by T. S. Joyce
“Dude, do you not work?” Ryder asked in a judgmental tone. “Is this your life? Just fighting vampires and sitting around at your cabin?”
Wyatt let off a single laugh. “Well, I was letting the Queen of the Asheville Coven drain my neck every few days for money, but now I’m out of that job.”
“On account of you killing your employer?” Aaron asked from behind Harper.
Wyatt twitched his head as a dark look took his features. “Yes, sir. Other than that, I work at the gem mine hauling dirt for tourists and rock stores that sell it.”
“Why would stores sell bags of dirt?” Weston asked from the open doorway.
“Because you never know. There could be a precious gem in there. Beryl and Corundum are guaranteed in every bag.” Wyatt blasted the ball into Ryder’s glove again. “The pay isn’t great, but my bear needs it. I get to work heavy machinery—”
“An excavator?” Aaron asked.
Wyatt nodded and caught the ball. Clack. “Yeah, and I haul a lot of weight, which sates my bear. Kane works with me out there, and between the two of us, the owner doesn’t have to employ a ton of labor. I asked for a couple days off, and my boss gave them to me. I’ve never taken any sick days before, and this week has been slow. The cold weather slows down tourist season.”
“Sooo,” Aaron drawled. “That’s cool that Kane is your friend and all, but I saw his eyes after the fight last night when he didn’t have his sunglasses on. Am I the only one freaked out by the fact that there is an unregistered dragon with fucking out-of-control lizard eyes in this town?”
Harper raised two fingers. “I’m bothered. He’s a Blackwing.”
“Whoa,” Weston said. “Blackwing as in Marcus’s line?” And now he was glaring at Wyatt again like Kane’s existence was also his fault.
Wyatt threw the ball up in the air and then caught it easily with his glove. “Trust me when I say this—Kane isn’t a threat.”
“He beat me at arm wrestling,” Harper argued. “And he eats peanuts out of the community bar bowl. Huge threat.”
Wyatt’s chuckle was interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. “Oh crap,” he murmured as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. He frowned at the screen. “I have to take this. Harper, toss the ball with Ryder.”
“Neeeeew,” Ryder whined. “She throws like a girl.” He looked at her scowl and muttered, “Just kidding, don’t eat me.”
Harper snorted. Her grandfather used to be a man-eater. She didn’t enjoy the taste of people’s ashes at all. Still, she’d threatened the boys within an inch of their everlovin’ lives anytime they stepped out of line when they were kids.
Harper caught the glove and ball Wyatt tossed her, then watched him saunter off to the side, hand on his hip and back to them as he answered the call.
Ryder was eyeballs-deep in bullshit because Harper had been team captain of their little league team, a title she’d earned. She chucked the ball at him. He squealed and danced out of the way of her zinger, and at the last moment, reached to the side and caught it. Harper smirked when he rubbed his sore hand.
“Damn straight, I throw like a girl.”
A few more rounds of that, and Wyatt hung up. “Okay, so I want to show you all something.”
“Hard pass,” Weston said. “I’m about to leave.”
“I really want you to stay, man. Just for a couple more hours. You’ve all asked me what I’m doing here, and I want to show you.” Wyatt hooked his hands on his hips and gave Weston a pleading look. “Please. It would maybe explain some of the stuff you don’t understand about me.”
Weston slid his hat from his head, then replaced it with a pissed-off sigh. “Fine. Two hours, and then I’m out.” He strode past Wyatt, hitting him in the shoulder with his own, and climbed up in his truck. “I’m driving.”
Harper hugged Wyatt’s waist and smiled up at him sympathetically. “You know Wes. His loyalty is hard to earn.”
“I know. I broke his trust.”
“So get it back,” she murmured through a saucy grin. Feeling bold, Harper reached up on tiptoes and pressed her lips to his.
“Barf,” Ryder called. “I’m barfing right now. I’m barfing in my mouth.”
Wyatt laughed against her lips and angled his face, then thrust his tongue into her mouth once before he eased back with a sexy peck. Then he grabbed her ass hard and turned her toward the truck.
Damn that man could give her a serious case of the butterflies. Her stomach was doing gymnastics right now, and when she made her way to the pickup, she felt as drunk as she had all those years ago at that hotel in Montana.
“I call window!” Harper said, but the boys had already beat her to it. Aaron told her to “climb over” instead of moving his legs out of the way, the bunion.
“Where to?” Weston asked in a none-too-charitable voice.
“Take a right on the main road,” Wyatt instructed.
“Town is left,” Harper pointed out.
Wyatt shot her a quick grin and rolled down the window. “We aren’t going to town.”
He rested his arm on the edge of the door and relaxed back against the headrest. Now Harper had a perfect view of his gloriously chiseled jaw line. He’d shaved this morning, and he was somehow even more handsome under the scruff. And then, as if he could tell she was checking him out, he reached behind him and hooked his giant hand on the back of her calf and squeezed it once reassuringly.
Heat pooled in her stomach, and her cheeks blazed with pleased warmth. Ignoring Aaron and Ryder’s eye rolls, she grabbed Wyatt’s hand as he moved to pull away from her and kissed his palm quick.
Twenty-eight years old, and this man had her feeling like a teenager experiencing first love again. And maybe she was. Maybe this was normal for someone who had been through what she had. She was so infinitely relieved that he was back in her life and showing her the same affection, attention, and care that she felt for him. He wasn’t holding back or treating her like she was temporary.
Instead, Wyatt was bonding them.
Chapter Ten
Aaron was angling his face down instead of looking out the window. He’d ridden like that for the twenty-minute drive into the Smokey Mountains. With a suspicious frown, Harper shoved his face to the side and gasped. His neck had been injured last night in the fight, but she hadn’t even thought to check him this morning. Bear shifters had some of the fastest healing capabilities out of all the shifters, but Aaron’s neck was only half-healed and angry looking.
Aaron lifted icy blue eyes to hers. A few strands of his gelled hair fell stiffly over his face. “It’s not how I thought it would be with the vamps.”
She studied the worry that pooled in his eyes. Aaron had always been the tough one. The quiet one. They’d spent summers and holidays together because their father’s, Bruiser and Cody Keller, were half-brothers. She’d watched him grow up strong, and she’d watched him transition from a happy boy to a tattoo-covered, pierced, scruffy, motorcycle-riding badass. The changes started happening when he went through the Fire Academy to become a firefighter like his father and uncles. Something about his occupation had made him harder, more withdrawn.
She ran her finger over the injury on his throat. Hers looked much better than this, and the queen had her teeth on her longer. “Wyatt?”
Wyatt turned in the front seat, and his eyes dimmed. “Sorry, man. That shit’ll scar. You went head-to-head with Aric, Arabella’s Second. He wasn’t trying to suck you dry. He was trying to rip your throat out.”
Aaron twitched his neck out from under Harper’s probing fingers. “Good. Chicks dig scars.”
She hadn’t missed the bitter edge to his voice. He didn’t want comfort, though, and she’d learned from spending a lifetime around rough-and-tumble dominant shifters not to press him.
“Turn here,” Wyatt said, pointing to a washed-out dirt road.
“Whoa,” Harper murmured, leaning forward to look out the front window better.
The road wa
s rough, sure, but there was no denying the beauty of these woods. It was early autumn, and the leaves were turning vibrant oranges, yellows, and bright reds. Sugar maple, sweetgum, scarlet oaks, and hickory trees lined the road in a myriad of sizes, and the ground was covered in the colorful leaves that had fallen early.
Up front, Weston tossed Wyatt a confused look she didn’t understand, and Wyatt leaned out the open window and inhaled deeply. His shoulders relaxed on the exhale. Huh.
As they came to a rusty old gate with a lock on it, Wyatt murmured, “I got it.” There were No Trespassing signs posted on either side that looked new, but the fence was old, and some of the posts had fallen over. Wyatt got out of the truck and jogged up to the gate, entered in a combination to the lock, then swung it open. He waited for Weston to pull through before he closed it and locked it up again.
“Uuuuh, I don’t feel comfortable trespassing,” Weston said, his dark brows jacked up high as Weston got back in the cab of his truck. “I’d like to not get shot by a landowner today.”
Wyatt gestured out the window to a blue sedan that was parked on the side of the road up ahead. “The landowner knows we’re coming. He was the one who called earlier.”
Weston shook his head and bounced and bumped the truck up the road, spinning out in the muddy spots. An older man with glasses and thin hair on top of his shiny dome waved as they came to a stop. His smile was there, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He looked…worried.
“Martin,” Wyatt greeted him heartily, shaking his hand the second he was out of the truck.
“Hey, Wyatt. Thanks for coming on short notice. I thought for sure you’d be busy on your day off.”
Wyatt introduced them to Martin one at a time as they piled out of Weston’s ride. And when he got to Harper, Wyatt rested his hand on her lower back and said, “This is my…this is Harper.”
Martin’s bushy gray brows arched up immediately. “Oh, wow.” He gave two owl blinks and then shook Harper’s hand vigorously. “I’m sure pleased to meet you.”
“You, too,” she murmured, baffled.
“Uuuh.” Martin released her hand and gestured up the road. “I’ll show you around.”
Wyatt’s eyes were boring into her, but she didn’t understand the attention. Even as they walked up the muddy road and into a clearing, he kept casting her strange looks. It wasn’t until she saw the cabin that she realized what was wrong with him.
He was watching her to see her reaction to the place.
The boys were dead-silent now, awed perhaps, or confused. She didn’t know, but right now, she couldn’t drag her gaze away from the old, dilapidated cabin to save her life.
The Smokey Mountain range painted the background like a picture, all oranges and yellows, and the woods were absolutely breathtaking. So different from the evergreen woods she’d grown up in.
Harper’s breath came shallow as she made her way to the old cabin—a two-bedroom perhaps that had gone to disrepair. The porch sagged, and the railing was rotted. The roof was bad, and the picture window on the side was cracked in a couple of places. There was no paint on the log planks that made up the walls, and somehow, it felt like it was a part of these woods. Like it belonged, instead of sticking out like a manmade thumbprint.
There was a thin trail around craggy, tar-colored rocks that shone in the sun, and farther up the mountainside was another cabin. A double it looked like, from the twin doors and the breezeway that went right through the center.
Such an odd feeling came over her. A warm, prickling sensation that spread from her chest to her arms.
“What is this place?” she asked on a breath, so she wouldn’t ruin the magic of this moment.
“Is it some kind of commune?” Ryder asked.
Martin chuckled. “No. My late wife’s family has owned this land for generations. I run the gem mine, and when my wife was alive, this was where she dug in her heels. There are four cabins on the property. For twenty years, we rented them out to tourists for extra income, and my Betty managed the properties, but we got muscled out by a big fancy chain with new cabins, personal chefs, river views, hot tubs on every porch, the works. And when Betty passed, I couldn’t keep up with the mine and manage the property, so…” He shrugged and shook his head. Resting his boot on one of the black rocks that jutted out from beside the path, he said, “I’m going to have to sell it. It’s been draining my savings, and I’m wanting to retire soon. I’ve kept it for Betty, but we didn’t have any children to give it to. I was hoping to find a buyer I know will take care of it.
Weston moved past her, eyes trained on something beside the door as he stepped carefully up the old porch stairs. With trembling fingers, he pulled up the last number of four that hung upside down from a single rusty nail.
Chills blasted across Harper’s arms when she read the number. 1010.
Wide-eyed, Weston looked back at Wyatt.
“I know,” Wyatt murmured. “It’s the same number as the old trailer up in Damon’s mountains. I was never one for signs, but damn if that didn’t draw me up when I saw it.”
A shudder trembled up Harper’s spine and landed in her shoulders as she moved past Weston and pushed the door to the main cabin open. Inside, the place was dusty and made entirely of wood, from the floors to the walls to the kitchen cabinets and counters. There was a chair toppled over on its side and covered in cobwebs, and gingerly, she righted it and dusted off the seat. She could see the potential here. She could imagine polished floors and a small table in the corner with a vase and yellow flowers. Phantom laughter echoed through the house as she spun slowly, transforming it into a homey cabin in her imagination. Couches and pictures, and a TV stand over there.
The boys had filed in. “It’s a shithole,” Ryder said. “Needs a lot of work.”
Wyatt’s arms flexed as he crossed them over his chest. “Yep.”
“It would cost you a lot of money to make the repairs,” Aaron murmured.
“Yep.” Wyatt’s eyes were on Harper now, his gaze lightened, the scent of fur wafting from him. Why was he worked up?
“It’s a drive from town,” Ryder said as he ran his finger over the dusty window sill.
“Yep.”
“It’s right in the heart of vamp land,” Weston murmured quietly from where he stood leaned against the front wall.
“That it is.”
“It gets worse,” Martin said from the open doorway.
“What do you mean?” Wyatt asked.
“I’ve been saving this place for you to come up with the money, you know that. But money is getting tight, and I still have bills at the mine to pay…”
“Okay,” Wyatt said, a frown marring his face.
“Yesterday, I got a new offer.”
Intensity sparked in Wyatt’s blazing eyes as he stood up straighter. “Who?”
“The Valdoro Pack.”
“Wolves?” Aaron asked. He shook his head and made a long chhhh sound.
“Shhit,” Wyatt muttered. “Martin, trust me when I say you don’t want wolves up here. You don’t want them anywhere near here.”
“I know that, Wyatt. But I’ve been holding onto this place for two years, and I’m getting to where I can’t float it anymore.”
“How much?”
“If you could just come up with what we talked about—”
“How much?”
Martin ducked his gaze to the dusty floor. “The alpha offered two hundred thousand.”
Wyatt ran his hands through his hair and backed up a couple steps as though he’d been socked in the stomach.
“Can we talk in private?” Weston gritted out to Wyatt.
Martin offered them a sad smile and clapped his hand once on the open door frame. “I’ll give you some time to absorb this. They gave me two weeks to decide. I just wanted you to know in case there’s any way you can swing it.” He made to leave but turned on the porch. “I’m sorry, Wyatt.”
“What the hell is going on?” Weston asked, his gaze
lingering on the old man who was sauntering to his car with a slight limp. “What is this place to you?”
“It’s mine. My bear’s. It feels like home and has since the moment I opened that gate for the first time.” He pulled his phone from his back pocket. “Look.” He showed them an image of a map of the country. There were red dots, yellow circles, and notes underneath. “I don’t know if you’re aware of the shortage of territory, but it’s hard as hell for shifter to buy land now. The land has to be government approved to register a crew to it. But there is a grant program that will match a cash offer on approved land if it means a territory is settled by a good crew, pack, or coven. Twenty years ago, we didn’t have territory problems because Vampires were still in hiding, and the wolves were, too. There were no rules, no laws about shifters owning big land, no financial assistance. Now, with the vamps and wolves out in the open, packs, covens, and crews are fighting for new territory.”
“Yeah, I’m still stuck on the fact that we’re in vamp territory,” Ryder muttered.
“Everywhere is vamp territory!” Wyatt pointed to the yellow circles. There had to be a hundred of them, covering most of the country. “Damon’s mountains were safe because of the dragon himself. But outside of them? It’s hard finding a place to claim. I know because I’ve been searching for years.”
“Then why didn’t you just stay home?” Weston barked.
“Because Beaston said I was going to kill her!” Wyatt made like he was going to chuck his phone against the wall, but changed his mind at the last instant and snarled his lip. “I left because I thought I was saving Harper. Beaston told me I was going to be the death of her, and damn it all, I wanted her to live. She had to live. I wouldn’t be okay if Harper didn’t exist somewhere on this planet.”
