Red Havoc Rogue (Red Havoc Panthers #1)
T.S. Joyce
Chapter One
Annalise Sutter leaned against the open doorframe to the cage room and crossed her arms over her chest as she blew out a long sigh. This was goodbye to her old life and hello to her new one.
The walls were covered in claw marks from the animal inside her. Strips of floral wallpaper hung in tatters down the wall, the single mattress in the corner was shredded and leaking fluff and bedsprings, and there were several holes in the sheetrock that exposed the metal bars her brother, Samuel, had built into the walls to keep her from escaping and mauling the neighbors.
The panther inside of her was insane.
She was a rip-roaring, razor-clawed brawler set on bleeding anything that dared to breathe around her. Samuel had jokingly named her “Angel” after the first time he’d met the panther. She-Devil was more like it. She-Devil ripped out of her whenever she felt like it and went insane, sometimes for days. Six months of this—fearing the monster in her middle—and Samuel had found her a shot at a new life with some panther shifter crew out in the boonies. Probably a bunch of smelly mountain men living in the trees or wherever it was that panther shifters liked to live.
Her phone dinged, and a sudden wave of butterflies fluttered around in her stomach. It was him. She knew it before she pulled it from her pocket and opened the home screen. As she read his name on the caller ID, a sudden wave of sadness overwhelmed her. Saying goodbye to her old life meant saying goodbye to Jaxon, and he was the only thing that had kept her steady as she’d transitioned into this person she didn’t recognize.
Hey, Anna. Thinking about you and wishing you were here. The sun’s setting over the falls.
Her phone dinged again, and a picture of a pretty orange sunset came through. The sun was sinking between two mountains in the distance, and in front was a gently rolling river. It was stunning, and she wished more than anything she was a normal girl who could share a sunset with a normal man like him.
She smiled sadly and typed in, What would you do if I walked up behind you and wrapped my arms around your middle right now, and told you not to turn around, just be with me until the sun disappears between those two mountains? Send. Yeah, she was feeling mushy. She’d been putting off her goodbye.
A response came a few seconds later. I’d say okay, but I would put your hand down the front of my pants while we watched it.
She giggled. He was good at surprising her out of melancholy moods. She would miss that the most. How was work? Send.
The front door banged open and Samuel called, “Annalise, are you ready to go? We’re burnin’ daylight. Is this all you packed? And why the fuck is your suitcase purple? What happened to the black ones dad got you?”
Annalise snarled up her lip at the pain of the mention of her parents. She’d had to back off the relationship with them to protect them from She-Devil. Maybe someday, if she could get the panther under control, she could hug them again. Annalise made her way out of the cage room and into the living room. “I didn’t want us to have matching luggage anymore, Samuel. I like purple.” Samuel’s blue eyes flashed with disgust as he hauled her luggage out the front door. Her house was small, but it was hers. Or it had been until she’d been forced to break the lease by Mr. Toots. That was what she called her landlord, even though his real name was Daniel Poots, which was almost just as bad. It was either move out or he would go to the hometown newspaper about her panther and force her to register as a shifter.
Fuck that, Mr. Toots. She-Devil was a secret Annalise would go to her grave with.
Her phone chirped. Work was dirty. Just getting off. Cracking open a beer. What are you doing? Send me a pic.
A naughty pic? Send.
I like where your head’s at, but no. Send me a pic of what you’re doing. I feel really fucking far away from you lately.
What do you mean? Send.
You know what I mean. You’ve been quiet. Something’s going on that you aren’t telling me. Pic please. Convince me you haven’t moved on already.
Just to test him, she typed out, Did you follow that story about Dark Kane? Send.
Dark Kane?
Yeah, the dragon shifter that burned the Rocky Mountains? Send.
Samuel was waving her to the car now, looking frustrated as hell that she was taking so long. It was an all-day drive where they were going. She put one finger up and closed the door so she could do this in private. Jaxon was stalling on answering. He always did this when he didn’t want to talk about something. That man was a closed-off mystery who only gave her the barest hints of his life. And she’d been totally addicted to unravelling the complicated ball of tangled yarn that he was. She’d breathed for the moments when he would slip up and tell her something real.
But this is where the distraction stopped. She had to focus now on fixing her life. Annalise’s stomach hurt so bad, she wanted to double over the pain. She missed him already.
The phone chirped. You know I don’t follow that shifter shit. What’s going on?
Jaxon was anti-shifter, and she was the most volatile one. He was human, and she’d made a huge mistake that had stolen her humanity away. She was about to go live in the Appalachian Mountains, cut off from everything she knew. She would never hug him, or hold his hand, or go to the movies or grocery shopping, or sleep beside him or any of a hundred thousand things she’d imagined doing with him over the past few months.
They were both too different.
No, not just different.
They were incompatible.
I’ve missed you. Send.
Then stop missing me, Anna. Tell me what’s going on. I can help you fix it. I’m right here.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she opened the door slowly and took a picture of her brother leaned up against the car, arms crossed, glaring at her. And then she did something that would hurt her for always because it would hurt someone she had grown to care for deeply.
She sent the picture of her brother and typed out, The distance you felt was real. I have moved on. It’s moving day. I’m moving in with him. I’m so sorry. Send.
Shoulders heaving with her emotions, she rushed to the kitchen sink and dropped her phone into a bowl of water that sat inside. If she didn’t cut herself off completely, she would get weak and crawl back. She would drag both of their hearts through this because she couldn’t help herself. Jaxon was her addiction. He was happy moments when she’d been struggling to find them before. Even if he was full of secrets and closed off half the time, he still felt steady.
Hands shaking, she clenched them at her sides and forced herself to leave the phone drowning in the water. It was done. No more leading him on, no more pretending she could have a normal life with someone like him.
It was high time she, Annalise Sutter, accepted that she was a shifter.