Page 5 of The Enforcers: KANE

“Nice set tonight, Raven,” he said. “You really put your heart into it. I thought one or two of the customers were going to start crying in their beer.”

“Like you’d care,” she said. “Unless it made them order more.”

“Better profit in hard liquor,” he said with a wink. “Give me the alkies any day.”

She shook her head. Manny didn’t have a sentimental bone in his body, but she liked him.

“So,” she said, hiking her butt onto a barstool, “speaking of customers crying into their beers, what’s up with that guy who sits at the corner table? I’ve seen him in here every night. Is he a regular?”

Manny shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I never saw him before you started. Must be a groupie.”

Rachelle frowned at that. Could be a harmless guy crushing on her, too shy to approach her. Or working up the courage. Although, even from the shadows, he looked way too hot to be that insecure. More like the kind of guy who could get a woman to drop her panties with a single smoldering look.

Was it possible he wasn’t what he seemed? Had one of Selina’s scouts made her?

“Does he talk to anybody?” she asked. “What’s his story?”

Manny shrugged. “That’s not the kind of guy who opens up to the bartender,” he said. “I’ve seen his type before. Hard-ass, brooding alpha males who don’t confide in anybody. They just keep it all inside until one day they explode with the crazy.”

“Great,” she said drily. “And here I was hoping Mr. Hot and Brooding had a crush on me.”

“Oh, he’s definitely hot,” Manny said. “I’d do him myself if I swung that way. I didn’t say don’t do the horizontal mambo with him. Just don’t kid yourself it’s going to be hearts and flowers and Sunday dinner with Mama. And check his garage for plastic explosives.”

Rachelle rolled her eyes. “Awesome,” she said. “I’m going home alone now, to think about this guy who probably wants to stalk me and then go postal. Thanks for that.”

“Anytime,” Manny said. “Hope you at least get a couple of serious O’s out of him before he turns psychotic.” He waved his bar rag and went back to stacking glasses.

Chapter 3

Kane stood at the edge of the forest that bordered the resort grounds. He was in wolf form, surrounded by the night, the breeze ruffling his fur.

Wolf was angry. He didn’t want to give back Kane’s human form. Kane kept his wolf locked away too much, so it was always angry. He rarely changed and ran with the rest of the pack, and when he did, half the time it ended in a fight.

The other half of the time, he and Israel went off on their own—and either killed something, or fought each other. Either way, they usually couldn’t change back unless blood had been shed.

It was just how things were. They both understood. They’d been through some of the same things, fought some of the same demons. And they were both still angry.

Raven’s music made it better—and it made it worse. It cracked the walls around his heart, made him remember the good things. Made him think it might be okay to feel again.

But the cracks also let the pain spill out. The pain pulled his wolf out of him, threatened to make him lose control.

His childhood pack had been decimated when he was sixteen, the survivors scattered. Seven years later, the alpha’s son, Jace Monroe, had found Kane and Israel near Seattle and convinced them to join him and their two pack brothers, Rafe and Jesse, in rebuilding the pack. They’d poured their blood and sweat—literally—into earning the money to buy Silverlake Mountain and claim it permanently as their territory.

No one in the Silverlake pack knew what Kane had done in the time they’d been scattered. They didn’t know the sick things he’d done for Selina.

His first love. His first addiction.

With the Silverlake pack, he’d tried to start fresh, carving out a place for himself where he would be respected, maybe even admired.

He knew he was never going to be loved. He didn’t deserve love.

But somehow, no matter how good an Enforcer he was, no matter how much he tried to do the right thing, the kind of respect he craved had never quite come.

And now this singer had fallen across his path. Another Raven. A mysterious, alluring woman who sang the same song his little-girl Raven had sung so long ago. It brought it all back.

He had to be able to control himself. If he lost that, he had nothing. And so he came back, night after night, determined to defeat Wolf and stay till the end of the show.

Every night he lost the battle.