by Elsa Jade
They all deserved such perfect memories.
Still naked—and now slightly aroused but damned if he was going to scrabble for his clothes while they watched—Kane took a long draught of the slightly warm beer to wash down the tightness in his throat before he glanced sidelong at Bas. “I heard you yelling earlier. Good way to whip up a town hunting party.”
His cousin rolled his beer bottle between his fingers. “No one remembers what a wolf sounds like.” His grin turned sly and a tilt of his head sent spiky white-blond hair sifting across his ice-blue eyes. In that moment, he looked like what he was: the youngest who’d always gotten them in trouble. “Besides, I don’t think you want to start lecturing me on the need for discretion.”
Rafe grunted. “Our fathers would whip us, all three.”
“Our fathers aren’t here,” Bas said with a snap in his voice.
That made them take a drink in silence.
“You should have run with us as soon as you arrived instead of coming here.” Rafe’s long black braids whispered over his buckskin vest as he prowled the small octagon. He’d always been the most wolfish of the cousins, but now Kane watched him closely, aware of a subtle menace in his older cousin’s stride. Rafe had been just starting to learn the ways of a pack alpha when his father was killed. As hard as it was for any boy to lose his father, werewolves were ruled by family and pack links. Those devoted bonds balanced the wildness. To have that closeness ripped away right when it was most needed had consequences. But that was why Kane had returned: to be that balance. “Things have changed around here.”
Bas let out a rude sniff. “Not so’s you’d notice.”
Kane shot him a withering look. “The mating season is here. With the pack alpha gone”—he refused to dwell on what he had missed in his years away—“I need to take a mate, to give the pack the center it needs.” He cast a dictatorial eye over them. “We all need mates.”
Bas let out a coyote-sharp bark of laughter. “We? You were raised pack alpha, not us.”
Rafe turned his head to look out at the desert. His rich, mahogany skin was tight over his high cheekbones as he clenched his jaw.
If the hunters hadn’t cut him adrift at that fateful moment, he would’ve been a mighty leader to the pack, Kane knew. For the first time, he hated, really hated, the humans for what they’d done: killed his cousins’ father for nothing and taken away his own freedom.
Taken away his chance with Maddie.
As if sensing the violent churn of his thoughts, Rafe looked back at him, his fathomless jade eyes glinting a warning amber in the darkness. “If we need mates, why’d you fuck Maddie Joplin—again—when you know you won’t keep her?”
Though Rafe wasn’t saying anything Kane hadn’t already said to himself, hearing it aloud made his hackles bristle. He took a short, stiff step toward his cousin.
“I’m keeping her safe,” he said through bared teeth.
Bas stood beside his brother, like light and dark twins. “Safe? Ah, that must be the blood I smell.”
A hot flush swept through Kane. “The bond won’t set unless I return the bite.” He forced himself to add, “And I won’t do that. Not to her.”
“Why not?” Bas needled. “She just might be strong enough to survive the change.”
“He was never sure he wanted to be wolf,” Rafe said to his brother, as if Kane wasn’t right there. “That’s why he left.”
Kane tightened his grip on the beer bottle, resisting the urge to swing. “I left to find another way to be a wolf.”
Bas tilted his head, pale brows arched. “Why would you want another way? It is what it is. The moon doesn’t howl at the wolf. The wolf howls at the moon.”
Sometimes the old ways of the shifters seemed impenetrable, like his cousin’s head. “You know what’d be nice? More freedom, and less secrecy and danger. Oh, and how about not being murdered by hunters?”
Bas shrugged. “I like danger.” His blue eyes turned utterly arctic. “And I will make any hunter I meet beg for mercy. Which will not be granted.”
“Just when I thought I was done with war,” Kane snapped.
This was why they needed mates. Not every male would find his true mate, the reflection of his soul; sometimes Kane thought true mates were more myth than reality, which was pretty funny coming from a werewolf. But without the steadfastness of at least a bonded mate, a lone wolf was reckless and gloried in violence. Kane understood all too well; sometimes it had felt good to walk into a war zone, to come alive in the presence of death. But to survive in a world teeming with humans, the pack had to be smarter, stronger, better connected. They couldn’t just run wild. They needed jobs that provided resources for supporting themselves. They needed advocates for preserving open spaces.
Aw hell. He sounded like a politician.
To wash that taste out of his mouth, he downed the last of the beer and slammed the bottle down on the rail. Turning his back on his cousins—and right now, he didn’t even care if they jumped him since a fight would at least tell him where they stood—he yanked on his clothes. When he swiveled around, they were watching him with eyes of crystal ice and mysterious jade.
He grabbed his empty bottle and gave them a sarcastic salute. “Thanks for the welcome home.”
“Any time.” Bas took his wallet from his back pocket and unfurled an accordion of condoms from the inner pouch. He tore one from the end and tucked it under the rail.
Kane grumbled under his breath, “Am I the only one who didn’t fuck down here?”
“Not anymore,” Rafe said.
Bas slapped his shoulder as they stepped out of the gazebo. “Really, cuz, welcome home.”
The trio dropped their bottles into the recycling bin behind the roadhouse, and the chime of empty glass echoed through Kane’s chest—brittle and hollow and cold, as if his moments with Maddie had never been.
And they couldn’t be, ever again, he reminded himself. For her good and the good of the pack. He’d do his duty as the pack’s first alpha and take a mate.
Even if his heart felt as distant and halved as the falling moon.
Chapter Five
‡
The sun had barely peeked over the rolling horizon when Maddie whisked down to the gazebo behind Gypsy’s. She tucked the condom she’d bought from the men’s bathroom at the gas station under the railing. Hopefully whoever used it had a better time than she’d had.
Instantly, she rejected the sourness of the thought. She couldn’t be unfair. She’d gotten exactly what she’d asked for: fucked. Just because her body and her mind had different interpretations of how that felt wasn’t Kane’s fault.
She circled the gazebo and walked down to the edge of the creek, hoping for a moment of peace next to the quiet, sparkling water. A great blue heron, hunting minnows, rose from the shallows with an annoyed croak. His mighty wings blocked the yellow sun for a heartbeat, casting Maddie in cold shadow.
The avian abandonment felt like a personal indictment, and she muttered a curse to break the clot in her tight throat.
Okay, so she’d made a bad choice. She’d done that before and survived just fine. She’d get over this too.
Again.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over in the hopes of different results,” she told the fish. Still hiding from the heron, they had no reply.
So she pulled out her cell phone and called Darling.
“Want to get coffee?” she asked without saying hello. “My treat.”
“You drink gas station coffee, so no thanks,” Dare said. “Anyway, I’m not ready to put on pants yet this morning. But I will put the tea kettle on.”
Maddie grimaced. She’d never been able to understand the love of tea. She trudged back along the road to town and down a slow-to-wake Main Street with its country market, the trading post/antique store, the motel and RV park that serviced the occasional petroglyph tourists, and the dueling diners—Gramma’s on one side of the street, Grampa’s directly across o
n the other side. Just before the feed store, Maddie turned onto a side street that led past bungalows and prefab ranches, most decked out with actual white picket fences. Back in the day, the quaint contentment had driven Maddie nuts. She might’ve unleashed a carton or two of eggs at those tidy white spires.
Darling lived in the last house on the lane with her aunt. Her mother had left Angels Rest for greener pastures when Dare was a toddler. Her father had died a couple years later “after a long battle with cheap bourbon and a short disagreement with an oncoming semi”, as Dare put it. In comparison, Aunt Betsy with her career as a telephone psychic seemed positively stable. She was in her office with her headset on, her tarot cards and crystal ball spread out on the desk in front of her when Maddie let herself in. They waved through the glass French doors and Maddie continued into the house to the robin’s-egg blue kitchen. Out the back door, a straight line of cottonwoods marked the boundary of the property, providing a backdrop to the neat garden beds and blocking the view of the wilder lands beyond.
But through the first spring leaves, Mesa Diablo lurked, its eastern face crimson in the light of the rising sun. Towering spires of harder basalt jutted up out of the sandstone like bloody fangs. For a moment, Maddie couldn’t look away from the menacing vista. Her heart skipped once and then hammered in her chest, as if it wanted to leap out and run for the hills.
Or run to the hills.
The delicate chime of fine china—incongruously civilized—brought her attention back to her friend.
Darling already had the tea out along with some meal bars. “I’m assuming you skipped the most important meal of the day, as usual.”
Maddie slid into the breakfast nook banquette across from her friend. “Had some things to do this morning.”
“Before coffee?” Dare lifted her pale cinnamon eyebrows. Her strawberries-and-whipped-cream Irish complexion had been a liability in this high desert town. They used to joke that she’d do better as a vampire, lest she step out into the summer sun and instantly immolate. Just as well she was prone to hiding in basements with musty old records, so the years of exposure had left only a smattering of freckles under her inquisitive peridot-green eyes. Those eyes were a little too perceptive now. “What could’ve been so important?”
“Nothing, really,” Maddie hedged. She was mostly telling the truth. What had happened with Kane was nothing, really. She plucked up one of the chunky, homemade bars and took a bite. “I have to open the gas station this morning, so thanks.” She chewed and then glanced down at the concoction of oats, almonds, and dried cranberries. “This is actually good. You could almost convince me to go vegan too.”
Dare snorted as she poured tea into three cups. “Two words: pepperoni pizza.”
Maddie lifted the bar, acknowledging the point. “Plus, Chuck said I can have all the fried stuff left in the deli case at the end of the day, so yeah, this probably isn’t the best time to try to purify my body.”
Although after Kane, maybe she needed some sort of ritual cleanse. The scorching hot shower she’d taken last night hadn’t quite reached all the places he’d touched…
“—shouldn’t have told you Chuck was hiring,” Dare was saying. “I can ask around at the county, see if I can find you something better.”
Maddie shook her head, as much to clear the distracting memories of Kane’s big hands as to reject her friend’s proposition. “I like working at the garage.”
“You were always better in shop than home ec,” Dare mused.
Their small high school had served kids coming from almost a thousand square miles of terrain that ranged from desolate mountain tops to lush valley bottomlands, and yet somehow managed to keep strictly defined, black and white definitions of gender roles. As if there was only one way to be.
In her years away, Maddie had found that was clearly not true. “Good thing I fought for my god-given right to small engine repair,” she said. “Every town has at least one garage so it was pretty easy to get some hours and a paycheck wherever I ended up.”
“You ended up here.” Dare studied her over the rim of her teacup.
Maddie took a sip, hiding her grimace at the honeyed hay flavor. Hiding her dismay at the observation, too. “Yeah. Funny, huh?”
“Yeah. We’ve talked about all the things you’ve done and all the places I haven’t been—”
Maddie stiffened. “I thought you liked it here.”
Dare waved away the interruption. “But we never got to why you’re back. Not to work at Chuck’s, no matter how much you like showing off that no one can pin you down with expectations.”
The insight stung a little. She liked shop work. Engines didn’t care how popular you were. She could throw her weight behind a torque wrench and have it mean something. And fitting in was just a matter of choosing the right bolt.
“So…” Darling pressed. “It’s nice to have you home, but”—a bleak shadow muddied her gemstone eyes—“I’m just wondering if you’re here to stay this time.”
Maddie knew her friend had handled her losses in life by retreating to old books, the proven kind that never changed or let you down. Though there was no hint of reproach in Dare’s voice, Maddie squirmed to think that she’d been one of those losses that drove Darling further into the basement.
But she had to be honest. “I don’t know what I’m going to do next. It’s just…” She took a deep breath and caught a faint whiff of bitterness from the tea. Darling was always so careful with her brewing; there must’ve been a bad leaf somewhere in the batch. “I was out east, driving this beater Caddie and working at an oil change place. The owner let me put the car up on blocks to figure out a tire problem. I was blaming all the potholes in those crowded highways and I was just going to realign the suspension, but he said, ‘How many more miles you gonna put on those wheels before you see the problem’s in the bones?’”
Darling blinked at her. “Pretend I don’t even own a car and have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Maddie huffed. “We got up inside and found damage to the frame from some old accident. No matter how much hammering I did, the thing was never going to run straight. It would always pull so hard that I’d end up going in circles. I sold that hunk of junk for barely enough to pay the Greyhound ticket here.” She let out a slow breath. “That’s why I’m back.”
“Because you finally found a car you couldn’t fix.”
“Because I finally realized it’s me I need to fix, inside, not outside.”
“You’re not broken,” Dare said, although her stout tone held more loyalty than conviction.
Maddie patted her hand. “You’re sweet. But…I’m missing something, and I think I left it here.”
Dare narrowed her eyes, the expression about as intimidating as angry Tinker Bell. “By any chance, would that something be Kane Villalobos?”
Gossip got around quickly in a small town; in a tiny town like Angels Rest, it broke the sound barrier. Maddie did everything in her power not to blush. “Not everything has to be about a guy.”
“Kane was more than just a guy to you.”
“Not anymore.” Maddie gulped down her tea, pretending the off flavor wasn’t symbolic of her life. “Banged him right out of my system.” Literally. “I’m over that.”
“Good,” Darling said. “He was wrong for you. Those Villalobos boys were always trouble.” Coming from gentle Dare, that was harsh criticism. A flush of anger brightened her freckles. “Without Mr. Villalobos to keep them in line, I imagine they’ll be worse than ever.”
Despite knowing her friend was right, Maddie couldn’t hold back a faint noise of protest. “They weren’t that bad. And anyway, Kane’s cousins mostly stayed at the ranch on the mesa.”
“Because no one here wanted them around.” Dare broke apart one of the breakfast bars, scattering nuts and fruits, but not eating any of it. “They think they are so much better than everyone else.”
Maddie peered at her friend curiously. “Why do I get the
sense there’s a story here I don’t know?”
Dare pushed her tea away. “It’s nothing, really.”
If her nothing was like Maddie’s nothing, then that was definitely something. “C’mon. I’ve told you all my Villalobos mistakes.” Well, not all of them…
Dare turned her glower out the window, toward the mesa which was turning hazier as the sun rose higher. “I was trying to do some research on the petroglyphs to update the website—”
Maddie laughed. “Angels Rest has a website?” Then she clamped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Won’t interrupt.”
With another attempted scowl, Dare said, “We do have a website. I just don’t have anything to put on it. I hiked up to the mesa—”
“You? Sorry, sorry.”
This time, Dare only loosed a resigned sigh. “I know. Which is why I was even more annoyed when I got up there and Rafe tried to run me off. I wasn’t on Villalobos land. The petroglyphs are designated a protected site for everyone to look at and dream about.”
A mental image flashed through Maddie’s mind of the ancient figures inked in Kane’s skin. She would’ve liked to’ve spent another few hours dreaming about his rock art.
She refocused on Darling, surprised to see something like fear lurking in her friend’s clear eyes. Kane had always been the golden boy, and Maddie wasn’t sure there was anything more to Bastian than sneers and sarcasm, but Rafael had a darkness in him. “He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No. He just…” Dare hesitated. “For a minute, I thought he might not let me go.” Before Maddie could respond to that outrage, Darling shook back her red hair. “He did keep my camera and then had the nerve to tell me no one should take things that didn’t belong to them. Like he was one of those people who think taking a picture will steal your soul.” She made a scoffing sound. “Like he even has a soul.”
Maddie wondered at the unusual sparkle in her usually bookish friend. But she was the last one who should question getting riled up by the Villalobos boys.
After promising Dare they’d sneak up to Mesa Diablo to get the photos she wanted right under Rafe’s out-of-joint nose, Maddie returned to the gas station to start her day. She put the fried foods from Grampa’s under the deli heat lamps and arranged the sandwiches and pie slices from Gramma’s in the cooler case; Chuck ordered from both of them since he didn’t want to be a pawn in their ongoing war. She topped off some local gas tanks, refilled a couple of propane cylinders, and directed a tourist asking about the nearest RV park. She made idle note of the license plate on the truck since the driver was a younger woman who appeared to be alone, which seemed a little odd so far out here on the edge of nowhere.
