Chapter 2 #2
“Refrigerator’s propane,” I said, trailing a finger along the butcher block counter. “Stove too. Power goes out most winters—you won’t starve.”
She set her bag down with excessive care, as though disarming explosives. When her fingers brushed the satin finish on the cabinets, I caught a slight bruise on her wrist.
“Closet space might disappoint.” I leaned against the arched doorway to the bedroom, tracking her micro-expressions. “But the mattress…”
Her breath hitched.
“…is memory foam. Doesn’t sag.”
The bed frame’s iron scrollwork threw barred shadows across her face. She blinked rapidly, throat working around unspoken words. Most women would comment on the quilt—hand-stitched by the Widow Granger last Christmas. They’d sigh over the farmhouse sink or coo at the subway tile.
Julia strode to the east-facing window instead, palms flattening against the sill. “Screen’s removable?”
“Twist latch at the top. Why?”
She didn’t answer, but her spine straightened as she counted the steps from bed to back exit. Twelve paces. Solid footing. No rugs to trip on.
Smart girl.
I moved to the kitchenette, deliberately turning my back. Glass clinked as I filled two mason jars from the tap. “Water pressure’s better than the Hilton. Showerhead’s got six settings—including ‘hurricane’ and ‘monsoon.’”
When I turned, she stood frozen between the sofa and coffee table, shoulders hunched like a spooked mustang.
The fading light caught the uneven dye job—jet black at the roots, bleeding to blueberry near the ends.
Chemical burn marks along her hairline told of bathroom sink disasters and hurried cover-ups.
“Keys.” I tossed the ring. She snatched them mid-air, reflexes honed by necessity rather than sport. “Silver one’s for the deadbolt. Gold does the handle. The key fob will arm the alarm system.”
Her eyes went wide. “Alarm system?”
“You are safe here, Julia. The alarm system is just an added element to be sure you feel as safe as possible.” Truth wrapped in practicality.
Let her think me a stickler about her feelings.
But something tells me she might be running from something or someone.
This is the quickest way for us to be notified if a bad guy has breached her residence.
I explained the very simple instructions for arming and disarming the system and the importance of her always having it armed whenever she’s at home.
She drifted toward the bookshelves flanking the fireplace—empty except for my sister’s hideous porcelain spaniel collection. I should’ve cleared them out.
“Storage ottoman doubles as a safe.” I nudged the tufted leather cube with my boot. “Combination’s your birthday.”
Her head whipped around. “How did you—”
“Your application. It included little vitals like that. This job may pay on a cash basis, but I needed to know a few things about the person I was opening up my books to. Like if you were old enough to be a CPA.” I gave her a wink. “Seems you are.”
The pink flush creeping up her neck said she didn’t believe me. Good. Let her wonder what else I knew.
I checked my Rolex—18:47. Church convened in twenty-three minutes. “Groceries get delivered Tuesdays. Cash envelope under the fruit bowl.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Yes.” The word came out sharper than intended. I softened it with a shrug. “Corporate account. Tax thing.”
She opened her mouth, no doubt to argue, when the wind shifted. Through the screen door came the distant howl of the 6:15 freight train—two long, one short, echoing across the plains. Julia’s pupils dilated. Her pulse jumped in that delicate throat.
Wolf instinct. Had to be.
“Schedules posted on the fridge.” I moved toward the door, leather cut flapping against my chest. “My number’s there too. In red.”
She hovered near the breakfast bar, arms crossed protectively. “What if I need something after hours?”
The challenge hung between us—a gauntlet thrown in honeyed tones. I let my gaze drop to her chipped nail polish, the raw spot where she’d worried a hangnail into an open wound.
“Then you call.” I palmed the doorknob, brass biting into my scarred palm. “Day or night.”
The screen door slammed behind me like a gunshot report.
Wind whipped dust devils across the driveway, carrying the metallic tang of approaching rain.
Through the apartment’s warped glass, I watched Julia trace fingertips along the butcher-block counter—a moth testing forbidden heat.
Her reflection fractured in the windowpanes as she took a coffee mug from the cabinet. Testing weight. Checking for defects.
“Prez?” JT’s voice crackled through my cut’s comms patch. “Church in ten.”
I thumbed the mic hidden under my collar. “En route.”
She drifted into view again, clutching the yellow gingham curtains around her shoulders like a child’s security blanket. The fabric strained against her collarbones. Too thin. Too damn thin. My knuckles ached where they gripped the truck’s door handle.
Raindrops pocked the windshield as I keyed the ignition. Through the garage apartment’s window, Julia pressed both palms to the glass. Streetlight haloed her thick and wispy bangs, turning black dye blue. For three heartbeats, we stared across the electric-dark space between vehicle and refuge.
Then she stepped back, swallowed by shadows.
I took a ride through town on my way back to the compound.
Gravel crunched beneath my tires. In the Stop-N-Go’s amber glow, I caught my own eyes in the rearview—wolf gold bleeding through human blue.
Her scent lingered. Not just fear-sweat and drugstore perfume.
Underneath… jasmine. Southern jasmine, like the vines strangling my mother’s porch back in the summer.
Pearl’s neon crucifix bled crimson across the truck hood as I rolled past. Muted bass throbbed through the bar’s shuttered windows. Old habits made me note the fresh motorcycle treads in the mud—two Harleys, one Indian Scout. All pack-registered.
The compound’s outer fence materialized from the storm. I licked diesel rain off my lips, tasting Julia’s lie again. Dead fiance. Bullshit. But trauma? That sharpened bone-deep.
Roadside cattails bowed as I passed, their feathered heads brushing the truck’s flanks. In the ditches, field mice fled prowling shadows. Every instinct said turn around. Post guards. Chain her doors.
Instead, I parked in front of the compound. Through the downpour, prospects scrambled to cover bike seats with tarps. Their laughter died when I strode past.
“President.” Doc emerged from the fog, medical bag dripping. “Heard you found our stray accountant.”
Lightning fork-lit the canyon. Somewhere beyond the ridge, thunder rumbled an answer.
“Not stray,” I said, shaking rain from my cut. “Hired.”
Doc’s nostrils flared. We both knew what that twitch meant—his wolf had caught the same thread of wildness in her scent that I carried.
He adjusted his horned-rimmed glasses, rainwater beading on the lenses, as he peered toward Pearl’s cottage across the compound.
“Smells like someone dipped a tea-bag in moon water.”
I shouldered open the lodge door, wood groaning against iron hinges.
The church room’s low lights cast long-jawed shadows over Wrecker’s scarred knuckles, where he dealt poker cards across the map table.
Four faces lifted—pack officers and enforcers—their animal scents clotting the air beneath the smell of coffee and curiosity.
JT rose first, prayer beads clicking against his belt buckle. “She clean?”
I straddled my chair at the table’s head, leather creaking with a warning. “Cleaner than your conscience.”
Chuckles rolled through the room like tumbleweeds before dying beneath another thunderclap. Wrecker dealt me in without asking—ace of spades face up. Omen or joke, I let it lie burning against oak wood mottled with old bloodstains.
That scent you’re carrying… “Hybrid?” Mama Pearl materialized from the kitchen archway, flour still dusting her black dress. She set a pecan pie between bullet hole clusters pocking the wall behind me—sugar weaponized as an interrogation tactic.
“Don’t know yet.” My thumb worried the card’s edge. “Human enough to bleed slow when cut.”
Mama’s spatula cracked against the pie server. “But not human enough to leave be.”
The truth hung heavier than August humidity as I laid out facts like tarot cards. “I don’t know. But she’s a tiny thing, not even as tall as my shoulders. Smells like fuckin’ ginger and burnt sugar. She heard the damn subsonic train whistle and responded to it.”
Wrecker leaned back until his chair groaned in apocalyptic protest. “Did you bring an omega into our den?”
Gasps rippled through my closest men—old superstitions flaring like struck matches. JT’s crucifix glinted as he crossed himself twice—once for man, once for beast.
I stood slow, palms flat on wood veined with generations of claw marks. “It’s clear she doesn’t even know what she is, what we are.” Power bled into my words—alpha compulsion thickening the air until breathing felt like swallowing wet wool. “But someone might.”
Mama set a slice of pie before me, pecans glistening like amber traps in syrup. “Now that sounds like trouble.”
I imagined Julia’s fear flashing under her bathroom light as she box-dyed evidence away—black rinses circling the drain in a porcelain bowl while bruises ripened beneath whatever she wore at the time. Not thrift store sweaters, I’d wager.
“Probably whoever she’s running from,” I said softly into my coffee steam rising like sacrificial smoke between us all.
The storm chose that moment to shatter cracked windows we’d yet to replace from the last big storm—glass teeth raining down as emergency lights bathed us red.