Break This! (A 300 Moons Book)

C
opyright
© 2016 by 13th Story Press
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

1
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acked with steamy shifters
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F
or the Black List
, my ravenous little book devouring vixens!

And for Patricia, and all the other friends who make this book world so much fun!

S
ome people said
Kate Harkness was a witch.

Others said she was an angel.

But to the very special group of foundlings in her care, she was just Mom.

Mom, with a long ponytail of frizzy yellow hair, smiling so hard that her sunburnt cheeks nearly covered her eyes. Mom, pushing a wheelbarrow or driving the pick-up truck that pulled the hayride at Harkness Farms. Mom, laying down the law when you messed up, and making you want to cry with pride when you had earned her gruff praise.

Any mom will tell you her children are special, but the kids who came to live at Harkness Farms weren’t exactly your run of the mill orphans. Kate’s children all possessed special gifts. Unique abilities, you might say. Each one had the unlikely power to shift into the form of an animal or magical creature.

And it was precisely because of these blessings that the children found their way to Kate Harkness. Most shifters didn’t have the power to change until adolescence. But rarely, a child would come into their gift early. And sometimes, this was just too much for even a shifter family to handle.

But not too much for Kate.

Bear. Wolf. Tiger. Dog. Butterfly. Dragon. It didn’t matter.

She made room in her home and her heart for them all.

To help them, every precocious young shifter brought to Harkness Farms was paid a visit by Gloria Cortez, a witch of no little renown, on the night of their arrival. Although Mrs. Cortez’s role in their everyday lives wasn’t as evident as Kate’s, it was no less important.

The tiny woman would cradle the child in her warm arms and whisper a sweet song, though none could ever remember the words.

“Three hundred moons, Kate,” she would say with a crinkly-eyed smile, handing the child off again.

“And then what, Gloria?” some of the children heard their Mom whisper one night, when they had snuck downstairs to witness the welcome ceremony of a new sibling.

“And then we wait,” Mrs. Cortez replied. “Magic always has a price. We’ll find it out soon enough.”

The children all believed that Mrs. Cortez had somehow given them the power to control their animals, to live a normal life among the rest of the world. But whenever they tried to ask Mom about it, she told them they would know well enough when they were older, and set them to work on one farm chore or another.

Eventually, they stopped asking. And the song was all but forgotten.

But now is a significant time for the first group of children who came into the care of Kate Harkness all those years ago. The 300th moon is finally upon them. Some memories refuse to stay forgotten forever.

And some prices won’t remain unpaid.

C
hance Harkness dodged
another punch as he waited for the opening that would give him his shot.

The man in front of him was thinking about throwing a right cross next. Chance could see it in his eyes. And by the way he telegraphed it when he shifted the weight to his back foot.

Most people would see a punch from a six-foot-two, two hundred plus pound guy as a bad thing.

Not Chance. Chance saw it as an opportunity.

He let the guy set up his punch for a fraction of a second, waiting for him to commit to it.

When the strike came, Chance dodged it, then ducked the hook that followed as he charged in for the takedown.

Without missing a beat, he grabbed the guy’s legs, scooped him up, and dumped him on the mat, landing in a secure position.

Boom.
Nailed it.

An opponent would be in real trouble right now.

But this wasn’t an opponent. This was his sparring partner.

“Again,” Alexei said from the edge of the mat in a bored voice, his Russian accent ringing off the walls of the gym.

Alexei Serghov was younger than most MMA coaches. He’d been forced to leave the ring himself after shattering his leg in a motorcycle accident. He had a great head for strategy, and he was ruthless with Chance.

Which was exactly what Chance wanted.

Chance and his sparring partner, Tony, got up and touched gloves again. Again they circled, and again Chance took him down, feeling an exhilaration he didn’t feel anywhere else in his life.

“Again,” Alexei said. Because a hundred times wasn’t enough.

Chance hopped up, ready for another shot. He was always ready for another run. His muscles could take a lot without tiring. Right now his body felt warm and supple. He was just hitting his stride after forty minutes of sparring.

“You’re still dropping your left hand too early,” Alexei warned him. “You’re gonna get your clock cleaned if Blanco’s camp catches that in the tapes.”

Van Blanco.

Chance almost shivered with pleasure at the idea of facing off with such an opponent.

And the idea that it was for a number one contender spot was icing on the cake. The winner of the fight was guaranteed a title shot at the big New Year’s Eve event.

Chance had watched hours of Blanco fighting. The guy was a great striker. He had a decent submission game too; he was a solid all around fighter, and more importantly, he had a will of steel.

If Blanco had one weakness, it was his wrestling. Which just happened to be Chance’s strength.

The fans were expecting fireworks from a matchup like this, and they weren’t alone. The president of the Absolute Combat League, Jason Garelli, had called Chance personally to offer him the fight.

Chance had no intention of letting anyone down.

He’d been working hard for this ever since he’d convinced his foster mom to let him join the wrestling team in sixth grade.

Now, he was undefeated in his six fight professional career.

There were times when it seemed too good to be true.

Alexei and his old coach had both told Chance that he won fights because he trained hard and fought smart, but he couldn’t help but wonder…

He shook himself slightly like a wet dog, drops of sweat flying out of his hair.

He nodded to Alexei to acknowledge the note, then returned to touch gloves with his partner once more.

Chance tried to clear his mind completely of the train of thought he’d been on but it was a well-worn mental path and a hard one for him to abandon.

Chance was a good fighter. And he did work harder than anyone else at the gym.

But Chance was also a shifter.

A bear shifter, who had been put under a spell as a child that restrained his animal side, and who tried hard never to allow his bestial nature to interfere with his fighting.

Nonetheless, it was impossible for Chance not to wonder: Was it his dedication that won him fights? Or did his bear give him an unfair advantage?

Tony jabbed at him and there was no more time to worry about it. Chance blocked and countered with a body shot.

Tony came right back at him and they exchanged blows for a few minutes. Then Chance saw his opening.

He shot in for another takedown, working a classic ankle pick into a single-leg.

Out of nowhere a searing pain blossomed in his chest.

His vision dimmed slightly, as if clouds had gathered over the room.

Was he having a heart attack? Chance was a big dude, it was all muscle but there was a lot of it. It wasn’t unheard of.

But no, the white hot pain wasn’t
in
his chest. It was
on
his chest. His skin seared as if he had pressed it against a hot iron.

In his confusion, he lost his grip on Tony, who reversed the move, and they crashed to the mat, with Chance on the bottom for the first time that day.

Tony began to hit, catching Chance above his right eye in spite of his belated attempts to protect himself.

“
Defense
,” Alexei yelled.

Everything after that seemed to happen in slow motion, as if Chance were watching it rather than participating.

Something inside him snapped. The bear charged protectively to the foreground.

It wasn’t the pain. He was used to that. It was a regular part of the training.

But whatever was burning him had the bear enraged. Through its eyes, Chance knew it viewed the burning as unnatural and evil.

Above him, Tony was still raining down blows.

The bear tensed to strike, not understanding that Tony wasn’t causing the burn.

No, please, he’s a friend,
Chance begged the bear. The focus he needed to restrain the furious creature was too much, he was taking more shots.

“Get your hands up!” Alexei shouted in frustration. “Active guard. Look for the sweep.”

But the bear was rushing at him like never before.

In desperation, Chance reached up, put both hands on his partner’s chest, and straightened his arms.

This was a move that should land him in an instant arm bar, especially against a Jiu-Jitsu black belt. But Chance had bet on the bear.

The bear did not fail him. As he had predicted, it pushed hard with him - its strength pushing with Chance’s was enough to send his partner flying off him.

Instantly, Chance was on his feet. But the bear was taking control now. He pounced on Tony before he could recover, and began a ground and pound assault on him. He landed a few good shots, enough to subdue his partner.

But the bear wasn’t finished.

The bear wouldn’t be satisfied until the threat was taken out entirely.

The bear wanted blood.

Chance felt himself hauling back for a big shot.

Pinned beneath him, Tony was already dazed. There was no way he would block. With the strength of his bear behind it, this was going to be a brutal punch. A knockout. Maybe more than that.

Please, no, please,
Chance begged.

And then, as quickly as it had come, the burning sensation disappeared.

Hoping that with the horrible burning gone, the bear would view the threat as being gone, Chance pushed desperately at his mind for control.

The bear backed down immediately, leaving Chance in the driver’s seat.

Suddenly, the lights were bright again and he tasted the blood in his mouth.

Chance rolled off Tony and stood immediately, extending a hand to help his dazed partner to his feet.

Alexei stepped onto the mat and handed him a towel.

“What the hell was that?” he scolded. “I mean, I like the aggressiveness, and the comeback, but you can’t pull that shit in the cage. If you straighten your arms like that against Blanco, you might not walk out with both of them still attached.”

“Sorry, coach,” Chance said, feeling more like he ought to apologize to Tony, who had never taken any cheap shots on him in all the time they’d worked out together. But Tony was already heading to the locker room, shaking his head. It was probably best to leave him alone and make it right with him later.

“Hit the showers. I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning,” Alexei said, running a hand through his dirty blond hair.

Chance nodded and wiped his face with the towel.

The bear had never been a big part of his life. That spell Mrs. Cortez put on him when he was just a kid seemed to have taken pretty well. Other than his sweet tooth and fondness for a good fight, Chance didn’t much feel like a shifter. At least not the way his foster sister Darcy did.

He headed for the showers, wondering if this is what life would be like after his 300th moon.

If so, his career was over. The bear might be spooked by anything.

Though in fairness, the pain in his chest had been really intense.

Tony was leaving the locker room as he entered.

“Sorry, man, I kind of lost it in there,” Chance told him.

“No worries,” Tony said, smiling uncertainly. “I get it. Big fight coming up.”

Chance felt awful, but there was nothing he could do to make it right. He certainly couldn’t say,
Sorry, dude, but I almost turned into a bear just then. Happens to the best of us.

The sound of the door closing behind Tony brought him back to the present.

Chance was hungry, thirsty, tired. He would feel better after a good meal.

He peeled his form-fitting Under Armour top off and glanced in the mirror. He’d always been big and muscular, but the way he was working out lately he was so ripped it was sick.

He was startled to see something on his chest, a dark marking where he’d felt the burning sensation earlier.

Stepping closer to the mirror, he saw it wasn’t exactly a marking on
him. Something dark
inside
him seemed to be moving, swirling upward toward the surface of his skin. Like someone had decided to give him a tattoo from the inside out.

But a tattoo of what?