Heart of Glass Read online

  They call him Skittles because he inks his body with the colors he can't see. Enough colors to tell a story. Like a stained-glass window, the light only shines through when there is darkness. He needs darkness, and she comes to him as a photo of broken captive woman. But he will find her, and he will fix her. And perhaps... she will heal him too in the process.

  They call her Seven, a title given to her by the crime lord holding her captive. It's meant to strip her identity and make her a possession instead of a person. But she remembers who she really is, and she knows the Firecats are coming for her. When they do, she will have her revenge on the ones who wronged her. As long as the one called Skittles doesn't derail her plans with his careful attention. Attention she craves.

  Can a fire breathing werecat show her a different future awaits her after freedom? Nothing is sweeter than revenge, they say. But maybe it's only because they've never tasted the rainbow.

  Heart of Glass

  FIRECATS

  Book Three

  By P. Jameson

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  Heart of Glass

  Copyright © 2019 by P. Jameson

  First electronic publication: March 2019

  United States of America

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, redistributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in any database, without prior written permission from the author, with the exception of brief quotations contained in critical reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this work may be scanned, uploaded, or otherwise distributed via the internet or any other means, including electronic or print without the author’s written permission.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover Design/Formatting: Agent X

  Cover Photography: Dreamstime

  P. Jameson

  www.pjamesonbooks.com

  Other books by P. Jameson

  Firecats (Alley Cats)

  All is Bright (Prequel)

  Series

  Ouachita Mountain Shifters

  Series

  Dirt Track Dogs

  Series

  Dirt Track Dogs: The Second Lap

  Series

  Ozark Mountain Shifters

  Series

  Sci-fi Fantasy Romance

  Starwalker (Amazon)

  Breaking the Skin (Amazon)

  ***

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  People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is only revealed by the light within.

  ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

  Chapter One

  Day One…

  Dark. It was always dark.

  And when it wasn’t dark, it was still colorless. No matter how much color he painted into his skin, there was never any real color in his life. It had all been zapped away when he was young. Now there was only blackness. And so many shades of gray he couldn’t count them.

  Sometimes he remembered what color looked like. He used to see colors, when he was very small. A tiny cub. Before everything broke. He remembered names and that red was hot, yellow was bright, green was fresh. He even remembered what his favorite color was.

  Magenta.

  He’d liked it because it was rich and deep and substantial. Dark, like his life but with hints of brightness in the background. It reminded him of hope.

  Magenta was hope.

  But now, as he crouched on the concrete floor of the storage building at the back of the Alley Cat Waste Management lot, staring at the mysterious photo someone had left behind… he saw nothing but darkness.

  The darkness was her.

  Her.

  She stood out from among the other three females in the picture even if they all held the same hopeless expression. Her skin was charcoal where theirs were various shades of gray. Variable, like the clouds of a thunderstorm, but none dark as her.

  She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what had his chest quaking with an emotion it hadn’t felt in a long damn time.

  Fear.

  Romeo “Skittles” Cordera didn’t feel fear. He didn’t feel anything. Not anymore. Everything was black and white. Analytical. Definitives and absolutes. A solution to a problem. A method to madness.

  Unless it was anger. He felt that. He felt it often.

  Empty trash barrels clattered nearby and a furious growl rumbled the air, reminding him he wasn’t alone in the storage building.

  “Not finding shit,” Felix muttered. “You?”

  “No. Nothing.” Skittles slipped the picture into his vest pocket just in time as Felix appeared from behind a stack of crates. “I’m telling you, it was just a rat or something.”

  He knew that was a lie. He knew the sound they’d heard coming from the shed was something more. Because someone had left the photo, and it wasn’t any of the other Alley Cats. Someone had been here and he was going to find out who.

  Because whoever it was could lead him to the darkness. And maybe he’d had it wrong all this time, painting his body with color. Maybe that wasn’t what would help him. After all, none of that had kept him from being a horrible person before. He’d killed, cheated, hurt innocents, just like the rest of his wicked clan.

  Her. Her.

  The word kept repeating itself in his head.

  Her.

  He wasn’t sure if you could know from a picture, that someone would change your life but he was sure of one thing…

  He knew her. Or would know her. She was something to him.

  Now he was going to find her, and make sense of the pounding way his heart kept repeating her, her, her.

  Her.

  The darkness.

  His darkness.

  ***

  Day Fifty-Eight…

  Number Seven stared through the iron bars of the electric fence that surrounded the massive compound where she’d been detained against her will. The bars separated her from the girls she’d spent the past several years with. The Dolls. The ones she’d endured with. Commiserated with.

  The ones she loved.

  No. Love is pain.

  Now they were getting their freedom, finally. And she… she was getting left behind.

  The strange man who’d tried to help her get over the fence was no longer a man at all. Ratchet, was his name. He stood on all fours, a burning beast, flames covering his thick fur, but not consuming him. As if he was made of fire instead of anything corporeal.

  The Firecat, the other men called him. There were four of them, and they’d come to free the Dolls.

  “We can’t leave her,” one of the Dolls cried. But Seven couldn’t tell which one. Not with panic turning her hearing into an unending echoing tunnel.

  The surrounding trees rustled and one of the men emerged, hauling a Doll by the arm. She went by Number Four but Seven knew her real name. She knew all the Dolls’ names. Just like she knew her own name.

  Nyla. I am Nyla.

  Number Four tried to run from the men who were saving them. Why had she run? Maybe if she hadn’t run, Nyla would’ve had time to cross over…

  And she didn’t even get very far.

  The man who looked the meanest of them all held her tight while he stared through the fence at Nyla.

  “We’ll come back for her,” he snarled, tipping his chin in her direction. “She’s ours, and we always get what’s ours.” His crue
l eyes glared down at Four as if to prove his point.

  The girls argued. Tears fell. But in the end, there was no other option.

  Seven choked back a sob, pushing her chin forward to show them she was brave. And they must’ve said their goodbyes, even if they didn’t register in her ears. Because suddenly, they were walking away. The men and the Dolls… and the Firecat.

  She watched in despair as they disappeared into the forest that surrounded the estate. Until there was no more lingering glow from the burning beast. No more cries from the Dolls.

  And then there was only the dark of the night.

  Seven turned into the thick of the trees surrounding the mansion. She had to go back. There was nowhere else to go. She would have to return to the dungeon where she spent her days. She would have to face the monster who’d kept her there. She would have to accept his wrath when he realized the others were gone.

  She’d have to bear it all, and do it alone.

  There’s still hope, a small piece of her whispered, and she ticked things off in her mind as she silently crossed the lawn under the moonlight…

  They were coming back, the cruel one said.

  There was one named Skittles, who could disarm the alarms and security measures that had kept the Dolls locked away.

  And before things had gone to shit, the beast-man had told her a secret: We’re going to ruin your captor. Wait and see, female. Wait and see.

  Chapter Two

  He left me. Gash was the only one that mattered, and he left me.

  The same way we were leaving the one they called Seven.

  It was a betrayal, leaving her.

  It was a betrayal what he had done to me.

  Betrayal was fucking flexible like that. One moment you were betrayed, the next you were the betrayer. And back around, again and again.

  He was my brother, but not like the others. We were brothers by birth. By fucking blood. It was supposed to be different. He was supposed to always be here, at my side. Doing my bidding.

  But more than that.

  He was the thing that made me strong enough to lead this sick fucking clan. He was always the better of us, I knew it. Pretended it didn’t matter, while I used his goodness to feed the black in my soul.

  Then he was gone, thought to be dead.

  Imagine, my surprise when I found him hiding away with a clan of sparkly do-weller mountain cats.

  Betrayer. Fucking Judas.

  And all over a female. One he called mate and loved.

  Fuck him.

  Fuck them all.

  Fuck them for turning me into a beastless waste of space. I wasn’t even worth the oxygen I breathed now, and it was his fault.

  But then came her. The one I held in my grip. The one who tried to run.

  Blond and frail and broken, but not too broken to run. Not too broken for me to hunt down.

  Skittles tried to warn me. He’d tried to show me his stupid photo with all the Dolls in it. Tried to ask me if one was mine.

  But fuck that noise.

  She would wreck me if I let her.

  I wasn’t going to let her. If it killed me, if I died and went straight to the flames of hell… I would. Not. Fucking. Let. Her.

  I was Felix, king of the Alley Cats. Lover of no one.

  And that was never going to change.

  Chapter Three

  Day Eighty-One …

  A photo is worth a thousand words, they say. But that was utter bullshit because he had one, and it wasn’t telling him anything useful.

  Skittles stared at the picture he’d pieced together as best he could. Felix, the asshole leader of the Alley Cat clan, had ripped it up just to be cruel. Because he knew how much it meant to Skittles.

  So much had happened in the—he glanced at the calendar that hung on the wall of his room where he ticked off the time—eighty-one days since he discovered the photo of the Dolls in the storage shed out back. Two of the Alley Cats had mated and new animals emerged to replace the old wicked ones they were born with, and lost. And the females Bastian Marx, the Lord of Memphis, had kept in his basement had been rescued.

  All except one.

  Seven. Nyla. The darkness that soothed him.

  Skittles’s gaze dug into the photo.

  A little scotch tape on the back had put it back together, but one jagged rip had torn her face in two, and it just wasn’t right now.

  Her beautiful fucking face, and the only thing in the world he had of her. The only thing he had to remind him she was real. And his.

  Felix, the bastard. He would never forgive him.

  Not him and not the other bastards he called brothers—Ratchet, Fang, and Smokes—for leaving her there when they rescued the other Dolls from Marx’s compound.

  He had trusted them. Stayed back and did all the ground work, disconnecting security cameras and disabling the electric fence so they could get the females free. All with the understanding that his girl would be on her way to their warehouse, safe, as soon as it was all done.

  But they’d failed.

  He’d failed.

  Every-fucking-one had failed.

  And she was still there, in that horrible place, with the crime lord of Memphis doing fuck-knows what to her.

  Skittles growled, and paced another circuit of his room, thinking… thinking…

  He was always fucking thinking.

  But his mind couldn’t work out a way to save her.

  He’d tried to intercept Bastian’s security camera feed, tried to get an idea of what was happening inside the compound, but they’d locked it down so tight he hadn’t been able to break in yet. He currently had three different programs working around the clock to decode it.

  He stopped, leaning over his desk full of computer equipment, and stared at the photo again.

  Nyla. Seven, they called her.

  Mine.

  There was a voice inside him, and he knew what it was.

  He knew because he used to have a similar voice long ago. It belonged to his panther, the evil animal part of him that had been extinguished by the Ouachita witches when the Alley Cats tried to come against their shifter family. They had given sanctuary to one of the Alley Cats who’d wanted out, wanted a better life, and at the time, it felt like the ultimate betrayal. The Alley Cats had attacked Ouachita with a vengeance, not thinking nor caring of the outcome.

  But those Sorcera had put the clan in their place, cursing them to live without the strength of their animals until they learned how to not be cruel. Now they were human as fuck, except where their animal should be, there was only sickness. Emptiness. A gaping hole that only the right person could fill. Just had to find her and heal. Her, her, her…

  Well, three of them had.

  First Malcom, then Ratchet and Monster.

  And new animals emerged. Ones that burned like fire, born out of love instead of the hate that their Father’s bred into them.

  Skittles searched the picture, studying her eyes, the exact tone of her skin, the way her full lips made a straight line instead of smiling. That new part of him that was growing inside, that new desperate part of him, broke a little more.

  Goddamn it.

  If he had one of those fucking Firecats, he’d be able to save her. If he had any cat inside him, he’d save her.

  No, that wasn’t true.

  The old him wouldn’t have given two shits about a female. There was only fighting and fucking and ink therapy and his goddamn computers that he got lost in.

  A beeping from one of the monitors grabbed his attention. One of his programs had found a chink in the armor.

  He jerked his desk chair out and sat down, tapping away at the keyboard as fast as his fingers would go. The firewall had opened up, but he still couldn’t access video feeds. Which meant he couldn’t see for himself that his Nyla was okay.

  “Shit.”

  He was a hacker at heart and not getting through this security wall was driving him batshit. It meant that whoever desig
ned this was smart. Smarter than him.

  The Dolls told him Nyla designed it herself.

  The idea made him equally proud and frustrated.

  Peeling back layers of code, he finally spotted something useful. A folder marked Marlee.

  Marlee. The first of Bastian’s girls to escape. She had managed it on her own and ended up in the Alley Cat’s storage shed where Ratchet found her and hid her from the others. That story had a happy fucking ending… for them. But all it did for Skittles was prove to him he had a mate, and that she was out of reach.

  And the photo. He had the photo because of Marlee.

  Heart pounding, Skittles double clicked to open the folder. Inside, there was a single notepad document titled SOS. Chills raced along his spine in warning. His gut clenched, instinct telling him whatever was in that doc was bad.

  But he clicked it anyway. How could he not. This was the only fucking lead he’d had.

  Three words filled the entire white space.

  Three words that made his heart blaze in his chest like an inferno. Panic and fear and goddamn everything hit him all at once.

  Dead by morning,

  7

  Skittles stood so fast he knocked the monitor sideways, sending it crashing to the ground. Shit.

  The familiar burning he felt in his skin sometimes when he laid in bed, staring at her photo, lit him up anew. He sparked with electric he couldn’t explain, and inside all he could do was roar. No, no, no.

  Dead by morning, dead by morning, dead by morning…

  No, goddamn it. He couldn’t lose her.

  Help mate. Help her, the voice inside demanded. Do something.

  He stood in his room, fists clenching as he spiraled out of control. Alone.

  He’d lost his shit when his brothers came back without her, but this was different. This time, he was losing everything. All of him was tied up with her. There was no him without her.