Chapter 7
CARTER
June’s taillights disappear around the corner, and I’m still standing in the parking lot like an idiot who forgot how legs work.
Kai bumps my shoulder. “You gonna keep staring at that road like it owes you money, or are we leaving?”
“Shut up.”
He hums, pleased with himself. “That’s a yes.”
We climb into my truck. Kai drops into the passenger seat and immediately acts like he pays the registration, one boot propped up like he’s king of my damn dashboard. I pull out of the fairground lot and aim us toward the ranch.
The night is cold and clear, stars scattered across the sky like someone got reckless with a handful of diamonds. The road stretches out empty ahead of us, dark and quiet, the kind of silence that makes thoughts louder.
I should be thinking about tomorrow. Circuit prep, as the rodeo kicks off the day after.
Instead, I keep replaying June. The way she laughed when Kai nearly ate dirt at the ring toss. Her eyes lit up every time we handed her another stupid prize. How addictive she smelled when she was right there between us.
Kai glances over. “You’re doing it again.”
“What’s that?”
“Where you go real quiet and your jaw gets tight.” He points at me like a prosecutor. “You’re thinking about her.”
I don’t bother denying it. I flick my eyes toward him. “So are you.”
Kai snorts. “Yeah, but I’m not the one pretending I’m above it.” He shifts in his seat, restless energy rolling off him. “You were real composed back there. Mr. Calm. Mr. ‘I’m just here for the community.’ ”
“One of us has to look semi-functional in public,” I mutter.
“Functional is overrated.” Kai rakes a hand through his hair, loosening it like he’s trying to shake the night off. It doesn’t work. “You see the way she looked at us? Like she was two seconds from making a bad decision, then she’d pull herself back.”
“I saw,” I say, unable to stop thinking about it.
Kai’s gaze narrows, like he’s watching me carefully now. “That didn’t mess with you?”
I tighten my grip on the wheel. “What do you want me to say, Kai?”
“I want you to quit acting like you didn’t spend the whole night one breath away from losing your mind.”
I stare out at the road, jaw working once.
“Fine. Yeah.” I swallow, irritated at myself for even saying it.
“Every time she smiled at me, I wanted to close the distance. When she got close, I had to tell my hands to behave. And then she left…” I exhale hard through my nose. “I’m not thrilled about it.”
Kai’s grin turns sharp and satisfied. “There we go. That’s the truth.”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m making it better.” He leans back, smug. “You’re welcome.”
I glance at him. “Go fuck yourself.”
Kai laughs like he’s already planning how to do exactly that and call it a team activity. “After we figure out what June’s hiding.”
His fingers are drumming against his thigh, that endless energy looking for somewhere to go. I know the feeling. My whole body is humming with it, restless, unsatisfied, wanting something I can’t have.
“Here’s the thing,” Kai adds, and the playfulness drops out of him. “I can still smell her.”
He glances down at his shirt. “On my clothes. My skin.” His throat works once. “It’s… bad in the best way. Like she got under me without even meaning to.”
I return my attention to the road. “You want me to pull over so you can rub your face on your own sleeve?”
Kai lets out a short breath that might be a laugh. Might be a growl. “Don’t start.” Then he sobers again. “But her scent. It wasn’t steady. You caught that, right? It got stronger as the night went on.”
“Yeah.” My grip tightens on the wheel. “Early on, I barely got a trace. Later, after the games, after she stopped bracing every second… it hit.”
“Exactly.” Kai shifts in his seat, restless. “Like there’s a lid on it. And when she relaxes, it slips.”
Silence stretches for a beat. The kind that means we’re both hearing the same thing in our heads.
Kai says it first. “She’s not a Beta.”
“My instincts clocked that the second I saw her,” I admit. “They haven’t backed off once.”
“Betas don’t do that to Alphas,” he says, voice rough. “They don’t make your whole body go alert. Like you’re on duty. Like you’re… owned.”
I exhale slowly. “So why pretend? Why hide?”
Kai shrugs. “Because somebody told her to, or she’s hiding something?”
I think of the way June answers too fast when designation comes up. The way she redirects. The way her scent flares for one breath, then vanishes like she shoved it back down.
“If she’s masking,” I say, “it’s not new. That takes discipline. Constant attention. You don’t keep that up unless you’re scared of what happens when you stop.”
Kai nods once. “Fear or experience.”
I glance at him. “And then there’s her ex, who’s a problem.”
“Fucking dick,” Kai states. “I doubt he knows, or he would have revealed it. I don’t think she’s hiding it from him, as he’s only a Beta.”
“Which means it’s bigger than him,” I murmur.
Kai’s voice goes quiet, dangerous. “Pack. Family. Somebody who didn’t protect her when they should’ve.”
The thought lands heavily in my chest. “Or somebody who convinced her hiding was the only way to survive.”
Kai stares out the windshield, eyes hard. “That’s not survival. That’s a cage.”
My fingers flex on the steering wheel. “And cages make people bite.”
Kai finally looks at me. “So we don’t corner her.”
“No,” I agree. “We don’t push. We make it safe. We let her choose.”
Kai’s mouth twists. “And if somebody made her believe she had to disappear… they’re going to regret it.”
I don’t argue. I just keep driving because my instincts have already decided one thing.
June isn’t just a girl we met at a fair. She’s ours.
We drive in silence, the road empty and dark around us.
I should be paying attention to where we’re going, but my mind keeps circling back to June.
The fear underneath her smiles. The loneliness she tries so hard to mask.
The way she stared at us like she wanted to believe in something but couldn’t quite let herself.
“You know what doesn’t make sense?” Kai says suddenly.
“What?”
“The pull I feel toward her.” He gestures vaguely. “It should be fading. We left her. We’re driving away. My brain should be settling down, moving on to other shit.”
“But it’s not.”
“It’s getting worse. Like the farther we get from her, the more I want to turn this truck around and go back. Find her. Make sure she’s fucking safe and ensure no one else gets close to her.”
I know exactly what he means. My foot keeps twitching toward the brake. Some primal part of me is howling that we’re going the wrong direction. That we should be with her. That she belongs with us.
Belongs with us.
That thought should scare me. We’ve known her for barely two days. But it feels like something that’s been building for years, just waiting for the right moment to explode.
“Why does this road feel wrong?” I frown into the dark ahead. The landscape doesn’t match what my muscle memory expects.
Kai leans forward, squinting through the windshield. “Because you’re driving like a man who’s been hypnotized. And you missed the turn by a mile, Romeo.”
I shoot him a look. “Fuck off, it’s not a mile.”
Kai digs his phone out and taps the screen a few times, then his mouth twists. “Okay, it’s… more than a mile.” He lifts the phone toward the windshield like better signal might magically appear. “And there’s spotty reception out here. Montana really said, ‘Good luck, idiots.’ ”
I slow the truck. The road is narrow, dirt edged, flanked by black fields and fencing that disappears into the night. No lights anywhere. Just stars and the sound of my tires on gravel.
Kai exhales, annoyed. “If GPS is catching up, it shows us way the hell off. We missed the turnoff, like, way back.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “How did we miss our turn?”
Kai points at me without looking up. “Because neither of us was thinking about the road. We were talking about June.” He snorts, shaking his head.
“We’re gonna end up on the local news. ‘Two grown men disappear into the wilderness. Authorities confirm the last thing they talked about was a girl and her smile.’ ” He glances over, smug.
“Cause of death: terminal lovesick stupidity.”
“I’m turning around.”
“Please do,” he says, voice suddenly serious.
I ease the truck down the narrow road, looking for a spot wide enough to turn around without ending up in a ditch. The fields are dead quiet.
And then the headlights catch something.
Big.
Still.
Too solid to be a shadow.
Kai goes silent in a way I don’t like. “Uh.”
“What?”
He leans forward, one hand braced on the dash. “Tell me that’s a cow.”
I follow his stare, and my stomach knots.
About thirty yards out, standing in the middle of the field like it owns the dark, is a bull. Black as pitch. Horns that look like they could forklift this truck for fun. Eyes that glint in the light and flash back at us, bright and wrong.
“What the hell is that?” Kai whispers, like volume might provoke it.
“That,” I say, deadpan, “is a beast with horns.”
Kai’s voice tightens. “That’s a demon wearing beef.”
“Stop.”
“I’m serious,” he says. “Look at the size of it. That thing pays taxes.”
I slow even more, because my brain is doing a fast audit of every bad decision I’ve made in the last ten minutes. “Why is it just standing there?”
Kai swallows. “Because it’s deciding if we’re worth the effort.”
“Don’t say that.”
Kai points. “It’s staring at us, Carter.”
“I know,” I blurt out.
Kai’s mouth twists into a nervous grin. “Maybe it’s June’s spirit animal.”
“Don’t bring June into this.”
“You’re right.” He nods solemnly. “This is what happens when you think too hard about a woman. The universe sends a monster bull to humble you.”
I stare at the animal. It stares back. Neither of us blinks. The truck idles like it’s holding its breath.
Kai whispers, “If it charges, I’m not getting out. I’m letting it take the truck. You can explain it to your insurance.”