Dying to Live: The Shifter City Complete Series Read online

  To get Your FREE Prequel to the Shifter City Series sent straight to your email inbox…

  Click Here

  Dying to Live

  Shifter City Complete Series

  Liam Kingsley

  © 2017

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

  Book List

  Burning Transgressions

  Dying to Live

  Burning Transgressions

  Shifter City Book 1

  Liam Kingsley

  © 2017

  Disclaimer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and events are all fictitious for the reader’s pleasure. Any similarities to real people, places, events, living or dead are all coincidental.

  This book contains sexually explicit content that is intended for ADULTS ONLY (+18).

  Chapter One

  The shifter epidemic still shows no signs of resurgence. There have been no new cases reported for ten full years, as of today. The afflicted…

  “That’s because nobody’s stupid enough to turn themselves in, you idiot!” George threw his empty beer bottle at the old TV in the corner, missing the TV, but smashing the bottle to pieces when it hit the wall.

  Logan Kim sat on the back of the sagging couch with one foot on the arm and the other behind George. George’s girlfriend, Mariella, lay with her head in his lap and her long, thin legs draped across their other friends, Robert and José. George glanced over at her legs, and squeezed one of her tits possessively. She rolled her eyes and slapped his hand away.

  “What’s your problem?” George demanded.

  “You,” she said, swinging her legs off the couch and turning to face him. “You are my problem. The hell are you thinking? Smashing bottles, getting all grabby, this is not the time or the place for your childish bullshit.”

  “Childish?” George said, looking around at his friends with a look of mock horror. “I’m childish? What do you call what you were doing?”

  “Sitting,” she sneered. “Comfortably. God, I need a cigarette. Don’t follow me, I’m done playing with you right now.” She sashayed out the door and George huffed and looked up at Logan.

  “Can you believe her?” He asked.

  Logan only grinned. Of course he could. He didn’t know why she’d stayed with him this long, and he predicted that they would split within a month. George was an asshole, and everybody knew it but him. Now that he thought about it, a cigarette sounded like a great idea. Not for the smoke itself, but for an excuse to get out of the cramped, little shack and stretch his legs. Life under the radar had become increasingly uncomfortable, and now the five of them were practically homeless.

  Logan squeezed José’s leg as he passed, a subtle signal. They’d managed to keep it low-key so far, but the second George suspected that there was something going on between them, he would make their lives hell. He might even go so far as to kick them out of his rag-tag little pack, but Logan doubted it. He needed them. José for money, he was the hustler, playing street games for cash. Logan for scouting, protection, and fake IDs. Robert, well…Robert was loyal to George, unconditionally. He never challenged his authority and always did exactly what he was told. Mariella’s role in the group was obvious, but Logan knew it was just a matter of time before she found herself a real alpha and never looked back.

  “I told you not to follow me,” Mariella snapped as Logan stepped out of the shack.

  “It’s me, Mar,” he said. “Let me hit that.”

  She passed him the cigarette, and he stared out over the lake. It was peaceful here, and warm for the moment. Come winter time, their little camp in the abandoned town would be unbearably cold. They’d managed to connect the electricity and cable themselves, but the gas line was too degraded to use. They would have to move south before then. He made a mental note to plant the idea in George’s mind.

  “He’s such an ass,” Mariella muttered, half to herself.

  “Yep.” Logan passed the cigarette back to her.

  “Like, why does he think he needs to mark his territory all the damn time? Robert wouldn’t dare, and José…can I tell you a secret?”

  “Sure,” Logan said, taking the cigarette back.

  “I think José’s gay,” she whispered. “I mean…I was washing myself in the lake yesterday and he showed up to do the same thing…we’re both standing there stark naked, right? So I look. I’m human.” She shot him a meaningful look. “Nothin’. Not a damn thing. Not even a wiggle. I mean…I know I ain’t everybody’s cup of tea or anything, but I look damn good right now.”

  Logan nodded and passed the cigarette back to her.

  “What?” She asked. “You don’t think I look good?”

  “You look great,” Logan grinned. “You know it, too.”

  “Damn right I know it,” she nodded firmly. “And everybody else does too, which is why I think José is…you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “George would have a fit.”

  “About him being gay, or about him seeing you naked?”

  A wicked grin crossed her face as she flicked the butt into the water. “Both,” she said. “I almost want to tell him about that last part.”

  “You want to get José killed?”

  “Nah,” she shrugged. “But George wouldn’t.”

  Logan raised an eyebrow and looked at her incredulously from under his long, black fringe.

  “Okay, maybe he would,” she relented. “He definitely would for the other thing. George has some real strong feelings about all that.”

  “You know what they say about homophobes,” Logan said, his mouth twitching in amusement.

  “No, what do they say?”

  Logan leaned close to whisper in her ear. “They say they’re all secretly gay.”

  Mariella shrieked with laughter and slapped him playfully. The door slammed open, and George glared at them.

  “The hell is going on out here?” He asked. His wide-set eyes darted from one of them to the other.

  “We’re having sex, obviously,” Mariella said sarcastically. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Don’t even joke like that,” George snarled as he jumped down the three rickety steps. “Don’t you ever joke like that!”

  “Jeez, chill out already,” Mariella said, rolling her eyes.

  “Don’t you roll your eyes at me, I am the master of this pack and you will respect that!”

  “For one, you mean alpha,” she said, crossing her arms and settling her weight on one hip. “And another thing? You aren’t my supervisor!”

  He pulled back his hand to strike her, and Logan saw her eyes go wide with fear for a spli
t second. He sidled in between them casually, as if he hadn’t seen what was about to go down.

  “Mariella, you got another smoke?” He asked.

  “Get the hell out of here, Logan. The lady and I need to have a talk.”

  “You talk with your mouth, not with your hands,” Logan said in a quiet sing-song. “You don’t put yours down, you won’t be talking at all.”

  His back was to George, and for a second he felt the vibration of rage crackle through the air. He stood still, waiting for the blow, but it didn’t come. Instead, George lowered his hand and blew a breath out through his teeth.

  “Whatever,” George said, walking backwards toward the shack. “I’m done with both of you tonight. I’m going to sleep. Mariella, I better feel your ass in that bed in two minutes.”

  “What if I gotta pee?” she asked snidely.

  “Then you better do it in under two minutes!” George shouted. He slammed the door and bits of the rotted frame flew off at the impact.

  “Can I ask you something?” Logan said when George was gone.

  “If you’re gonna ask me why I’m with him, save your breath,” she said, her lip curling in disgust. “The second we meet another pack I’m gone.”

  Logan smiled and nudged her with his elbow. “You could be alpha,” he told her.

  “Whatever,” she said, but she smiled. “You think so?”

  “Yeah, you got the brain for it, and the sass. It doesn’t take muscle and rage to run a good pack. Hell, if George knew how to take a damn suggestion, we wouldn’t be living in this shithole. You’d be infinitely better at this.”

  She smiled thoughtfully for a moment, then her face fell and she shook her head. “If we run, he’ll just follow us,” she said. “It would be worse when he caught us.”

  “Only if you leave him alive,” Logan said. He kissed her cheek affectionately and turned to walk inside. A glance over his shoulder showed her chewing her lip and staring at a spot on the ground, lost in thought. Logan grinned. He enjoyed his role, and enjoyed even more the fact that he was the only one who truly understood it. Even José didn’t understand how Logan pulled strings in their pack. Maybe he’d tell him, one of these days.

  More likely he wouldn’t. José hadn’t been so much a choice as the end result of a lack of options. He was attractive enough, and Logan was more than willing to roll around with him for a while. But he was dumb as a box of rocks, and Logan only had so much patience for that. He, like Mariella, was simply waiting for something better to come along. In the meantime, he had one hell of a dry spell to break. Eighteen months since he’d been bitten, and exactly that long since he’d gotten laid. He wasn’t looking for forever. He didn’t believe in forever. He’d seen too much, heard too much, and come to all sorts of conclusions that would be vehemently debated by everyone he knew if he ever chose to express them. Which he didn’t. Logan preferred to keep his inner workings a mystery, and his thought processes locked up behind many closed doors.

  Inside, José was stretched out on the couch watching a rerun of some dumb sitcom. Robert had already gone to bed in the bunk room in the back of the shack, which was where the three of them slept. George was in his room, mumbling curses about Mariella. After she came in, they would argue for a while, have sex, and go to sleep. Only then would it be safe for him and José to sneak out to the woods and cross the line they’d been flirting with for weeks. Logan perched on the back of the couch once more, waiting out the clock.

  Mariella didn’t make it back inside in two minutes, or three. She waited a full seven minutes (had another cigarette, Logan thought) before stepping back in through the door. She said goodnight and walked into the back room, where George immediately started berating her in muted tones. Logan listened to it as if it were music, letting the highs and lows wash over him as the two ill-fated lovers bickered. The bickering reached a fever pitch, then there was a tussle. Logan sharpened his attention then; there were two kinds of scuffles with that pair, and only one of them that he would let slide. Wet, sloppy, sucking sounds began, and Logan relaxed.

  Five minutes later, George was snoring loudly. Logan tapped José’s shoe and nodded at the door. José grinned and followed him out. As soon as they were in the trees, out of sight of the shack’s few dirty windows, José became a different person. He was assertive, passionate, and desperate. Logan gave as well as he took, and they wrestled each other out of their clothes violently. There was no foreplay. Logan hadn’t expected any. José bent him over forcefully and took him from behind. Shifter sex was eminently different from human sex. Logan could feel his body changing around José’s insistent thrusts, opening to accommodate his throbbing knot. A quiet moan escaped José’s mouth, and Logan shushed him. They bit their lips and rode the wave of frustrated lust and pent-up sexuality until, with arching spines and lips wet with blood from their own lips, Logan and José spilled over into satisfaction.

  José emptied into him. Logan didn’t care, not really. His life had become entirely too weird and dangerous over the last year and a half for him to worry about things as mundane as safe sex. José stood, quaking behind him, until his biology allowed him to pull away. They dressed quickly and kissed twice, then began their walk back to the shack. Logan felt fine for the first two steps. At the third, an odd, heavy tingle began in his lower belly. At the fourth, the tingle began to wriggle like a snake through his gut. One more step, and Logan went down. The tingle shot up his spine to his brain stem, and everything went dark.

  “Logan?” José hissed. “Dude, you okay?” José knelt down beside him and shook him. “Dude? What’s wrong?”

  Logan, being unconscious, couldn’t very well answer. José swore violently under his breath, and carried Logan into the house as quietly as he could. He slid Logan into the bottom bunk and covered him up, then he climbed into the top bunk. He told himself that Logan would sleep it off. It was just a killer orgasm, that’s all, right? Right. With that, José rolled over and promptly fell asleep.

  Chapter Two

  The morning routine went as it usually did. Robert was up first, as always, making coffee with filtered lake water. George bounced out of bed as soon as the scent hit his nostrils. He was always in a good mood after he and Mariella did their thing. Sex alone was good, but sex plus fighting always cleared his head the next day. José trudged out soon afterward, called to action by his bladder. Mariella waited until the crowd had cleared, then stepped out, wrapped up in her blanket, to fill her cup. It was always the last one on the counter, which was why she was the first one to ask the obvious question.

  “Where’s Logan?”

  The three men shrugged and grunted, absorbed in their coffee. Mariella shot them a disgusted look and marched into the bunkroom. Logan never missed coffee. He was always at Robert’s elbow, urging him to make it just a little darker, a little stronger this time. The fact that his cup was still sitting beside the coffee pot worried her, and it annoyed her that nobody else seemed concerned. As she wasn’t a morning person in the first place, and her episodic drama with George never failed to leave her in a foul mood, she wasn’t gentle when she tried to wake Logan. She ripped his blanket off of him and shook his shoulder hard.

  “Hey!” She shouted. “You dead?”

  There was no answer, and she rolled her eyes. She swore if she looked down there and he was smiling, screwing with her, she would kill him. She crouched beside the bed to look at his face. She blinked three times then rubbed her eyes, hard. She looked again. Logan’s face was sallow, pale under the golden tone. His cheeks and lips were a fiery red, and his thin undershirt revealed more red spots under his arms and across his lower belly. Something snapped inside of her and she stormed out to the main room, dropping her blanket behind her.

  “Alright,” she demanded. “Which one of you assholes did it?” Her brown eyes blazed fiercely as she met eyes with everyone in the room.

  “Did what?” Robert asked.

  “Did what, did what? Did any of you bother to look
at Logan before you came out here this morning? Who the hell did it?”

  “Mariella, baby, slow down. What’s the problem?”

  “One of you assholes beat the shit out of him last night!” She screamed. “And I want to know who did it, because I sure as shit don’t want to kill the wrong person.”

  George’s eyes narrowed and he stood up to face her.

  “You would kill for him?” he asked threateningly.

  “You’re damn right I would,” she snapped. “Wouldn’t you? Thought this pack was supposed to be family.” She spat the last word, and he stepped toward her.

  “Oh, we’re family,” he said slowly. “Family looks out for each other and listens to the daddy. I’m the daddy around here, and I don’t remember telling either of you to beat Logan, so who did it, and why?”

  José and Robert exchanged terrified looks, and neither said a word.

  “Better start talking, assholes, before I start making you. You upset the lady and laid a beat down without telling me. Those are some serious rules to be breaking. Now one of you better start talking.”

  “I was in bed,” Robert said quickly. “I didn’t see Logan after he went outside with Mariella.”

  George stepped close to Robert and stared directly into his eyes. “Would you lie to me, Robert?”

  “No, never,” Robert said with utter sincerity.

  “Then it was you,” George snarled, turning on José. “What did you do and why did you do it?”

  “I didn’t beat him,” José said. “I swear I didn’t.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “Nothing! I…he wanted to smoke, and I wasn’t tired, so we went for a little walk is all. We came back, went to bed, end of story.”

  “Then why,” Mariella exploded. “Is he lying in there, lookin’ sick as hell and bruised bloody?”

  “Bruised bloody?” José asked, his face paling. “Is he?”