Harrison’s voice dropped to a whisper, all silk and arsenic. “You’re nothing but a hired gun with PTSD and a—”
Carter slammed the laptop shut. The room went instantly silent, except for the blood hammering in my ears.
His hands shook. I took them both in mine, just holding. It was like trying to absorb lightning, but I didn’t let go until he looked at me, eyes wide and stinging.
“He knows about you,” Carter said, voice shaking. “If he knows about your record, your past…”
I stopped him with a kiss, soft at first, then harder until he let go of the breath he’d been holding. I brushed his hair back, searching his face for any cracks. There were none that I couldn’t fix.
“Let him dig,” I said. “Let him threaten. There’s nothing in there that can take me away from you. Nothing I’m ashamed of. And nothing I wouldn’t do again if it meant keeping you safe.”
He crumpled against me, body curling in tight. I wrapped both arms around him, careful of the belly, careful of every part of him that needed to be kept from harm.
We stayed that way for a long time. I listened to his breathing, let it slow to something manageable, then pressed a kiss to the crown of his head.
“He’s never going to stop,” Carter whispered. “He’ll try to buy out the county. He’ll threaten Rawley, maybe even Jojo—”
“He can try,” I said. “But we’re not the same scared kids you left behind in Texas. We’ve got each other. We’ve got friends who’d die before letting him win.”
He laughed, a real one this time, watery and bitter and alive. “You always have to be the hero, huh?”
“Not a hero,” I said. “Just a man who knows what he wants.”
He sniffled, wiped his face, then pulled back enough to look me in the eye. “What if he’s right?” he asked, soft. “What if I can’t do this without the safety net?”
“You already are,” I said, meaning every fucking word. “You stood up to him. You claimed the land, the future, the baby. You chose it all, Carter. That’s more than most men ever do.”
He looked at me, searching for a lie and finding none.
I grinned. “And if we get desperate, I hear the goat cheese business is about to boom.”
He laughed for real then, head thrown back, the tension finally breaking. I didn’t realize how much I’d needed that sound until I heard it, bright and clear and free.
We let the day pass in a blur. I called Rawley, told him to expect trouble. He just laughed and said, “Let the old bastard try.” Jojo baked a cake, of all things, and brought it over with thebaby in tow. Carter held the kid for an hour, cooing and making faces, the shadows under his eyes slowly fading.
That night, we lay in bed, his head on my chest, the weight of him grounding me to the world. I traced the curve of his spine, memorizing every inch.
“You scared?” I asked.
He shook his head, then nodded, then laughed again. “Yeah, but only a little.”
I thought of Harrison’s face, the way it had gone brittle with rage when he realized he couldn’t win. I thought of all the men I’d outlasted, all the fights I’d survived, and I knew this one was already over.
“Let him come,” I said.
Carter smiled, pressed a kiss to my chest, and drifted off.
In the dark, I watched the shadows play across the ceiling and felt a new kind of calm settle into my bones.
Harrison Steele had never met an alpha who knew how to love.
But he was about to.
