Page 34 of Dark Dragon’s Wolf

They pulled into the compound, bouncing over the rutted ground, and edged in among a bunch of other vehicles parked every which way.

Mayah looked around with interest. She liked the Bad Blood Crew. She hadn’t seen much of them because she’d been too messed up in the head to go visiting. But they were her kind of people—disorganized and opposed to rules.

The main compound was a large clearing surrounded by woods. In the center was a big two-story cabin, with a soaring roof, a wraparound porch, and acres of windows. There were a few utility sheds dotted around the perimeter, and a number of paths led through the trees to more cabins and trailers.

Smoke was already rising from the industrial-sized grill in the sunken barbecue area. It was surrounded by a waist-high retaining wall and held a picnic table, a scattering of chairs and loungers, and a full outdoor kitchen.

At one side of the clearing was a huge spreading oak tree, with an enormous super-cool three-story tree house. Mayah knew that was where Xander lived—the panther—with his mate Jenny and their son Brandon.

As soon as they pulled in, the crew clustered around. Tank was in front—a giant of a man cradling a baby in one arm, so tiny next to his bulk that she looked like a doll.

His face split into a grin the moment he saw Tristan. Tristan’s face relaxed, and he grinned back.

“Hey, Papa Bear,” he said, climbing out of the truck and clapping Tank on the shoulder. “Man, look at Arden! She’s huge! How old is she now?”

“Seven months, two weeks and three days.” Arden grabbed Tank’s ear, and he beamed down at her. It slayed Mayah, seeing that enormous man so gaga over his little girl.

The rest of the crew descended on them, hugging Tristan, or crowding close to touch him in the way animal shifters liked to do with the people they cared about.

They greeted Mayah too, doing their best to make her feel welcome, but most of the attention was on Tristan. Mayah didn’t begrudge him that, but it made her feel a bit wistful. Even if the crew’s bond with him was caused by shared suffering that she wouldn’t wish on anyone, she still envied it.

She felt a touch on her arm, and turned to see Lissa, Tank’s mate. “They’re all going to be hugging and yakking for a few minutes,” she said. “Come on over to the firepit. We’ll get us some beers and talk about them behind their backs.”

Mayah followed her across the clearing, where two women were sitting on a quilt spread on the lawn near the top of the retaining wall, two identical babies rolling around between them. One seemed to be trying to bite his brother’s toes off, hampered only by the fact that he had very few teeth yet.

“You remember Caitlyn and Jenny, right?” Caitlyn, a snowy owl shifter, had honey-brown hair and round amber eyes. Jenny had dark curly hair and a thin scar on one cheek. She was also very pregnant.

They exchanged hello’s, and then Lissa got them beers from the cooler and they kicked back on two of the loungers near the fire pit. Lissa looked over at the rest of her crew, still standing by the pickup truck, all talking at once. Her face softened when she looked at Tank, holding his utterly girly, pink-beribboned daughter.

“Tank misses Tristan,” she said. “It meant a lot to him that Tristan came here when Arden was born.”

“I didn’t know him then,” Mayah said, “but I think it meant a lot to him too.”

Lissa grinned. “You should have seen them. Tank was like, glued to the side of the bed the whole time I was in labor, holding my hand and trying to pretend he wasn’t freaking out, and Tristan and Flynn sat right behind him all night, drinking whiskey and slipping it to Tank when they thought I wasn’t looking.”

She took a swig of beer. “I wasn’t about to object. God knows he needed it. He was a wreck.”

Mayah could totally picture it. “Sometimes I think Tristan should come back here,” she said. “He always seems happier when he’s around the Bad Bloods. He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s lonely.”

“Even with you around?” Lissa asked, raising her eyebrows.

“What?” Mayah hadn’t expected that. She and Tristan hadn’t told Kira about their whatever-it-was. It was too new.

Lissa shrugged. “You have that vibe between you. You know. The boinking vibe.” She paused. “Are you mates?”

Mayah looked over at Tristan, who was laughing at something Xander said. “I don’t know.”

Lissa nodded sympathetically. “Meaning, you do know, but you guys haven’t committed yet. Probably because Tristan is being dense. Like all Bad Blood men.”

Mayah laughed. “I guess.” Then she shrugged, picking at her beer bottle. “I just—sometimes I don’t think I’m enough for him. He needs someone who understands his past, but he doesn’t want to share it with me.”

Lissa rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it. Tank was the same. It was so hard to get him to talk about his former mate, let alone all the bad shit that happened to him after she died. He wanted to forget his past, but then, he was stuck in it at the same time.”

“Are we leading parallel lives?” Mayah asked. “Because it’s like you read my diary. Which I don’t have. But if I did, that would be in it. What did you do?”

“Tried to help him carry some of it,” Lissa said. “As much as he could share. And tried to build new memories with him, so the others would gradually fade. And I had his baby.”

She winked at Mayah. “You know what Tank’s like—a badass teddy bear. He’s totally in love with Arden. If it wasn’t for the wild bear sex we have when she’s sleeping, I’d think he’d forgotten all about me.”