10. Dom
10
DOM
“ Y ou think he was aiming for you or Kira?” Galen darts a rapid glance my way as he pulls out of our property on onto the main road headed into town.
Since I know what Bryce looks like, it makes sense that I’m in the passenger seat, watching out for him. He was conventionally handsome, blond and blue eyed, and about 5’9, I think. A little shorter than me, but not by much.
The last time I saw Bryce was years ago, after Aaron’s funeral and I’d left the Marines, when I decided I needed to leave Palmerston or I’d kill him. Staying away from Kira was becoming impossible, and I’d had enough of military life. My wolf has a good nose, but five years is a long time to remember a scent I did my best to avoid.
Kira’s husband’s scent drove me into a rage every time I smelled it. Or maybe it was knowing he had my mate.
My wolf snarls in my head.
Ex-husband , I mentally reassure my wolf.
Kira left him. He lost all right to her when he had her running with only the clothes on her back.
“No. He was after me.” I might not remember Bryce’s scent, but I remember the possessive arm he slung around Kira’s waist and moved her closer to his side the second she smiled at me.
“Do you think he knows he hit you?”
I hope not. If Bryce saw me shrug off getting hit, he might have seen enough to suspect I’m not fully human.
“Can’t be sure. I was busy getting Kira back in the car.”
I learned to move slower, pretend to struggle with lifting weights that I could have lifted with one hand for five hours and it never would have strained me. I was careful. No one could have known I was anything other than human, not after my four years in the Marines.
“So the guy just wants you dead, then?” Galen changes gears as we approach main street.
“Yep.” Wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to kill me, and it wouldn’t be the first time I survived being shot at.
I joined the Marines when I was twenty-one and left when I’d just turned twenty-five. If I hadn’t met Aaron, Kira’s big brother, I’m not sure what I would have done with my life. Probably spent those four years bumming across the country, trying to figure out who left me in the Minnesota backcountry, and why. And I’d have gotten nowhere.
“You’re being particularly uncommunicative of late, Dom.”
“I’m wondering if Bryce came here alone.”
Galen slows, giving me a rapid glance too fast to read. “You think he didn’t?”
“I think he’s a cop who might have friends willing to watch his back, or maybe help him grab Kira.”
It won’t happen. There is no way I’m letting that happen.
If I hadn’t been trying to hide my wound from Kira, I’d have grabbed more than just Galen for this hunt. More so if this wasn’t a bright, sun-drenched early afternoon. It would make hunting him easier if we could do it as wolves instead of in our human form.
Instead, I borrowed Galen’s phone, sending a quick text to Chloe before we left the house, warning her of the shooting.
More importantly, while we were gone, warning her and the rest of Pack Hunt to watch over Kira and ensure all those shopping bags went to go to her room and she was safe.
No one is grabbing her from the house. Not without them paying for it with their life.
“So Shawn’s lie didn’t convince him.” Galen slows to a crawl down main street.
As always, the streets are quiet, the traffic on the road limited to people coming and going from Lacey’s Lemon Bar. But calling the five trucks parked outside traffic is being generous.
“Or Bryce knows Kira is here some other way.” I sweep my eyes over the streets, rolling the window down so I can use my biggest advantage: my nose.
I might not remember his scent, but I can sure as hell pick out any unfamiliar scents that would stir my wolf’s instincts.
I’m not getting that.
It’s the ordinary sights, scents, and sounds of Main Street.
Lemon, sweets, and baking from Lacey’s. Mint and chocolate from the ice cream parlor. One sniff and I always know which flavor is the popular flavor that day. As usual, it's mint-choc chip. Nothing that makes me think an out of towner is here to cause trouble.
Galen turns at the end of Main Street and snakes through the residential side roads. There aren’t many. Not with sub ten thousand inhabitants to the city, so this won’t take long.
Nothing.
“We could park up and take a walk, see if he takes a potshot at us?” Galen suggests.
I look at him. “Sometimes, I wonder about you.”
He snorts a laugh. “I didn’t say it was a good idea. Just an idea.”
Sierra did the same thing, playing bait to lure out enforcers from his old pack who abducted him from outside the jewelers, and nearly killed him. I’d ask him if he stole the idea from Sierra, but it’s probably Galen’s. Neither one of them ever hesitates to put themselves in the line of fire for the people they care about.
I shake my head and resume scanning the buildings we pass. All the townhouses and apartment blocks are quiet. No sign of any trouble down here. “He might have taken off after he fired the shot. If he was close enough to wound me, he was close enough to recognize me.”
“Ah, so he’ll have remembered you were a Marine, the past life you have still yet to share with your alpha.” Galen pulls back off the side street.
Nothing has changed on Main Street as we wound through the quiet residential streets.
“That was a hint,” he says, dryly. “In case you missed it. A big hint to tell me about this secret past as a Marine you have told none of us about.”
“It was a long time ago.”
Rain lashes me, mud tugs so hard on my boots, it nearly wrenches them off. The coppery scent of blood is rich in the air, and in the distance, the rat-a-tat of bullets tearing into people and trees surrounds me on all sides.
I meet Aaron’s blue eyes as he lies nearly neck deep in mud. Like the rest of us, he’s as miserable and exhausted from the relentless pace of the days, weeks, and months of our trek through this miserable jungle. But the end is finally in sight.
We just have to push through this last ambush, and we’re home free.
“How is it?” I yell to be heard over a bomb falling somewhere on my left.
His teeth flash white from a face smeared with dark green and black camouflage paint, but he never takes his finger off his rifle trigger when he yells back, “Outstanding!”
Because no matter the weather, the exhaustion, or if someone just shot you in the ass and you don’t know how you’ll sit until it heals over, it is always outstanding.
Even on the day you and half your platoon get bombed out and you fight tooth and nail to save them, but you can’t save them all. So only you and two others live through it. And when you go home, you’ll see your mate crying because you couldn’t save her brother.
“Hey!” Galen’s words return me to the present.
He’s pulled over feet from the ice cream parlor's front doors. Not far from where I just took a bullet.
I meet his gaze, expression blank. “Please tell me you’re not going ahead with this walk around and wait for someone to take potshots at us idea?”
His green stare is probing. “You know you can talk to me about shit, right? Fuck knows I talked your ear off about Sierra and my growling habit. According to my beta, I have a fondness for growling that only one woman can tolerate without wanting to leave me. I’m proud to say I’ve reduced it by approximately fifty percent.”
“Fifty percent is generous.”
“Fifty percent is not generous.”
“Thirty. Maybe. And that’s only because we have a human in the house who might wonder about that growling.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it, before shrugging. “Fair enough. So…”
I resume watching the streets. “I don’t know. It’s hard to focus on anything except the fact that as soon as Kira learns what I am, she will walk.”
How do you tell someone that you aren’t fully human? And that they’re your fated mate, a person you never believed you would ever meet? How can she believe the bond exists when she can’t even feel it?
“She might stay even knowing what we are.”
I turn away from a young couple entering Lacey’s, meeting Galen’s gaze. “You sound pretty confident of something you can’t know will even happen.”
“I can be confident because Kira must have been running scared. Bryce gave her a reason to be afraid, but you haven’t. She ran right here, to you.”
If Wylder wasn’t dead quiet, we wouldn’t be talking about any of this here. But I need to figure out what to do, and more importantly, what to say. The longer we don’t find Bryce, the more likely he’ll pop up when we’re least expecting it, and I might have to shift in front of Kira to save her.
I’ll do it without hesitation. Her life means more to me than anything. But if she sees something that shouldn’t exist, namely people who can turn into wolves, she will run.
“I think you should tell her,” he says quietly.
Did I hear him right? “You think I should do what?”
“I think you should tell her,” he repeats.
Has he forgotten that we don’t tell anyone what we are? Ever . That our very survival depends on the fewer people knowing we even exist.
“I thought you’d be encouraging me to keep my mouth shut.” Most alphas would. Scratch that. Most shifters would.
“Kira is your mate. Normal rules don’t apply. The sooner you tell her, the sooner you can get started showing her she has no reason to fear us.”
“She will leave me.” And I can’t let that happen when I thought I’d lost her forever. I sat on the porch waiting for her, hoping she would look at the address on the postcard I’d send her every year, and come to me.
But I never believed she would. Over the years, I pictured her getting pregnant with Bryce’s kids, and then throwing my postcards away.
Now she’s here, I can’t do anything that would make her leave.
I need to take my time, figure out exactly what to say, and how to say it so she won’t immediately run. I’d rather do that than risk losing her forever.
And if I lost her forever…
The future doesn’t bear thinking about.
There’s no sign of Bryce in Wylder.
Galen and I sit in the car for as long as we can without attracting attention, then we get out, and do what I had thought was a stupid idea: we go for a walk up to Lacey’s.
Nina has just brought us over a coffee as we sit at the window giving us prime view of Main Street, when the front door swings open and Shawn steps inside.
I pray he’s here to pick up a cup of coffee as a midday break before he leaves again.
His head swings one way, scoping out the space, then the other, before fixing on us. I mentally curse when he walks over.
“I was hoping to speak to you,” he says, pausing beside our table. “Do you have a minute?”
“Not really.” I give Galen a pointed look, since we are here in town for one reason. That reason is not to have a coffee break with the sheriff. It’s to hunt Kira’s husband. My wolf growls. Ex-husband , I mentally correct myself, and my wolf settles down.
We can’t do that with Shawn close by.
“Sure,” Galen says, overruling me. “What’s up?”
I hope whatever it is has nothing to do with Chloe.
“I wanted to ask about Chloe,” Shawn says.
Shit.
“She’s back at the house,” Galen says.
“Yeah, that’s, uh, a good thing.” Shawn scratches his jaw then lifts his hand, waving at Nina, who calls out, “Coffee?”
Shawn nods. “Sure. Make it a takeout.”
Let this conversation be brief and let Galen stay ignorant.
“So, I haven’t seen her with anyone,” Shawn says.
Galen looks at Shawn. I look at Galen. Though when Galen looks at me, I take a sip of my coffee as my gaze slides to the window, and I hope Bryce shoots at me again, putting an end to this unwanted conversation.
“No,” Galen says slowly. “Why would you be expecting to see her with… Oh .”
Silence falls for two beats.
Nina’s voice pulls my attention back to the table. “Here you go, Shawn.”
I put my cup down. “Ah, we should probably get going, Galen. That thing won’t happen on its own.”
Namely, hunting and killing Kira’s ex-husband.
Galen stares at me through narrowed eyes as I get to my feet.
We leave Shawn in Lacey’s as we walk back to Galen’s truck.
“Do you have something you need to tell me, Dom?” he asks.
You mean the fact that Shawn, a human cop, might have feelings for Chloe, a relationship that can never happen?
“Not really. But I think we should widen our search for Bryce.” I look at his car. “That idea you had before might not be such a bad idea.” If only to lure Bryce out of wherever he might be hiding.
“And Shawn?”
“We can discuss it after.”
Or never. I have no desire to break Chloe’s heart, and I have a feeling that conversation will lead to it.