Etienne (The Shifters of Shotgun Row Book 1)(53)

They all loved her.

Not like I loved her, but it counted.

It counted a whole fucking hell of a lot.

They wouldn’t put her in danger any more than they would put themselves in danger.

“He’s relaxed, Eti. He’s with his kind.”

I rumbled down deep in my throat at her comparison to the wretched bear to my gator.

“He is not our kind.”

“Eti, he’s lonely. Look at him.”

Trying not to look creepy as fuck, I watched Bruno for a few minutes. He looked at the crew with some kind of longing. Maybe he just wanted in on the conversation. Maybe he wanted to be crew. But we had no alpha, and Bruno sure as hell wasn’t going to rule over us like he did at the station.

It just wasn’t going to happen with this rowdy bunch.

“We have to talk more when he’s not here. It can’t just be us. He has to fit in—visit more—and we have to build a place for him to live.”

Tansy let go of my arm and looked behind the group. “There’s that house back there. I’ve never seen anyone go near it.”

“No, Tansy, not that one,” Loic spoke over the laughs of the group and even over the constant sounds of the swamp.

“What? Why not? No one’s using it.”

“We said no, Tansy. Please, just let this go.”

She gave the rundown pale-blue shotgun house one more glance before taking the not-so-subtle hint and stopped talking about it.

What’s that about? she asked.

Not my story. That would be Loic’s story. And you’ll be waiting a long time for it, if you ever get it.

I ticked a glance at Loic, who handled it by grabbing the last full bottle of vodka and making it not so full at all.

There was a good reason Loic was always stoic.

Tansy snuggled closer against my side and yawned, hiding it with her fist. She forgot we could hear everything.

“Ready to head in?” I asked.

“No,” she lied straight to my face with a smile on hers.

“Come on, to bed for you.”

“To bed? Or to bed?” She lowered her voice, trying to mock me.

“I didn’t give it to her,” Justice said with his hands up.

I hadn’t noticed my mate had a shot glass in her hand. Tansy was fine with a couple of beers, but we’d seen her once on rum, and she was a fucking mess. A beautiful mess, but a mess.

“Alright, who did it? We don’t give the lady rum. She can’t handle it.”

“Handle me fine! Where’s that Roy?” Tansy asked, raising her glass to toast with the air or a ghost. Who knew? Roy referred to Roy Orbison. She made fun of me for listening to him every chance she got.

“Look what you did, whoever you are.” Lazare tried to be sly, sliding the bottle behind his bench.

“It was you! No rum for her. Look what happens. She’s...she’s…”

She was giggling like a drunken cheerleader.

Silly girl.

“Come on, to bed with you.”

In her fake low voice, she parroted me. “Bed you me. Come on!”

Love you still, even brunk.

As I carried her over my shoulder to our house that was fit for a hobo but housed a queen, I smiled at the swamp and at the noise of my crew in the background and at my mate’s ass right next to my face. This was all that mattered, that my mate loved me and was mine.

Tansy loved the fuck out of me, brunk or not.





Epilogue: Tansy

“Did you really de-haunt T-John’s?” Callum threw another log on the fire before perching on his stump chair.

“She said she did, didn’t she, asshole?” Justice chucked a pebble at Callum’s head, hitting him square in the shoulder and earning him a scowl and a “fuck you.”

“I’m sure there’s a better term than de-haunt.” Loic was not one to be left out.

I’d been living with the guys officially for a couple of months now, unofficially longer. It was nice. Home. Where I belonged. Even with the guys being, well—the guys.

“It works.” Technically speaking, it wasn’t an exorcism, even if that was the common term. “I didn’t expel them like in an exorcism. Meemaw and I just helped them go home. Four of them, anyway. The rest will need to wait until another day because I just can’t. That place is too dark.”

Meemaw and I spent six hours there, me trying to convince the ghosts they were dead, and her trying to convince them she was helping them and not making it worse. We managed to get out a mom and her baby, a child, and a young man who was less than cooperative or trusting. Knowing all three were no longer trapped in that awful place was amazing but darkened by seeing all those we had yet to save.

“You didn’t have to help at all.” And there Meemaw sat, on the stump I’d demanded be made for Bruno for the odd occasions he stopped by.

“Hey, Marie,” the guys said in unison, no longer shocked by her random appearances.

“Meemaw, you can’t just pop in and be all know-it-all ish on me like that. Besides, you and I both know if I wasn’t there, you still would be dealing with Mortimer.”

It was an argument we’d had repeatedly ever since I pieced together the plan for how we might be able to help them.

“Fine,” she conceded. Finally. “But you don’t need to give up your life to help me do my job.”