Elliot, page 1
part #3 of Anarock Shifters Series
Elliot
Anarock Shifters, Book 3
Romi Hart
Copyright © 2019 by Romi Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Also by Romi Hart
Anarock Shifters Series
Victor
Bryce
Elliot
Devil’s Flame MC Series
Rafe
Zeke
Eli
Harrison
Corey
BOX SETS
Stamina
Out of Bounds
Playing to Win
Untamed Billionaires
Dangerous
Untamed Billionaires Series
The Billionaire Bull
The Billionaire Bold
The Billionaire Brute
Playing to Win Series
One Kiss to Win
One Chance to Win
One Cheer to Win
Out of Bounds Series
Temptation
Addiction
Passion
Dangerous Series
Dangerous Play
Dirty Play
Daring Play
Stand Alone Books
Sinner
Big Slide
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Victor (Anarock Shifters, Book 1) - Special Preview
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Romi Hart
1
Elliot Weeks slammed both fists down on the table. Pens bounced before they settled. “You can’t do this! You can’t stand by and let them get away with this.”
Colonel Horace Weeks drew himself up to his full height and confronted Elliot. His one eye glared and his half mouth hardened into a stern line. Elliot knew that expression only too well, but Victor Griffin spoke before the Colonel could say anything. “We have no other option. Alexa made a free choice. We offered to bring her in and she turned and ran off.”
Elliot rounded on him spitting tacks. “You were only too happy to let her run off, too, weren’t you? You were happy to see your problems run off to bother somebody else for a change. I only wish you were man enough to admit it.”
Colonel Weeks snarled under his breath. “You better watch your step around here, boy. We’re all upset about this. That’s no reason to forget our manners.”
“And you!” Elliot lunged for his father, but he stopped himself from actually crawling across the table to grab his father by the throat. He wanted to, though. “You go along with this! You stand around in this fucking war room talking while she’s out there doing God knows what. She could be in danger. She could be fucking dead by now and you don’t even care.”
Riley Strickland spoke up for the first time. “We all care. We care about Bryce and Alexa. It’s thanks to both of them that we’re alive and we know about this fucking Omega Battalion at all. They risked everything for Anarock. We’ll do everything we can to help them, but right now, we have bigger fish to fry. They wouldn’t want us putting Anarock in danger to help them.”
Elliot shoved off the table, but he didn’t unclench his fists. Every face at this table enraged him beyond endurance. “You can’t seriously expect me to believe Alexa ran off to be with that…. that traitor. How can you even begin to think that?” He bared his teeth at Victor. “You said in front of everyone that you would kill him if he ever showed his face around here. He did and you let him go.”
“I didn’t let him go,” Victor murmured. “Malachai and I both tried to kill him during the air battle. Alexa defended him and then the Omega Battalion took him away with them. She went with them. We can only assume she did this to get him back. We don’t know for sure.”
Elliot locked his teeth and narrowed his eyes at Victor. “If you don’t do something to bring Alexa back, I will.”
“You’ll pull your head in before you get it bitten off, boy,” his father rumbled. “You don’t speak to this man like that—not in my presence or out of it. Are we clear?”
Elliot’s shoulders slumped, but when he scanned the group, he lowered his voice to a threatening growl. “I meant what I said. You can’t hold me back forever. None of you gives a flying fuck about Alexa, but I still do. I’ll get her back if it’s the last thing I ever do. You all stand around and talk. I’m out of here.”
He spun on his heel and stormed out of the war room. He blasted through the doors and hit the corridor. He didn’t know yet what he would do. He only knew that, for the first time in his life, he couldn’t rely on the Prometheus Crest to protect him and his family.
His father only cared about kissing Victor’s ass and playing along as commanding officer. He would let his own daughter twist in the wind rather than step out of line.
Elliot played through their arguments one after the other and dismantled them. Riley kept insisting that Bryce and Alexa were trying to help Anarock from inside the Omega Battalion. Well, that didn’t really make a difference in the end, did it? If the Omega Battalion was holding Alexa against her will and using her power to threaten Anarock, then that only made it more imperative to get her out of there, didn’t it?
He cursed his father and Victor and Riley and Malachai and the whole Prometheus Crest. They were all so stuffed full of their own political importance that they couldn’t act. All they could do was talk.
Elliot trotted up the stairs and emerged into a bare concrete passage spray-painted with graffiti on all sides. Reeking drunks and half-dead homeless wrecks slouched in corners and sprawled across his path. He picked his way between bodies wrapped in rotten rags to the steps exiting Ogru-Kuche.
From here, he could see the ten-foot barbed-wire fence surrounding the Prometheus Crest headquarters. A heavy iron chain and padlock held the gate shut against all intruders. He couldn’t see Jules Hitchcock, but that didn’t surprise Elliot. No one saw Jules until Jules was ready to let someone see him. That made him the perfect guard.
Beyond the gate, the streets and neighborhoods of Central City New Orleans extended out to the human world. None of those innocent people knew or cared that a whole society of New Breed mutants lived side by side with normal humans. None of them suspected that the toxic waters of the Louisiana bayou changed millions of people into New Breed with fearsome powers and an underground society all their own.
Elliot considered his options. If he left Ogru-Kuche now, he would never come back—not the way he did before. If he really intended to turn his back on the Prometheus Crest and get his sister back, he would cross a line in the sand. He would make enemies of his father, his brothers, and a whole lot of other people—and for what? For Alexa?
If he believed Riley, Alexa wouldn’t want Elliot betraying the Prometheus Crest. Alexa loved Victor more than anything—at least, she used to. She ran off when he married Riley. That seemed to indicate she turned her back on the Prometheus Crest, too, but Riley didn’t seem to think so.
Riley was the only person in Anarock who had spoken to Alexa and Bryce Griffin since both of them disappeared on Victor and Riley’s wedding day. Why should Elliot doubt Riley’s word?
Standing on those steps, Elliot realized he’d already crossed that line. He already betrayed his family and his Crest in his heart. All he had to do was follow through.
So where could he go? What could he do? Who could he turn to to get information on Bryce and Alexa’s whereabouts?
His gaze skated over Central City, but his mind ranged farther afield. Shifters dominated the Prometheus Crest, but they weren’t the only Crest in Anarock. The most powerful magic-wielders belonged to NightRage Crest. They fought the Omega Battalion for Victor. They must be tracking those freaks wherever they went after the battle.
NightRage lived in other parts of the city, dangerous parts where sane men feared to tread. They lived in Zion City and Hoffman Triangle—neighborhoods where every man, woman, and child needed paranormal powers just to survive.
Did he dare go there? Did he dare to throw himself on NightRage’s mercy? If he did that, he could never show his face in the Prometheus Crest again. He would become a traitor just like Bryce Griffin. He would become a marked man. Only NightRage would be able to protect him from his own people.
Elliot knew his father too well to delude himself of the consequences. No one could match Colonel Weeks for loyalty to the Prometheus Crest. He would turn on his own son before he betrayed his Crest and the Crest meant Victor. What Victor said went and Victor already decided to let Bryce and Alexa go.
Elliot couldn’t accept that. Maybe he never really accepted Victor as his leader at all. Elliot pledged his fealty to Victor at the wedding the same as all the others, but that was before he found out about Alexa. Alexa loved Victor. Elliot might be one of the few people
That was no reason to discard her when something better turned up. That was no reason to drive Alexa out of the only home she’d ever known.
Elliot couldn’t accept Riley’s assessment. He couldn’t just give Victor a pass for rejecting his sister. Even if, by some chance, Alexa returned to the Omega Battalion of her own volition to save Bryce, that only proved Elliot’s point. Alexa never would have been anywhere near the Omega Battalion in the first place if Victor hadn’t thrown her away like he did. She never would have left Anarock. She never would have hooked up with Bryce—if that was in fact what she did.
Either way, Elliot wouldn’t abandon her to those crackpot circus freaks. He still knew the value of family. He would get her back come Hell or high water. He didn’t care if he had to join NightRage to do it.
He set off walking. Jules appeared at the gate and let Elliot through the way Jules always did. Elliot Weeks moving in and out of Ogru-Kuche never raised any eyebrows. No one could see the change from the outside. In his heart, nothing would ever be the same.
He walked away without a backward glance. He never wanted to see the place or his family or the Griffins again. He wanted nothing of the whole fucking Prometheus Crest and their politics and their war room and their strategies. They could all go suck on it.
He strode from one block to the next, past businesses and houses and people leaning against cars. He passed dozens of people that he knew—all of them loyal to the Crest—his Crest—what he considered his Crest up until a few moments ago.
He came to South Claiborne Avenue and stopped. He gazed across a very normal-looking street. A strip of lawn separated Central City from Hoffman Triangle. To the untrained eye, it looked like any other New Orleans neighborhood.
He checked both ways for a gap in the traffic. He was just making up his mind to migrate down to the crosswalk when a familiar voice called him. “Elliot! Elliot! Where are you going?”
He didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. He kept his eyes locked on houses across the road. “What’s up, Aria?”
Aria Slaughter hustled up next to him. “Hey! For a second, it almost looked like you were about to cross the street.”
He didn’t look at her. He couldn’t. He didn’t want her to see the truth that he was about to cross the street. He mumbled over his shoulder instead. “You shouldn’t be out here. Don’t you have work or something?”
“Mama gave me and Amaya the day off. It’s Gianna’s birthday on Saturday, so we’re planning a surprise party for her. We were thinking of checking out that new Bejeezus band at the Orion. Do you want to come?”
“I don’t know, Aria,” he mused. “I might be busy.”
Her tone changed in a heartbeat. “Shit. You’re always busy. That’s all I ever hear from you anymore.”
He really did turn his head and look right at her this time. “It ain’t like that. Don’t go painting it as such when it ain’t.”
She bobbed her head sideways. Her long, straight black hair sizzled in the sunlight and her black eyes glittered. That girl could throw her attitude around like nobody’s business. “Go fuck yourself with your ‘it ain’t like that’ when you know it is like that. Don’t go shoving your bullshit up my ass, Elliot Weeks, ‘cuz I ain’t that stupid. It’s me who’s always asking you out and never the other way around. Fuck, you ain’t asked me out in six months and the last five times I have asked you out, you’ve been too fucking busy to turn around and look at me when you speak. If that’s the way you wanna play, just come right out and own it. Don’t fuck with me ‘cuz I’ve got better things to do.”
Her voice cut him to the quick. Normally, that biting tone would make him mad, but a hidden catch in her throat made him swivel around to confront her. She wore her usual pencil jeans and her denim jacket the way she always did. She wore those same Doc Marten boots every day of her life, but her lack of fashion sense didn’t make her any less miraculously beautiful.
Her Choctaw features gave her a harsh, dangerous appearance, but Elliot knew her too well to fall for that illusion. Underneath, she was just as sweet and innocent and vulnerable as a man could hope a girl to be. She put up a tough exterior because she wore her heart on her sleeve where anybody could come along and hurt it.
He spent too much time with her not to recognize when something was bothering her. The worst part was that she was right. Ever since the military attack on Anarock, Elliot got more and more distracted by politics. That was another reason to distance himself from the Prometheus Crest. He let himself get sucked into the same all-consuming vortex as his father and his brothers.
He didn’t mean to slight Aria. He honestly cared about her. He might even feel tempted to think they had a future together. One hiccup after another prevented him from accepting her many invitations to spend time together, much as he might like to.
When he faced her, he couldn’t hide from the pinched, strained expression around her eyes. He knew he would see that expression there. He softened and sidled toward her. For a second, he actually forgot the errand he wanted to attend to across the street.
“Hey,” he breathed. “It ain’t like that. You know I always want to go out with you.”
“Not much, I’d say.” She shook her hair aside and looked across the street. She didn’t see Hoffman Triangle, though. She wouldn’t want anything to do with that. Only he would toy with that.
She raised her hand and brushed aside a strand of her long, silken tresses. They shone so sleek and black against the sun that they tricked Elliot’s vision. He had to double-check that there really was something there to see and not just a vision or a shadow.
He eased a step closer to her and put out his hand to touch her shoulder. “I didn’t say I couldn’t come to the Orion, but I’d rather do something with just you—just the two of us.”
“You never want to spend time with my family,” she countered. “You always want to go somewhere alone. I swear you don’t like my family or else you’re trying to send me a message that you don’t want to be seen with me in public. It’s one or the other.”
“I ain’t. You know I think the world of you and your family.”
She compressed her lips and threw her weight to her other foot. She waved her hand at nothing. “Your actions say something else. You’ve been telling me in a thousand ways for months that you ain’t interested in nothing but a piece of that. Well, I got your message loud and clear. You don’t have to hide it anymore. Just run along and get your piece of poontang somewhere else ‘cuz this bitch values herself too much to put up with a trifling player like you.”
She rotated to walk away. Elliot saw his one chance at redemption slipping through his fingers. He jumped forward and caught her by the elbow. “I don’t want no other piece of poontang. Jesus fucking Christ, Aria! Give a man a break, will you? Don’t you know my dad has been trying to rope me into helping the Crest all this time? I gotta run interference for him in between everything else I gotta do. That’s the only reason I’ve been too busy to go out. There ain’t no other woman for me. You know that.”
“I don’t know that.” She yanked her arm away. “If that’s true, you march right down to Ogru-Kuche and tell him you need to make time to go out with me. It’s that simple. Oh, what? You won’t do it? That’s because you’re full of shit, Elliot. I’ve known it for months and now I know it for sure. Your dad is trying to rope you into helping the Crest? Well, what’s so wrong about that? Go help the fucking Crest. I don’t give a shit. Just don’t fucking play me. I’m sick to death of players. That’s all this town’s ever got anymore.”
