A Place to Change: Trials of the Blood, #4

Jessica LaRoux, Alpha of the San Antonio Basin pack, may be perpetually thirsty, but she doesn't do labels, or love, or relationships—and she certainly doesn't believe in mates or forever. She's perfectly happy with her giant pack, her vampire-free city, and her secret side hustle.

BUT WHEN SHE ASKS SHEPPARD, the Alpha of the Colorado Springs pack, to be the face of her PR campaign to reveal werewolves to the world at large, she gets more than she bargained for. One brush of a hand sparks a flame that refuses to be extinguished, no matter how much Jess tries to pretend it's nothing.

BESIDES, SHEP WOULD go running for the hills if he found out about her side hustle... wouldn't he?

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2024 by Becca Lynn Mathis

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by an electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

No generative artificial intelligence (AI) was used in the writing of this work. Without in any way limiting the author's exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence technologies to generate text is strictly prohibited.

Edited by Christina Dickinson

Cover by Joolz & Jarling – Julie Nicholls & Uwe Jarling

ISBN 978-1-7331626-9-2 (ebook)

ISBN 979-8-9911225-0-4 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-9911225-1-1 (hardcover)

www.BeccaLynnMathis.com

PROLOGUE

​*** (PAIGE) ***

COULD THIS THING RUN any slower?!

Why is it that computers just seem to know when you’re in a hurry and turn on their defiant chip that makes them go at a snail’s pace instead? Thank God Blair was at lunch and couldn’t hear my frustration with this damn machine.

This was the last thing I needed today, even if it is what I get for procrastinating. I should have built these reports already; I’d had plenty of time, despite the office switch. And Blair was going to kill me, or at least give me an earful, if I didn’t have them ready for today’s meeting with the pack. It’d be the third time this week I delivered something late to her.

God, like learning about werewolves hadn’t been weird enough, now we’re tracking how people talk about them in online spaces so we can appropriately build a PR campaign for them? It was crazy, but I couldn’t argue with the reasoning. Debunking the false information would be crucial to the campaign’s success.

I’d traced some of the popular questions online myself, trying to learn what people were finding, which was nothing truly good. There was a lot of talk about mates and mate-bonding and how viciously protective packs were and honestly, a lot of it harkened back to the way we used to think of wild wolves, back before we understood that they were family units.

But I couldn’t get lost in that research again. I had a report to rebuild.

What do you mean ‘the file is corrupt and cannot be opened?!’ I just used it yesterday! I clicked around on the computer, trying to think of another way to access the report template, but I’m not exactly the most tech-savvy person on the planet, and I kept running into the same error message. Uuugh!

A headache started to press at my temples as I stared blankly at the screen, my hands clasped behind my neck. The only thing to do now was completely rebuild the damn thing from scratch. Well, mostly from scratch. At least I had a copy of last week’s reports to look at. With a deep breath, I took a sip of my coffee, opened a new file, and got to work. I had just forty five minutes to get well over an hour’s worth of work done.

Dammit.

My phone rang, making my eyebrow twitch at its sudden sharpness.

Double dammit!

I picked up the handset and turned on my customer service voice. Eclipse Media, this is Paige.

A male voice answered me. Hi Paige, Eric asked me to run some diagnostics on the PCs connected to the pack’s network. I’ll need to remotely access your PC for a few minutes.

I didn’t recognize this guy, but I knew Eric was the one who ran IT for Jessica’s pack. I glanced at the clock. Forty-four minutes to get the report done.

Seriously? Now? I huffed. I have a report to rebuild and nowhere near enough time to get it done!

I get that, but we need to make sure the network is secure. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.

A couple of minutes? Nothing any tech guy ever did actually went as quick as a couple of minutes. I was going to lose nearly all of my time to this. I raked a hand through my hair, and then smoothed it back into place as I took a deep, slow breath. Murphy’s law. Of course they’d need to do this when I have forty-three minutes left to get this report done.

I don’t have a couple of minutes.

If I can’t get your PC secured today, he said, I’m going to have to lock you out of the pack’s network until I can.

Triple dammit!

I needed on the pack’s network, or I’d have to try to rebuild that report from memory. Another glance at the clock. Forty-two minutes.

Fine, I said with another exasperated huff. But you’re gonna have to walk me through it. I know spreadsheets and presentations, not the technical stuff.

The guy on the phone chuckled. No problem. It’s super easy.

A few clicks through menus later, and the pointer on my screen took on a life of its own as Eric’s assistant got to work. My screen flashed a couple of times before an installation progress bar popped up.

What’s it installing? I asked, like I’d have any clue what the heck the answer would mean.

It’s just a new network support framework, he said. It’ll secure the firewall and ensure no intrusions on the network come from your PC.

Oh, okay. Like I figured, technical mumbo-jumbo. Why the hell did I even ask?

The pointer moved around some more and a keyboard popped up on the screen. He typed out the word ‘test’ in the document I was working on.

Perfect, he said. You’re all set. Thanks a bunch, Paige.

Sure. Great. Have a nice day. I clicked the handset down a little harder than I meant to, not even waiting for a final reply from Eric’s assistant.

Twenty-eight minutes left to rebuild this damn report.

Blair was gonna kill me.

​ONE

*** (JESSICA) ***

IT HAD BEEN NEARLY two months since Sheppard went home with his newest pack member and all their newly-minted bureaucratic protections. Well... technically she was my pack member, at least on paper, but I wasn’t about to try to make a wereleopard choose between a werewolf pack she barely knew and one she didn’t know at all. Hell, I’d be shocked if she was even capable of  pack-bonding.

Still, I had plans in motion, and Blair had been pestering me for over a month to find a face to this PR campaign already. We knew I wasn’t the best choice—I was much more reactive than cool and collected.

But Sheppard was practically the opposite. And he owed me three favors now.

So, I called him up, and told him he should come out to San Antonio while his pack figured out their next steps. I had a guest house they could stay in on my stretch of land, and they’d get out of a town they were done with.

At least, I was pretty sure they were done with Colorado Springs. Once they took down the major vamp nest in an area, his pack usually moved on. Sometimes they’d stick around to clean up the stragglers, but I was under the impression there weren’t many of those left. I didn’t know exactly how many brood destructions that made for them, but I knew it had to be more than four times what my pack had under their belt. Besides, with the military wolves right in his backyard, Sheppard and his pack could move on and let the Army pack clean up the scraps.

He seemed hesitant to leave, though.

Come on, Sheppard. It’s easier to sell a house if no one’s living in it, and we have an international airport in our backyard with plenty more connections than Colorado Springs has.

He chuckled. We don’t exactly have a shortage of housing here, but you make a fair point about the airport. That said, Denver’s only about an hour or so north of us.

Sure, I said, pacing around my room for the fifth time this conversation. But San Antonio International is only twenty minutes from my place, so it’d be more convenient than a bunch of road trips.

And this has nothing to do with the favors I owe you, huh?

I snorted as I stepped onto the cool tile of my bathroom and leaned a hip on the counter. I’d be lying if I tried to tell you that wasn’t at least part of my motive for the offer. I think I know something you can help me with.

Oh?

Nothing you can’t handle, of course. I grabbed the bottle of red nail polish on my vanity and shook it. The little metal ball bearing clinked rhythmically against the interior of the bottle. We’ll talk once you’re all settled. Get out of the military’s backyard and come be around people who actually understand your pack.

I’ll give it some thought.

Lemme know when your flight arrives.

He laughed. Talk to you soon, Jessica.

I ended the call and put the phone down next to the sink as I opened the bottle of nail polish. Crinkling my nose at its sharp scent,  I got to work on my toenails.

He hadn’t said no—at least, not right away.

That was something.

Getting him to agree to be the face that made the world aware of werewolves would be another thing altogether.

​TWO

*** (SHEPPARD) ***

IT TOOK A LITTLE OVER a week to make sure we had everything settled, though we did, in fact, clean up the tail end of the vampires that had nested downtown. Those vamps had been Buckheim’s problem before we came to the area, but as soon as we arrived, they became our problem, and I wasn’t about to shirk that responsibility. Still, once Colorado Springs was as safe as we could possibly make it, there was no sense to us staying.

So, I decided to take Jessica up on her offer, and told the pack to prep for San Antonio. It felt like our only choice, really. If we didn’t leave, we’d be in danger of setting down roots in the military’s backyard, and that’s the last place I’d want to do something like that. Comfort breeds complacency, so getting us moving so we could get to the real move was a far better choice than staying put.

We made it to San Antonio at the very tail end of August, which meant it was about as hot as Texas gets when we arrived. The heat and humidity was a stark contrast to the cooler mountain temperatures we’d known in Colorado.

The house Jessica had available for us was a little tight, but it did fit the whole pack under the same roof—with a master bedroom and a media room in the back corners of the ground floor, plus four more bedrooms and a loft on the upper floor. I took the master bedroom on the ground floor, of course, and all of the mates had private rooms upstairs. Kristos took up the loft, which was next door to Naiya and down the hall from Lynn and Jonathan. Jamie and Ian shared the media room on the ground floor, since there was more than enough couch and floor space for the two of them there.

Once everyone had staked their claim on rooms, I intended to send three pairs of them out to scout potential places for us to settle again. Kaylah decided she wanted to do more than just cook, clean, and do laundry, so I set her up with the task of keeping all the arrangements organized and keeping in touch with the traveling pack members.

Naiya, on the other hand, didn’t take too kindly to the idea of us all splitting up as soon as we arrived in San Antonio.

I thought you said you were staying together, she said, piling her long black hair up into a messy bun on top of her head as her piercing green eyes held my gaze.

It was disconcerting that she could comfortably do that for as long as she did, but it was yet another in a long list of reasons that made me unsure she would ever pack-bond with us. And I wasn’t sure how that would affect the long-term stability of the pack.

We are, I replied. "But we have to go somewhere, which means we need to find the right location."

Don’t you have contacts that can help with that?

I nodded. Sure, but there’s only so much any given pack knows about the goings-on outside of their territory.

‘N we don’ wanna step on toes by tryin’ to share territory, Kaylah added.

Naiya looked over her shoulder, through the window, at Jessica’s main pack house. "So, that’s not what we’re doing here?"

I gave her a gentle smile as I shoved my hands into my pockets, hiding them as they clenched into fists. I did not appreciate such direct opposition, but I wasn’t the ‘giving orders’ type, and Naiya was not quite pack. She wasn’t quite not pack, but she didn’t have the same instinctive need to lean on a leader, nor the instinct to trust in that leader’s decisions.

She wasn’t questioning my leadership. She simply didn’t understand.

I owe Jessica favors, I said, keeping my voice cool and level. She’s asked us to come here while we figure out our next steps so that we’re close enough that she can call in those favors without too much trouble.

Uh-huh. She crossed her arms with a sigh.

Ian placed a hand on her shoulder, drawing her attention. "Sarcina eiusdem sanguinis, Naiya."

Ian had really taken that aphorism to heart. Despite his youth, he was unfailingly there for the pack, even when he had his own rather close-knit group of human friends from before he’d been turned.

Naiya raised an eyebrow at him. What?

It’s Latin, Kristos said as he sat down on the couch. He pointedly looked at the cushion next to him before looking back at her.

It means ‘the blood and the pack are one,’ I said as she sank to the couch next to Kristos.

At least someone could get her to do what they wanted her to.

I suspect New Orleans might be a hotspot of vampire activity, I said. The last I’d heard of a pack down that way was decades ago. Since Matt is our best fighter, sending him there makes the most sense. And since he’s likely to be there for a week or more, sending his mate with him so he doesn’t try to rampage across the city, or get himself killed—

Hey! Matt surged forward in his seat.

Chastity put a hand on his shoulder. He’s not wrong, Matt.

With a sigh, Matt sat back in the chair.

I jerked my chin at him. That’s why sending Chastity with you makes sense. She keeps you level.

Naiya nodded along with the explanation, so at least that was something.

Ian has been tracking the online news about the rifts, I continued, gesturing to him.

"There have been a lot of them in New York," he said.

I nodded. So sending him there to check them out simply makes sense as well. With any luck, we can figure out what the hell is causing them.

‘S’not really our job, though, Shep, Kaylah said as she rearranged packages of meat in the freezer. She marked something down on a scrap of paper she had on the counter and then looked up at me as the freezer door closed.

It’s not, I agreed. But the creatures those rifts occasionally spit out are just as dangerous to people as vampires are—maybe even moreso, since daylight seems to have no real effect on them.

Kaylah shrugged. So who d’you wanna send to Montana?

I surveyed who was left. Kristos said he didn’t trust airplanes. Naiya was too new to know what kind of space we needed, as was Lynn. If I sent Kaylah, we’d mostly have grilled food—which would be a pain in the ass thanks to the heat—or takeout—in a town we were wholly unfamiliar with—until she got back. That left just Daniel and Jonathan, both of them mated. I could send Lynn and Jonathan, but Kristos would object to that unless he went too, which put me back at the problem of airplanes. Plus if Lynn and Kristos and Jonathan went, Naiya would likely end up going too, and that was just silly. I didn’t need that many scouts in one place.

Daniel and Jonathan, you guys up for some time out and about? I didn’t like splitting up mates, but they were the only two that made any kind of sense.

I’ve cleared my caseload for the next month, Daniel said. So I’m happy to go where you need me to.

Jonathan squeezed Lynn’s hand, and he kissed her temple. Absence makes the heart grow fonder?

Lynn placed the back of her wrist against her forehead as she leaned back in her chair. How ever shall I live without you next to me every moment of every day? She straightened with a laugh and elbowed him. I’ll be fine, my love.

He kissed her then, giving me a thumbs-up as he did.

I was so glad those two came together. They could not be more perfect mates for each other. The same was true for Kaylah and Daniel, and Matt and Chastity, of course, but I’d had more time to grow accustomed to their bonds. Unfortunately, all three mate-bonds were a stark contrast to the darkness that swirled around Naiya. Sending that guy across the rift had torn off a piece of her, and I wasn’t sure how long it would take her to recover from that, if ever. Those two might as well have been mate-bonded, even if that wasn’t necessarily how wereleopards and humans worked.

I looked over at Kaylah. So, Daniel and Jonathan, then.

Kaylah clicked her tongue as she nodded. Gotcha. Y’all’ll have flights out by the end of the weekend.

Thanks, Kaylah. I nodded at her before pacing back to the master bedroom to finish unpacking.

I hadn’t forgotten Jessica already had something in mind for one of her favors. The sooner we got settled in, the sooner I could get that done.

​THREE

*** (JESSICA) ***

MY MONTHLY KEYWORD-update meeting with Blair had gone longer than I’d liked, but with the vampires pulling their online shenanigans, we had to figure out a way to get werewolves trending positively again. Normally, Blair would assign that to someone on her team but, since we were specifically keeping the circle of trust small until we knew we could safely widen it, Blair took on the task herself. She explained how she’d set up dummy social media accounts with computer-generated posts to help get people to question the motives of the ones releasing these fight videos online.

It was a good plan. And just another reason I was glad I’d hired her. We put the plan into the chat server for the pack, and set the wolves who were social media gurus on the task of helping her. It didn’t take much nudging, but Blair insisted on making sure to follow everyone that was going to be assisting with the task so she could be sure everyone was staying ‘on brand.’

It was a little before lunchtime when I finally got back to the pack house. The scent of beef and chicken tamales was heavy in the air, and my mouth watered at the thought of biting into a fresh one. But Jay, our resident chef, wasn’t in the kitchen when I came around the corner from the garage. Instead, I found him lying on one of the couches in the great room, his arms behind his head while a wind-up kitchen timer ticked away on his chest.

Jay, I called. You make enough for the visiting pack?

"Si, mami, he replied, not even opening his eyes. And enough for the Howlers crew. Timer says three minutes." He held up his hand with three fingers extended.

You didn’t even look at it!

I’ve been counting the ticks!

I plucked the ticking box from his chest. Sure enough, two minutes and fifty two seconds left to go.

See? He opened one of his eyes to look at me. "I know what I’m doing, mami."

My phone buzzed from my back pocket. You tell the rest of the pack yet?

"Porque no, he replied. You wanna stampede on the house? Besides, they gotta set for ten to fifteen before you eat ‘em. Figured I’d let you tell the pack once you claimed the ones you wanted."

I laughed as I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned back toward my master suite. Thanks.

He waved a hand. You better claim more than you think if you’re hoping to have leftovers. I keep making bigger and bigger batches, but they still keep disappearing.

What do you expect? Imogen asked, coming around the corner of the kitchen with her hair wrapped in a towel. Homemade tamales are the best!

I stepped into my bedroom with its red walls and black furnishings and sat on the leather chair in the corner to take off my boots before thumbing open my phone. It was a text from Sheppard.

Sheppard:

I ran into one of yours running pack errands today.

I huffed out a little laugh as I sat back in the chair and tapped out a reply.

Me:

Color me surprised. You can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting one. Who’d you run into?

Sheppard:

She had loose, dark hair and big eyes. Maybe about as tall as Naiya? She seemed a little jumpy. The barista called her Thalia. When you get a chance, you should probably let her know that a triple espresso isn’t gonna do anything for her that a single wouldn’t.

Thalia was one of the wolves I had taking journalism and video editing classes so she could help my teams around the country with debunking the videos the vampires kept releasing. And I’d told her probably a dozen times already that a triple shot of espresso wasn’t doing her any favors.

Me:

lol – She knows, but she swears she can feel the difference. She was probably on her way to class. I’ve got a handful of wolves working on communications degrees at UT.

Did she clock you?

Sheppard:

I’m pretty sure she did. She kept her head down as she passed me, very clearly focusing on the ground in front of her. She knows she doesn’t have to do that for an alpha, right?

There were a lot of things Thalia didn’t have to do. But she’d grown up in a very conservative home, and her first pack was a church pack, though she cut ties with them as soon as she had her first ‘disciplinary action’ for daring to question why they’d captured a bloodsucker instead of just killing him. Turns out they were using the vamp to track the rest of the brood, but church packs don’t take kindly to even a hint of insubordination. It’d been an uphill battle to get her to relax, and her breakup with Eric a handful of months ago didn’t help any.

Me:

She does that to me too sometimes. I keep telling her, but she’s pretty big on assumed protocol.

Sheppard:

Kaylah used to be like that too. She’ll mellow out.

Me:

They always seem to, at least a little... excluding your pit fighter, of course.

The typing bubble came up and disappeared a few times before I finally got a reply.

Sheppard:

Matt?

Me:

You mean to tell me there are multiple members of your pack with faces all scarred to hell?

Sheppard:

No... and Matt has mellowed over the years.

Mellowed? Really? I didn’t see it, but then again, he wasn’t my pack. I just knew I didn’t ever wanna be on his bad side.

Me:

He was a real force of nature back when the church got pushy.

Sheppard:

You were too, as I recall.

I couldn’t help but smile at that. Sheppard had been instrumental in putting the church in its place back then, though I’d only realized that in retrospect. Losing my own alpha to those fights while simultaneously turning away from the church had me stuck in a rut of just going through the motions. So it was nice to know that I hadn’t been completely useless back then.

Me:

Thank you.

Jess, Jay said quietly, standing in my doorframe. Tamale time. He jerked his head back toward the kitchen.

I nodded as I stood. Thanks, Jay.

I’d completely missed the ding of his timer. I furrowed my brow. No, I bet he stopped it from ringing so he wouldn’t call in the wolves before he was ready for them.

I padded out to the kitchen and gathered a plate full of tamales.

Put the ones for Sheppard’s pack to the side, I said. I’ll take them over when I’m done eating.

"You got it, mami, Jay replied. I found a nice big basket at the farmer’s market when I got the corn husks and the stuff for the masa."

Perfect, I said, sitting at the breakfast nook. It was built into the curve of the bay windows overlooking the backyard, across from our positively giant kitchen.

I had half my plate of tamales down before my phone buzzed again. I unwrapped the next one and licked some of the seasoning from my fingers before wiping them off on a napkin. Imogen, her blonde hair now blow-dried and straightened, plunked the bottle of hot sauce onto the table as she sat down across from me with her own plate full of tamales.

She jerked her chin toward my phone as she unwrapped the first few tamales on her plate. Who’s buzzin’?

I thumbed open the screen. Sheppard.

Problems?

I shook my head. Nah, he’s just chatty.

Sheppard:

So if your pack’s all over a town as big as this one, what do you do when you need some space to think?

I started to type a reply, but deleted it as I thought about it. Did I