Boondocks Books Novels & Stories

Chapter 23: Meatpacking Storm (Luca’s POV) Hunts Point was a maze of brick warehouses and rusted chain-link at the edge of the city perfect place to hide someone you didn’t want found. We rolled in three vehicles again, lights off, parking a half-mile out in a deserted lot behind an abandoned cold-storage building. Rain had started again light but steady, turning everything slick and reflective. Good for cover. Bad for footing. I checked my vest, magazine, comms routine movements to keep my hands busy so my mind wouldn’t spiral.

"Alpha, that place is dangerous..." "Let's go." I strapped the dagger to my belt, my eyes burning with a thirst for vengeance. An hour later, we were at the entrance of the Red Moon Bar. This was the darkest corner of the Black Forest Pack, filled with criminals and outlaws. The air was thick with the stench of blood and alcohol. The basement was even grimmer. In the dim light, a brutish-looking man sat in a corner. He was Derrick Bloodclaw. "Alpha Austen?" He stood up in shock. "What... what are you doing in a place like this?"

"You told me you don't know who. I believe you don't know the name. But you know something about them. You don't get to eighteen months inside an operation without picking up texture. What do you know?" He's quiet. His broken finger is purple now, the knuckle grotesquely swollen, and there's blood drying on his chin from the lip Declan split, and he has the look of a man who has been making calculations for the last twenty minutes and keeps arriving at the same answer, which is that he is out of leverage and what's left is just deciding how much more of this he wants before he says everything he knows. "They called them the Ghost," he says finally. "That's all I ever heard. The Ghost. Someon

The thing inside me settled again, warm and approving, like a predator watching its young take their first real step into dominance. No. I clenched my jaw. “You don’t get to like this,” I muttered inwardly. It didn’t answer. It never did when it was satisfied. The voice returned, smoother now. “Interesting,” it said. “The bond alters response parameters.” Bond. Jake stiffened beside me. I felt it too, the word landing like a hook in my ribs. “We’re not bonded,” I snapped. The air rippled. “Not yet,” the voice replied. That did it.

Then she stepped inside and did not leave until the lamps began their evening shift. She moved along the lower shelves first, reading spines without touching, noting which sections carried the wear of regular consultation. The oldest texts were in languages she did not know, their scripts circular and elegant, but she could read the organisational logic of the sections even without understanding their content. She had always been a better reader than anyone expected of her — wolfless girls were not invited to social hours in Ravenglade, which meant she had spent her childhood in the pack's archive while others spent theirs in more comfortable rooms, and she had used the time well. She worked

"State your price." Rebekah held up three fingers, her smile widening. "Three hundred thousand silver tokens for each route map in that folder. And I'll purge the backup files before the morning security sweep." It would cost Bianca six hundred thousand tokens to buy her way back into the good graces of the rival syndicate elders with these maps, but the potential return on the northern smuggling routes made it an easy choice. Without saying another word, Bianca gave a sharp nod. Rebekah dropped the folder back into her hands, their palms sliding together in a brief, heavy warrior’s grip to bind the contract before they vanished in opposite directions through the dark.

Until the day we get to meet you, we’ll keep living, laughing, and collecting little pieces of our life together so that one day you can see how your story began—long before you even took your first breath. Until the day comes. Love, Mom and Dad. Arden and Cade. END OF BOOK 1

“Where are we going?” “I don’t know, okay!” I said louder than I intended and Abigail’s bottom lip quivered like she was going to cry. Nina quickly pulled Abigail into her arms, rubbing her back. “Stop yelling at her Shane!” Nina held both her palms in hers. “Let’s just say we are going on a family adventure.” “Really?” Abigail smiled excitedly. “Yeah,” I added, forcing a smile back. Nina packed up her stuff in less than a minute and just like that, our shack, the place we had called home all our lives, was empty.

His gaze remained riveted on the mesmerizing sight as he added, “need not speak the words your eyes so clearly confess, love.” C O P Y R I G H T This book is solely a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, incidents and/or occurrences are products of the author's imaginations, and have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual person(s), living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental. Her Strength Her Bane © 2023 by Laramie. Published by O. A. F., writing under the pseudonym, Laramie.

Why were women so damn complicated? As Josh neared one of the smaller lakes that fed off the Saint Johns River, he started to detect another animal—a shifter he hadn't come across before—a bear, but definitely not Wes. Slowing, Josh followed the scent through some cypress trees toward an area dense with foliage, almost as if a ring had formed protecting—a camp? His panther blinked slowly as he stared at the makeshift camp in front of him. There was a small two-man, maybe four-man tent, toward the back of the camp, a firepit in front of that, and a small camp table with a chair in front of the tent. A pair of shorts draped over the back of the chair, and other clothes hung from a rope strung