RED HAVOC ROGUE
(RED HAVOC PANTHERS, BOOK 1)
By T. S. JOYCE
Red Havoc Rogue
Copyright © 2017 by T. S. Joyce
Copyright © 2017, T. S. Joyce
First electronic publication: February 2017
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: Jonny James
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
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Chapter One
Annalise Sutter leaned against the open doorframe to the cage room and crossed her arms over her chest as she blew out a long sigh. This was goodbye to her old life and hello to her new one.
The walls were covered in claw marks from the animal inside her. Strips of floral wallpaper hung in tatters down the wall, the single mattress in the corner was shredded and leaking fluff and bedsprings, and there were several holes in the sheetrock that exposed the metal bars her brother, Samuel, had built into the walls to keep her from escaping and mauling the neighbors.
The panther inside of her was insane.
She was a rip-roaring, razor-clawed brawler set on bleeding anything that dared to breathe around her. Samuel had jokingly named her “Angel” after the first time he’d met the panther. She-Devil was more like it. She-Devil ripped out of her whenever she felt like it and went insane, sometimes for days. Six months of this—fearing the monster in her middle—and Samuel had found her a shot at a new life with some panther shifter crew out in the boonies. Probably a bunch of smelly mountain men living in the trees or wherever it was that panther shifters liked to live.
Her phone dinged, and a sudden wave of butterflies fluttered around in her stomach. It was him. She knew it before she pulled it from her pocket and opened the home screen. As she read his name on the caller ID, a sudden wave of sadness overwhelmed her. Saying goodbye to her old life meant saying goodbye to Jaxon, and he was the only thing that had kept her steady as she’d transitioned into this person she didn’t recognize.
Hey, Anna. Thinking about you and wishing you were here. The sun’s setting over the falls.
Her phone dinged again, and a picture of a pretty orange sunset came through. The sun was sinking between two mountains in the distance, and in front was a gently rolling river. It was stunning, and she wished more than anything she was a normal girl who could share a sunset with a normal man like him.
She smiled sadly and typed in, What would you do if I walked up behind you and wrapped my arms around your middle right now, and told you not to turn around, just be with me until the sun disappears between those two mountains? Send. Yeah, she was feeling mushy. She’d been putting off her goodbye.
A response came a few seconds later. I’d say okay, but I would put your hand down the front of my pants while we watched it.
She giggled. He was good at surprising her out of melancholy moods. She would miss that the most. How was work? Send.
The front door banged open and Samuel called, “Annalise, are you ready to go? We’re burnin’ daylight. Is this all you packed? And why the fuck is your suitcase purple? What happened to the black ones dad got you?”
Annalise snarled up her lip at the pain of the mention of her parents. She’d had to back off the relationship with them to protect them from She-Devil. Maybe someday, if she could get the panther under control, she could hug them again. Annalise made her way out of the cage room and into the living room. “I didn’t want us to have matching luggage anymore, Samuel. I like purple.” Samuel’s blue eyes flashed with disgust as he hauled her luggage out the front door. Her house was small, but it was hers. Or it had been until she’d been forced to break the lease by Mr. Toots. That was what she called her landlord, even though his real name was Daniel Poots, which was almost just as bad. It was either move out or he would go to the hometown newspaper about her panther and force her to register as a shifter.
Fuck that, Mr. Toots. She-Devil was a secret Annalise would go to her grave with.
Her phone chirped. Work was dirty. Just getting off. Cracking open a beer. What are you doing? Send me a pic.
A naughty pic? Send.
I like where your head’s at, but no. Send me a pic of what you’re doing. I feel really fucking far away from you lately.
What do you mean? Send.
You know what I mean. You’ve been quiet. Something’s going on that you aren’t telling me. Pic please. Convince me you haven’t moved on already.
Just to test him, she typed out, Did you follow that story about Dark Kane? Send.
Dark Kane?
Yeah, the dragon shifter that burned the Rocky Mountains? Send.
Samuel was waving her to the car now, looking frustrated as hell that she was taking so long. It was an all-day drive where they were going. She put one finger up and closed the door so she could do this in private. Jaxon was stalling on answering. He always did this when he didn’t want to talk about something. That man was a closed-off mystery who only gave her the barest hints of his life. And she’d been totally addicted to unravelling the complicated ball of tangled yarn that he was. She’d breathed for the moments when he would slip up and tell her something real.
But this is where the distraction stopped. She had to focus now on fixing her life. Annalise’s stomach hurt so bad, she wanted to double over the pain. She missed him already.
The phone chirped. You know I don’t follow that shifter shit. What’s going on?
Jaxon was anti-shifter, and she was the most volatile one. He was human, and she’d made a huge mistake that had stolen her humanity away. She was about to go live in the Appalachian Mountains, cut off from everything she knew. She would never hug him, or hold his hand, or go to the movies or grocery shopping, or sleep beside him or any of a hundred thousand things she’d imagined doing with him over the past few months.
They were both too different.
No, not just different.
They were incompatible.
I’ve missed you. Send.
Then stop missing me, Anna. Tell me what’s going on. I can help you fix it. I’m right here.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she opened the door slowly and
took a picture of her brother leaned up against the car, arms crossed, glaring at her. And then she did something that would hurt her for always because it would hurt someone she had grown to care for deeply.
She sent the picture of her brother and typed out, The distance you felt was real. I have moved on. It’s moving day. I’m moving in with him. I’m so sorry. Send.
Shoulders heaving with her emotions, she rushed to the kitchen sink and dropped her phone into a bowl of water that sat inside. If she didn’t cut herself off completely, she would get weak and crawl back. She would drag both of their hearts through this because she couldn’t help herself. Jaxon was her addiction. He was happy moments when she’d been struggling to find them before. Even if he was full of secrets and closed off half the time, he still felt steady.
Hands shaking, she clenched them at her sides and forced herself to leave the phone drowning in the water. It was done. No more leading him on, no more pretending she could have a normal life with someone like him.
It was high time she, Annalise Sutter, accepted that she was a shifter.
She couldn’t depend on Jaxon to keep her steady now.
If she wanted any kind of stable life back, she would have to depend on the Red Havoc Crew.
Chapter Two
“Son of a bag of dicks,” Jaxon muttered as he looked over the steering wheel of his truck to what definitely resembled a moonshiner’s camp. This was not at all the hotel he’d been told Annalise would be at. He’d been duped.
Jaxon rolled down the window halfway, scented the fresh Virginia forest smells, and promptly gagged. It smelled like cat piss. Mother fucker.
As seven different revenges played across his mind, he connected a call back home to Damon’s Mountains.
“Hey, Jax!”
“Bash, please tell me you didn’t send me straight into panther territory to find Annalise.”
There were a few moments of silence before the best stalker-slash-hunter in the Boarlander crew lowered his voice. “Your mom made me not tell you. She’s scary.”
Jaxon scrubbed his hand over his face tiredly and then strangled the wheel with his free hand. “Is she there?”
“No?” The brawler bear shifter didn’t even try to hide the lie in his voice.
“Bash!”
“She’s been waiting for you to call me. We’re eating Twinkies and drinking beer on my front porch. Your dad and brother are here, too.”
“Hey dickweed,” his twin brother, Jathan, called through the line.
“Oh God, this is my nightmare,” Jaxon muttered.
“I had a nightmare last night, too,” Bash said solemnly. “I dreamed that I accidentally told you that Annalise was a panther shifter, and your mom made the grocery store stop selling pizza rolls like she said she was gonna do, and I couldn’t figure out how to special-order the pepperoni ones, and they would only deliver cheese ones—”
“Give me the phone,” Ma muttered across the line. There was a blast of static and then, “Hey, baby boy.”
“Ma, what the fuck? She’s a panther?”
“First off, don’t use the word fuck with me unless you do that curse justice. Second, I had good reasons for keeping her big-catness quiet.”
“Just…” Jax counted to three in his head and prayed for patience. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“Okay, pinky swear me you won’t get mad.”
“No.”
“Fine. I accidentally made Bash research her when you first started talking, and I know how you feel about dating shifters, so I accidentally kept it a secret that she wasn’t human. Did you bring the green M&Ms?”
Jaxon blew out a soft, steadying breath and did another three-count before answering carefully. “Why would I bring her candy right now?”
“Orange M&M’s will make her boobs grow, but I’ve seen a picture of your girl, and she’s got plenty. You don’t need those. Green M&M’s will make her horny. You’re welcome.”
Jaxon stared defeatedly out the window, shaking his head as he watched a pair of birds on a low-hanging branch. His ma, Willamena Madden, aka Willa Barns, aka Almost Alpha, aka Second of the Gray Back Crew was a handful on a good day. But right now, she was being ridiculous.
“Hey,” Jathan crowed in the background. “Remember that one time Jaxon dated a panther shifter for four months and didn’t even know it?” The slap of hands sounded, and Jaxon could just imagine him high-fiving his dad. This was the worst day ever.
A freaking panther shifter? He wanted to kick everything. He’d been epically lied to, not only by the girl he’d been talking to for months, but by his family and Bash. And now several things Annalise had said or hinted at made sense. She’d been asking him more about shifter stuff lately, like she was testing him. He’d thought she had figured out he was a grizzly shifter and had been avoiding her questions like the plague. His views on his animal were…complicated.
And now his views on Annalise were pretty damn complicated, too. If Bash was right, and she was here, she was in the heart of a notoriously private, violent, and reclusive crew of panthers. Jax’s bear was a brawler, but he didn’t know enough about this crew to go in there guns blazing and asking what the fuck Annalise meant by ditching him all the sudden three days ago. He knew the picture she sent was of her brother, but she’d gotten rid of her phone or something and hadn’t picked up in days.
Stupid him, he’d thought she was in trouble, and he was here on some half-cocked rescue mission to get her out of whatever danger she’d found, but nope, she was just a damn big cat, doing big cat shit. Girls were complicated enough without claws.
Fuck, he’d really liked Annalise, but big cats and bears didn’t mix.
“Don’t run,” Ma said through the phone, like she could read his mind. He hated when she guessed his feelings. “See why she moved out there at least. She hasn’t been a part of a crew before now, so something happened. You owe it to yourself to at least see her tits.”
“Ma,” he gritted out.
“I meant see her.” There was the crinkle of paper, and then she was chewing loudly in the phone.
“Ma, listen to your maternal instincts and share,” Jathan demanded.
“Boy, I love you, but I’m not sharing my Twinkie with you. You’re a grown man. Go get your own.”
Tiredly, Jaxon muttered, “I’m hanging up now.”
“Don’t forget to expose your neck, boy,” Dad called through the phone.
Unease unfurled deep in his gut. “What do you mean?”
“If you’re in panther territory, they’ll be hunting you already. Put up a fight, but if you’re losing too badly, expose that neck and hope they don’t go for the jugular. Good luck getting boned.”
“Fight good! Bye, baby,” Ma sang.
“I’m kind of sorry, Jax!” Bash rushed out right before the line went dead.
Jaxon dropped the phone in the cup holder and threw the truck into gear. Hell no to all of this. He was out of here. He needed to regroup at a local hotel and figure out his next move, but he was definitely not ready to go to war with the panthers over Annalise. If he was perfectly honest, he was pissed at her for lying.
Jaxon spun his tires out on the grass. The headlights were facing the road again before he noticed the red-headed man standing in the middle of the dirt track. His blazing gold eyes were hard as stones, his head canted, his mouth set in a grim line of fury, and every muscle in his body tense. Sheeyit.
With a snarl, Jaxon slammed on the brakes and shoved the truck into park. His bear was right there now, ready to fight, just like always when he saw another male shifter. He pushed open the door and was pulling off his shirt the second his shoes hit the soggy ground.
“Careful,” the man drawled in a voice too low and gravelly to be human. “You’re in my territory. You’ll answer questions before we bleed. Why are you here, Jaxon Barns?”
Great, this man knew him, but Jaxon didn’t know a damn thing about him. He hated this kind of disadvantage. ??
?You know my name, so you know who will come raining fire if I don’t make it back home.”
“Damon? Damon doesn’t scare me, Grizzly. I could have Dark Kane here much sooner than the blue dragon could burn my woods. Let’s not put our friends at war though, yeah?”
“Are you the alpha here?”
The man dipped his chin once, and his eyes blazed even brighter. Movement caught his attention to the right, and when Jaxon glanced over, there was a tall man with a single scar down his face, arms crossed over his chest. He spat and leaned languidly against the trunk of a tree. Jaxon wasn’t often snuck up on, so in a bout of self-preservation, he scanned the rest of the woods to find two more men. One was squatted down in the dirt, glaring up at him from ten yards off, and one was sitting up on a thick, low-hanging branch, one leg draped over the side, as he cut chunks of red apple with a foot-long bowie knife. That one smiled at him like a psychopath right before he popped a sliver of fruit into his maw.
Four cats, and he could take them easily. Still, he was careful where he waged war. He’d seen too much in Damon’s Mountains to waltz into fights unprepared, and he didn’t know much about the reclusive panther crew. They could have a dozen more hiding in the woods for all he knew. “Look, I’m not here for any trouble. This is all just a misunderstanding. I was looking for this girl—”
“What girl?” the alpha asked.
Jaxon narrowed his eyes and scrubbed his hand down his jaw. He might be pissed at Annalise for lying, but it still didn’t feel right putting her name in front of these backwoods shifters if she wasn’t here. The instinct to protect her was still strong as ever. “Clearly, she’s not here, so it doesn’t matter.”
“You talkin’ about the dumb one?” the man in the tree asked. “The one with no instincts at all?”
Pursing his lips, Jaxon angled his head in denial. “Nope. She’s smart.”
“Human smart or shifter smart?” the man squatting in the dirt asked. “We got a newcomer here who is one, but not the other.”