Chapter 12
Kane
I was naked and covered in blood when I returned to the Clubhouse from the woods.
I’d just had a shift and taken down some coyotes who’d tried to flee when they saw me.
But the shift, and their deaths, hadn’t taken the edge off half as much as I would have liked.
Between the Blood Moon and the little omega who’d slipped out of my grasp, I was barely holding it together.
I had to have her. Nothing short of rutting her lush body and tying her to me with my knot would do. She was like a beacon of light after spending my whole life in the dark. Until she was mine, I wouldn’t be whole.
Nobody batted an eyelash when I entered the Club house. With all the crazy shit that went down here, a naked, blood-coated biker didn’t even register on a single person’s radar.
Passing by a group of females, all human, I let them leer at my junk.
Compared to human males, wares had big cocks, and mine was bigger than most. Then there were our knots.
The glands, out of place on humans, didn’t even give these bitches pause.
Hell, they didn’t even seem to care about the anomaly.
As long as the booze and drugs continued to flow freely, they were game for whatever fucked up shit we wanted to do to them.
That arrangement worked just fine with my pack.
We used them and they used us. That was just the symbiotic nature of life in this jungle.
Most of them came and went like the seasons.
Some did so willingly. Others disappeared after doing one too many hits of their drug of choice in our back rooms. Either way, I didn’t give a fuck or bother to learn their names.
They weren’t like us. They were weak, inferior beings that were only good for one thing: satisfying my needs, whatever they may be.
Striding over to the bar, I didn’t bother with a glass.
Instead, I twisted off the cap with my teeth and began to down the cheap booze as fast as I could swallow.
It was going to be a long night without my omega to warm my bed.
It would take this bottle and a few others to dull the rage, lust, and demons that constantly plagued me and screamed inside my head.
The women openly stared now. I could tell they were impressed with my ability to booze with the best of them.
Eying me with a mixture of respect and fear, they edged back against the wall, not sure what kind of mood I was in: party time Prez, or the angry animal that lashed out at anyone dumb enough to get close?
Spoiler alert: I was never in a good mood. Deep down, I would forever be the angry animal they all feared. It was my nature. No amount of booze, drugs, or pussy was going to fix that.
Setting down the empty bottle, I glanced at the dark corner where the women were cowering.
It turned me on. I ate up their terror like a feast. These women, who’d seen things grown men would tremble over, looked down and away whenever I trained my cold, blue gaze on them.
It made me feel powerful. Dominant. In control.
Like the alpha I had always known I was but had only truly understood when I’d come of age.
I grew up on the road with my asshole father. I’d never really known my mother. She was a human, and my dad was an animal. Not a ware. Just a fucking animal that had beaten me whenever I disobeyed. Which was always, because I fucking hated him. And he hated me.
The only reason my old man had taken me from my mom was out of spite, not love.
The woman who gave birth to me was just some bitch he’d chosen not to pull out of late one drunken night and who demanded too much in child support after I was born.
To thwart her getting any, he’d disappeared with me when I was five.
A trucker by trade, my father had lured me into his rig with promises of treats and adventure.
Since my mother hadn’t ever shown me any love, I decided to give him a shot.
That had been just as big a mistake as ever trusting my mother, who, it turns out, never even tried to get me back.
She’d just gone on living like I’d never been born. Fucking cunt.
It hadn’t taken more than a week to realize I’d been tricked with promises of regular food and a chance at a real home.
My dad wasn’t just a drunk. He was a liar as well.
By fourteen, I’d had enough of the liquor-fueled beatings.
The last time he raised his fist at me, I’d raised mine back.
Even at that young age, I was big, aggressive, and full of hate.
I left his lifeless body in the back of his semi and never looked back.
At fifteen, I had my first turn. It was under a Blood Moon. At the time, I’d been living on the streets using my fists and fear to get whatever I wanted. That fateful night, my skin had itched, my mind had bugged the fuck out, and my muscles had seized up like I’d been working out nonstop for days.
I’d thought I was losing my goddamned mind that first shift.
It hadn’t helped that I’d been so high on skag I’d barely known my name.
Hell, maybe the dope had helped. Eased my transition and allowed my brain to accept what my body was going through.
Either way, I shifted into a wolf, and my world had been forever changed.
My old mentor, Clause, had been the one to find me the next morning.
I was covered in blood with three dead homeless men littered around me like empty candy bar wrappers.
Empty, because I’d torn open their bellies and consumed all their soft organs and tissues until they were nothing but hollow shells.
Clause covered up the mess like he’d done it a hundred times before.
Looking back on it now, I’m sure he had.
Maybe even more. He was like me, a true predator in every sense of the word.
He liked to wreak havoc. Cause chaos. Create fear wherever he went.
But that meant he could never stay in any one place too long.
His first lesson to me was to not draw attention to your kills.
Keep moving so that you could keep the law men guessing.
When he’d told me what I was, that I was a ware, I didn’t even need time to process it. I had just accepted it. I’d always known I was special. Not like the rest of my loser family. Now I knew why. I was a rarity. A latent Alpha. And I was more powerful than I had ever imagined.
We traveled together for about a year before Clause caught a bullet in the chest raiding some asshole farmer’s chicken coop.
When I found him, he’d been hung in wolf form from a tattered rope in the farmer’s barn, throat slit and bleeding out into a rusty bucket.
The toughest motherfucker I’d ever known had been felled by some douche hick with a shotgun and strung up like some prized catch.
If wares pass during a shift, we remain in that form permanently.
Same goes if we pass as humans. Nature’s way of keeping our secret, I guess.
Well, I have my secrets too, and they would make mother nature cover her eyes and hide in her closet if she didn’t want nightmares for the rest of forever.
What I did in retribution to that farmer is one of those closely guarded secrets that I don’t share with anyone.
The night after Clause had been murdered, I returned to the farmer’s house.
Picking the lock, I’d crept into their home and moved silently from room to room.
The farmer had a wife, a son, and three daughters.
I took my time with each of them while he was tied up.
The daughters were my favorite. I made him watch each and every degradation I performed on them until he was a completely broken shell of a man.
Then, after he’d witnessed every one of his family members perish painfully, I did what we’re warned never to do as shifters.
I changed in front of him before eating his innards while he was still tied down in his chair.
Not willing to clean up the mess I’d made, I’d set it all on fire and watched it burn as I cleaned myself in the idyllic pond out back. It was one of my favorite memories and never ceased to make me smile.
I was on my own for a few years after that. I bought a bike, taught myself to ride, and eventually made my way to Arizona. That’s where I met Los Lobos, a pack MC who used their strength and the club to get whatever they wanted.
While I had no need for companionship, never had, I decided to join, vowing I’d be president one day.
I would use it to my advantage to get everything I’d ever wanted.
My goal was reached in a coup against my old prez two years back.
He was a grizzled old ware named Pike, who’d lived past his prime and his usefulness a decade prior.
I ended him and had been in charge ever since, ruling this pack with an iron fist.
The three overly thin women in the corner nervously shifted about like penned up sheep scenting an apex predator in their midst. Grabbing another bottle off the filthy bar top, this one vodka, I twisted off the cap and downed half of it.
Pointing at the group, I said, “Get over here.”
The women uncertainly glanced between each other, wondering who I was referencing. The answer was all of them. They were all going to feel my wrath tonight. Just like the farmer’s daughters.
The boldest of the crew strutted forward, feigning confidence she didn’t actually possess. I could tell. The scent of her stinking fear was wafting off her in traitorous waves.
“You need me to take the edge off, baby?” She asked in a saccharine sweet tone we both knew was false.
“I need a whole lot more than you,” I returned, crooking my finger in the direction of the two remaining women. “Bring your friends over here. Just one pussy ain’t going to cut it tonight.”