Rogue Me Tender (Fur-Ever Mountain Pack #3)

Chapter 1 Roland

ROLAND

“Hurry up!” my herd’s healer yelled as if I weren’t three feet from him.

As if I wasn’t going as fast as I could grinding herbs for a bandage. I knew the consequences if I didn’t.

It was such a dumbass reason for needing healing, too.

Frank, an alphahole of a grown-ass man, decided to cut through property that had a fence clearly labeled as barbed and electric and got his leg cut flinching from the shock and getting gouged by the barb.

Somehow that meant I had to help him out.

They always made it my responsibility. That would make sense if I was the healer of the herd, but I wasn’t, and I had no desire to become one. Not that my father, the Alpha, would let me train for anything valuable like that. I was a commodity to him and a reminder of his own lacking. Nothing more.

I finished up, tapped the mortar to get all the herbs off, and brought the bowl over to him.

“I wouldn’t need to do this if you hadn’t overused your abilities yesterday.”

I bit my tongue. Getting into a fight with the healer wasn’t going to make my day any better.

But the truth was, I hadn’t overused my abilities.

I was forced to shift so the healer could take advantage of my horn’s power.

He had me heal a bunch of bruises on herd members who got a little too aggressive in their soccer match.

They didn’t need healing. They needed to wait a few hours until their beasts took care of it.

What a waste of my ability and 100% done to make sure I knew my place as his current lackey. I was left needing to recharge and not fully available when he needed me all because of his hazing.

Just leave. That was always my unicorn’s solution. Just leave. As if it was as easy as that. At least with the herd, I had some protection.

If word ever got out that there was a unicorn running free, I’d be on borrowed time.

There was always someone willing to take me down for my horn.

Thankfully, most shifters didn’t believe unicorns were real.

They, like humans, thought I was a mythical creature.

There were days I wished I was—that I wasn’t an anomaly, a loser in the current genetic crapshoot, a recessive gene that hadn’t been seen in my herd for generations deciding to present with me.

“It’s packed in.” The healer indicated the herbs. They were designed to keep out infection, because while I’d be able to heal it, I wouldn’t be able to keep that at bay. Not with the amount of strength I currently had.

“Shift,” the healer told me.

No, my unicorn answered.

Shift, please, I begged my unicorn.

I hated being forced into a shift. I got stuck there for hours and hours when I did, but that was exactly what was going to happen if I didn’t shift.

Part of the reason I’m so weak is because you wouldn’t shift yesterday, I reminded my beast. He didn’t care.

“You know what to do.”

I let out a sigh. Either I did it on my own, or they were going to have people hold me down and make me. I went to the jar, the one just for me, and grabbed a piece of the “candy.” Candy, what a joke. It forced me to shift. It was a drug with a sweet name and nothing more. I hated it.

This was the strongest version of the recipe, one only used by Healer and my alpha father and only occasionally, and it was usually under lock and key.

The normal “candy” didn’t hurt nearly as much, but it more coaxed than forced my beast out.

I wished he tried it first, but he’d set that jar on the counter when I was dealing with the herbs too slowly, so it was a punishment.

On the times that my unicorn shifted on its own, when we were far away from people and just having fun the two of us, shifting didn’t hurt. With this sugary delight, it was agony. I could feel my bones break and move and reform. It was a cruelty like no other.

Soon I was standing there on my four legs, pressing my horn to the wound.

I didn’t really know how it felt to be healed by me.

My herd would say everything from, “It stings and you’re doing it on purpose,” to “It hurts,” to “I’m on fire,” to “I didn’t feel a thing.

” Most likely, it was somewhere in the middle of the extremes, because forced healing, like forced shifting, couldn’t go without any sensation.

But no one I trusted had ever needed me, and I long ago stopped asking.

The alpha stood up and shook his leg off.

“Weak-ass horse wannabe.” He pushed past me and walked away.

He was one of those ones who tried to make it look like I never really did anything because, obviously, he was better than me in all ways…

while at the same time being stupid enough to get caught in a barbed-wire fence.

I stood there looking at the healer, hoping that today would be one of the good days, one of the days he allowed me to shift back without having to wait for the medication to wear off. And he did, pulling a little pellet from his pocket. “I’m only doing this so you’re stronger tomorrow.”

I didn’t care why. I ate it. The shift back was doubly painful, but at least I was walking back to my place, my clothes in hand, and not on my hooves wondering how long it would be until I had full control again.

My place was close, and I took the dirt path back, not caring who saw me.

My cabin was one of the smallest, most dilapidated buildings on the herd land and sat in the far corner of the same lot as the Alpha house. It was the equivalent of a human’s tiny home, only less nice.

I didn’t get to live in my father’s house, despite the Alpha house being huge. He kept me close enough so he could still have control over my every move, but far enough that I knew exactly where I belonged in the pack hierarchy.

My father was all about control and power. Heck, he referred to our herd as a “pack” often because he thought that made him sound like a badass. It didn’t. Stripping your identity to try to look bigger and cooler didn’t work.

I threw my clothes on the front porch and went around behind the cabin to where my outdoor shower was. I wasn’t even given hot water like everyone else. It wasn’t cold, not anymore, not since I attached a couple of solar panels and a small water heater, but it was never a real shower.

Challenge your dad. That was another thing my unicorn went on about. And the reality was, I probably could take him down, but then I’d be Alpha, and I didn’t want that. The herd would be scheming to take me down within minutes. No, thank you.

I stood under the water, letting it wash over me and working the shampoo through my hair, as my unicorn kept pushing for me to leave.

One day it would get to be too much, and I would.

I had some money squirreled away, little bits I found here and there from when I went shopping for herd needs.

Money no one knew existed but me. But the timing had to be absolutely perfect for me to take the risk, and that time was not now.

“You’re needed at the Alpha house.”

I opened my eyes, forgetting that the shampoo was still being washed down my face, and immediately shut them as the stinging hit. Great. Freaking great.

“Yes, Nick. I’ll rinse quickly.” So much for a complete shower. When my father’s beta asked for me, I went. No questions asked. “Two minutes tops.”

I knew better than to make my father wait. He was probably going to be pissed that I took the two minutes. My head was still dripping as I jogged into his house, refusing to give him the satisfaction of me being late, a crime that had many consequences, none of them pleasant.

“Father.” I tilted my neck, a sign of submission. “You needed to see me?”

“Don’t tell me you got into human drugs.” His words caught me off guard.

“Of all the things, Father, why would you think that? How would I even get them? I have no money,” which was a lie, “and I have no access.”

“Your eyes.”

Excellent. Shampoo strikes again.

He ignored the topic of my eyes, hating to be caught being wrong. “This is a reminder that you have two weeks until the ceremony.”

The ceremony being my official mating. He still hadn’t even told me who it was to, which told me that it was 1,000,000% someone I didn’t want anything to do with. You’d think my father would have learned his lesson: mating for anything other than love didn’t go well.

They say shifters mate for life, and they do. My father didn’t mate his true mate, he mated for his position, and the mating bond was weak at best with them, which was how I came to be. My omega dad cheated on him, and I was a consolation prize.

One of my first memories was hearing them fight and my omega father shouting that he wouldn’t have needed to cheat if my alpha father had managed to make them an heir. They fought a lot until the day he was banished.

He didn’t even pretend to fight for me, just left and never turned back. I think that hurt more than everything else in my life. My father remated, again for power. He craved it. My stepfather pretended I didn’t exist, which worked for me.

My father rambled on about the arrangements for my ceremony, and I nodded every few sentences, my mind not really focused on his words, knowing that if I did, I’d be angrier than I already was. And as it currently was, I was barely able to hold in my rage.

“You’re dismissed. You healed today.”

I nodded.

“Go recharge your unicorn.”

“Yes, Father.”

It had nothing to do with him wanting me to be healthier. He wanted me at the ready. But I didn’t care because it gave me a reason to leave his presence and get away from the herd.

Back at my cabin, I grabbed my backpack, the one I always brought with me when I “recharged,” and went hiking in the woods.

Years ago I started carrying it, a very intentional move.

If the day ever came that I could leave, this was the one I was bringing.

I wanted the sight of me walking into the woods with it over my shoulder to be normal and not suspicious.

I also shoved my small spray bottle of skunk musk with my own special addition, to help cover my tracks if I scented any predators along the way.

It had only happened once, but it was better to be prepared than wishing I had it as I was being attacked.

I got the idea from a YouTube video about hurricane readiness back when I was a preteen, and it stuck with me.

I kept the blasted thing at the ready with some candy bars, protein bars, water, the money I’d squirreled away sewn inside one of the pockets, a couple of antibiotic pills Healer had left on the counter one day, a roll of gauze, a blanket, and a change of clothes.

I didn’t need any of those today, but still, I brought it.

And if they asked why I had all that with me, my excuses were ready.

I might get hungry.

I like to lie on the blanket in the sun.

If my unicorn takes over and shifts, I might ruin my clothes.

I had an excuse for everything in that bag but the money, which I hoped they never found.

Waving to a couple of herd members along the way, I headed toward the woods. They ignored me, just like they always did. But if I didn’t, they would complain to my father that I wasn’t a herd-player.

I walked toward the river. I loved the sound of the running water.

It helped drown out my thoughts and calmed me, and I reached my favorite boulder, the one I like to sit on, about a half-hour later.

I joked that the goddess left me a chair, because it had a little indent that was perfect for my butt.

Super comfortable, even though a rock didn’t sound like it should be.

Closing my eyes, I listened to the water. The breeze shifted slightly, and suddenly, everything changed. My unicorn was on edge.

Mate. Dying. Help him.

I didn’t have a mate, but my beast insisted. I grabbed the bag and started running. I’d be quicker in my shifter form, but if I shifted and ran and I needed to cross human land, I was stuck.

I kept running and running and running, the scent of blood tickling my nose. My unicorn was right. Somebody was dying.

And then I saw him, a body slumped against a tree, unmoving, covered in blood.

Please don’t let me be too late. Please don’t let me be too weak. Please, let me save him.