Chapter 3
ROMAN
Twelve hours since I sank my teeth into an Omega I’ve never met before, and her scent hasn’t left me. “Fuck me.”
I pour coffee into the thermos lid, but little has been steady inside of me since yesterday. The coffee is the real stuff, ground this morning because after years of prison coffee that tasted like burnt water, I don’t drink garbage anymore.
I set the lid on the stump I’ve been using for a table.
We dropped this pine last week, and I cut the stump flat and square afterward because I prefer a table I made to one I bought.
My father was the same. Everything in our cabin in Brazil, he built, and he’d slap the table and say a man should be surrounded by his own work.
The morning is a good one for hauling. Fog’s burning off late, which means the creek’s running high and cold, and the sun’s finally punching through the canopy in long slats between the trunks.
Air’s cool enough to keep a man working without sweating through his shirt by noon.
Tiny chickadees are going at it all around me in the tree, and that’s fine by me.
It’s when the birds shut up that I pay attention.
We’re clearing a half acre off the east trail for Eve.
She wants camping platforms out here, firepits, some experience she can sell to lodge guests, and the timber goes to the mill for cash.
So this morning I’ve been bucking the last fall into lengths and spray-marking on the next line of trees to fall.
An engine comes up the fire road in low gear, gravel popping. Burgundy pickup, more mud than paint, one headlight strapped in. Grayson parks the thing and swings out of the cab, ink from wrist to neck, sleeves shoved up, and bangs the door shut hard enough to lift the chickadees out of the county.
“Hey, Roman.” He grins across the clearing at me. “How many trees did you take down this morning, big man? Forest surrender yet?”
“Eleven,” I say, deadpan, handing him the coffee I poured for myself because he’ll take it anyway. “All by myself with my teeth.”
He takes the lid, drinks, winces at the heat, drinks again. “Yeah, I heard that’s your thing now.”
“Fuck you.” But I’m grinning when I say it, and he claps a hand on my shoulder hard enough to stagger a smaller man.
That’s been us since a concrete yard three years back, when some fool decided the quiet Brazilian was easy meat and Grayson waded in, swinging, before he’d ever heard my name.
Wolf ended it from thirty feet away without saying a word.
My pack. I’d go back inside for these two men, and I don’t say that lightly about anyone else aside from my mom and sister.
“You’re welcome, as I finished the work around here. Now say something useful.”
He grunts a laugh. “Your truck’s back at the cabin.” He hands the lid back half empty. “Plugged the tire. Nail through the shoulder of the tread, probably off the lodge road. You owe me a beer.”
“That fucking tire.” I say it slowly. “I blame it for the whole shit show yesterday. I’m on the shoulder with a jack in the mud, and the entire time, Eve’s granddaughter was probably standing in Rusty’s Wolf Tavern waiting for me to walk her through the woods because I didn’t turn up.
” I roll the lid between my palms. “I missed her by about twenty minutes, and she was gone when I arrived.”
“Mm.” He leans a hip against the stump. “You sure it’s the tire, though? Not that you got one look at her and realized she’s sexy as fuck in real life, and now you’re grieving the first impression you never got to make?”
“Fuck. That didn’t even cross my mind.” I’m grinning again, which does nothing for my case.
“Right.” He scratches his jaw. “So that wasn’t you last night, rolling in at midnight covered in trail dust and another man’s blood, and the first thing out of your mouth being ‘I think I might be in love. Lucy’s my future wife, and she’s so damn beautiful.
’ ” He holds up a finger. “ ‘Not to mention she’s got a great rack.’ ”
“Yeah, well. You had to be there.” I finish the coffee, and the heat of it does zilch for me. That’s the problem—nothing’s touched the wire humming under my skin since yesterday. “Besides, do you remember what else I said to you last night?”
The smirk comes down off his face by half, and he nods. “That during your fight, you bit her.”
“It was a damn accident because everything happened in the same second. The strange guy with her had swung at me, she fell into me, my mouth was open in a snarl, and then my teeth went into her hand. Broke skin, and she bled, and I got some of her blood in my mouth.”
His eyebrows rise. “Was it a bite bite?” he asks. “Or a marking bite?”
“Honest answer, I don’t know.” The lid’s going cold in my hand, and I set it down on the stump.
“But the second my teeth were in her, I felt a current go through me down to my fucking balls. Like grabbing a fence you didn’t realize was electric.
And it hasn’t stopped. All night there’s been this hum under my skin, and my heart keeps kicking like something’s coming up the trail.
That worries me, man. A bite shouldn’t do that with a stranger, or with anyone. ”
He watches me for a long moment. “Except with your scent match.”
The laugh that comes out of me is rough. “Yeah, right. What are the odds of that, tripping over your scent match on a forest trail? That’s fairy-tale shit. Men like us are the part of the story that mothers point at when they tell their kids to stay on the path.”
Twigs snap to the north, and both of us turn toward the figure coming down from the sloppy, thick parts of the woods.
Wolf, felling axe over one shoulder, wedge bag in the other fist. His gaze sweeps the clearing once—the bucked timber, the painted line, the two of us standing around a stump.
He’s been walking the marked line since dawn, checking my paint against the lean of each trunk, because Wolf checks everything.
“Lots of talking,” he says flatly, “for two men on the clock.”
“Break,” Grayson answers, spreading his arms. “Even convicts get ten minutes, buddy.”
Wolf doesn’t respond to that. He shifts the wedge bag, pulls his dented steel cup out of his jacket, and tosses it underhand across the clearing at me. I catch it against my chest, then fill it up with coffee, the same cup that came out of Stone Creek Penitentiary with him that he’s never let go.
He takes the drink and sips it, staring at me over the rim with those flat gray eyes. “So, you’re talking about how you bit Lucy yesterday instead of helping her to the lodge?” he asks.
“I’ve been telling myself it was nothing, seeing as it was just an accident.” There’s no point in trying anything else on Wolf. “But it’s not nothing.”
He drinks again, taking his time. “Doesn’t matter that it was an accident.
There’s no such thing as a harmless marking bite on an Omega, Roman.
If you broke skin, it counts, and her body already knows it.
By the look of how flushed you are and the fact that you’re bouncing on your toes talking about her, yours does too.
” His gaze glides over me once. “How bad is it?”
“I can’t get her scent out of my nose, man.” The words come out low and scraped, half a growl. “Apples and honey, and I’m so fucking savage for more.”
Wolf bursts out laughing. “Well. Now I’m curious.
” He tilts his head at me. “It’s not every day a man bites a woman the first time he meets her.
So what’s the plan when she gets to the lodge?
Because she’s coming here. You going to shake her hand and say, ‘Welcome home. I do the logging, sometimes I work the grounds and the firewood, and also, that’s my mouth on your hand’? ”
“I’ll figure it out before she gets there,” I say, and it sounds weak even to me.
“Figure faster.” One corner of his mouth lifts.
Grayson’s already at his truck, arm through the open window, and he comes out with an energy drink.
He cracks it and points the can at me. “You realize Eve is going to lose her shit. She finds out you put a mark on her granddaughter, forget the parole board. She’ll drive you back to prison herself and help them process you. ”
The growl comes up out of my chest, rolling.
Grayson toasts me with the can and a grin. Asshole. He’s enjoying this too much.
“She’ll be pissed at all three of us if we blow the lumber quota too,” Wolf states, holding the cup out in my direction for a refill, unbothered as ever.
“She’s selling this timber to keep the lodge’s lights on.
Occupancy’s been shit all season as she develops the place, and right now we’re part of what’s keeping her upright. ”
Grayson swigs the drink, and his grin turns sly. “Look at the bright side, though. Lucy falls for you, maybe she starts cooking. Ethan bitches every single time he feeds us. Yesterday he called my breakfast order a war crime with syrup.”
“You asked him to put six eggs inside a pancake,” I say.
He shrugs. “It was damn good and packed with protein.”
Wolf drains the second cup of coffee, hands it back, and hefts the axe and wedge bag over the side of the truck bed, steel ringing against steel. The breeze ruffles his dark hair, pushing the longer strands into his eyes.
“Seriously, though, for one second,” Grayson says.
“As Wolf said, this could blow up in our faces.” He turns the can in his fingers.
“Eve’s been good to us, and she took us in without blinking.
We need her signature to close out the program clean, all three of us, and if this bite thing turns her against you, it splashes on Wolf and me too.
” He stares at me straight. “I’m not doing six more months behind bars over this.
I’d rather be out here, free. All of us need this. So we gotta find a way to fix this.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s been sitting on me all night, as I haven’t told her about the bite yet.
” My hands start coiling the strap on the stump.
“But it was a genuine mistake. I lost it completely. There I was, coming up from the bar, moving fast because she’d already gone into the woods, and at that stage, I assumed she was alone, so I was running.
And this fox suddenly bolted across the trail in front of me as though the whole forest was on fire.
Then I cleared the rise, and there was Lucy.
I’ve seen the photos of her in Eve’s office, so I knew it was her, except she wasn’t alone.
A man had his hand clamped around her arm, hauling her toward the hollow part of the woods.
She was fighting him, digging her heels into the dirt and pulling back with everything she had. What was I supposed to do?”
“Not bite her,” he states the obvious.
I exhale loudly. “Fuck, I was ready to put that man in the ground. I can’t explain it.” I roll my neck.
Grayson’s quiet for a moment, then asks, “And the guy? Any idea who he was?”
“Never seen him before. Mid-thirties, thin, going bald at the temples, red bandanna at his throat.” I shrug.
“I took him down fast and made a choice, because she hit her head. So I carried her and her bag to my car and drove to the hospital. When I went back up to deal with him, he was gone. The whole day was fucked up.”
Grayson crushes the empty can slowly in one fist. “All right. One problem at a time. You’ve spoken to Eve today, right?”
I nod. “Told her everything else that happened, that I screwed up with the timing, and she said something weird: The guy guiding Lucy through the woods called himself Roman.”
“What the fuck? That’s not a common name,” Wolf barks.
“Exactly my thought. So did someone pretend to be me? And more importantly, how the fuck did they know I was escorting her to the lodge yesterday?”
“I really want to know who the fake Roman is,” Grayson says.
“Me too. Because there’s the added complication that I attacked him first, and if he presses charges, knowing I’m here in the reintegration program, he could have me sent straight back.
Eve said Lucy will explain that I was defending her if it comes to that, but she’s calling my parole officer, who’ll probably come out and grill me about the whole thing.
” I exhale, trying to ease the pressure tightening around my ribs. “It’s just gotten fucking messy.”
“We’ve got this.” Grayson slaps my back hard enough to shove me forward a step. “We tell the truth, and in the meantime, keep your head down until we work out who the hell that bastard in the woods with Lucy was.”
Then he’s hauling my saw and the fuel cans onto the tailgate. He shouts at Wolf about whoever strapped yesterday’s load down crooked.
I screw the thermos shut. I’ve spent my whole life looking after other people.
First, it was my mom and little sister after Dad died, and becoming the provider before I was old enough to know what that really meant.
Then, yesterday felt no different. Now, the moment I saw Lucy, something deep inside me decided she was mine to protect.
I cinch the last strap and turn toward the cab, worry creeping steadily up my spine. But as Eve had said on the phone, I just have to be honest. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well… except for the bite, but that had been an accident too.
The breeze comes up the trail off the creek, through half a mile of pine and thinning fog, and I swear on my father’s grave that it’s carrying her. Apples and honey, faint as woodsmoke from a far ridge, threading through all that green straight to me.
My heart kicks hard, and my cock throbs harder, both at once. I’m certain I’m screwed.