Page 1 of Phantom’s Mate

Chapter 1

Nick Cadoulec was dead.

Not in the figurative, I’ve-fucked-up-and-now-I’m-gonna-be-so-dead sense.

In the actual I’m-a-ghost, I’m-transparent-and-can-walk-through-walls-and-fuck-with-my-friends-by-moving-their-shit-around-with-my-mind sense.

Which he often did, but not today.

Today he was not in the mood for pranks. Or friends.

Today was all about his enemies.

Because he was dead… but they weren’t.

Yet.

One of the downsides of being a ghost was, they tended to obsess about unfinished business. Nick had been a ghost for nine months, one week, and three days, and he’d thought his business was finished.

Austin Raines, the psycho panther shifter who’d ordered the hit squad that killed him—dead.

Raines’s criminal organization—destroyed.

His clan—decimated.

Nick’s crew, who’d also been targeted by Raines, were safe and happy and no more fucked up than usual.

They’d even found mates and were well on their way to the kind of happily-ever-after that Nick had always avoided like Ebola or week-old pizza. The kind that ended in no good—white picket fences and babies and holiday dinners and pet gerbils.

Not that he didn’t like being part of the crew. He was still astounded that they’d accepted him as one of them—despite the whole dead thing, which made communication difficult.

The more so because until recently, his ghost had been stuck in panther form. Now that the panther god had granted him the ability to take a ghostly human form, there were magical workarounds for when Nick felt like talking.

Which brought him back to the downside. He was finding out that human ghosts were not like animal ghosts.

Human ghosts had too many emotions. They wanted things.

Justice. Retribution. Revenge.

Love.

He’d recently learned that Jax Darius, Raines’s second-in-command—who’d not only led the hit squad that killed Nick, but also the team who’d massacred the Alaskan village his friend Titan came from—was still alive.

And once again, he’d fucked with Nick’s crew.

This time, being a human ghost, Nick found himself unable to let it go. He wouldn’t rest—couldn’t rest—until Jax Darius and his hit squad were just as dead as all the people they’d killed.

Because why should Jax get to be alive, when Nick had lost everything?

So here Nick was, in Raines’s old compound—a quadrangle of abandoned buildings, stripped of anything of value.

Right now he was in Raines’s personal living quarters. There wasn’t much left here except the broken remains of some bedroom furniture. The floor was covered in glass where Jax’s guys had broken out the windows, and dried leaves littered the room.

What this room did hold was Nick’s freshest memory of Jax, less than a month ago. Fucker had been holding Titan’s mate, Mari, hostage until Titan turned over a fortune in gold and dragon artifacts that had belonged to his village.

Mari’s blood was still a rusty brown stain on the floor by the four-poster bed frame, where she’d hit her head when Jax shoved her away from him after he got what he wanted.

Nick’s whole crew had almost died that day, including their alpha, Brandon Fierro—the closest thing to a brother and best friend Nick had ever had. Although, he hadn’t let down his guard all the way even with Brandon. He hadn’t ever done that with anyone.