking and entering when they found out why I’d done it.

They were going to be thrilled. And I was hoping they’d storm in any second and reward me. Or better yet...punish me.

“It’s fine,” I said. “My boyfriends aren’t going to arrest us.” I laughed, because the thought of them arresting me was ridiculous. Unless they wanted to do some light roleplaying. I wasn’t opposed to that. I loved being tied up.

“You only just started dating them,” Emma protested.

“And one of the first things you do is break into their bank and crack their vaults?” She shook her head.

“God, what were we thinking? I know it’s halftime, but maybe they haven’t looked at the security feed yet. There might still be time to flee.”

Doubtful. “We’ve been dillydallying for a while now...”

Emma groaned.

“And I didn’t crack their vaults. I knew the code.” Yes, I’d brought a power drill to break in just in case the code didn’t work. But it hadn’t come to that. So no harm no foul .

“But not because they showed it to you. Because you just happened to see Bennett punch in the code once. He’s going to be so pissed.” She started pacing.

I didn’t love the fact that she thought she knew one of my boyfriends better than I did.

But…she had dated Bennett first. I bit my bottom lip as I watched her pacing.

I really needed to get over that. They both had moved on.

It shouldn’t still bother me. But…what if she was right about Bennett actually being really pissed about this?

I swallowed hard, remembering what he looked like when he shifted right in front of me. I was trying to help him, but what if he took this the wrong way? I knew better than anyone what happened when he was angry…

“Maybe we should leave and talk all this out in private,” Kebe said.

I’d almost forgotten she was with us, because she’d been eerily silent. I don’t think I’d ever seen her look so serious before. She was usually smiling and joking around. A little too much if you asked me. “What do you mean? You were totally down for the heist.”

“I was…” her voice trailed off as she looked back at the vaults.

“Nothing has changed,” I said. “We have the cure for Callum and the guys. We should be celebrating. All of us. Actually, Emma you should call Callum and tell him to meet us here. So we can show all the guys the coin at once. I can’t wait to see all their faces when we tell them we found what they’ve been searching for. ”

Emma hesitated for a moment, but then started to pull out her phone .

“Everyone just stop for a second,” Kebe said and grabbed Emma’s phone. “What if we’re wrong?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “This is exactly the coin my client told me about.” King had been very clear about it. I opened my hand. “The Anubis head. It’s even a little tarnished like he said it might be.” I ran my thumb along the carved jackal head.

Kebe shook her head. “It’s giving off the wrong aura.”

We’d already been over this. And I didn’t really believe that she could see auras anyway.

Apparently my supernatural beliefs stopped at werecats and vampires.

But I was pretty sure it was just because I didn’t believe in Kebe.

I’d been suspicious of her since the start.

And now she was suddenly changing her mind?

“You said it was giving off a green aura. And that green was good?”

“There were too many items in the vault.” She shook her head. “The auras were all swirling together. And so many of them are gray.” She shook her head again. “Why are so many of them gray?”

Emma stared at the coin, her eyebrows pulling together. “So what color is its aura now? Is it gray too?”

“I’m not sure,” Kebe said. “Colors are still leaking out of the vault. I just need a minute.” She frowned as she stared at the vault.

“Kebe, we don’t have a minute!” Emma said. She looked like she was going to be sick. She turned to me. “How well did you say you knew King?” she asked.

“Sexually? Very well.” I winked at her.

“That’s not what I asked, Zoey!”

“He’s one of my cam clients. What answer were you expecting? ”

“Knowing his sexual desires doesn’t mean he knows anything about cures,” Emma said. “We were so drunk when we came up with this plan.” She took a swig from the champagne bottle, as if getting drunk now would make everything make sense again.

“King is rich. And smart. He knows all about this stuff.”

“So you trust him?”

I nodded. I did. We’d already been over all this or else we wouldn’t be standing here in this bank after hours.

King had no reason to lie to me. And I’d known him a lot longer than I knew Kebe.

Kebe had only just shown up in our lives earlier this week.

I didn’t trust her one bit. Especially because she kept hitting on Emma’s fiancé.

“Please,” Kebe said, as if she knew what I was thinking. She sounded frantic. “I need to ask my daddy about that coin. He’ll know. I just need to talk to him. Sort everything out. And you don’t want to get your boyfriends’ hopes up for no reason.”

She’d said her father was a curator. Or a professor.

Or an anthropologist? Or all three? I guess either profession might have some insight on the coin.

I pressed my lips together as I thought it over.

I didn’t want to get the guys’ hopes up for no reason.

The coin felt powerful in my hand though.

I knew in my gut that there was magic here.

“We can tell them that we think it’s the cure.

But that we have to do more research. They’ll want to be a part of it… ”

“But that does what I just said. It might just get their hopes up for no reason. ”

I didn’t want that. They’d been searching for so long. The last thing I wanted was to tease them. Teasing was meant for the bedroom only.

“And we’re not thinking about the whole picture here,” Kebe said. “ What if the cure does work? And it changes them forever?”

I just stared at her. “That’s kind of the whole point, Kebe. I want to change them back. They’ve all been dying to be themselves again.”

“But what does that look like? Really?” She turned to Emma. “Suddenly Callum will only have 60 years left to live instead of 600? Don’t you think that might cause some kind of existential crisis? He only just proposed. It could change his whole outlook on…”

“He loves me,” Emma said. “He’s giving up a lot to be with me already.”

“I’m just saying that it changes things.” She turned to me. “Your boyfriends share you because they have to. Because they don’t trust themselves to be alone with you.”

“That’s not entirely true…”

“Do you really think they’ll keep sharing you if they don’t have to? They’ll make you choose one of them. It could tear them apart.”

I liked being with all of them. The situation was perfect for me.

I thought it was perfect for them too. But what if Kebe was right?

What if they didn’t love the situation and they were just doing it because they had to?

All four of them gave me something I wanted.

Something I needed. Well, maybe all five of them now.

I pictured Titan staring at me while the other four devoured every inch of me.

Maybe he gave me something I needed too.

And I hadn’t even gotten to explore that yet.

“Just let me research it with my daddy before we do something we regret,” Kebe said. She tried to grab the coin from me, but I pulled back.

“I’m not giving you the coin.”

“Don’t you trust me?” she asked.

Not even a little, bitch. She pretending to look innocent, but I wasn’t buying it.

The brights on someone’s car lit up the glass doors.

“They’ll probably punish you by getting you naked,” Kebe said. “It’s basically a strip search. You have no choice but to give it to me.”

“Then I’ll give it to Emma.”

Emma held up her hands like she didn’t want it. “As if Callum isn’t going to ravish me when I come back home in this catsuit.”

Fair point. The door to the bank started to open.

Kebe grabbed the coin from me and shoved it down the front of her black shirt before I had a chance to stop her.