The Hyena’s Guardian (Warborn Pack #2)

1. Chapter 1 - Matt

Reynolds had never liked goodbyes.

Not because they made him sentimental. He had survived the Army, Iraq, medevac birds screaming over sand, and enough awkward formations to know sentiment usually showed up wearing the wrong uniform and pretending to be professionalism. Goodbyes were worse than that. They made people honest.

He stood at the edge of Mac and Melvin’s meadow with his hands in his jacket pockets, watching lantern light move across three hundred acres of Colorado land that somehow already smelled like pack. That was the part he still did not know what to do with. Pack.

A year ago, the word would have felt borrowed. Something that belonged to wolves with old blood and territory, to men like Mac who carried command in their bones whether they wanted it or not.

Reynolds had been a specialist with a smart mouth, a bad habit of eating everything in reach, and a hyena under his skin he had not asked for.

Now he was standing at his Alpha’s wedding reception, dressed like a civilian, waiting to leave the Army for an organization most people would never know existed.

Across the grass, Mac had one hand resting at the small of Melvin’s back while Melvin spoke with his mother.

They looked easy together. Not soft exactly, because neither of them had ever been built for softness, but settled in a way that made the war itself feel distant for once.

Like it had tried to pull them apart and failed badly enough that even the universe had stopped arguing.

Reynolds felt the bond between them from where he stood, a quiet, unshowy certainty that simply existed.

The hyena noticed things like that. It recognized where people belonged long before they admitted it to themselves, and once it decided someone was part of its circle, it became stubborn in ways Reynolds had learned not to question. Wolves built hierarchies. The hyena built connections.

“You look like you’re planning an escape route.”

Reynolds glanced over as Marcus came to stand beside him, jacket open, tie loosened, violet awareness tucked behind ordinary eyes.

“I always plan an escape route,” Reynolds said. “That’s called being emotionally healthy.”

Marcus hummed. “That is absolutely not what that’s called.”

“Sounds like something a witch would say.”

“Sounds like something a hyena would avoid unpacking.”

Reynolds looked at him, and Marcus smiled faintly into his drink like he already knew exactly what Reynolds was thinking.

Reynolds looked back toward the reception where laughter and conversation drifted across the meadow beneath the lantern lights.

Diaz was laughing at something Lucero had said.

Barnes stood beside her girlfriend, looking calmer than Reynolds had ever seen her, and between Mac’s loud family and the steady warmth surrounding Melvin’s, the entire place carried the quiet understanding that none of them had come home from Iraq unchanged.

Reynolds shifted his weight slightly. “I leave in three weeks.”

“For Valker.”

“Yeah.”

Marcus did not look surprised. Nobody looked surprised anymore. That was somehow worse.

“You nervous?” Marcus asked.

“No.”

Marcus waited.

Reynolds sighed. “Some.”

“That sounds more honest.”

“I hate that about you.”

“I know.”

The music softened into something slower that carried across the meadow while Mac pulled Melvin closer with quiet instinct and Melvin settled against him without hesitation.

Around them, people pretended not to watch and failed badly enough that even Reynolds had to fight a faint smile.

The tightness in his chest had nothing to do with envy because he really was happy for them, but happiness carried a different shape when it belonged to someone else.

You could recognize it from a distance, stand close enough to warm your hands against it for a while, and still know it was never truly yours.

“You know,” Marcus said quietly, “joining Valker does not mean leaving the pack.”

Reynolds did not answer immediately, his gaze drifting beyond the lanterns toward the dark line of trees surrounding the preserve.

The night smelled of grass, pine, food, wolf, panther, and something older woven subtly beneath it all as Mac’s land became more than property or pack territory.

Reynolds could feel the beginning of something taking root there that Mac himself had probably not fully named out loud yet. Home.

Reynolds swallowed. “Feels like it might.”

Marcus followed his gaze. “Because you’re used to orders meaning distance.”

Reynolds gave a faint laugh. “You always this cheerful at weddings?”

“Only when someone is brooding near the tree line like a haunted gargoyle.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“You are absolutely brooding.”

“I’m observing.”

“That is what brooding people call it.”

Reynolds almost smiled before the expression faded again, and across the meadow Mac looked over as though he had sensed the shift in mood before Reynolds had fully hidden it away.

Reynolds was still getting used to that.

Mac never pried and rarely pushed, but his attention carried a steady kind of weight whenever it landed on someone, calm and exact in a way that made pretense feel pointless.

Reynolds gave him a small nod, and Mac returned it after holding his gaze for a quiet second longer than necessary.

It should not have meant much. Somehow it still did.

A year ago, Reynolds would have called him sir without thinking twice and meant it completely, but now the word caught behind his teeth every time it tried to surface.

Mac had corrected him enough times that it had become a running joke, even if the truth underneath it was far harder for Reynolds to untangle.

Sir was easy because it kept things professional and distant.

Mac was personal in ways Reynolds was still learning how to handle, while Alpha carried an entirely different kind of gravity altogether.

The hyena had understood the distinction long before he had.

Hyenas did not bow automatically to power just because something stronger walked into the room.

But Mac had never once tried to force obedience from him, and somehow that made Reynolds want to follow him anyway.

Marcus tilted his head slightly. “He worries.”

“Mac worries about everybody.”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “But you are leaving his immediate reach. That will bother him.”

Reynolds looked down at the grass. “I’m not a kid.”

“No one said you were.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?”

The question was asked innocently, but Reynolds felt the weight behind it anyway, and his jaw tightened before he answered. “I know what Valker is.”

“Do you?” Marcus repeated carefully, and when Reynolds finally looked at him, the teasing amusement that had been there moments earlier was completely gone from the witch’s expression.

“They are not just a team with better funding and fewer human rules,” Marcus said. “They are enforcement. Containment. Judgment when the Council wants its hands clean. Sometimes rescue. Sometimes not.”

“I know.”

“You know the words.”

Reynolds glanced back toward the dark tree line as the hyena shifted restlessly beneath his skin, alert and listening.

For a moment he found himself remembering the first time claws had surfaced without pain tearing through him, the first time fangs had slid into place without panic following, and the slow, terrifying realization that the thing inside him was no longer just damage left behind by violence and fear.

Somewhere along the way it had become his, and accepting that truth had changed everything about the way he moved through the world.

“I was made into this,” Reynolds admitted. “Bitten. Dragged into a world I didn’t even know existed. For a while, all I did was react to it.”

Marcus said nothing as Reynolds flexed his hand inside his pocket, feeling the faint ghost of claws beneath his skin before finally admitting, “Valker gives me somewhere to put it.”

Marcus studied him. “The danger is letting them tell you that usefulness is the same thing as belonging.”

The comment hit harder than Reynolds wanted it to, and he buried the feeling beneath a shrug and sarcasm. “Damn. You do weddings, therapy, and ominous warnings?”

“Package deal.”

“Expensive?”

“Very.”

This time Reynolds actually smiled as Melvin stepped away from the reception and made his way toward them through the lantern-lit meadow with smooth, unhurried movements that still carried the unmistakable grace of a predator.

Even in a suit, Melvin moved with the unhurried grace of a predator, patient and observant in the way dangerous people often were when they no longer needed to prove anything. By the time he stopped beside Reynolds and Marcus, he had already taken in the mood between them.

“You two look suspicious,” Melvin said.

Marcus lifted his glass. “We were bonding.”

Reynolds snorted. “That’s one word for it.”

Melvin looked at him, and the humor eased into something steadier. “You alright?”

Reynolds almost fell back on the automatic answer that military life had burned into him over the years: fine, good, ready.

Instead, he glanced toward Mac again and found him talking with Barnes near the reception, though Reynolds could still feel the edge of his attention reaching this way like a steady hand against the middle of his back.

“Yeah,” Reynolds said. “Just thinking.”

“That is usually where trouble starts,” Melvin said.

“Everybody’s a comedian tonight.”

Melvin smiled faintly. “You leave soon.”

“Three weeks.”

“Training first?”

“Guess I’m learning on the job,” Matt said dryly. “Virginia for processing. Then overseas. They still haven’t said where.”

Marcus made a soft sound beneath his breath. “They know. They just haven’t told you yet.”

“Comforting.”

Melvin’s gaze sharpened, not with fear but recognition. He knew that world. Maybe not all of it, but enough. The contractor work he did now brushed close to the places Valker moved through. Languages. Negotiations. Problems no one wanted attached to official paperwork.

“You remember what I told you?” Melvin asked.

Reynolds nodded. “Make sure it’s mine. Not yours.”

“Still true.”

Reynolds held his gaze. “It is.”

Melvin held his gaze for a long enough moment that Reynolds knew he was weighing the answer instead of simply accepting it, then finally nodded once in quiet approval.

Mac joined them a moment later, crossing the meadow with that steady, effortless authority that made people either notice or obey him before they consciously realized why.

“Everything good?” Mac asked.

“Depends,” Reynolds said. “Is this where you give me a speech?”

Mac’s mouth twitched. “Hadn’t planned on it.”

“That’s a relief.”

“I can if you want.”

“I absolutely do not.”

Melvin’s smile deepened.

Mac stepped in closer, his voice lowering just enough to cut cleanly through the noise drifting across the meadow. “Reynolds,” he began, then quickly corrected himself. “Matt. You know you have a place here.”

Matt looked away too fast.

“With Valker, without Valker, Army or no Army, you have a place.”

The words still landed hard enough to tighten Matt’s throat. He stared out toward the dark hills beyond the meadow while the hyena beneath his skin went completely still, listening harder than the man himself wanted to. “I know,” he said softly.

Mac waited without pressing him for more, and after a long moment Matt finally let out a slow breath.

“I’m working on knowing.”

Mac nodded once, accepting the answer exactly as it was, and Matt found himself thinking again that this was what made following him different.

Mac never demanded more honesty than someone could survive giving. He just made lying feel useless.

“Good,” he said.

For a little while none of them spoke as music drifted softly through the meadow beneath swaying lantern light. Somewhere behind them Lucero yelled something that earned a threat from Diaz in two separate languages, and the sound pulled a quiet laugh out of Matt before he could think better of it.

“See?” Melvin said. “Home.”

Matt let his gaze drift across the meadow one last time.

Home.

The word settled uneasily beneath his ribs because it carried the kind of promise the world seemed to enjoy testing.

Three weeks later, Matt stood alone in a narrow airport corridor with one duffel at his feet, a black folder tucked beneath his arm, and a Valker contact waiting beyond the checkpoint with no sign, no uniform, and no patience.

His phone buzzed while he waited near security, and when Matt pulled it out he found a text from Mac telling him to let them know when he landed, followed seconds later by another message insisting it was not because he was worried.

A moment later, Melvin texted: He is absolutely worried.

Matt smiled despite himself as a third message appeared from Marcus warning him not to get cursed, bitten, buried, recruited by a cult, or emotionally compromised before Thursday.

Matt stared at that one for a long second before muttering, “Specific.”

At the far end of the corridor, the Valker contact lifted his chin in silent impatience.

Matt slipped the phone back into his pocket, picked up his duffel, and started forward with the strange realization that for the first time since the bite, he was walking toward duty without feeling like he was leaving his pack behind.