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Defensive Line (The Unlovabulls #1) Chapter Thirty-Nine 100%
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Chapter Thirty-Nine

Happily Ever After

Lily

I dried the Boxer pup with a towel to stimulate its breathing and settled it back in the whelping box where its mother and siblings waited. The smallest of the litter, he had been sluggish to breathe and I was checking on him often. Soft cries and grunts danced over the air in the small room dedicated to mothers whelping their pups.

Iris nosed her baby as it wrestled with the other four to find a nipple. She’d be a good mama.

She’d been a handful when she came in.

Skinny, hungry, with wounds on her shoulders and sides I was sure were cigarette burns. She’d been dumped, likely because she was pregnant, and she’d attacked her male rescuer but had gone to a female rescuer with relative ease.

It wasn’t hard to figure out her abuser was a man.

The whelping room had a temporary sign on it that said Women Only. We’d start Iris’s socialization once her pups were older. For now, she’d hang with the girls.

Shutting off the light, I closed the door behind me, and regarded the shelter I’d named the Unlovabulls Canine Rescue Center. It was smaller than I’d originally hoped. We were set up for thirty-five dogs at a time, but we never turned one away. Somehow, we always found room for the dogs that needed us most. There wasn’t a fancy ribbon cutting or a glitzy celebration, either.

No, the money went where it was needed most—the dogs.

I walked over to the fold-up cot that would be my bed and prepared myself for a long night. I needed to stay close to Iris tonight to make sure she didn’t have any complications. She wasn’t a spring chicken. Dr. Avalos—Regina or Gina, as most of us called her—thought she was at least eight, and this definitely hadn’t been her first litter.

Our shelter didn’t adopt many dogs out directly. They came here to get the care and skills they needed to be companion animals, and when I was sure they posed no more risk, they went back to the rescue organization that brought them to us to be adopted out. We’d adopted out only forty-three dogs directly. Dogs from the mill that weren’t suitable for other rescues.

I scanned over the Original Unlovabulls wall. Each survivor we’d rescued from the mill had a framed picture up there. The ones that hadn’t made it out with their lives had a plaque in my office with their breed type and a name we’d given them. The top of the plaque read You Were Loved. It was the truth.

Brody’s picture had yielded results.

Officer Johnson was able to identify who the pickup truck was registered to.

The red and black Ford F-150 Raptor belonged to Devon Taylor.

I scrunched my pillow under my head, trying to get comfortable, when the soft padding of doggie feet and tennis shoes down the hall made me smile. I glanced up to see Brody toting an air mattress.

“What are you doing here? You don’t have to sleep down here with me. Go upstairs with the dogs, Shaw.” I started to sit up. “You’ve got an agility trial tomorrow.”

Discovering Devon was one of the guys behind the mill had come as a shock, but after a little digging, it all made sense. Brody had never told him we slept together. Devon knew because they’d been keeping tabs on me since they got spooked at the rental house. It wasn’t only the sticker on Everett’s car that had spooked him that night, either.

He’d recognized Brody’s truck.

Devon had flipped on his cousin in exchange for a reduced sentence. They’d moved the dogs to a rural warehouse a couple of towns over. Mrs. Davis turned out to be their grandmother, and the farm manager. He took a cut in exchange for letting Devon and his cousin, Colton Andrews, use the barn.

The letters in the brand finally made sense. DA. Devon Taylor and Colton Andrews. The ASPCA, SPCA of Dallas and Collin County Sheriff’s department had joined forces once we had a location. We rescued 104 breeding dogs, most of the females pregnant or nursing. That number didn’t include the pups.

“We’re not sleeping upstairs when their mom”—he pointed to the dogs—“and my fiancée is down here on a cot. Now, come on down on this mattress. It’s a lot more comfortable than that cot. I’ll be back, I’ve got to get a dog bed.”

Fiancée . It wasn’t a title I’d ever thought I’d wear again. I admired my modest engagement ring for the millionth time. This time, I had the right man. The only man. The wedding would be small. Out on our ranch outside the city, nothing fancy. Picnic tables and straw bales. A band in the barn and an open bar. Dogs welcome, people tolerated.

It’d be fun to watch Hayes and Olive dance around each other all night, given their history and their statuses as best man and maid of honor.

That man was relentless when it came to her.

Laila’s happy little face made me smile as she tried and failed to jump up on my cot. She was full grown, but she was still a bulldog, with short little bulldog legs and a chubby bulldog butt. Smiling, I slipped down to the air mattress, where she buried her big wrinkly head under my arm.

Hearing Brody’s steps and more doggie feet coming down the hall, I kissed her snout. “Your daddy spoils you rotten, little girl.”

“Damn straight. My princess deserves it. All my girls do.” He put the dog bed down at the head of our makeshift bed. Jet crawled in, and CC snuggled in half on top of her, half in our bed, with her butt in my face.

Such is life with dogs. I reached up and patted my girls.

Brody kicked his shoes off and got situated on the other side of the mattress, and Mack jumped on top of him, rolling on to his back and pushing my fiancé to the edge.

Chuckling, I nodded at my good boy. “What’s your excuse for how spoiled that one is?” Mack snorted and wiggled his head under Brody’s hand.

“That’s all you, darlin’.”

“Oh, you’re full of shit, Shaw.” He and Mack were buds, best buds.

“Hey, he’s the only other guy in the house. We need each other. We bond.”

“You feed him off a fork.”

Brody closed his eyes and true to form, he and Mack were snoring in a matter of minutes.

Nineteen.

That was the number of breeding dogs we couldn’t save, and the number of names on the plaque in my office.

Six.

Six dogs I deemed unfit for adoption. Two Corsi. One Pit Bull. One Bull Mastiff. A German Shepherd. And a Bull Terrier.

We sold my house and bought the ranch for them. They’d never be trustworthy around most humans because most humans didn’t know how to read them, how to handle them. But I did, and Brody had learned. And Officer Johnson—David—he knew how to channel their work ethic into something productive that gave them peace. They had good lives with us on the ranch. Full lives, with fresh air and sunshine. A pond and plenty of food and water and trees to sleep under and climate-controlled housing. Warm beds, and goats and ducks and chickens to guard—for those who’d mastered their prey drive.

They would live that way until they went over the bridge.

There was no doubt the life of a rescuer was hard. The lows were very low. But the highs...the dogs that went to good homes or into working dog programs. Seeing them explore grass for the first time and feel the sun on their faces. Pick up a toy and bring it to me. The pictures that covered the other three walls of my office—successful adoption stories and updates from families.

I’d take a hundred of the bad days in exchange for the feeling I got when one of our dogs found a home.

Because they were our dogs. All of them.

I reached over, tapped my snoring husband-to-be.

“Huh.”

“I love you.”

“Mm, love you, too,” he mumbled.

“Shaw, thank you.”

He opened his eyes, and he reached over to squeeze my hand. “For what, darlin’?”

“For loving these Unlovabulls every bit as much as I do.”

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