I shook my head and rubbed my eyelids. “Jackson, is your mama part rodent?” I almost choked on the words as they passed my lips and tried to keep a straight face.
“Low blow, Loco. You’re going to make him lose his shit,” Greaser, our road captain, barked, striking blue chalk against the tip of his pool stick. I shrugged in response to him, but otherwise ignored the fact that he had forced us to listen to his opinion. Greaser had a soft spot for Jackson that I never understood. It wasn’t that Jackson was a bad guy, he was one of the best, but I’d be damned if I ever admitted it to him.
“What? No. I mean, fuck you, August.”
“Coño tonto gato,” I repeated the same thing I always did when he used my first name to stop myself from lunging at him. The guy had a huge heart, and the only reason he called me by my legal name was that it was how he was introduced to me.
The first time Jackson walked into our club, Chaotic Twister, it was around 3:00 A.M. and, he couldn’t have been wetter behind the ears. Before he was even through the doors, Tyson and I picked up on his scent, putting us on guard. I was on the brink of shifting, my leopard was screaming to kill, but Tyson sternly smacked his hand against my chest. “Isn’t necessary. I smell fear,” he all but purred as he licked his lips.
When we approached Jackson, he didn’t back down as most strays who wandered out of the shadows of the night and into our club had. Much the opposite, actually. He smiled and held his hand out for introductions. Tyson shoved me toward Jackson and called me by my first name, since at the time, Jackson was a civilian. A lot had changed between then and now, except the fucking dumb cat still called me “August,” and I hated it. He heard everyone else refer to me as Loco, my road name, so it wasn’t as if he wasn’t familiar with it. He called the rest of the brothers by their road name part of the time and then by their civilian name the next, depending on who was around. He at least recognized theirs and used it every once in a while. Honestly, I thought the fuckhead did it to annoy me, but he spoke so earnestly I couldn’t force myself to rip his skin from his bones. At least I hadn’t yet, the desire to do so varied from day-to-day.
“Cat got your tongue, August?” Jackson shot back in my direction, and a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
“Real original, Puta.”
“Go back to Mexico—”
“I’m not from Mexico, dumbass,” I snarled and pinned my shoulders back as I prepared to shift into my leopard.
“No!” Tyson spoke, and the two-letter word stopped every muscle in both of our bodies from moving even an inch. Essentially, I was the beta of our pack of misfits that we called a motorcycle club, but being in that position meant there was still one higher than me. Tyson. I didn’t always agree with him, and the two of us were known for giving each other shiners, but this subject was one he wouldn’t ever budge on. He didn’t give a shit what we fucked up where the public couldn’t see, but it would be one colossal shit storm if we had to explain to the city what tore through the side of our building. The citizens of south Michigan wouldn’t be thrilled in the slightest to learn there were “dangerous, murderous animals” walking their precious streets in regular clothing amongst them. Even though humans were just as likely to kill as shifters were, it wouldn’t matter. People feared what was not easily understood or what was different. It had been expressed a multitude of times throughout history. Decades ago, people were segregated simply because of the color of their skin or because their religious beliefs differed. Human beings had made a lot of progress over the years; however, they weren’t exactly to the point of welcoming shifters into the community either. Thinking about how much torture they put one another through over the smallest of disagreement made me positive shifters would not be welcomed. Not into people’s homes for Sunday dinner or to sling back a cold one at the family cookout, not if they were aware of what we were and our capabilities.
“I’m out,” I huffed. Tyson was right, and I wouldn’t argue with him.
He nodded in my direction, and I threw two fingers into the air, saluting him. “Boss. Brothers. Jackson,” I gritted his name through my teeth and shoved the door open, letting it clatter against the frame behind me.
The sky was almost completely blackened, and lightning struck the dirt in front of my black boots. I took a deep breath and then another just to be safe. If I didn’t calm myself, Detroit and the surrounding areas were about to have another freak storm that came out of nowhere, which seemed to be happening pretty frequently for a few weeks now.
Usually, I had the ability to control the weather, which had been incredibly beneficial several times we needed to get the fuck out of dodge and put the breeze between our knees. Yet, these last few weeks, something had been off with me. I hadn’t lost my grasp on my abilities this much since I was young and learning how to manage them. Whatever was bothering me, I could feel it in the air. When I pulled a breath into my lungs, it burned, and other times, the scent was so intoxicating, I could not think straight.
“You need to stop overthinking stuff, pussy.” The leopard within me laughed. “Some time in the woods would do us both some good. I need to stretch my legs anyway. It’s been
