Scoundrel Read online

  Scoundrel

  The Protectors of the Pack Book Five

  Keira Blackwood

  Contents

  About Bad Alpha Dads

  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

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  A Taste of Can’t Prove Shift

  Also by Keira Blackwood

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Keira Blackwood

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual persons, places, or events is coincidental. All characters in this story are at least 18 years of age or older.

  The cover utilizes stock images licensed by the author. The model(s) depicted have no connection to this work or any other work by the author.

  Edited by Liza Street

  PS brushes courtesy of Brusheezy.com.

  About Bad Alpha Dads

  Bestselling and Award Winning Paranormal Romance authors are bringing you the baddest of the bad ALPHA dads. Keyword bad. So sexy, you’ll want to teach them to be good. These shifter dads need all the help they can get, and we want to give it to them.

  Check out our website www.BadAlphaDads.com for the release schedule and more about our fabulous authors.

  Snag your free Protectors story, Revenge, exclusively available to Keira’s email list!

  Chapter One

  Jett

  The icy cliff was a pillar of shelter in the wasteland of frozen tundra. Limestone walls jutted from it like gnarled claws. Besides the mountain, there was nothing to see for miles, only a white-gray haze and an unsettling gale that ensnared and pulled anyone who wandered toward the precipice like an insatiable demon hunting for its next meal.

  Twirling blades faded from view as the chopper that had delivered me rose into the fog, but the whirring sound still lingered. The small landing pad was desolate, leaving me to find my own way.

  Knowing this was only a visit didn’t help the bile churning in the pit of my stomach. Too many times I’d envisioned myself ending up here. But I’d changed. The Ashwood chapter of the Silent Butchers had changed.

  Unfortunately, our pasts hadn’t changed. Going straight and taking jobs on the right side of the law didn’t absolve us of our sins.

  Tribunal Facility 17. Icicles hung from the silver lettering on the arch above the door. I’d never wanted to set foot in this place, but I didn’t have a choice. I turned and looked out to the twenty-foot stone walls topped with razor-wire. Machine gun turrets were perched in watchtower spires and scanned the walkways below.

  Tribunal Facility 17, The Meat Locker, was both a castle and a prison.

  The doors opened before me, and a rush of warm air struck me in a surprising but welcome embrace. I glanced at the man holding the door for me—big, stoic, and clean-shaven. His uniform was pressed, suggesting a man of discipline, and his scent said bear. My guess—polar bear, given our location, though I wouldn’t ask.

  “Name?” The guard’s eyes narrowed.

  “Jett Greyson. I have an appointment to see my client, Keirnan Draper.”

  “ID?”

  I pulled my identification from my briefcase, unsurprised that authentication was required. Again. I’d also supplied it before loading into the chopper that brought me here.

  “You can’t bring that in.” The guard pointed to my briefcase.

  “Sure.” I handed it over. That wasn’t a surprise, either, though I was supposed to record what Draper had to say, and my audio recorder was in my briefcase. “Can I take—”

  “No pens, no pencils. No audio recording devices. You’ll leave your cell phone, your wallet, your belt, your shoes—”

  “My shoes? You want me to leave my shoes?”

  “You’d be surprised what a desperate man could do with a shoelace.”

  Probably not. But I hesitated.

  “Want this meeting to happen?” The guard lifted a brow.

  Not really. I wanted to get the hell out of here. Still, I took off my shoes. “Yes.”

  He cracked a smile. “Lie.”

  “I’m a lawyer,” I said. “It’s my job.”

  He laughed, a dry, dark sound. “All right, lawyer, spread ‘em.”

  I leaned my palms against the cold stone wall and did as I was told. Thankfully, his callused hands patted and invaded no longer than was necessary. He took my shoes, my wallet, and my phone, then slapped his badge over a panel on the wall.

  A stone door opened slowly, followed by a second door made of metal. Another guard waited on the other side, dressed just like the first, with the same stoic look and dead eyes.

  I stepped through the threshold and listened to the doors slam shut behind me. The sound resonated through my chest and echoed down the empty gray hall. My focus needed to be on the meeting ahead, but it was hard to tune out the panicked feeling of being trapped inside the most feared shifter prison in existence.

  The guard led me down the hall to an elevator, where he used a card to activate the controls.

  “Step in.”

  I did, and the doors slid shut, leaving me alone as I sank deep into the heart of the prison. The numbers above the door went up, though I was most definitely going down. I rolled my shoulders, stretching the stiff fabric of my jacket. The sooner this was over, the sooner I could lose the suit and throw on a pair of jeans. Give me leather and denim over Armani any day.

  The elevator stopped at 15, and the doors opened once more. Fifteen stories down into the side of the mountain. Was this where the roving chapter was being held? That, or it was just the location used for meetings. Given my experience so far, and the horror stories I’d heard about this place, it didn’t seem likely that there were many visitors.

  I stepped out into an open room. Everything was painted gray. The air was damp and frigid, and filled with the wild scent of shifters. No, not just any shifters—wolves.

  The number 15 was painted by the elevator, and again on the other side of the room. There were five doors, all exactly the same, and I had no idea which one I was supposed to open.

  “Hello?” My voice bounced around the room with no reply.

  A door opened, the one on the right.

  Inside the room was dark, and the lights only flicked on as I stepped in. The door shut behind me, and my inner wolf howled and clawed to be released, hating the idea of being detained. I could only imagine how the prisoners felt.

  In the center of the room was a box of glass, and standing by the edge was a man. His hair was shaved off, his beard, too. But his eyes—those I recognized—icy gray, and twice as hard. I knew little about the man, only that he was VP of the Silent Butchers roving chapter, second to the alpha. We’d met only once, a couple of years back.

  The rovers had never put down roots in any particular city like the rest of us had, and instead wandered the country following wherever money led them. As the closest chapter to where the rovers were arrested, the burden fell to the Ashwood chapter to investigate
what went wrong. I was here for Draper’s story.

  “Hawke sent his number two instead of coming himself?” Draper’s voice cracked as if it was the first time he’d spoken in a while, and he squinted up at the lights.

  “You know that’s not how this works.” Hawke, my alpha, would never set foot in this place—that was one of the perks of being alpha, I guessed. I approached the glass, taking note of the chair that was welded to the floor next to it.

  “By all means,” Draper said, “have a seat.”

  Hard pass. “Tell me what happened.”

  “What, no pleasantries? You know how long it’s been since I had contact with the outside world? How long it’s been since anyone even fucking looked at me?”

  “Too long, I’m sure.” Fourteen months since apprehension, since rumors of an ambush had started. I’d thought we’d never be granted a meeting.

  “If Hawke wasn’t coming himself, he should’ve sent a piece of ass. What I wouldn’t give to see a nice set of tits. You have nice tits, Greyson?”

  I clenched my jaw. We only had thirty minutes. That could have started when I arrived or when I stepped off the elevator, I had no way to know. Whichever way it went, Draper was wasting what little time we had left.

  “Tell me what happened in Greenville or I walk.” It was said that the rovers were picked up outside of Greenville City, and that Dirty Jack, Draper’s alpha, was dead. If I was lucky whatever landed the rovers in a cell was their own fault, and it wasn’t my problem. Hawke seemed to think that was the case, but we weren’t in Greenville City when it happened, and we had to know for sure.

  “We were betrayed, plain and simple.” Draper shrugged and turned around, feigning disinterest.

  “Who betrayed you?”

  “Same guy who hired us—Briggs.”

  That didn’t make any sense. Why the hell would the Greenville City Pack hire the Butchers, only to betray them? “What was the job?”

  Draper looked up to the ceiling, to the little speaker in the corner. They were listening. Of course they were listening.

  “Briggs told us to meet him in the forest. We did as we were told, and that’s where we got ambushed. Briggs’s brother told us where to find the asshole after that, but when we got there, all we found was Tribunal scum.” The vein in his neck pulsed and he clenched his fists as he yelled at the ceiling.

  The rovers were twice fucked over by the same family. “What about Dirty Jack? There were rumors—”

  “Briggs killed him.”

  I studied Draper’s rage-contorted face. Everything he said was true. I’d have heard it if he was lying.

  The situation was worse than Hawke had thought.

  The door opened, and a guard stepped inside. This was a different guy than the two I’d seen upstairs. “Time to go.”

  “Wait!” Draper banged his fists on the glass. “Wait!”

  I turned back.

  “Sure you don’t want to show me those tits? Come on, Greyson. I know they’re nice.”

  The guard pushed a series of buttons on the screen on his forearm. Sprinklers in the glass cube turned on and soaked Draper. Water ran down his face, and the crazed sound of his laughter haunted me long after I walked away.

  The way back was just one motion after another, given it was a two-day trip. I reclaimed my belongings and was flown back to the little town of Frozen Peaks. From there, I took my motorcycle. I considered calling Hawke to report, but he’d want to hear this in person.

  At first the roads were icy patches of black, indistinguishable from the pavement. I wasn’t in the best state to deal with that kind of shit, and my tires slipped more than once on the curved mountain roads. The frigid air bit my skin right through my clothes, and again I wished I’d been wearing my usual jeans and leather instead of this monkey suit.

  The farther I drove, the more the scenery transformed. Bare-branched oaks replaced snow-coated pines. The scents of the air grew richer, revealing layers of life and decay. This was what summer forests were meant to be, none of that flat dampness of frost. Soon, I’d be home.

  Draper’s words haunted me as the wind whipped and the birds chirped. We weren’t just dealing with a fuckup by the roving chapter, getting caught by the Tribunal. We were dealing with a declaration of war from the Greenville City Pack.

  Sure, Draper was losing his shit, but who wouldn’t when trapped in a dark cell in isolation? He was off, but from what I could tell, not delusional. And he hadn’t lied. Not once.

  I knew Hawke well enough to be sure he wouldn’t let the Greenville City Pack’s betrayal slide. No matter how hard the Ashwood Silent Butchers were working to make a living respectably—trading questionable mercenary jobs for respectable security gigs—we still had an obligation to our brothers. Fuck with the Butchers, face the consequences.

  Hawke would want to hear everything from me firsthand the moment I returned to Ashwood, and I knew better than to keep him waiting. The engine beneath me purred as I crested the last hilltop and cruised down into the little valley town that was home. The pavement was rough and jostled my tires, a familiar feeling on the old streets. I’d spent my life in this town, leaving only for law school, then returning to my roots, here in Ashwood. My father was a Butcher, and his father before him. The MC and the pack, they were one in this town, and they were my family.

  As I parked behind the two-story brick building that was both our place of business and our clubhouse, I could feel the weight of someone watching. No surprise there, since Hawke was waiting.

  The door burst open. I climbed from my bike and turned.

  It wasn’t Hawke who stood waiting, but Brick. The six and a half-foot grizzly shifter always stomped when he walked, but this time he was hunched in a strange way, with his arm behind him.

  His hard, brown eyes set on me. All the color drained from his face, and he looked like he’d been through hell.

  “What the fuck happened, Brick?”

  I steeled myself for whatever had done this to him, to beat the hell out of whoever deserved it.

  He opened his mouth and shut it again.

  “Shit going down inside?” I asked. “I’ll go in and—”

  “No.” He pulled out the thing that was behind him, the thing that had him keeled over like he was injured. He shoved it forward, and stood up straight. “This is it.”

  Before me stood a little kid, a blond-haired girl with bright blue eyes and the kind of scowl that said she was trouble. Trouble that hated Brick.

  “I’m not a this,” she said. “I’m a person.”

  “She’s yours.” Brick nodded at me.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Brick backpedaled toward the door. “I hate to be the one to tell you...but apparently you have a daughter. Welcome home, Greyson.”

  Brick ducked inside, and the door shut behind him. The kid crossed her arms and frowned at me.

  What the fuck? This had to be some kind of misunderstanding...or a shitty prank...or… Fuck.

  Chapter Two

  Paige

  Staring at an empty Word file, I tapped my fingers softly over the keys. My butt was parked in my favorite writing chair, in the comfort of my living room. It was usually the best place in the world to work. Coffee cup number three was kicking in, filling me with caffeiney goodness. The twitchy energy was there, but the words...not so much.

  When I’d taken a job at Gimme, the love and lifestyle blog, I’d thought I was just one chance away from meeting Mr. Right. I’d thought life always ended up like the movies, where the perfect guy would show up at the most awkward time and it would be kismet. Then I’d have my story, the perfect article where I’d know exactly what to say about relationships. He’d see me in a way I’d never seen myself, not as the awkward chubby girl, but as a goddess of pure perfection.

  I figured it’d be easy. Shifters were supposed to have one true mate fated to complete us, two halves of a whole. Back home, I knew from a young age who my mate wasn’
t. He wasn’t anyone I’d met. Bear men were cocky lumberjacks, and not for me.

  As soon as I could escape, I ran off to college and surrounded myself with humans. They didn’t expect me to be a certain way because of my heritage. But that wasn’t working out so well, either.

  Five years I’d been writing for Gimme, and I was tired of looking for Mr. Right in a stream of not so great Mr. Right Nows. Hope and optimism faded to weariness from expecting some amazing lust and devotion-filled inspiration to crash into my life.

  So even though I wanted to write the perfect article about mind-blowing sex and intense spiritual connection, or hell, even a glimpse at something close to either, I settled. I compromised, like I always did, by flipping through the early editions of next month’s fashion magazines for some new trend I didn’t hate.

  Tiny backpacks, crocheted crop tops, short skinny wide-legged jeans...how did that even...never mind. There, on page twelve, was something I could pretend to be passionate about—high-waisted, loose cotton pants. My go-to was yoga pants, for sure, but when it was time to stop writing and put on my real pants, I was one hundred percent behind something that looked comfy while also being chic.

  Settled on the subject of my next article—a ballad of love and devotion...to comfortable pants—I traded my yoga pants for a black linen pair of palazzos with billowy legs and a high waist from my closet. A quick mirror selfie of the pants in question, and I was ready to write.

  Screw stiff jeans. Gimme comfort. Gimme a pair of palazzos paired with a crop top and wedges.