DAVE
Dave paid through the nose for a cold beer. Most people were holding one, so he figured he’d fit in better that way. He wandered through the crowd, trying to disguise the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up at the tension in the air. It wouldn’t take much for the bloodlust to spill over from the cage. These were people who’d been looking forward to this for days, who wanted to see blood spilled and someone beaten. It was legitimized brutality, and Dave hated it.
Despite knowing he had to talk to people, he found himself in the corner of the room, as far away from that damn cage as he could get, and sat down on an overturned crate that had once held beer bottles. He had to admit the pack had their audience figured out. It wasn’t the pitifully small prizes they were fighting for—it was all the other things. The need to work out frustration and to feel in control. The same reasons why Christian so needed this.
His gaze flicked around the huge, cold building until he finally found Christian. His powerful arms were crossed as he nodded at something a dark-haired shifter was explaining to him, everything in his stance screaming anticipation.
Christian had always been… Well, he’d always been Christian. Volatile and swift to assume the worst, because that was what life had always dealt him. Lately, though, with all that had been going on in Elk Ridge, he’d been on a knife-edge, with the smallest thing liable to set off a furious reaction.
Dave sighed slightly. Maybe a good fight would get all that pent-up anger and aggression out of Christian’s system, and then they could get back to how they usually were. Which was never devoid of drama because all it took some days was someone to look at Christian wrong, but Dave could usually calm him. He’d learned to pour oil on the waters Christian ruffled, smoothing things over before they turned into arguments or bruised feelings. Most days, he could head off trouble before it started. But it was tiring, always having to be that person.
He sighed again as he settled more comfortably on his makeshift seat and took a swig of his beer. He loved Christian, and he knew Christian loved him, but lately he’d been wondering if Christian had any idea how much Dave did to keep things smooth. Of the way he buffered so many interactions, making excuses when Christian was short or sharp.
But for all Christian’s volatility, there was something immovable in him too—a certainty, a promise without words. Dave was used to being tolerated or ignored, but Christian never made him feel that way. When the world grew shaky, when all Dave’s centering exercises weren’t enough for him to feelsafe, Christian didn’t just steady him—his love felt like it echoed from the beginning of time until the end. It was the one thing Dave could rely on never to change. Never to leave him.
He was certain they’d loved each other in previous lives. The minute he’d first seen Christian, he’d known that something lay between them.
He remembered it clearly, that day on the ranch with the sun beating down, when he’d turned to see a compact, muscular shifter striding toward him. Dave had been in the corral, attempting to soothe the black gelding that Matt had taken in after investigating an animal cruelty case. He hadn’t had any experience with horses back then and had nothing to guide him but kindness and his longing to stop the creature panicking. Not least because every time he did so, those hind hooves flashed out quicker than Dave could track, and one of these times they were going to catch him.
Christian had shouted at him to get back, his voice urgent enough to startle Dave into stumbling backwards.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Christian had snarled into his face once he was out of the corral. “Give him space. Don’t make him feel any more trapped than he already is.”
Even with the raised voices, the fact Dave was no longer in the corral had settled the horse slightly. The white of his eyes had still been visible and its body was full of tension, but his head was lowering.
“I have given him space, and time,” Dave said, not meaning to sound defensive though it came out that way. He wanted to help this horse, which had been beaten and abused, but it still hated him. Or more likely, distrusted his intentions.
“However much time you think he needs, give him double, and then some,” Christian said. He turned away, putting his back to the horse, and Dave followed suit. “They’re prey animals. Don’t take too kindly to being stared at.”
Which made sense. Dave guessed over the last couple of months of living and working on the ranch, he’d been lulled into feeling falsely confident that he could deal with horses, becauseMatt’s other horses were docile and friendly. The truth was, he knew jack about them.
“I’m Dave,” he said. “I look after the horses here, though apparently not that well.”
The suggestion of a smile flickered around the guy’s mouth. “Christian,” he said. “You’ve got yourself a real delinquent with that one. That doesn’t mean you’re screwing things up with the others.”
Now, looking back, Dave could see what an unusual offering that had been from Christian. It was as though he, too, had felt that something lay between them. “You’re a friend of Matt’s?” Dave asked.
The beginnings of a smile tugged at Christian’s lips again. “Not unless your alpha makes friends with everyone he threatens to sling in a cell overnight. No, that deputy of his, Bryce is it? He’s offered me a ride to Denver tomorrow just so long as I don’t get in any more fights tonight.”
As Dave looked sideways at Christian, he could see the black eye, split lip, and bruising on the knuckles that spoke of a recent fight in human form. “Are you likely to?”
Christian’s lip curled. “When you’ve got assholes saying shit about shifter women, damn right I am,” he said. “That deputy knows it too. I figure that’s why he brought me out here, because otherwise I’m going to find them and kick the shit out of them.”
Now, after five years of living on Matt’s ranch and as a member of his pack, because somehow Christian’s overnight visit had gone on until one day Matt had rolled his eyes and offered him an official job, they seemed to have come full circle. The hard-won peace Christian had found was gone as if it had never been. Something had made Christian itch to fight again.
“You keep sighing like that, you’re going to take the roof off.”
The voice jolted Dave back to the present. He found a shifter standing in front of him, light blond hair swept off an open, friendly face.
“Mind if I join you?” the shifter asked.
He needed to focus. He wasn’t here to try and work out what was eating Christian but to find out what happened to Jesse’s pack, all those years ago.
“Sure,” he said. “I’m Dave.”
“Justin.” The guy pulled another overturned crate over and sat down, easy and graceful. His green eyes were flickering over Dave in a way he hadn’t experienced in a long time. He and Christian tended to go to the same couple of bars in Elk Ridge when they went out, so he rarely met anyone new. Finding himself scrutinized and quite obviously admired was an unusual experience.
It wasn’t unwelcome—Justin was attractive, with something easy about him—but Dave already had what he wanted.
