Addie (Pack of Misfits #1) - Raven Kennedy Page 0,71

us, one of his enforcers passing him some new clothes. His didn’t survive his shift, considering how fucking big his jaguar is.

Hugo turns to walk to his Jeep, and the three of us exchange a look before climbing in. I take the front seat while Lafe and Herrick settle in the back. He has the top off, so there’s just bars and wind around us as Hugo starts driving. With one hand on the steering wheel, he takes a right and points to a modest-sized house with a long drive and overgrown grass. “That’s my place. Back that way are the mate cabins. Over there are the singles’ warehouses. The rec center and our own gym is this way. We train there. Training is mandatory for every shifter in the pack.”

“Even the females?” Lafe asks, surprised.

I have the same reaction, because it’s rare that females are allowed to train and fight. Usually, they’re kept as the caretakers. It’s medieval and stupid, but most shifters are stuck in the old ways.

“Especially the females,” Hugo answers. “Most of my pack members don’t have predator animals that can protect them in a fight. So we train their human forms to be able to defend themselves, and then we train their prey animal forms to use their own unique strengths to their advantages.”

“Smart,” Herrick says.

Hugo turns down a dirt road and looks at Herrick in the rearview mirror. “Pack Aberrant has to be smart. We don’t have brute strength. Our power comes from something else.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll have to figure that out on your own.”

Hugo parks his Jeep in front of the rec center, where a dozen or so shifters are hanging around. Next to the metal building, there’s an outdoor eating area, set up with dozens of picnic tables and a pile of wood for a bonfire. On the other side is a training yard, enclosed in a short wooden fence. There are two enforcers overlooking a training session going on between four shifters—two females and two males, all in their human form.

When some of the bystanders notice Hugo, they wave and smile and he tilts his head at them in greeting. “Alpha,” a female says, coming up to the side of the Jeep. She’s wearing loose sweats on her body and a toddler on her hip.

“Hey, Janie. How’s it looking today?” he asks her.

Janie casts her eyes over at the training yard where the shifters are running through moves, with shouted orders and direction coming from the enforcers. I can see immediately how well they’re all working together. The sense of camaraderie is strong, and when one of the training females manages to pin the male she’s fighting onto the ground, everyone cheers for her—even the male she beat.

Janie smiles. “It’s going real well, Alpha.”

“Good. And how are you, kid?”

The toddler takes the thumb out of his mouth and beams. “I’m two!”

Hugo chuckles at the two drool-covered fingers the boy is holding up proudly. He musses his hair. “You mind your mother, alright?”

The little boy nods. “Okay.”

Janie smiles and nods at us before walking away, heading back toward the fence line. I watch as the little boy hops off her hip and starts chasing a cricket that’s jumping around on the grass.

Hugo nods at her back. “Janie joined Pack Aberrant eight years ago. Showed up bloody and near unconscious at our gate,” he explains, his voice low but steady. “She’d been beaten within an inch of her life, all because her family of cottontails lived next to the territory of a pack of wolves. The wolf shifters ambushed them in their den one night, for no reason other than the fact that they could. They killed every last one of them. A dozen lives lost in a single night, just like that,” he says, snapping his fingers.

“Janie only managed to escape because her rabbit was fast. She lost her parents, her aunts and uncles, her cousins and siblings...everyone. The alpha wolf shifter beat her, and then used his power to force her to shift into her rabbit form. They thought it was entertaining sport to make the terrified and injured rabbits run from his wolves, and then watch them be caught and mauled to death. Janie got away, though. She ran and she didn’t stop running until she’d crossed two states to find Pack Aberrant. It took three years for me to convince her to shift into her rabbit form again. Another year to get that haunted look out of her eye. And