Ansel's Game (Shifter Fever Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

   Copyright 2017 by Selena Scott - All rights reserved.

  In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  ANSEL

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Preview – Chosen by the Dragon

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ANSEL

  PROLOGUE

  ONE YEAR AGO

  Ruby Sayers skipped a rock off the shallow, almost still, waters of the lagoon where she sat. She wanted to shout something across the water to her brother, but instead she bit her lip and skipped another stone. She was trying to take a step back lately. He was seventeen years old, for God’s sake. And she was woman enough to admit that she was a tiny bit of a helicopter parent.

  She didn’t particularly blame herself for it, considering that she’d had to learn how to be a parent all at once, at age nineteen, when she’d unexpectedly become the sole guardian of her then nine-year-old brother. But it was eight years later, their lives had really started to smooth out, and she knew Griff didn’t need a nagging, harping voice in his ear telling him to be careful jumping between the boulders that surrounded the lagoon.

  But dang it, she really wished he’d be more careful jumping from boulder to boulder! Instead of calling out to him, she squeezed her eyes shut for just a minute, centering herself. It was better if she didn’t watch him. When she felt a little bit better, she grabbed up her camera from her satchel and set about taking some pictures of the lagoon. This would make a lovely place for some engagement photos, she reflected. Or some graduation photos.

  It was a little bit too woodsy for typical wedding shots; no woman in a full wedding gown could make it out this far from the trail. But, in her last five years as a professional photographer, she’d definitely learned that it took all kinds. People came in all shapes and sizes and they wanted all matter of things documented. Hell, Ruby had photographed a cat wedding not three weeks ago. As in, a person had wanted his two cats to be wed.

  She and Griff had been laughing through tears when she’d showed him the final proofs. She smiled now, just thinking about it. And without a second thought, she swung her camera toward Griff, and captured him in a photo in the exact second that he backflipped off a boulder and into the lagoon below.

  Ruby squawked in dismay. Yes. Squawked. The noise tore out of her as she rose up instantly, tossing her camera aside and readying herself to dive into the water after him. Half a second later, he surfaced, grinning and waggling his eyebrows at her.

  “Griff, you ass!” Ruby hollered as she set her hands on her hips. But she couldn’t stay mad. She’d never been able to stay mad when he was smiling like that. Ever since their parents had been declared dead, all of Ruby’s focus had been firmly placed on Griff’s happiness. Which was why she’d made the decision to yank him out of school in Brooklyn two years ago.

  They’d had to leave some friends behind when they moved out here, but Griff was never gonna survive in high school. He often had debilitating migraines that his doctors never could get to the bottom of. And he found himself falling further and further behind in school. When the choice had been to repeat freshman year, or yank him out and help him get his GED, Ruby hadn’t hesitated.

  And for his part, Griff hadn’t either. He was a shy kid, always had been. Even though he’d been born and raised there, the loud, raucous heat of Brooklyn had never quite felt like home. Both Ruby and Griff had breathed a tremendous sigh of relief when they’d finally rolled into the driveway of the summer home their grandparents had left to them a few years back.

  It was small, quaint, and had needed plenty of upgrades to turn it into a year-round home, but two years later, it suited both of them perfectly. Small enough that it was fairly easy to keep clean and just big enough that they had places to stay out of one another’s way.

  Which was becoming increasingly important, Ruby reflected as she watched Griff’s slender, sleek body dive under the water. He was growing up. He was starting to meet—shudder—girls.

  God.

  Ruby sat on the edge of the lagoon and turned her face up to the sun that filtered through the layers on layers of green leaves. What was she gonna do about Griff dating? Up to now, she’d been able to muddle her way through parenting him in each stage of his life because each stage of his life had been something she’d handled first-hand.

  But dating? Yeah. She had zero experience in that arena. Like a big, old, whopping zilch. She hadn’t been, you know, very cute in high school, all that red hair and a little chubby. And she’d only been one year into college when her parents had disappeared. And then, when she’d blossomed (her hair had calmed and she’d made her peace with her curves), which she could admit that she finally had, she’d become a two-for-one deal. Most guys weren’t interested in getting super close to a girl who had a lanky, quiet, often scowling kid attached to her side.

  She sighed. She figured that she’d probably handle it the exact same way she’d handled everything with Griff. With unfiltered, often cringe-worthy honesty. She never wanted him to feel as if she were keeping anything from him. So she’d just gone the safest route and told him the truth. About everything. It had made for hard moments.

  -There was an avalanche, Griff. They can’t find Mom and Dad.

  -They stopped looking for Mom and Dad, Griffie.

  -There’s gonna be a funeral, Griff. We’ll say goodbye together.

  -It’s just you and me. But we’ll make it, Griffie. We’ll make it.

  Hard moments, but ones that she was grateful for in the end. She and Griff trusted one another without question, and he’d understood what had happened from the beginning. There were none of those gut-wrenching, when is Mommy coming home? moments that you so often saw in movies. She’d told him the truth. He’d cried his eyes out, accepted it, and moved on at her side.

  She watched Griff float lazily in the water. He was getting bigger. And he’d started asking her about getting a job of his own. Because the house from their grandparents was bought and paid for, Ruby had been able to keep them in groceries and fairly stylish clothes with just her photography gig. But she had to admit, a little extra pocket money for a kid his age would go a long way. And a job would be good for him. Maybe something physical. Something that could put a little meat on his bones.

  She wondered idly if the carpenter who’d done the upgrades on their home two years ago would ever hire an assistant
on. Her brain quickly skittered away from thoughts of that man. He made her stomach jump. Not in a bad way, but just in a… jumpy way. Slow-talking, slow-eyed, and well over six feet tall, Ruby had always felt nervous in whatever room he was in. So for the most part, she’d kept out of his way while he finished up the project. Occasionally she’d see him around town and she’d give him a quick smile or a nod, but most of the time she found herself busying herself with something, crossing to the other side of the street.

  She supposed some men were just like that. No one else she’d ever met besides that particular one. But it soothed her nerves to think that he was of a particular type that she just wasn’t quite familiar with yet.

  Ruby did a quick scan of the lagoon, saw that Griff was still floating on his own, and stood up to start getting lunch ready for the two of them. Nothing fancy, just some sandwiches she’d tossed into the bag and an orange and a pickle each. And a Nalgene of water to split. She was halfway through setting it out on the small picnic blanket she’d brought when something caught her eye. And sent her stomach right down through the floor.

  Griff was gripping the side of the lagoon, his shoulders up around his ears and the heel of one hand digging into his eye.

  She’d recognize that posture anywhere. It was exactly what he looked like when he was just minutes from experiencing an excruciating migraine.

  Damn. Damndamndamn. Ruby dug through the bag until she found the pills that the last doctor had prescribed, but she knew they wouldn’t work. They never worked. Yet, it was better than just sitting back helplessly. Luckily they still had a few hours before the sun set, so Griff would probably be over the worst of it before they had to hike back out.

  She grabbed the Nalgene, hopped a small shrub and skidded to her knees right next to where Griff gripped the side of the crystal clear pool.

  “Here you go,” she whispered, knowing that extra noise would be excruciating to him now. She wasn’t surprised when he shoved the pill back toward her. He didn’t like taking them and Ruby couldn’t blame him. They didn’t do much besides knock him out for a day and a half.

  “No, Rube,” he groaned. “If I gotta walk out of here in a few hours then you know I can’t take that crap.”

  “Alright,” she whispered back, and then tipped the bottle of water onto his lips. He took a few grateful sips.

  “Rube,” he said through a voice laced with the beginnings of pain. “Do you see that?”

  His eyes were focused on something just over her shoulder. Ruby glanced quickly behind her and then back to Griff, her attention focused on him. But then, what she’d seen slowly registered and Ruby found herself doing the mother of all double takes.

  The small waterfall that fed into the lagoon was… glowing. Amber gold and absolutely incandescent.

  Ruby rose to her feet and turned to stare when something large and wet brushed past her.

  “Griff!” she started; he was moving quickly. Considerably faster than he was ever able to when he was in the first throes of one of his migraines.

  But she could barely keep up.

  “Griff, wait!” she hollered at him as he jogged toward the glowing waterfall. She caught up to him, grabbed his shoulder, swung him around to face her, and barely recognized her little brother. The boy she’d damn near raised. His face was dazed and somehow looked both pained and calm at the same time. His features were both lax and tight. And she knew, without knowing, that his eyes were unseeing. He was gazing at that waterfall like it was otherworldly.

  Something cold and quick zipped up Ruby’s spine and she called his name again. But he didn’t hear her.

  He merely shook her off of him with strength she didn’t know he had. And then he wasn’t jogging, he was full on sprinting toward the waterfall. Water droplets flung off of him, catching the sunlight on their way into the air as he closed the distance.

  Ruby was right behind him, but not quite fast enough. Just one yard behind him. Inches really. And it would be that that would haunt her in the months to come. How close she’d been to being able to grab him again.

  But she wasn’t close enough. Because Griff ducked his head, reached out his arms and dove into the waterfall.

  Ruby full on screamed as one second he was there and the next second he wasn’t. She reached the waterfall one second after he did and she plunged her hands into the water first, looking for a handhold that would help her step through the water and into whatever cave Griff had just dove into. But her hands didn’t find a handhold. They found a solid sheet of rock.

  She screamed her brother’s name and broke fingernails as she scraped her hands through the falling water, searching and searching for whatever hole he’d disappeared into. But she’d found nothing.

  And neither did the cops who eventually came. And neither did the hunting dogs who combed the mountains for him. And neither did the men who dragged the lagoon for his body. No one found a thing.

  Which is how Ruby Sayers found herself one hundred percent alone in this world. Living on the outskirts of a town full of people who started giving her real funny looks. Those of them that would look her in the face, that is.

  Ruby didn’t care. She cared about nothing. Her brother was gone. Just like her parents were gone. Disappeared into nothing. Just like the light of the golden waterfall the second it closed around Griff.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Ansel Keto didn’t consider himself to be a complicated man. Sure, there were plenty of things about him that would make most folks’ mouths drop open–one thing in particular–but besides that, he was just a regular man. With a regular man’s needs. He liked to work hard at something physical every day, which was why carpentry suited him just fine. And he liked to relax in a quiet place with something cool to drink every night. Which was why his two-room cabin up in the Catskills suited him just fine. The porch was perfect for sitting and the view was perfect for looking.

  He was aware that most people viewed him as a rather slow man. And that didn’t bother him at all. He and his three siblings had a pretty juicy secret that they chose to keep to themselves. Each of them had chosen a different way of coping with such a burden, and a different way of throwing folks off the scent.

  Ansel was mostly quiet, patient and methodical and therefore people around here considered him to be one of the duller hatchets in the shed. It never occurred to them that that particular persona was a great way to keep private matters private. It simply didn’t compute for anyone that Ansel Keto might have deep waters.

  His younger twin sisters, Milla and Inka, on the other hand, had very different ways of hiding their, occasionally literal, tracks. Milla was extremely orderly, businesslike and severe. Both of them were identically, breathtakingly beautiful, but people barely got a chance to see it in Milla. She was too busy rushing from place to place, barking into her cellphone or orchestrating grand business mergers filled with this and that. Things that Ansel had no earthly interest in. People tended to avoid Milla. It was said she could raise the blood pressure of anyone within 100 paces.

  Inka, on the other hand, was the daffy one. The wild child, but not in the typical way of young women. While some girls were off getting sweaty in the back seats of cars, Inka was off eating a burrito and counting stars, watching and re-watching old movies, knee deep in a creek and catching frogs. She was the type who sang to herself in public, laughed too loud when she thought something was funny, and dressed in whatever clothes happened to be closest to her hands. People tended to give her quite a wide berth.

  And last but not least was Kain. The baby. Goofy, loose and lovable. There wasn’t a heart in a hundred-mile radius that hadn’t trembled over that smile of his. The biggest flirt in five counties, not one person who cozied up to Kain Keto ever realized that never once did he reveal a personal detail about himself. He could charm the stripes off a zebra, and not a soul realized that the young man was simply hiding in plain sight.

  And so things had gone for them, ever since their parents had pas
sed away. Each of them had a way to pass the time. They saw one another when they could, Milla less often than the rest, as she spent the weekdays in Manhattan and commuted back out to the Catskills for the weekends. They each had their own little niche in the world, their own trade. But nothing was as important as one another.

  Which was why Ansel found himself packing up his tools just a touch earlier than he might have liked that Thursday night. It was his turn to make dinner for Inka and Kain, and to be late would mean that everybody was just a touch grumpier than they had to be. Something he wouldn’t mind avoiding.

  He sighed as he eyeballed the intricate, and very boring, bookshelf he’d been contracted to build for one Ms. Arla Weaver. He suspected two things: 1. That Ms. Arla Weaver had a bit of a sweet spot for him. And 2. That she’d designed this bookshelf to be as painstaking a job as possible to keep Ansel on the job as many days as possible.

  Normally, he would have turned down a job like this without blinking. Not his particular taste. But Ms. Arla Weaver happened to have the good fortune of living just down the mountain from Ms. Ruby Sayers. And there was something inside Ansel that just liked being close to Ruby Sayers.

  He’d done a bit of work for her, right when she’d come to town, and dang if she hadn’t hooked him.

  There was something about that long, messy red braid she liked to wear all down her back. That smudge of red lipstick on her lips. All those flowery red dresses. All that dang red. She even smelled red. Don’t ask him to explain it. It just was. Something about it. Oh, and those blue eyes that were twice the size of everybody else’s. Those didn’t hurt either.

  He’d wanted to ask her to take a walk with him, back when he’d been on the job with her. But judging from the way she could barely look him in the eye, and from the sheer number of things she knocked over the second he came into any room, he figured she would have said no.