Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
FOR THE SOUL OF AN OUTLAW
(OUTLAW SHIFTERS, BOOK 5)
By T. S. JOYCE
Other Books in this Series
For the Love of an Outlaw (Book 1)
A Very Outlaw Christmas (Book 2)
For the Heart of an Outlaw (Book 3)
For the Heart of the Warmaker (Book 4)
For the Soul of an Outlaw
Copyright © 2018 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2018, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: March 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
Contents
Other Books in this Series
Copyright
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue
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Prologue
It wasn’t sickness that had made Genie go still and quiet.
It was sadness.
The Two Claws Clan was hugging in the barn, crying for joy over the news of Karis’s pregnancy, but Genie’s reality was very different.
The crows were coming for her, and there was no sanctuary here anymore. Life had been easier when Ramsey hadn’t known where she was. It was easier when she didn’t feel so deeply for these people, before Colton had proved he was a loyal friend.
It was clear as crystal he would die to keep her safe. But to him, she was just a pet. He had no idea what she really was. Another wave of guilt wracked her chest. She gripped the exposed ceiling rafter she was perched upon with her little claws, but barely kept from swaying under the weight of the trouble she’d found.
God, no one had ever dug a deeper hole than her, and now it wasn’t just her at risk. Now there was a cub.
And on top of it all, on top of everything else, her heart was aching because she missed someone, two someones, who had left without her having the courage to expose her true self.
Below her, the Clan laughed and wiped their eyes in happiness over the bright spot in their future. Over a cub that would give them even more to fight for.
But that story would never belong to Genie.
Ramsey would never quit until she belonged to him again.
Before Genie had come here, she hadn’t known what love was. But here, she’d known happiness as she watched her friends find their mates and fight for a good life she’d always thought was impossible for people like them.
She owed Colt and Karis a debt for showing her what real friendship, loyalty, and kindness were.
She didn’t know how she was going to accomplish it, but she was going to save the Two Claws Clan from this war.
Chapter One
Kurt gritted his teeth as he looked down at the glowing screen of his cell phone. Trina was calling. Again. Probably to weasel his location from him because that cougar shifter had blurred lines when it came to loyalty. The whole damn Darby Clan did.
His phone dinged. Oh good, another voicemail he would ignore.
But when a text came through that said she’d sent an image, curiosity got his cat. He opened it and squinted at the picture of a street fire. Looked like it was burning right in the middle of Main Street in Darby. What the fuck?
He picked up the phone from the old, ratty motel bed and studied a second picture that came through. It was an aerial view, probably taken from the roof of the GutShot bar.
The fire was in the shape of a bear.
Oh, fuck.
This was a death oath, an obvious one, and whoever had burned it had lit it right there in the middle of town for every shifter and human alike to see. These flames meant the Two Claws Clan of bear shifters was in deep shit.
Kurt checked that Gunner, his six-year-old son, was still sleeping soundly under the covers of the musty bed. It was the best he could do for his boy when they were on the run like this.
Trina was calling again.
“Hello,” he answered.
“You need to get back to Darby.”
“So your Clan can hunt me again? No thanks. I have a cub to protect.”
“Kurt, there is no Clan chasing you anymore. There is no Clan at all.”
“Yeah?” he asked, tired already of Trina’s bullshit. He leaned back on a locked arm and asked, “Then who is burning a death oath for the bears?”
“Red Dead Mayhem.”
Kurt sat straight up. The air had gone thick, and he felt like he was inhaling cement. The crows were after the bears?
“What do you mean there ain’t a Clan chasing us?”
“They’re dead.” Trina choked out. “All dead.”
“The Darby Clan?”
“They drew the grizzlies into town, then attacked the Two Claws females when they were unprotected. Tried to Turn Hairpin Trigger’s mate and scarred the Warmaker’s mate real bad. The crows joined the war. The bears killed every single cougar shifter in this godforsaken town except me and Dad.” She was crying pretty good by the end of the explanation. He could tell by the hitches in her voice and the waver of her tone.
“Well, they fuckin’ deserved it,” Kurt growled, his veins filling with red rage. “When?”
“The night you left town. You missed the war by hours. Trig’s mate was Turned into a polar bear so save her from the mountain lion the Darby Clan put in her.”
Chills blasted across his skin. He hunched over, head between his knees, because he was going to pass out or lose his dinner or both. Ava Turned? Sweet human Ava? With an animal in her now? And Karis was scarred? And he hadn’t been there to protect them.
“Why the fuck did you leave me that note, Trina?” he asked.
“What note?”
“You know the note. Don’t bullshit me. The one that told me the Clan was coming for me, and I had to get me and Gunner out of there to keep the bears safe. Why would you do that? You let them go after two females? And no protection from me? Are you fuckin’ serious?”
“I didn’t write any note, Kurt!”
“Well, I know Karis and Ava’s handwriting, and they didn’t write it! And the note was definitely from a girl. The hearts dotting the I’s gave you away.”
“You’re an asshole,” Trina said, voice shaking with fury. “I’ve never dotted an I with a heart in my entire life. I don’t know who wrote you that note, but it wasn’t me. I haven’t been to the ranch until earlier today when I went there asking about you, because my dumb ass was gonna beg for you to be the new Alpha of the Darby Clan. Don’t matter if me and my dad were on the outskirts of that Clan, Kurt. The bonds all got shot to hell, and I can’t stop crying. My whole body hurts, and I was gonna beg you to make it stop, but you weren’t there. Typical. I called you as soon as I saw that death oath burning, trying to help you, believe it or not. Your friends are about to have a murder of crows on them. They don’t stop, Kurt. You get that, right? The crows? Whatever they want, whatever beef they have with the bears, that entire shifter race won’t stop until the coffins drop for Two Claws. Come back and help your friends or don’t. I don’t give a shit anymore.”
The line went dead.
Kurt thought about giving into the rage in his soul and chucking his phone at the wall to watch it shatter, just like he’d shattered the day his mate died, like when he betrayed his Alpha, like the day he left Two Claws Ranch. His life was nothing but broken pieces, and he was a shell pretending to be a whole so he could be okay for his kid.
Someone had sent him away. Someone had written him a note, betrayed him and the Clan, and the girls got hurt by it. His friends got hurt.
Kurt scrubbed his hands down his face and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes to ease the building headache there.
Gunner stirred, and Kurt rested his elbows on his knees, and watched his boy stretch. Gunner usually slept like a stone, but Kurt’s tension was probably waking him up. His son had been more sensitive to him lately.
Okay. Far as he could tell, he had two options.
One, he could keep runnin’ and make one-hundred-percent certain his boy was safe from any backlash for him killing the Alpha of the Darby Clan.
Or two, he could go back and make a stand with the Two Claws Clan, like he’d done the night he’d killed his old Alpha. He owed Trig for giving him sanctuary. Everyone in town called him Hairpin Trigger because of his beastly temper. The Warmaker got a bad nickname, too, for never backing down from a fight. But the townies and the Darby Clan had never really understood the bears. They might be outlaws, but they weren’t the bad guys. They were just trying to survive and protect their territory, their mates, their legacy.
Trina’s body hurt? She had no idea what pain was. Kurt’s heart had broken with the loss of Gunner’s mother, and his body had broken in that Alpha fight. Now he wasn’t healing. A wise shifter would’ve cut and run from a fight with Red Dead Mayhem, but where the lines of loyalty had been blurred with the late Darby Clan, they never had been for Two Claws.
Kurt had picked his people. Killed for them. Gone rogue for them. Bled for them still.
Daddy?” Gunner asked softly.
“Yeah, Boy Boy?”
“Where are we going next?”
Kurt heaved a sigh and looked his son in the eyes. Gunner’s blood was already bad. He had a fuckin’ cougar in him. He would fight the monster all his life to stay good. Kurt couldn’t teach his son to be a good man if he wasn’t a good man himself.
Those bears might not be his Clan, but they were his friends.
And friends had each other’s backs always.
“We’re going back to the Two Claws Ranch.”
Chapter Two
The lucky one.
That’s what Tenlee, aka Genie named by Colt, had been called since her first shift. You’re the lucky one. Only everyone was wrong. Being different from every other shifter on the planet wasn’t lucky. Being caught between animal and human wasn’t lucky. Never fitting into either culture wasn’t lucky. What they really meant when they said you’re the lucky one is you’re the freak.
And she was.
It was four in the morning, the witching hour for a shifter like her. In the big cabin, Hairpin Trigger slept soundly, curled around his newly Turned polar bear mate, Ava. Genie knew because she always checked on everyone at the ranch before she gave her skin to the weak human part of her. In the cattleman’s cabin, her best friend Colt, the Warmaker, slept with one leg hanging off the mattress and his new mate Karis sleeping soundly with her cheek on his chest.
And here Genie stood, staring at a red door at the back of the barn, because this was where it almost, almost, felt like she had a heart again.
Her chest was empty, but that’s what happened to girls with broken hearts. The pieces eventually disintegrated and left nothing but a gaping hole.
Before Two Claws Ranch had gone to hell, there had been laughter in this barn, especially in the small apartment behind the red door. She’d never been inside, but she’d imagined it a hundred times. A man used to live there. A man and his son. A man who confused her and a boy who called to her protective instincts like Colt did.
She would’ve killed for that man, and the boy, but they’d gone away. And now Genie was left to turn into her human self, the self she hated the most, and stare at the red door and wish she could go back to the day they’d left. Every morning at four o’clock, this was her routine. This was what she did.
She was special, but what did special get her? Attention that she didn’t want, and no attention when she needed it.
Kurt was really gone, and she would never get the chance to tell Gunner she would keep him safe for always.
In the stall behind her, Norman, Ava’s little pet reindeer, moved around. He didn’t like being alone, and sometimes Genie slept in his stall to keep him company. She knew how he felt. She didn’t have parents either. They had both been squirrels, but she barely remembered them. That, and she scared normal animals. Not the ranch animals, because they were stubborn and mean spirited, but in the wild? No one would even look at her. She was a pariah to animals, but she hated her human side, so she was stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck.
And Karis was going to have a baby.
She took one step toward the red door.
Karis was going to have a baby, and Genie wouldn’t be around to stare at him for hours like she had with Gunner. Sounded creepy, but she just loved Kurt’s cub, that’s all. Her love wasn’t normal, but a long, long time ago, she’d accepted that nothing about her was.
Kurt was gone, and she’d never got to tell him she was like him. And now she would never hear his laugh again or watch him teach Gunner homeschool lessons. She would never watch him sit and get quiet in his thinking place deep in the woods. He was broken, too. She recognized that about him right away. He smelled heartsick, and before he’d left, he had smelled body-sick, too. He was hurt and wasn’t healing, and now he was out there in the world without anyone looking after him.
Genie took another step toward the red door. She could go in there now since he was long gone. She could see where he and Gunner had spent their nights, and it would make her insides feel better…right?
But just before she reached the door handle, she caugh
t her reflection in the stained-glass mirror someone had leaned up against a stall. She paused and forced herself not to look away this time. The lights in the barn were dim, but she could see herself just fine. She had plain brown hair, the same shade as her fur, and brown eyes, the same as her eyes when she was in animal form. Her nose was small, her lips thin, and she was tiny. She wasn’t beautiful and curvy like Karis was, and she wasn’t fit and strong like Ava. She was a mouse. Thin to the point her ribs stuck out, thanks to her fast metabolism, and her breasts were small. She looked frail, but on the inside, she wasn’t. On the inside, she carried enough anger for this entire ranch, and that gave her a strange sense of strength. Her hair was mussed and had leaves in it, and for a moment, she wished her human side was pretty, like Karis and Ava. Maybe then she would like being in this skin more. But she wasn’t pretty. She was just…her.
Genie closed her eyes and let the animal, her favorite, favorite part of herself, have the body again. And when she opened her eyes and looked at her reflection in that speckled, flawed mirror glass that reminded her so much of her human side, she thought herself acceptable again.
What did it matter now if she had any human in her?
The crows would never stop their attack on this ranch until Ramsey had claimed her, Colt and Trigger would never understand why she was the way she was, Karis and Ava would always be friends with no room for a fucked-up shifter who was ninety percent animal, and Kurt…
If she could cry in this form, she would, just at the thought of him…
Kurt was gone, and her boy…no…his boy…was gone, too.
And Genie-Tenlee-Genie-Tenlee…she was on the fast track to a short life, so what did pining over a man matter?
She backed away from the red door.
Nothing was gonna fill the hole in her chest. Nothing ever had and nothing ever would.
That was the curse of being an Origin.
Chapter Three
Genie’s legs dangled from the low-hanging limb that she laid on. The last of the snow had melted yesterday, so that was cool. It would be spring soon if the new buds on the tree were any indication. Below, Colt and Trigger were arguing over whether a fart made steam behind a butt in cold weather. Genie rolled her eyes and hated everything.