“Shift.” He felt himself turn inside out when the bitch told him to shift. “Shift. Shift. Shift.” Each time she commanded him to do it, he could feel the pain coming off his wolf. When she finally stopped, he lay there as his wolf, with his body so abused that he couldn’t move. When she knelt down in front of him, David didn’t have the strength to swipe at her. Panting, his wolf curled around his body as if to say, shut the fuck up and go home, he snarled at her again.

  “Would you like to feel that pain for the rest of your life, David? I don’t have to be near you to make you do what I want. In fact, I’m planning on staying as far away from you as I can for the next—how long do you suppose he can live after what we did to him, Lica?” He said it was getting closer to it only being minutes. “Yes, I’ll have to agree with you. He’s losing a great deal of blood right now.”

  He was, too. Not just from his paw, but his nose was bleeding, too. And it would never stop bleeding until the man, the supposed alpha, forgave him. Christ, this was a nightmare. All he wanted to do was kill the two of them so that he’d have the alpha position.

  This time, the man leaned down to speak to him. As much as he wanted to rip his throat out, David knew that he needed to rest a bit. His body was worn out. His heart seemed to be beating a tad too slow. Standing up, falling back over as soon as he did, he whimpered again before speaking to them.

  “I’m going to allow the two of you to live for another day.” They both laughed. He didn’t blame them. He knew that he was a mess. “You won’t think it’s so funny when I slit your throats in the middle of the night soon. You’re going to be dead as dead can be.”

  “Is there another form of dead that we don’t know about?” The man stood up. “I don’t have time for this bullshit. You apologize to my wife and myself, and I’ll heal you. Otherwise, and you can bank on this, David James, I’m going to kill you where you lay. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder for you. You’re just stupid enough that you’d keep trying until I bore of you, and that will be the end of your entire family, too.”

  “Kill them all. Do you think that I care? My mother has been telling me that I’m stupid and dumb my entire life. I could care less if she took another breath.” The bitch asked him if he was serious. “Yes. Christ, she’s in my face about every little thing. I cannot wait to be able to piss on her grave for all the things that she’d done to me. Kill them all. I find that I would be better off without them.”

  He wasn’t going to turn around and see what was behind him. Both the bitch and the man were looking over his shoulder like he was going to see. When he heard his mother telling the couple, there wasn’t any way that she’d be talking to him about that sort of shit, about how he’d made her life hell since he’d been a little boy. That she despaired of him ever amounting to anything.

  “I doubt that he’d going to be any help to me in my golden years either.” She got down on her knees, and he thought for sure that this was going to be epic. His mother was going to beg for him to be alpha like he’d been planning and plotting for his entire life, but all she did was bare her throat to the couple. “I pledge myself to you, Alpha Lica Fraizer and Alpha Bitch, Brandy Fraizer. I will forever be a servant to you and my pack.”

  The moment that the man, he’d not known that his name was Lica, touched his mother, he turned to him. While he wasn’t afraid of the man, he certainly made an impressive wolf. When the bitch shifted, something that she seemed to be happy about the way she was dancing around, she turned to look at him when she settled down. Lica smiled, his wolf making it look like he was all badassed or something.

  “David Arthur James, I sentence you to death by pack.” He looked over his shoulder, and David was suddenly terrified. “Take him. Kill him.”

  David felt his body lift up. Not like he was going to be able to stand picked up but like he was tossed into the air. And he was. Several times, from wolf to wolf, they tossed his body from one group to the next while working their way to the field behind the town. Each time he came down, he lost a bit more of himself. Fur was torn from his skin. His paws were torn away from him with no more than a snap of their teeth. But the time he was in the field, he didn’t have the strength to bed. His mouth had been ripped open, and his gut was hanging out of his belly like some kind of odd art project covered in blood.

  He didn’t know one wolf from the next. While he could see enough to know where he was, there was something wrong with one of his eyes. Then it saw it hanging from the mouth of someone he thought was his brother. Christ, was no one going to take his side in anything? The alpha was watching the entire thing. And when David’s throat was ripped out, he knew that he was as good as dead when he realized that his mother had killed him like he was nothing to her.

  ~*~

  Ayden had been working at this place for the last several weeks. Brandy told him all he had to do was observe what was going on, but it wasn’t easy to see much by just going into the place and having a meal. The food was all right, not great, and the service he was getting was a lot to be desired, but he couldn’t figure out for the life of him why they were losing money.

  The portion sizes weren’t too big. It didn’t look to him like much was coming back by way of dirty plates. However, last night’s numbers indicated that they lost over seven thousand dollars. He wouldn’t have guessed that they had served that much in the way of food.

  “Hey, Andy,” He corrected the night manager again that wasn’t his name. “I don’t care. Do you want your free meal or not? I’m going to be closing up soon. It’s almost nine o’clock now.”

  Time, when he was busy, seemed to get away from him quickly. Telling Mr. Hobby that he would love something to eat, he took off his apron and made his way to the back of the restaurant. Being a busboy brought back all kinds of memories. Hardly any of those were good, but he was making decent money, he supposed. As soon as the thick steak was set in front of him, Ayden looked at the cook when he sat down across from him.

  “I’ve been watching you, Frazier. I’m thinking that you’re a man who could use some extra cash all the time. Am I right, or am I wrong about that?” Ayden simply told him that he thought everyone could use a bit extra at times. “Yeah, I thought so. I got us a thing going on here that nobody has figured out yet. You like playing poker?”

  He hated card games. He was good at them, but he nodded that he did all right at it. After explaining the rules to him, although he was not sure where this was going, the manager came back and sat at the break table with them. There were two more people who joined them. One of them was the waitress that he’d met earlier. She wasn’t anything but a pain in the ass and a bitch to boot.

  “Okay, you got the rules?” Forgetting that he should be paying attention better, he simply said yes. Whatever was going to happen tonight, he had a feeling that it was going to be the explanation for how the restaurant was doing so poorly. “All right. The winner takes all. You got that? If you win, which I don’t see how you will, you get to take out all the meat in the locker and sell it off. That’s one part of the rules. Then you bring back the money that you made when it’s all gone, and I’ll divide it up between the six of us.”

  Ayden swallowed hard. He didn’t know why they were going to divvy up the money between the six of them when there were as many as eight in the room with them. There were still several waitstaff on tonight as well as the manager.

  “You got something to say?” He asked what he’d been thinking. “Oh well, we take care of our own here.” He pulled out a gun from the back of his apron and shot the waitress in the head. “You’ll sell off her meat too. It’s good tasting, waitress meat, huh?”

  Ayden looked down at his half-eaten steak and felt his belly lurch. Standing up, he barely made it out of the building’s side door before he started throwing up every bit of food that was on his stomach. Christ, he’d been eating here every night for the past few weeks.

  Staggering to the woods, he shifted and took off at a dead run so that his wolf could puke, too. Like a fool, he’d been shifting after work and letting his other part have the leftover meat from his meal. He’d be lucky if either of them would be able to eat steak again after this.

  As he lay in the grass to rest, he heard voices. It was the manager, Mike Hendershot, and the cook, Harden Gray, talking about him. It took him a few seconds to realize that they weren’t looking for him to play ball but were there to kill him.

  “I thought that he could be one of us. Did you see his face when he realized what he was eating? Christ, that will sustain me for the rest of my life.” A bullet pinged off the tree just above his head, but Ayden didn’t move. “Well, Mikey, he’s going to have to die now. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, it’s a right shame. I was kinda liking him. Even though we do have to kill him off, do you think that I could have a taste of him? Damn, but I’ve never seen a nicer body than that man has. He must lift cars to keep in that good of shape. Can you imagine, Hardy, how muscled his butt rump would be to the person who would buy his roast?”

  Ayden was going to be sick again, but he laid as still and quietly as he could. He could almost see them now. They were within five feet of him, leaning against the tree and talking. When one of them took a piss, he turned away from the man and reached out to his brother.

  “I have a situation here that is going to make anyone sick that has ever eaten in this place I’ve been working.” Lica asked him if he was having fun anyway. “I’m serious, Lica. They’re selling off the meat that’s left over. Also, oh Christ, I can’t say this without puking. They’re killing off the staff and selling them too as roasts, and—they’ve talked about selling me as a pot roast.”

  “Where are you? I’ve told Brandy she’s going to call the police as soon as you tell me where you are.” He told him that he was at Red Rose Blues. “That’s not far from here, is it?”

  “No, about three miles outside of Coshocton. It’s not hard to find. It has a big fucking rose that is at least fifty feet in the sky.” He told his brother everything that he’d been told about the meat, as well as their plans for him. “They shot a woman when I asked about how they were diving up the money six-ways when there were about eight of us back there. Just pulled out a gun and shot her right in the head. I never dreamed that they’d be selling the meat and making a profit off of it and then secondly, using human flesh…I can’t deal with this right now.”

  “The police are on their way. Brandy said that they were coming in without lights or noise. Just so they don’t hurry up and get rid of the body.” Lica told him about his day. “We signed off on the paperwork this afternoon.”

  Ayden really didn’t give two shits about what he’d done today. But then he realized that he was distracting him. Not only did his wolf seem to feel better, but he did as well. The other two men were still standing there talking when he slid his body along the damp grass to see if he could get to the parking lot. He wanted away from all the shit going on right now. He told his brother what he was doing.

  “You’ll have to talk to them, you know that, don’t you?” He said he wouldn’t be able to speak to anyone if they shot him. “Good point. Yeah, I think you’re better off getting away. But don’t go back in—”

  “They’re dragging out four bodies wrapped up in dark trash bags. I believe that they killed the other waitstaff before coming to find me.” Lica said that Brandy wanted to hear so could he pull her into the conversation. “I don’t mind, but I’m going to tell you straight up that I’m not going to sugarcoat this.”

  “I would expect no less from you. Are you all right, Ayden? Had I any idea what was going on, I’d never have sent you there. I’m so profoundly sorry that you had to witness this.” Ayden told her that he’d do it again if she needed him to. He loved her like a sister. “And I love you all as my brothers. What’s going on now?”

  “I’m following three men to a building I never noticed before. Do you know what it might be?” She told him that she didn’t know there was a building. “I’m assuming that…yes, I’m right, it’s their slaughterhouse of sorts. Christ, there is so much blood all over the place that it’s a small wonder that…Brandy, they have this down to a science. They’re getting ready to saw cut the waitress shot they killed first. How do I get the police back here?”

  He ran to the parking lot, only taking time to look around for the cook and manager. As soon as he found one of the officers, who was a wolf, he bit gently into his hand so that they could speak. After telling him now through their link what was going on, he led him and two men back to the building.

  Ayden was keeping his brother and sister updated on what was going on. The officer, Officer Merrick, said that he’d keep it out of the press and paperwork about how he had led them to the barn structure. But he would have to talk to them as a man. There was no way he’d be able to hide that he’d been in the building when things went south.

  He wanted to ask him if he’d eaten there but thought that was just too cruel. When it came out what some of the people might have been served, they were going to have about a million lawsuits on their hands. Ayden was glad that Brandy had only been thinking about investing in the expansion they wanted to have instead of owning it like he thought that she did.

  It wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it might be. Ayden had expected there to be a gunfight, but almost as soon as the barn door was opened up, the four men that had brought the bodies down here dropped their equipment and surrendered. The first body had already been started on, and he had to leave before he got sick again.

  The body, of course, had been removed from the kitchen. However, when he was shown the inside of the locker to hold the cold foods, he had to leave the place again. There was a woman hanging from a meat hook that had taken out her eye when her head was hooked in her skull.

  “Everyone has been arrested. I’m currently hiding in the woods so that no one sees me. Officer Merrick said that they’d change his name and tell the public that he was one of the victims. It would be easy enough to hide from. They never got his name right in the first place.” Lica asked if he was coming home tonight. “I think Merrick wants me to stick around and help them find the other body parts. They had to be doing something with their hands and feet.”

  “Yes, I can see that. They’ll need a great deal of help, I’m thinking.” Lica then told him about how they’d found out that Brandy was a turned wolf. “I had no idea, but I couldn’t be happier. We’ve been looking it up. But Grannie seems to think that because I’m the alpha, Brandy will need to be a wolf as well.”

  “Thank you both. I don’t know what I would have done if either of you had freaked out with me. I know that I more than likely would have been shot.” He looked out in the parking lot to see that the coroner was there. “Wait, a second and a third have pulled into the lot too. If you want to know the names on the side, for now, all I can read is Forensic Van. I guess it could be from anywhere.”

  Merrick had given him clothing when he had time to pull them from his trunk. He’d not realized how old the man was until he saw him with the light of the trunk. Ayden thought for sure that he would have been retired by now but didn’t comment. The man was keeping everyone from freaking out, and that helped a great deal.

  It was nearly midnight when he saw his brother and Brandy. The others, including his brothers, had come along to help search for the bodies if they needed them. Merrick said that they were all young pups so that they’d have a better chance of finding, as their ‘sniffer’ would be younger, too. As each one of them began to head for the woods, he still stayed where he was. He was afraid of messing up the plan that they had of him dying by a gunshot wound when the two men had chased him out of the restaurant. He was helpful by telling Merrick and the Feds, who had finally shown up where the bodies were. His family had been given bright green flags to put where the scent was that they’d found.

  By the time the sun was coming up, they’d found sixty spots where the scent of blood was. In the first shallow grave, they found four sets of human appendages. Ayden thought that they’d find twice that many the longer his family was out there sniffing around. Brandy had made arrangements for food and water, as well as light food for the men working. Coffee was a huge seller, he noticed. Then Brandy came to sit on one of the few chairs and talked to him.

  “I’m going to have to be more careful with people from now on.” He didn’t say anything because he was sure there was more to come. “I can’t handle this shit anymore. I’d just like to stay at home, pound your brother, and, when the time comes, play with our baby. I’m seriously thinking of closing down this part of my business.”

  “What will you do with all that free time on your hands? Besides pounding my brother—which, by the way, is way too much information.” She laughed like he hoped that she would. “I don’t blame you one bit.”

  “A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was working at a bakery. He was, like you’re doing, looking to see what was happening in the warehouse where things were sent from. Not only were the employees smoking and in the kitchen barefooted? But the place was so infested with rats—rats, not mice that when the bulldozer tried to take down one of the buildings, rats swarmed the man and his crew by going up the dozer and running after them.” He told her to never tell him the name of the bakery. “I won’t. Lica said the same thing when we were driving here. You’ll be happy to know that I’ve never seen any of the product in any of your homes.”