Beck Bear (Daughters of Beasts Book 2) Read online

  BECK BEAR

  (DAUGHTERS OF BEASTS, BOOK 2)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Other Books in this Series

  Novak Grizzly (Book 1)

  Ash Bear – Book 3 – Coming November 2018

  Beck Bear

  Copyright © 2018 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2018, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: October 2018

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Cover Image: Wander Aguiar

  Cover Model: Florian

  Contents

  Other Books in this Series

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Up Next in the Series

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  More Series by T. S. Joyce

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  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Rhett released the arrow and watched it arching into the woods.

  “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  Fuck yes, he’d heard every word of Remi’s nagging because he listened to everything, but she didn’t need to know that. It would only encourage her.

  “Do you think I need to manscape more?” he asked, standing up straight and looking down at his bare chest.

  “You’re as hairless as that damn mole rat you brought home for Raider which, by the way, only has visitation with us every other weekend, so guess who gets to take care of that little bitey monster when he’s not around?”

  “I’ll buy you another one to befriend her, and then you won’t have to take care of her. I’ll get a boy this time. Oh my god, I just had an epiphany.”

  Remi’s dark eyes went totally dead. “We aren’t breeding mole rats.”

  “Are we not?”

  “Stop doing that!”

  Rhett loaded another arrow and drew the string back on his compound bow. “Do what?” Ziiiiiing. The arrow went sailing into the woods.

  “Ask a question every time you don’t want to have a serious conversation.”

  “Why the everlovin’ hell would I ever want to have a serious conversation?” He grinned brightly and reached for another arrow off the seat of the green plastic lawn chair Remi had punted into a tree the day she moved here. But he’d fixed it because lawn chairs weren’t cheap. They were at least five bucks, and he was poor as shit right now. Plus, he was really good at fixing stuff. Ziiiiiing.

  Remi was standing there watching him with her lips all pursed, her face all scrunched up and angry, and her black hair whipping around in the wind. She had the coolest hair when it was all wild like this, but again, she didn’t need to know that nice stuff. Girls got mushy if you complimented them.

  “Did you even brush your hair today?”

  Remi shoved him in the shoulder so hard he lost his balance. Stupid grizzlies. So violent. He didn’t even try to hide his laughter.

  “Rhett Bertrand Finnelfucker, I have a friend coming to visit,” she called over her shoulder as she stomped away. “Act right for two days. That’s all I’m asking!”

  “Polite decline,” he called after her as he loaded another arrow. “Also Finnelfucker isn’t my last name, but it’s kinda cool so I’m gonna change my name. Can you file it with the courts for me?”

  “That’s not my job!”

  “Yes it is! You’re supposed to take care of stuff around here.”

  Remi flipped him off over her shoulder, not bothering to turn around. Four seconds later, the door to her and Kamp’s trailer slammed closed.

  “Your middle fingers are really skinny!” he called.

  “Fuck you, Rhett!” she yelled back.

  Hmm. He smiled. He liked the Novak Grizzly. Feisty, feisty. She was a good fit for this place, and especially for Kamp. That asshole had only gotten into three fights with the Alpha, Grim, this week. Remi was like a little magician.

  Damn, he was out of arrows. Now for the challenging part—finding them again. He played this game every week. He shot the arrows randomly into the woods and then went searching for them. Sometimes when it was raining, he dressed like a Viking and set the arrow tips on fire just because it pissed Grim off when he played with fire. Finding the lost arrows settled him. They gave him an excuse to get to know the woods—his territory. Grim and Kamp thought they ran these mountains, but they didn’t. The lion inside of Rhett did. He just kept better control of his inner beast. Years of living among the humans had taught him valuable lessons in self-control.

  “Why aren’t you working?” Grim yelled as he tromped by with his yellow hard hat in one hand and his chainsaw in the other.

  “Because I don’t want to be?” Rhett offered. Duh, jackass. That answer was pretty obvious. That, and it was his day off. Rhett hadn’t had one in two weeks.

  Grim snarled and rounded on him. His dark hair was messier than usual and his skin pale as a ghost, his tattoos stark against his pallid flesh. He smelled sick. Not cold or stomach flu sick, but head sick. Or heart sick. The bitter, acrid scent was the same for both. The Alpha looked like he was losing mass in his shoulders, too. Alarm bells, alarm bells. Rhett was the watcher of the Crew. The secret watcher. The jokester everyone ignored, but he paid attention more than anyone realized. Why? Because these mountains and the people here were the only things in the world that belonged to him anymore.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, dropping his plastered smile for once.

  Grim’s bright gold eyes narrowed to slits. “What do you care?”

  “Because you’re my Alph—”

  “No, I’m not. I’m the same as you and Kamp. I wish everyone would fucking stop calling me that.”

  “Uh, then stop beating us in all the fights,” Rhett yelled.

  “Then here is my Alpha order.” He took a menacing step forward and jammed his finger at the woods. “Get to your machine.”

  Uh, it really was his day off so Rhett pulled a Remi and flipped him the bird.

  Grim launched and snapped his teeth at his finger, damn near bit the thing off. Rhett jerked back just in time. Thank you lion shifter reflexes.

  “What the hell, man? That’s my favorite finger!”

  Grim arched his eyebrows unapologetically and walked away, snarling an unsettling sound. He literal
ly might be the worst Alpha in the entire world. Rhett wanted to hate him but, secretly, he admired him instead. Grim was possibly the only one in existence who was more stubborn than Rhett. I see you, kindred spirit.

  “Have a good day at work!” Rhett called.

  “Don’t set my woods on fire!”

  Rhett chuckled. “Don’t give me any ideas.”

  “I’m serious, Rhett! If I have to come home to another fire, I’m going to kill you and eat you.”

  Rhett shook his head and made his way for the woods.

  Maybe Grim should eat him.

  Put him out of his fuckin’ misery.

  Chapter Two

  “Are you good?” Juno Beck’s boss asked way too loud into the phone.

  Juno hunched her shoulders at the sheer volume of his voice. He knew she was a shifter, so did he have to yell everything? Lord, she could probably hear him from Los Angeles without the phone clutched in her hand.

  “Manny, I told you three times already. I’ll get to the concert in time. I’m sure the Beefeaters will be super worth our time.”

  “The Beateaters,” he corrected her.

  A large man with Funyun breath knocked into her in his rush to grab his suitcase off the airport baggage claim. She pitched forward and had to use the edge of the baggage carousel for balance.

  “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “It’s okay,” Juno said politely.

  “I was talking to her,” the man said, pointing to a perfect ten blonde with bright red lips and cat-eye makeup on his other side.

  Juno’s mouth was definitely hanging open as she watched him tip his baseball cap at the smirking lady and pull his suitcase away.

  Rude human.

  If he didn’t smell like onions, she would’ve been tempted to eat him.

  “Helloooo,” Manny said. “Are you listening to anything I say?”

  “Yes, yes,” she rushed out, lurching forward to grab her own glossy neon-green hard-case luggage. “I’ll be at their gig in two days. It’s only a four-hour flight from here.”

  “It’s just there are two other record companies circling these guys, and this is the worst time for you to take a couple of days off.”

  “Well, I haven’t taken any days off in four years, Manny, so I think I’m due.”

  “If we lose these guys, the higher-ups will look at you.”

  “Is that a threat? I’m fired if I don’t seal the deal? You all use the same threat every time you want some new talent, but guess what, Manny? Most of the people you get desperate for are shit—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. That’s why you’ve sent me out to these dives over the last three months, right? You know I can spot actual talent, but you keep pushing and pushing. You ignore everyone I tell you about and sign these dweebs who sell out in a year, tops. Where is the soul—?”

  “In the music industry, blah blah. Spare me your keeping-it-about-the-music bullshit, Juno. Bottom line is money, and talent alone won’t get you very far. Look at Linda Lewis. She can’t sing a note that isn’t autotuned, and her songs are selling by the ton—”

  “Because she wears short skirts and no panties on stage—”

  “Find me one of those!”

  “Manny! No!”

  “You were hired to schmooze who we tell you to schmooze. Sign the Beateaters, and we’ll talk about giving you a project band.”

  “A project band?” Real talent shouldn’t be called a “project band.” Juno wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. She’d worked for years at this soul-sucking job for a chance to sign someone who actually fucking deserved to be signed. She stomped faster past another baggage claim area.

  “Juno, you know as well as anyone in the industry, you were hired because of your father. You have to work your way up, just like everyone else.”

  “Are you serious right now?” she whisper-screamed into the phone as she weaved her way through the busy airport. “You’re really throwing who my dad is in my face? I got this job without him even knowing. I’ve never used his name to build myself up. I hide who I am as much as possible! You degrade the work I’ve done by saying shit like that to me.”

  “You have to pay your dues and do the chores that you don’t want to before you get your break. Look at what Mark brings us?”

  “Mark is a trained monkey!”

  “A well-trained monkey who you should take lessons from. He doesn’t give me shit every time I send him out on a job. He just gets it done.”

  “Right, sign Nudist Barbie with three brain cells in her head and be exactly like Mark-the-womanizer-who-sleeps-with-hookers-in-every-town-you-fly-him-to!”

  “Juno…sign the Beateaters. I don’t care how you do it. They’re who the label wants. Do your job and get that band for us.”

  The phone line went dead, and Juno strangled it while making a screeching sound. A woman looking concerned pulled her toddler closer to her legs, but hang it all, Juno was about thirty seconds away from texting Manny I QUIT and calling her career good.

  The thing that stopped her? The crinkle of the eviction notice for her condo in her back pocket. She’d read it on the plane after putting it off for the last two weeks. She was upside down on everything. Freaking LA and the ridiculous cost of living.

  Her life had turned out so different than she’d planned.

  And right now, only one thing in the world could take the sting off her stress level.

  And that was one freckle-faced, grinning bestie leaning up against a black F-150 right outside the airport doors. The color of the truck matched Remington Novak’s newly dyed hair.

  Juno let off a sigh and blinked back tears as she ran for Remi. It had been way too long since she’d seen her. “Oh my goooosh,” she squealed, landing tits-first into her hug.

  Juno held her at arms’ length just to get a better look at her. Remi’s cheeks were rosy, and she hadn’t covered her freckles with makeup like she’d done with her ex-boyfriend, Asshole Kagan, as Juno had liked to call him. She’d dyed her hair back to her natural color, and her smile was easy and huge. Her green bear shifter eyes looked even brighter and more animated than she’d seen in years, if she ignored the tears rimming them. “Stop!” she exclaimed. “You know you can’t cry alone with me around, and I’m barely holding it together. God, Remi, you look so different. You look…happy.”

  Remi swallowed hard and cupped Juno’s cheeks, studying her face. “You don’t.”

  “Oh, stop,” Juno said, angling her face away. “I’m just tired. The flight was long. There was a crying baby.”

  “You know I can still hear a lie, right?”

  “I’m hungry, and I Googled where your new Crew is. It said something about a cheese factory?”

  Remi laughed and threw Juno’s suitcase into the back of the truck. She gestured for her to get in. “Let’s go, the boys are making you food. We’ll have to tackle the cheese factory tomorrow.”

  “Weeeell, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Juno said as she stuffed herself into the passenger’s side. “I have to fly out tomorrow afternoon.”

  “One day?” Remi yelled as she climbed behind the steering wheel. “No, that’s not enough. You just got here. Call your boss and tell him to fuck off.”

  “I tried. The label is going to fire me if I don’t sign this band. But bright side, one day together is better than no days, so let’s just have as much fun as possible and not talk about work.”

  “Okay,” Remi murmured, pulling out into airport traffic. “No work talk. Only fun.” Remi looked over at her with the happiest smile Juno had ever seen on her face. This place had been good for her best friend.

  Beaston had told Juno that his daughter could find sanctuary here, and Juno had trusted him. She’d encouraged Remi to come out to these mountains and fulfill some vision Beaston had seen for her. And it had worked.

  It was terrifying, because that meant the vision Beaston had had for Juno just might come true, too.

&
nbsp; She was going to die soon.

  Chapter Three

  “Juno,” Remi said.

  “Mmm?” she answered distractedly as she typed out an email to the administrative assistant of Halfstone Records.

  “You’re missing it.”

  “Just a sec…” Juno speed-typed, but made two typos and had to go back and fix them.

  “Juno, seriously, you’re missing it.”

  “Missing what?” she asked, looking up at the piney woods blurring by.

  “Life,” Remi murmured.

  Juno sighed. “It’s not that simple, Remi. Not for me, not anymore. I have bills to pay.”

  “It’s your day off.”

  “I don’t really get days off. I just have to move those hours somewhere else in my schedule.”

  The disappointment in Remi’s face made Juno’s stomach hurt, so she dragged her attention away from her work and stared out the window. “It’s really beautiful here. Reminds me of back home in Damon’s Mountains.”

  “How long has it been since you were back?”

  “The last time you saw me there. Christmas last year.”

  “I think you’ll like it here,” she said softly. “It’s really different from city life.”

  “Do you miss Sacramento?” Juno asked carefully.

  “You mean do I miss Kagan, feeling lost, the honking horns and crowded streets, having to worry about where I’ll Change, and feeling like a number? No. Not even for a second. I feel at peace here.” She cast Juno a quick smile. “I can’t wait for you to meet Kamp.”

  Juno’s heart was happy just seeing the joy written into her friend’s features. She wouldn’t live long enough to find a mate, that much was clear from Beaston’s vision. Her end of days was coming up too quickly. But at least she could go knowing Remi had found her place in the world, with the right man who made her glow from the inside out instead of dimming her.

  “Why do you look sad?” Remi asked with a little frown furrowing her dark eyebrows.