First Beast by Faye Avalon Page B

Caleb, he’d demand his half-sibling divorce the woman, get her out of the community. But he knew that in doing so, she might do exactly what he feared the most. Report on the secret community of shifters living on the edge of the moor. That would be the death nail for their lifestyle. They’d have to scatter as they’d done back in the seventeenth century, when their Irish community had been betrayed by an outsider let into the community, much like Joshua’s wife had been, who had exacted revenge after a betrayal by one of the pack.
    Families had been ripped apart: members caught, tortured, killed. Babies torn from their mother’s breasts and thrown on pyres.
    While, thank God, civilization had moved on since then, there was no way on earth Caleb would chance history repeating itself. Not if he had anything to do with it. And it was his responsibility to make sure he kept his people safe.
    It was the main reason outsiders were never accepted into the community. And it filled him with rage that Joshua had put their clan at risk in such a heinous way. Not that he should be surprised. His sibling had spent the best part of his life pushing the boundaries, and Caleb wouldn’t be surprised if Joshua had married a human simply to make a point, to basically thumb his nose at their traditions and practices.
    As tension crackled through him, making him edgy, restless and fucking pissed, Tynan turned to him.
    â€œYou need to run?”
    â€œYeah.” He needed to shake off some of this restlessness that had plagued him since returning home. “I really do.”
    There was a kind of consolation in his friend’s perception of his moods. He’d missed having someone on his side this past year. Well, he’d thought he did have someone on his side, which only went to prove once again that you couldn’t trust outsiders. Or women. The confirmation further increased his resolve to do something about Joshua and that wife of his.
    â€œWant company?”
    Caleb turned to Tynan and nodded. “Why not?”
    The men stood as one, shrugged out of their clothing and shifted into their beasts.
    Damn, but it felt good to run with a friend. To slip into the easy camaraderie. Once, before Tynan’s accident, they had indulged in light competition to outrun the other—testing speed, agility and strength—but it was always tempered with allegiance, loyalty and friendship built on years of familiarity and trust.
    Mindful of his friend’s physical limitations, Caleb tempered his pace as they pounded over the moor, noses to the wind, ready to take evasive action should the scent of outsiders permeate their senses. Both he and Tynan were adept at evading humans and had never once been caught either by sight or on camera, unlike a few of the younger shifters whose blurry forms had sometimes accompanied the latest news story of large cats sighted in the area.
    Rumors of the existence of large cats living wild on Bodmin Moor had abounded over the years, but were generally quashed by so-called experts and wildlife enthusiasts, who reasoned that the cat-like creatures were likely figments of overactive imaginations.
    It didn’t stop the believers, though. Those who made it their main interest in life to track down the beasts that allegedly roamed the moor. They were more dangerous than the fortuitous enthusiasts who plucked their digital cameras from their backpacks as a flash of fur disappeared into shrub land. Those whose amateur photos often graced the social media sites and created a frenzy of interest from the press, until lack of evidence plunged the mystery of the beasts of Bodmin once more into the realms of fantasy, alongside Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.
    Four hours later, Caleb walked with Tynan back to the edge of town, where they parted ways. As always, the run had cleared his head and left him with a clarity that directed his steps to the offices of the local paper.
    He