Dead of Winter (Battle of the Bulls Book 2) Read online

  DEAD OF WINTER

  (BATTLE OF THE BULLS, BOOK 2)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Dead of Winter

  Copyright © 2020 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2020, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: October 2020

  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.

  Editor: Corinne DeMaagd

  Cover Model: Jeff Button

  Photograhper: Wander Aquiar

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Up Next in the Series

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  More Series by this Author

  For More from this Author

  About this Author

  Chapter One

  “Are you sure you belong here?”

  Raven stopped shifting her weight from foot to foot and twisted around. “Me?” she asked the woman standing behind her in line for the beer truck.

  The pretty woman was dressed in bootcut jeans, muddy boots, and a flannel shirt that she’d tied just below her perky boobs. Her tight midriff was exposed. She had platinum locks cascading down her shoulders from under her white felt cowboy hat.

  Blondie was the complete opposite of Raven.

  “You sure have a lot of tattoos.” The woman scrunched up her face. “You would be so cute if you hadn’t done that to your skin.”

  Stunned, Raven glanced down at herself. Black ripped-up shorts, black motorcycle boots, black tank top, and a red and black Harley Davidson flannel tied around her waist. And yep, she had tattoos—a sleeve of them down her right arm and all down her left leg.

  Raven’s cheeks were burning. Shyness was a beast she still hadn’t figured out how to deal with. She didn’t know how to respond, so she said awkwardly, “Umm, I just like tattoos and how they look.”

  “Huh,” the girl said. “Are you here to see the riders or the bulls?”

  Okay, friendly conversation. The woman wasn’t going to make her feel like an outsider anymore, so this was good. She parted her lips to answer, but the girl’s eyes went wide and she took a step back.

  “Your eyes. They just went from light green to brown. I know what that means.” She looked around as if checking to see if any of the rodeo-goers around them were paying attention to her discovery. Louder, she called out, “I know what changing eye colors mean!”

  “Okay,” Raven murmured, stepping forward in line to put in her order. “Think I need two beers,” she told the cashier of the little booze truck parked outside the rodeo arena.

  “Are you with one of the bulls? Are you a girlfriend? You’re a cow shifter, right?” the girl asked from way too close behind her.

  Inside of Raven, her animal stirred. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Cow shifter sounded lame, but her animal was a monster. Purebred Texas Longhorn shifter and full of fury when she took the skin, so… “Can you give me a little space?” Raven whispered. “Please?”

  “Right, right,” Blondie said, throwing her hands up and backing away a maximum of three inches. Freakin’ humans.

  “Are you with one of the bulls? I’m a huge fan of Quickdraw Slow Burn. I came here to cheer for him. I follow him on social media. He has an eight-pack.” Blondie was staring down at her phone.

  “Here you go,” the cashier said with a friendly smile as he set two plastic cups of frothy light beer on the counter. “That’ll be ten bucks even.”

  Raven pulled a ten-dollar bill out and then two more dollars to put into the tip jar beside the register. “Hey, thanks mister.”

  “It’s so weird to hear a country drawl on a goth chick,” Blondie said. “Okay, here.” She shoved her phone at Raven just as Raven was turning around with both beers in hand. She jerked to a stop and spilled a little. Blondie was showing her a picture from Quickdraw’s Instagram page. A picture Raven had already seen because she’d stalked all the bulls being represented by Cheyenne Walker.

  “This is who you’re with, right? He is covered in tattoos, too. Y’all would match.”

  “I don’t know him,” Raven murmured, staring at the background of the picture. The background was more important than the giant, muscled-up, black-haired behemoth cheering behind the chutes at the second event of the Battle of the Bulls circuit. Behind him was the man she’d come to see. The one who had caught her attention from the moment the news broke that he had a human mother.

  Dead of Winter was standing behind Quickdraw, screaming, gripping the top of a gate behind the chutes. He’d been cheering on Two Shots Down, who was bucking during the taking of this picture.

  “Damn, I totally thought I had you pegged.”

  “Nope. Just here as a fan. Like you,” Raven assured her and walked around the nosy human.

  Are you sure you belong here?

  She looked around at the cowboy boots, the hats, the Wranglers, the belt buckles, and gripped her beers a little tighter as she stepped around a giant pile of horse crap in the middle of the walkway.

  Hell no, she didn’t belong here, at some rodeo in Boise, Idaho.

  She didn’t belong anywhere.

  Chapter Two

  “You don’t belong here.”

  Dead of Winter charged First Time Train Wreck and just barely missed the bull shifter in his human skin when he scurried up the alleyway fence. He rammed where the heckler had disappeared and dented in that length of fencing. Across the alleyway, his agent, Cheyenne, was yelling profanities at Train Wreck. Little hellion woman didn’t like anyone messing with their heads right before a big buck.

  As a kid, he’d always wanted a guard dog. Who the hell would’ve ever thought he would get one in the form of a five-foot-six mouthy woman?

  The handlers were behind him with hot shots in their hands, threatening him to move forward by the pulsating electric current on the ends of the long wands.

  First Time Train Wreck, watch your back tonight. I’m gonna find you after you buck.

  He bolted forward, his hooves sinking into the alleyway dirt. The crowd outside was cheering a deafening sound. He trotted to the end of the alley and loaded into chute number two. The handlers closed him in, and this was the part he hated—the before. Th
e cage. The waiting. The few minutes before a buck where a rider had to settle on his back and he was trapped under that human’s weight and spurs. The clang of a fence made him flinch back, and he slammed his horn against the gate hard. The gateman was ready, holding the rope attached to the gate taught, weight on his back leg, eyes boring through the slats of the gate at Dead. Dead had trampled him before, but the old coot had learned his lesson. Now, he always got out of the way fast. Pity.

  Dunbar Cooper was settling onto his back now, his spurs running painfully down Dead’s ribs as he eased his legs on either side of his back. Dead held still. For now. Quickdraw was loading two chutes down, ready to buck after Dead. He was kicking and headbutting the rails, making a mess of his rider’s head. That was his favorite move in the chutes.

  Dead’s? He liked to stay still, and then when the rider got comfortable and distracted, he would screw with him. The announcer was telling the huge crowd Dead’s entire life story. God, he hated this part of the circuit now. All the research into his past, all the rumors, all the conversation about who he really was. Right now, they were talking about his mother, the human, the vessel for this monster bull shifter, and blah blah blah. Too bad Mom didn’t mean to be a vessel for a bull shifter. Too bad she’d done her best to cut the animal right out of Dead. But go ahead, Mr. Announcer. Talk about her like she’s worth a damn. Talk about her like Dead hadn’t gotten himself here by his own bootstraps with no help from anyone, especially not his mother. That’s what humans did. They took the credit away from the animals. Of course, the announcers would give credit to his human mom.

  Dunbar’s spur dug into his side harder, and Dead reared back and slammed him against the gate. The rider yelled but held. Little barnacle. He was going to be tough to buck. Dunbar had been making a run and had some confidence in him now.

  Cheyenne and Two Shots Down’s voices echoed through his head. They were here now and riled up on his behalf. Protective herd.

  Cheyenne was ripping on the flankman for putting the rope on Dead’s nuts, and Two Shots was leaning down into the chute, yelling at him to, “Buck up, Dead! Train Wreck will take your place if you don’t put Dunbar on the ground. No mercy. Get rid of him!”

  Adrenaline pumped through his body. Dead looked out through the slats to the arena again. Gateman was ready, pickup men were ready across the dirt clearing, the bullfighters were all tensed and waiting.

  A man laced a rope through the chute slats and flung it around his head behind his horns but in front of the muscular hump on his back. Shit. They did this when there wasn’t enough fight in a bull. Dead hated the feel of the rope sliding back and forth, back and forth on his neck. He slammed his body against the gate, but still the rope rubbed, back and forth, back and forth.

  Thunderstruck blared over the loudspeakers, and he could feel Dunbar nod to the gateman.

  The second the gateman pulled the rope and it released from his neck, and Dead flew out of the chute. When his front hooves hit the dirt, he kicked high, pushing Dunbar perpendicular so he would slam down on his hand that was holding the rope.

  He twisted on the next buck, tossing his head the opposite direction of his body. He needed his hurt shoulder to hold tonight. His tight, quick spins wouldn’t work on Dunbar. He needed the power behind his landings and kicks to rid himself of this tick of a human.

  Rage fueled him as his hooves hit the ground again, throwing a cloud of dirt up. Cameras were flashing, the crowd was screaming, Dunbar’s team was shouting for him to stay on, Cheyenne and Two Shots were yelling for him to throw his rider, and then it happened, like it always did. The sound died to nothing, and the flashback began. The torture. The needles. Mom staring at him stone-faced through the window glass of some sterile room. The attempted assassination of an animal that refused to die. The flashback of the pain dumped more adrenaline into him. The echoes of his own screaming filled his head, and he slammed back to earth, twisted, rose back up, and kicked in the air. When he landed, Dunbar went flying forward and hit the dirt on his back.

  Dead could hear the wind leave his lungs, but he didn’t care if the rider was down. He didn’t care about the buzzer that signified Dead had bucked him off in time. He didn’t care about anything but killing that motherfucking human because, in this body, humans would always be evil. In this body, he would always hate them. In this body, he would always be scared, and for a creature like Dead…fear manifested as violence.

  Dunbar couldn’t get away fast enough. Dead’s black heart smiled as he aimed for him. The bullfighters were yelling, hitting his face then ducking out of the way, and Dead fell for a couple of their moves. One was dragging Dunbar away while two other fighters were trying to get his attention away from Dunbar.

  Too slow. He slung his head and knocked one of them off his feet. At the gap he created, he closed in on Dunbar in a few steps. He slammed his horn against the rider’s chest, jerked his head and slung him against Quickdraw’s chute gate.

  Cheyenne was screaming something, Two Shots, too, but fuck their words. They didn’t understand how cruel the humans were. They didn’t understand the necessity for revenge. They didn’t understand that he had to do this to feel okay. To feel steady.

  The bullfighters were good, but not good enough. They were touching his nose, charging him, two working as one, but Dead only had eyes for the rider on the ground. He tossed his head and bolted the last few steps. So close to the limp cowboy. So close.

  Two Shots jumped down from the top of the chute and threw his body over Dunbar, who wasn’t moving.

  He should kill Two just for taking that from him. Should kill him for protecting that human.

  He should.

  He would.

  Cheyenne jumped from the top of the fence, slammed down into the dirt in front of Two Shots, and threw her hands over her face.

  Shit, he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t stop! Too much weight behind him, too fast, too much power.

  Cheyenne!

  Dead jumped at the last moment to avoid her and slammed into Quickdraw’s gate. He tried his best to avoid the pile of bodies, but there wasn’t enough space. His hooves slammed down on Two Shot’s leg.

  Dead trotted away, feeling like there was poison in his guts. Two. Two, Two, Two. He was limping while he and Cheyenne dragged Dunbar’s limp body with the bullfighters.

  Fuck the limping rider, but Two was limping, too. Had Dead broken Two’s legbone?

  He trotted around the curve of the arena fences, but it wasn’t his usual victory lap. His eyes were on Two, on his face as he winced in pain with each step and had trouble climbing out of the arena. Dead slowed and stopped, head up, ears erect, eyes on Two. Two, Two, Two, his friend Two. Part of his herd.

  “It’s okay,” a woman said softly near him.

  Her voice was as clear as a bell over the roaring of the crowd. What? Dead ripped his gaze from Two’s disappearing back and looked up into eyes as black as night. Black eyes, black hair, pink tinted cheeks, black clothes and tattoos painting her skin. She leaned forward and said it again and, this time, the words moved right through him. “It’s okay.”

  A rope flung in front of his face and made him flinch when it landed on his neck. It tightened, and then a second landed on his neck before he could back up. The pickup men were here to take him from the arena since he hadn’t gone through the exit gates on his own. As they dragged him toward the open gate between two of the chutes, he locked his legs, tried to keep his eyes on the girl. The girl who stuck out like a sore thumb. The only girl still sitting in her seat while everyone else was up, cheering and jeering. The only one who’d been speaking quietly just to him.

  It’s okay.

  No, Girl Who Didn’t Belong.

  His entire life, he’d stayed away from close relationships, because he hadn’t wanted to be hurt ever again, and now he’d hurt Two. Two, his friend. Two, his herd. Two who had to buck in two weeks and keep his rank so this herd could stay together, and Dead had just landed on his leg.
>
  It wasn’t okay.

  Chapter Three

  Raven fidgeted with the VIP pass around her neck. “Two more please,” she asked the cashier at the booze truck.

  “You can sure put the beer away,” he said. Oh, she knew he was teasing from the sparkle in his eyes, but she didn’t want him to think bad of her. “I’m getting one for someone else.”

  “Ten bucks again,” he said as he set the plastic cups on the counter.

  She paid and made her way carefully back toward the chutes. There was a VIP entrance there. This pass had cost her an arm and a leg, but when else would she get a chance to meet him? To meet Dead of Winter, the badass number three bull in the world. Well…number four now. He’d just dropped a rank tonight. Some bull shifter named First Time Train Wreck had outscored him, but she didn’t really understand any of the technicalities of this sport. Dead had bucked his rider off before the buzzer, so why the heck did he get dropped a rank? Everyone in the arena had gone wild when he’d bucked and gone after his rider.

  Dunbar Whatever-His-Name-Was had recovered. He’d just been knocked out. He’d come out behind the chutes and watched some of the other riders after a few minutes. That was good. At least, Dead hadn’t killed him, but she’d watched the huge black and white bull’s eyes. They had stayed on his teammates, not the rider. He hadn’t cared much about what happened to Dunbar. Something was wrong with that bull. She had to know if the man was as monstrous.

  She passed under the VIP sign and made her way down a narrow alleyway, showed the man at the end of it the pass that hung around her neck, and asked where she was supposed to go.

  “Right there some of the bulls and riders will be signing autographs,” he said, gesturing to a row of tables against a wall.

  “Thank you so much,” she said quietly.

  A couple of pretty girls on horses trotted through the alleyway so Raven pressed her shoulders against the wall to stay out of the way of those hooves. She didn’t know anything about horses, or rodeos, or any of the events she’d just seen, but she’d enjoyed herself. This was a completely different world than she was used to.