Ash Bear (Daughters of Beasts Book 3) Read online

  “Yes,” she whispered fast. But the guilt kicked in. “I’m no good.”

  “You keep saying that, but I have this feeling you’re very good.”

  “Oh,” she said, heat firing her cheeks as she shook her head. “Wrong.”

  “I don’t mean at pool. I think you are good in general, aren’t you?”

  Ash shrugged. “I donate blood on Fridays.”

  He had a nice smile. It was slow, like he didn’t give them easy, and she liked when he gave them to her. A person had to probably earn smiles from a man like him. A man who had good and bad.

  She stood and followed him as he made his way to the pool tables in the back.

  Bad was okay.

  As long as the good in him was bigger.

  Chapter Two

  Truth be told, he’d asked the shy, curvy, blue-haired beauty to play pool because the pool tables were in back, away from the audience crowded around the bar and stage. She’d seemed so uncomfortable, that his instincts to fuck everyone up had become a little overwhelming. He would need to Change tonight and give the Reaper his body.

  Like he had control of that. Ha!

  He needed her to settle down so his inner lions would settle down with her. That had been his intention, but when she’d talked, she’d interested him. He couldn’t figure her out. She was shy, and she spoke differently than anyone he’d met before. He liked it, though. She was different from all the viper females of his old Tarian Pride.

  Grim racked the balls without looking at her. People reacted better when his focus wasn’t on them. Even humans. Even puny, weak humans had some long-buried instinct that they were in danger around him. Sometimes it helped if he didn’t look at them, but with this girl, it was hard not to. He’d never seen anyone like her.

  She had sky blue hair that was down to her shoulders and black at the roots. Her eyes were bright as the sky, and even though blue wasn’t her favorite color, it was his. Everyone else in this bar looked exactly the same—except her. It was as if a light was shining brighter on just her, casting everyone else in shadows. She was an impossible woman not to pay attention to.

  Big tits, big hips, and she had that hourglass figure that he’d always wished for in a mate, if he’d been allowed to take one. Her tank top flattered her curves and showed the top of her cleavage, and he couldn’t deny his attraction to her. But he also liked the way she felt. It was like a stream of goodness was seeping into his skin from her. Did she realize she was like that? That she could feed the dark ones like him or the dragon shifter at the end of the bar who was still paying him too much attention? Ash was a feeder. And he was an eater. An eater of the good, and he would drain something pretty and sweet like her.

  It was a good thing the Rogue Pride Crew was leaving tomorrow because Grim would pay this girl way too much attention.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ash. Ashlynn. But just Ash. My dad picked it. He’s Bash. I’m his first daughter, and he likes words that rhyme.” She wrung her hands in front of her lap and said, “Oooh.” Her cheeks turned bright red.

  “You’re doing good,” Grim said as he rolled a pool stick on the table to make sure it wasn’t a shitty, wobbly one. It was about as decent as an abused bar-pool-stick could get, so he handed it to Ash. Ash. Pretty name for a pretty woman.

  Her skin was smooth and pale, like some ice princess. Even more so with those bright baby blues and blue hair. She was a stunner, and it was hard to look away. “Do you have any tattoos?” he asked.

  “No, but I like yours.”

  Grim smiled. He couldn’t help himself. He didn’t often get compliments. Something dark and sickening roiled inside of him, but he ignored it. That was just the Reaper waking up. He would want the body soon, but Grim was used to it. There were plenty of big predator shifters here to keep him from killing anyone. Probably.

  His good lion faded away like he did every night. Typical weak move. He rarely took the body. He always gave in to the Reaper.

  “Your name is Grim. Does it rhyme with your dad?”

  He grinned and gestured for her to break. “No dad, no mom, no rhymes. Grim isn’t my real name. It’s just what everyone calls me.”

  “You don’t have a family?” she asked as she slammed the cue stick into the white ball and broke up the balls at the other end of the table.

  Huh. Well done.

  Ash loosened up when he wasn’t focused on her, so he chalked up his pool stick and didn’t look at her when he said, “I was raised by my grandmother. Her name is Rose. No rhyming.”

  “Roses are pretty,” she uttered softly.

  That they were. “I grow them in front of my trailer for her.” Holy fuck, what had possessed him to say that out loud? Grim cleared his throat, lined up, and hit the two ball in. And then the one. He missed on the six, though, just so she would play with him longer.

  “We used to have roses,” Ash said, lining up a shot. “Clinton pulled them all up and threw them on the roof of our trailer. Twice. Now, no more roses.” She talked so much easier when she was busy.

  “What color roses?” he asked.

  “Pink.”

  Grim hid his satisfied smile. “That’s my grandma’s favorite color. I cut the thorns off and mail them too her every two weeks during the growing season. Her mate used to get them for her, but he died before I was born. And I was the man of the house, so I always got her pink roses so she would know…how…special…”

  “She’s very special,” Ash said with wide eyes and a curt chin nod. “I like her.”

  Good God, he’d just poured his fuckin’ heart out to this girl. He’d never told anyone that.

  Did he like this? Was it okay? He didn’t know. Maybe that beer was stronger than he thought.

  The Bartender, Layla, showed her knack for perfect timing and brought a pitcher of ice water and two glasses to the table next to the pool table. Grim poured them both glasses. Time to sober up and stop talking, motherfucker.

  The Reaper growled.

  Fuck you.

  The Reaper growled louder, rattling around in his head. Grim closed his eyes tightly for a three-count until the monster eased away and then brought Ash one of the waters.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked softly.

  “Does what hurt?”

  “The Good and The Bad?”

  Grim didn’t understand, so he handed her the water and took his turn at the table. Another two balls in and a purposeful miss on the third.

  “Mine hurts,” she said quietly as she lined up for another shot. She sank the eleven in the corner pocket. “And I only have The Good.”

  Grim narrowed his eyes at her. “Who told you?”

  “That you have two?”

  “Yeah. Who told you I have two animals? Was it Remi?”

  “Oh, Remi is loyal to Rogue Pride. She barely says anything. It hurts sometimes that she doesn’t talk to me like she used to. It’s supposed to be like this, though. She’s supposed to pick her Crew. It’s supposed to hurt. It means she’s doing it right.”

  Grim leaned against the wall, gripping his cue stick as he crossed his arms over his chest. He really didn’t understand, but before he could ask, Ash shrugged up her shoulder and said, “No one had to tell me. I can feel The Good and The Bad in you.”

  Huh. This girl was hella interesting. “And you aren’t scared of The Bad?”

  “I haven’t seen him. How can you be scared of something you can’t see?” She looked at him with such wide-eyed innocence that, for a moment, he wished he was a normal shifter with one animal. One who had a shot at staying stable. One who had a shot at not disappointing everyone. At disappointing her. If she saw “The Bad” she would run away and never come back.

  He hadn’t named the Reaper. He hadn’t named the dark lion. The Tarian Pride had. A Pride full of monstrous, murderous lions had named the two most important parts of him—Grim and Reaper—and he was standing here looking at this good girl, wishing he was a little less dark so he co
uld talk to her longer.

  But it wasn’t the way of the world. Not for him.

  Grim leaned over, lined up the shot, and scratched on the eight ball. “You win,” he murmured. “It was nice to meet you, Ash.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “Now?” he asked, setting his cue stick in the rack in the corner.

  “Yes.”

  “Now I’ll go where The Bad tells me to.”

  And then he forced himself not to look back as he made his way down the hallway toward a back exit. Because he knew exactly what he was giving up. He was giving up an evening with a nice girl who could make him feel a little bit normal. But the Reaper didn’t care about such things, and there were woods out back.

  The Bad was a-scratchin’, and it wasn’t his choice to answer the door or not.

  The Reaper did what he wanted.

  Chapter Three

  Grim was almost as wide as the hallway. Shifters tended to be bigger, especially the males but, holy crap, Grim was bigger than Kong. He walked like an Alpha. Felt like one, too. Was he the Rogue Pride Crew Alpha? She needed to ask Remi more questions about her new Crew.

  Ash had done something wrong, she could tell, because he was leaving so fast. He’d barely lost the game of pool, and now he was running out the back door.

  She should find out what she did wrong so she could learn and be better.

  So…Ash followed him.

  She followed him down the hallway and out the back door, catching it as it swung closed on her. She followed him down the narrow back stairs and past the blue dumpster. She followed him into the packed parking lot and past the clusters of Rhett Copeland fans, all here to hear his music from outside of the packed Sammy’s Bar. She followed Grim straight into the woods and walked and walked until he stopped, far away from everything.

  That gray thermal sweater showed the lines of his muscular back. He was tensed up and breathing heavy. “Why are you following me?” he asked in a voice that sounded like it was more animal growl than human tone.

  “So you won’t be alone,” she answered.

  “It’s not safe to be around me.”

  Ash looked back toward the bar, but they were too far away for her to even see the lights. “Not safe for a bear or for humans? There is a difference, Grim, whose real name is not Grim. Humans bleed easy. I do not.”

  “What do you want from me, Ash? Say it quick so I can get you to go away.”

  Ash shrugged. She was a shrugger. She shrugged, then went and sat down by a tree and rested her back against the rough trunk. “To be near you. So you won’t be alone.”

  Grim cast her a golden-eyed frown over his massive shoulder. “How could I ever be alone if I have two animals inside of me and a Crew inside that bar?”

  “The animals aren’t your friends and neither is your Crew. You didn’t ask them to come out here with you,” she pointed out.

  “I hunted them last week.” He turned slowly and stalked closer. “I set up a drinking game in the woods, and I listened for them to get closer and closer.” His voice had gone low and feral. “And then I tried to kill them.”

  Ash picked up a stick and broke it in half, then drew a circle in the snow so she could give her attention anywhere but his scary eyes. “I killed a lady bug last Thursday. It was an accident. It was on my jeans, and I scratched my leg. Killed it with my bare hands. I also ate pizza three times last week, and now my jeans don’t fit. We all feel guilty. Stop hunting them.”

  “That’s just it, Good Girl.” He knelt down in front of her, and she could hear it so clear—the growl in his throat. He hooked a finger under her chin and lifted her face to his. “I don’t want to stop hunting them.” He snarled up a lip, and she could see it. She could see him losing himself. Ash wasn’t talking to the same man who had been nice to her in the bar, and it made her angry. It made her want to yell at the imposter who was trying to intimidate her.

  His eyes flashed a chocolate brown for a moment. He gritted his teeth, angled his face away. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Can you hold it?” she asked.

  “It’s not like taking a piss, Ash.” Whooo, that voice wasn’t human at all anymore.

  “I know a place if you can hold it.”

  When he looked back at her, his eyes were gold again. “I want to rampage.”

  “But we could rampage together, away from all these humans, and then sit in the hot springs after we’re all done.”

  Grim’s dark eyebrows drew down. “What’s the hot springs?”

  “Big-ass hot tub. Hold it like piss, Grim. And then we can have more fun.”

  For a moment, he knelt there in front of her with wide eyes, lookin’ at her like she was crazy, but that was okay. Everyone did that when she opened her mouth. She was used to it.

  He had pretty eyes when they were all wild and gold like this. The moon was full, and she had good vision on account of the bear that lived inside her, so she could make out even the little green specks in the middle. His black mohawk was all spiked up, and his beard was thick but trimmed. He had really nice lips. The kissable kind. At least, she thought so. She hadn’t kissed that many people.

  She’d never been into tattoos, but Grim’s were like artwork on a canvas. She shouldn’t say it, but if she didn’t, she might never get the chance to. So…she inhaled deep, closed her eyes, and rushed out, “You’re pretty.”

  “Ash…” Grim’s voice broke on her name.

  And when she opened her eyes again, his face was red and he was shaking. His closed fists were punched against the ground, and every vein in his forearms and neck was popping out.

  “The Bad?” she whispered, fear flooding her.

  “Run,” he barely got out before his body broke into something monstrous.

  A lion with paws the size of her head and a pitch-black mane ripped out of him and landed with his legs splayed on either side of her hips. His lips were curled back, exposing long, razor-sharp teeth, and his gold eyes were full of more hate than she’d ever encountered in her life. There were no green specks in his eyes anymore. Only fire-yellow.

  His breathing was ragged as he leaned closer, closer, until his forehead pressed against hers. and then he pushed her back into the tree behind her. This was a terrible position to be in, sitting, un-Changed, under a monster with his weapons ready. Teeth and claws and anger. Be ready, Bear. Her voice shook as she asked, “Grim?”

  The lion tensed, eased back, lifted an enormous paw with his claws extended, and then time slowed. Something deafening rattled the woods, a roar she hadn’t heard in years. The moon was blotted out as a massive creature covered the sky, beating its wings as it landed behind Grim, crushing the trees under its talons.

  Grim turned, a snarl in his throat as he faced the Red Dragon. Vyr Daye. Vyr was home in Damon’s Mountains. Fully Changed into his fire-red dragon and narrowing those icy blue, reptilian eyes at Grim as he lowered his horned face low enough to the ground that his dragon-smoke breath blew across the woods like fog.

  And The Bad…that deranged animal with too much dominance in one body and no control… charged Vyr. He charged a dragon twenty times his size.

  “No!” she screamed, and Vyr reared back. She scrambled to her feet, but it was too hard to see. There was too much smoke, and the lion had disappeared into it.

  She could hear it—the terrifying sound of Vyr’s Firestarter clicking in his throat.

  And then there was fire.

  It lit up the fog, illuminating the lion’s silhouette as he skidded to a stop just in front of the line of inferno the dragon had made.

  Fourteen seconds. She counted them in a whisper to calm herself down. She was real good at counting. Counting came naturally. Fourteen seconds Grim The Bad stood at the fringe of the fire, looking up at the Red Dragon. Fourteen seconds, and then he turned and disappeared into the woods. He didn’t look back. She waited to see if he would.

  Vyr watched him go, his scaly nostrils flaring with each infuria
ted breath, and then he glanced at Ash, swiped his massive claw through the flames, extinguishing them, and dug a smoking trench in the earth as he did. And then he bunched his muscles, lifted his great horned face to the sky, and beat his wings. The wind was so strong she plugged her ears and stabilized herself against the trunk of the tree until he was gone.

  What…the hell…had just happened?

  Pressing her sweating palms to her cheeks, she looked where Grim had disappeared into the woods. She lifted her attention to the sky where Vyr was just a speck in the distance, then back to where Grim had disappeared again. She didn’t understand.

  She’d never seen Vyr as a dragon. From rumors, he’d been a beast when he had Changed in Damon’s Mountains when he was younger. But Vyr was very different now. He’d found a mate. He’d been lucky. He’d found a crew with Nox and Torren, but now he was back? For what? To blow fire at Grim but not kill him?

  She didn’t understand anything.

  Part of her was angry at that. She never understood why people did what they did. Nothing made sense but numbers.

  “Was that a dragon?” a human asked from a few trees away. He was swaying and had a beer bottle in his hand. Probably wandered out here to take a leak and got lost.

  Huffing a frozen breath, Ash stood and gathered Grim’s boots, wallet and cell phone from the back pocket of his tattered jeans. His clothes were ruined, but she could keep the other stuff safe. She marched toward the drunken human and stopped right before she passed. “Fourteen seconds he had to kill the lion, and he didn’t.”

  The man arched his eyebrows. “Okaaay.”

  “I don’t get it either. Better get back to the concert, human. It smells like smoke out here.”

  Chapter Four

  When Ash saw green eyes reflecting in her headlights, she slammed on the brakes of her Jeep and skidded to a stop inches away from the black-maned, scarred-up lion in the road. She’d come barreling around the curve, just like every night, because she was the only one who lived out this way. Never having to worry about other cars on the one-lane wilderness road, she had always set her own speed limit.