She drifted into view again, clutching the yellow gingham curtains around her shoulders like a child’s security blanket. The fabric strained against her collarbones. Too thin. Too damn thin. My knuckles ached where they gripped the truck’s door handle.
Raindrops pocked the windshield as I keyed the ignition. Through the garage apartment’s window, Julia pressed both palms to the glass. Streetlight haloed her thick and wispy bangs, turning black dye blue. For three heartbeats, we stared across the electric-dark space between vehicle and refuge.
Then she stepped back, swallowed by shadows.
I took a ride through town on my way back to the compound. Gravel crunched beneath my tires. In the Stop-N-Go’s amber glow, I caught my own eyes in the rearview—wolf gold bleeding through human blue. Her scent lingered. Not just fear-sweat and drugstore perfume. Underneath… jasmine. Southern jasmine, like the vines strangling my mother’s porch back in the summer.
Pearl’s neon crucifix bled crimson across the truck hood as I rolled past. Muted bass throbbed through the bar’s shuttered windows. Old habits made me note the fresh motorcycle treads in the mud—two Harleys, one Indian Scout. All pack-registered.
The compound’s outer fence materialized from the storm. I licked diesel rain off my lips, tasting Julia’s lie again.Dead fiance. Bullshit. But trauma? That sharpened bone-deep.
Roadsidecattails bowed as I passed, their feathered heads brushing the truck’s flanks. In the ditches, field mice fled prowling shadows. Every instinct said turn around. Post guards. Chain her doors.
Instead, I parked in front of the compound. Through the downpour, prospects scrambled to cover bike seats with tarps. Their laughter died when I strode past.
“President.” Doc emerged from the fog, medical bag dripping. “Heard you found our stray accountant.”
Lightning fork-lit the canyon. Somewhere beyond the ridge, thunder rumbled an answer.
“Not stray,” I said, shaking rain from my cut. “Hired.”
Doc’s nostrils flared. We both knew what that twitch meant—his wolf had caught the same thread of wildness in her scent that I carried. He adjusted his horned-rimmed glasses, rainwater beading on the lenses, as he peered toward Pearl’s cottage across the compound. “Smells like someone dipped a tea-bag in moon water.”
I shouldered open the lodge door, wood groaning against iron hinges. The church room’s low lights cast long-jawed shadows over Wrecker’s scarred knuckles, where he dealt poker cards across the map table. Four faces lifted—pack officers and enforcers—their animal scents clotting the air beneath the smell of coffee and curiosity.
JT rose first, prayer beads clicking against his belt buckle. “She clean?”
I straddled my chair at the table’s head, leather creaking with a warning. “Cleaner than your conscience.”
Chuckles rolled through the room like tumbleweeds before dying beneath another thunderclap. Wrecker dealt me in without asking—ace of spades face up. Omen or joke, I let it lie burning against oak wood mottled with old bloodstains.
That scent you’re carrying… “Hybrid?” Mama Pearl materialized from the kitchen archway, flour still dusting her black dress. She set a pecan pie between bullet hole clusters pocking the wall behind me—sugar weaponized as an interrogation tactic.
“Don’t know yet.” My thumb worried the card’s edge. “Human enough to bleed slow when cut.”
Mama’s spatula cracked against the pie server. “But not human enough to leave be.”
The truth hung heavier than August humidity as I laid out facts like tarot cards. “I don’t know. But she’s a tiny thing, not even as tall as my shoulders. Smells like fuckin’ ginger and burnt sugar. She heard the damn subsonic train whistle and responded to it.”
Wrecker leaned back until his chair groaned in apocalyptic protest. “Did you bring anomegainto our den?”
Gasps rippled through my closest men—old superstitions flaring like struck matches. JT’s crucifix glinted as he crossed himself twice—once for man, once for beast.
I stood slow, palms flat on wood veined with generations of claw marks. “It’s clear she doesn’t even knowwhatshe is, whatweare.” Power bled into my words—alpha compulsion thickening the air until breathing felt like swallowing wet wool. “Butsomeonemight.”
Mama set a slice of pie before me, pecans glistening like amber traps in syrup. “Nowthatsounds like trouble.”
I imagined Julia’s fear flashing under her bathroom light as she box-dyed evidence away—black rinses circling the drain in a porcelain bowl while bruises ripened beneath whatever she wore at the time. Not thrift store sweaters, I’d wager.
“Probably whoever she’s running from,” I said softly into my coffee steam rising like sacrificial smoke between us all.
The storm chose that moment to shatter cracked windows we’d yet to replace from the last big storm—glass teeth raining down as emergency lights bathed us red.
Chapter 3
Juliet
The screwdriver slipped from my grip again, clattering against concrete as wind whipped rainwater sideways into my eyes. My fourth attempt to unscrew the floodlight casing became a battle against the storm itself—fingers numb beneath dripping sleeves, soggy sweater suctioned to my skin like a second layer of regret. Lightning cracked the sky open three miles west, the delayed rumble vibrating through my molars. These damn lights had to be turned off. I’d never get to sleep with them shining in my windows, plus they draw too much attention. I had to turn them off. Also, he could find me any minute. Had to make it harder for him.
