Good Things: An Urban Fantasy Anthology Read online

  “I didn’t bring you a chicken biscuit,” I said with a wink. “These are both for me.” Elsie grinned.

  “The food here is not that bad,” Veronica said. “I eat it.”

  “And look at ya,” Elsie said. “Nothing but skin and bones! That’s because there’s not a drop of nourishment in this mess.”

  “Veronica looks good to me,” I said with a grin. “Very good.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Elsie, be nicer to X than you were to me. We need our companions and there are not a lot of good guys like him around Mirage.”

  “Ha!” Elsie laughed. “You’d be surprised how many guys like him are around.” Elsie wasn’t a shifter. She was just...perceptive. She knew exactly what I was and that Mirage was full of people just like me.

  With an unknowing smile, Veronica shook her head. “I’ll be back in an hour to take you to your treatment, Elsie.” She winked at me and then left. As soon as the door closed, I gave Elsie the chicken biscuit and looked through her old record collection while she gobbled it down.

  “So,” she said once she was done. Her hazel eyes studied me. “What’s the news, mutt?”

  “Nothing much,” I replied. “Kane has a mate now.” I didn’t want to dive into the details with her just yet.

  “That’s a big thing for ya’ll, right?”

  “A wolf’s mate is everything, yeah.”

  “Then tell him I said congrats. When’s the wedding?”

  “Hopefully never,” I muttered.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.” I returned Elsie’s records to their crate and sat down. “So am I reading to you today?”

  “You’d better,” Elsie said, leaning closer to me. “But first, do that thing with your eyes again.”

  I grinned and then closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw Elsie’s face light up. I’d shown her my wolf eyes, which were bright yellow with round black irises. In all the time I’d been visiting her, it’s the only part of my wolf side that I’d ever let her see.

  “Hot dog!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe I still get a kick outta that!”

  I laughed. “Me neither. I would think the wolf thing would be old news to you by now.”

  “How could such a thing ever be old news, boy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe because it’s just old news to me. I don’t even think twice about it.”

  “I would think none of you would. But to us humans, you’re like alien creatures to us.”

  “Aliens!?”

  “Or something like it. You’re just cuter.”

  I laughed but then a moment later, I got serious. “So how are the treatments going?”

  “Oh, about as expected.” Elsie rubbed her bald head which was wrapped in a colorful scarf. “They’re eating me alive.”

  I shook my head. “I hate that you have to go through that.”

  “Me too. That’s why I’m giving them up. This is my last week.”

  “Good.” This announcement should have really hit me hard, but all I felt was relief. Chemotherapy was about as bad as the cancer itself, if not worse. Elsie had always hated the treatments and if this would help make the days she had left a happier time, then I was all for it.

  “Xavier.”

  “Yeah, Elsie?”

  “You know you’re my favorite mutt, right?”

  I grinned. “Yeah, Elsie. I know.”

  “You gotta promise me something, boy.”

  “Anything.”

  “You gotta promise that when this cancer takes me, you’ll take care of Cynthia.” Cynthia was Elsie’s parakeet. I thought she was nothing but a winged noise box, but Elsie thought she was a feathered angel. Couldn’t tell her nothing about her bird.

  “Of course I’ll take care of Cynthia for you,” I said with a cheesy smile, eyeing the cage where the bird was napping.

  Elsie’s eyes narrowed. “You’d better not eat my bird!”

  I burst out laughing. “I promise I won’t eat Cynthia. At least, not without frying her up first.”

  “You ain’t shit, boy!” Elsie laughed and I laughed some more with her.

  “Now,” I said. “Do you want me to read to you or not?”

  “I certainly do. I’ve picked out a new one for you too. It’s over there on my dresser.”

  I rose to retrieve the book. Once I saw the cover, I shot Elsie a look. “The Three Little Pigs is not new.” I’d read it to Elsie at least fifty times. Any books with wolves, full-length novels or picture books, were her favorites.

  “So I lied,” she said. “Sue me. All I know is that you’d better do the voices. Growls, barks, woofs, oinks, all of it.”

  I sighed. “Would I ever read the book any other way?” Elsie smiled and settled back to listen. Halfway through, I stopped reading because my heart just wasn’t in it. My mind was still on the trial, but even more so, the verdict and my pending metamorphosis.

  “Elsie. There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  Elsie peeked at me through one eye. “Juicy gossip?” She sounded hopeful.

  “Real men don’t gossip. But I have an interesting story to tell you.”

  She grunted as she sat up straighter. “So you did have news. Spill it.”

  “It’s about Kane,” I said. “He broke our treaty with the Gray pack.”

  Elsie was quiet while she processed this. I could tell she was working out the details. Cancer had incapacitated her body, not her mind. She was as sharp as ever. “His mate is a Gray girl.”

  I nodded. “The trial was yesterday. Roman was there.”

  “The king?”

  “Yup.” I explained what had happened during the trial.

  “So who’s gonna be alpha if not Kane?”

  I lifted my eyebrows in answer.

  “You? Well, hot dog! That’s great news!”

  “No, it’s not. I’m not ready to be alpha. I don’t deserve it.”

  “Boy, hush your mouth. You’ll make a great alpha.”

  “You think so?”

  “A good boy like you? I have no doubt. You’re smart and you have a good heart. From what Darien tells me when he visits, you’re not just a cousin but a best friend as well. I think he and the others would follow you to the ends of the Earth.”

  I thought about that for a minute and realized she was probably right. ”Thanks, Elsie.” She nodded with a smile.

  “So when will all of this be official?”

  “Soon,” I said. “There’s going to be an ascension ceremony where I’ll have to go through a...metamorphosis.” I paused. “I won’t be able to come see you for a few weeks after.”

  Elsie looked at me. “It’s going to be that bad, baby?”

  “Yeah. It is. I won’t...I won’t look the same.”

  “I picked up on that. That is what metamorphosis means, ain’t it?”

  I smiled. “Yeah. But what if they don’t let me in to see you because they don’t recognize me?”

  “Hmm, good point. Guess you better come back with a good cover story to explain the changes.”

  “Great,” I huffed. I couldn’t imagine any excuse being convincing enough to explain how I had changed so drastically in only a couple of weeks. Even plastic surgery as an excuse wouldn’t hold up once they really thought about it. But I was going to think of something. Being alpha wasn’t going to get in the way of my being a companion at Genesis House. I refused to let it.

  I read two more books to Elsie, then I headed home. I would have stopped by to visit my mother, but she’d gone out of town with her mate, Nathaniel, for the weekend. So I headed back to the Wesley campus and spent the day in the library to continue mapping out the trip around the world I planned to take in a few years.

  Late that night, I was woken up by someone banging at my cabin door. Cursing, I got up and answered it, ready to beat down whoever was on the other side.

  It was Remy.

  “Why are you banging on my damn door like that?” I asked him. “What’s going on?”


  “It’s Kane,” Remy said. “He’s woken everybody up looking for a fight. With you.”

  I dragged my hands over my face. “Damn, I haven’t even been the alpha for a day yet, and I already have fools trying to challenge me!”

  “I know, but Kane has realized this is the only way he’ll ever be alpha. He thinks that if he goes through metamorphosis, he can take on Clarence.”

  “Is he out of his damn mind!?” I shouted. “Clarence Gray has twenty years on him! He’ll break him in half!”

  “I know this, but Kane doesn’t seem to care. All he can think about is Aspen.”

  I growled. “This mating shit is really starting to piss me off.”

  “What are you gonna do?”

  “Answer the damn challenge, what do you think?” As alpha, I had no choice, metamorphosis or not. If a subordinate issued a challenge, lycan politics dictated that the alpha had to step up or step down. If they bitched out, their pack had the right to vote them out as alpha. I wasn’t going to let this happen my first day on the job, not that my pack would ever vote me out. But if I didn’t fight Kane tonight, I could look forward to being challenged on the regular in the future.

  “Damn!” I pushed past Remy and stormed outside into the darkness.

  All of the pack members who lived on campus, guys and girls, were gathered in the clearing behind the student cabins belonging to the college’s benefactors, which we called “the dell.” Most benefactor’s kids attended other universities so the cabins remained empty for the most part. The pack usually came together here for wolf games, which ranged from wrestling as wolves to bare-knuckle boxing as humans. But tonight, the dell was going to be a battleground and I planned on establishing my authority using Kane’s face.

  My cousin paced the dell, huffing and growling like he was hopped up on something. Remy went to stand with Darien and Foster and I stepped up to confront Kane. The entire pack fell silent.

  “Heard you’re looking for a fight,” I said.

  Kane glared at me. “This isn’t what I want, X. But I have to do it. I can’t let the congress keep me from my mate.”

  I couldn’t believe we were having to go through this again. “Do you hear yourself?” I asked. I looked around at the other pack members. “Do ya’ll hear this guy? Once again, he’s putting his own wants before the good of the pack!”

  “She’s my mate!” Kane yelled.

  “She’s a Gray!” I yelled back. “That’s the problem! You violated a hundred-year-old treaty for her! You put us all in danger for her! And now that I’m the alpha, you’ll be lucky if you ever see her again!”

  That did it. Kane lunged at me, but I had expected him to.

  Pivoting to the right, I wrapped my arm around his neck and flipped him over my back. He slammed to the ground and I punched him in the stomach to keep him down there. Air whooshed out of his lungs, but he was only out of it for a second.

  He rolled back and drew his legs up, planting his boots in my chest. He kicked out and I went flying backwards. I hit the ground hard, popping my shoulder out of place. With a quick snap, I set it right and back-flipped onto my feet, ready to get back at it.

  With a roar, I took my wolf form, shredding my clothes in the process. Kane realized I was about to go for blood so he followed suit, morphing into his brown wolf.

  We circled each other, and some of the other pack members growled and snarled in an attempt to aggravate one of us to attack first. I took the initiative and went straight for Kane’s throat. He tried to jump out of the way, but I had always been stealthier so he didn’t get far.

  My fangs clamped down on his shoulder, having just missed his throat, but that worked for me. Kane yelped in pain, twisted and batted me in the face with a paw. His claws ripped through the flesh on my muzzle, forcing me to let him go.

  He came at me again, using his full strength to tackle me. We rolled toward the pack in a furious ball of fangs and claws, stopping just short of taking several of them down.

  I dug my claws deep into Kane’s side and slashed. He howled and reared back up onto his hind legs, batting me yet again with his paw.

  The head shot dazed me for a minute and Kane knew it. He took the opportunity to try and clamp down on my throat. I dodged the attempt and when he stumbled, a blow to the back of the head took him the rest of the way down.

  We don’t have to keep doing this, I said, using my wolf sense to communicate with Kane.

  Yes, we do, he replied, back on his feet. I have to be with Aspen. So that means I have to take on Clarence.

  He’ll kill you.

  Probably. But for her, I’d die with a smile on my face.

  You’re an idiot.

  I’m sure you’re not the only one who thinks so. But then again, you don’t have a mate yet. When you do, then you’ll know. Then you’ll be the idiot.

  Maybe so. But I won’t betray the pack I’m supposed to lead. Not for my mate. Not for anyone.

  Yeah. We’ll see about that.

  The two of us lunged at each other at the same time. We collided and rolled, clawing at each other as we both fought to get the upper hand.

  I clamped down on the scruff of his neck and rolled, flipping Kane onto his back.

  I jumped on him and took a few shots at his face and ribs. My claws came back covered in blood and fur, and I knew I’d gotten in some good hits.

  But Kane wasn’t out yet. He knew where my weakness was and he exploited it. He swatted me so hard in the face this time, my nose broke. It hurt like hell and the pain should have put me out of the game. But it didn’t. It just pissed me off.

  I went kind of crazy at that point.

  I bit and tore at any part of Kane I could get at. He tried to defend himself, but there was just nothing he could do. I was relentless. I was merciless. I went for blood and I got it. I went so hard, I almost passed out. Exhausted, I collapsed on the ground, choking as I tried to pull air into my lungs. After I was able to catch my breath, I used my last bit of energy and changed back into my human form, leaving Kane a bloody mess on the ground.

  The pack was dead quiet as they waited for what I was going to do next. After a quick three-count, I reached up and snapped my nose back into place. The pain pissed me off all over again, so I balled up my fist and slammed it into Kane’s face. He yelped as his jaw shattered and I knew the fight was officially over. He wasn’t starting anything back up after that.

  My cousin, back in his human form, lay curled on the ground holding his face together. I circled him like he was my prey, but I only did it to make a point to my pack. This could have been any one of them and I needed them to understand that.

  “Hope ya’ll were paying attention,” I said to them. Then I yelled, “Were you paying attention!? This is what will happen to anyone who challenges me! I am the Wesley alpha and you are my subordinates! I make the rules, you follow them. You challenge me, I put your ass down!”

  I circled the entire group, making eye contact with as many of them as possible. “In a couple of weeks, I’ll go through metamorphosis and every one of you knows what that means. You’re all still welcome to challenge me after that, of course, but I wouldn’t suggest it.” I stopped where Kane was folded up on the ground.

  “Get up,” I said. He peeked up at me through swollen eyes and I smiled. “You heard me. Don’t make me ask again.”

  With grunts and groans of pain, Kane slowly climbed to his feet. One hand held his jaw and he used the other to cover himself. Eli rushed forward to bring him some clothes and I let him. Nudity wasn’t something shifters thought twice about, but I knew Eli really just wanted to check up on his brother because that’s what he did.

  “Take him home,” I said. “I’ll tell Elliott to come check on him after his shift in the morning.” My mother was the pack’s healer, but since she was out of town, her assistant and fellow nurse at the Mirage hospital, was filling in for her.

  “Thanks, X,” Eli said. “Yo, Darien. Give me a hand with him.�
�� My cousin rushed forward to help. They propped a groaning Kane up between them and the pack parted to let them through.

  “Good show, X,” Darien muttered as he passed. A minute or so later, the three of them disappeared into the darkness, headed in the direction of Kane and Eli’s cabin.

  “The rest of you should turn in as well,” I said to the pack. “I don’t expect to be back here anytime soon. But like I said, the choice is yours. Challenge me, I’m going for blood, and you can be sure that I won’t take it as easy on you as I did on Kane. Happy nightmares, bitches.”

  I didn’t have to push through the horde of pack members to leave. They moved out of my way and practically killed one another doing it. I strolled out of the dell cool as the wind and started toward my cabin. I put up a good front, but Kane wasn’t some punk omega who’d only learned to fight yesterday. Even though I was the victor, my cousin had been a worthy opponent and I was feeling the results of that in every part of my body. I would need at least a couple of days to recover.

  Someone followed me out of dell. From his scent, I knew it was Remy. “You sounded real tough back there,” he said. “Kind of reminded me of Uncle Bart.”

  I ignored him and kept moving. After a minute, I heard him stop.

  “I’m just saying!‘” he shouted after me. “Maybe you were always meant to be alpha!”

  I stopped too and turned back to face him. I smiled. “You know what, Rem? I actually think I was.”

  * * *

  Three weeks later...

  “It’s time.”

  I nodded at my mother, who smiled at me and opened her arms for a hug. Rolling my eyes, I did what she wanted because I always did whatever my mama wanted.

  “Are you ready, baby?” she asked.

  “As ready as I can be to endure never-ending, mind-numbing pain for days on end.”

  My mom’s brown eyes filled with tears. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Don’t be. I’ve never heard of an alpha coming out of metamorphosis any worse than when he went in.”