12. Dom
12
DOM
K ira is the last to breakfast, and it’s clear she didn’t sleep well.
I wish I’d stayed with her. I’d wanted to stay with her. If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to keep my hands off her.
As she walks toward the dining table, I pull out the chair beside mine. This wasn’t the seat she was sitting in before, and this empty seat required my packmates moving, which they didn’t mind, but Kira is my mate. I don’t just want her sitting beside me. I need it.
After a brief pause, she takes the seat and I push her chair in before she can. My wolf, pleased at having his mate so close, relaxes.
Her smile is faint, but grateful.
“You want me to make you up a plate?” I point my chin at the table laden with breakfast food, ignoring my packmates’ interested stares.
She shakes her head, and her long braid swings with the motion. “I’m not hungry. I kept thinking about whether staying is the best thing I should do. You’ve given me a place to stay, and I wouldn’t want you to be rewarded by Bryce shooting you.” Her eyes dip to my side. “ Again .”
“Bryce doesn’t concern me.” He took a pot shot from a distance. He wouldn’t survive coming at me head on.
My wolf’s snarl fills my head at the thought of dealing with Bryce once and for all.
“Because you’re a marine?” Kira asks, angling her head to face me.
“Perhaps.” I pick up my juice and take a sip so I don’t touch her like I want to. This close, her scent makes me want to do nothing else.
“And your friends?”
“We’re not afraid,” Sierra says calmly.
“And we’re feral about protecting those we care about.” Jones winks.
Everyone looks at him.
Dangerous words to say when Kira doesn’t know she’s sharing a table with shifters who have a habit of biting back, and biting back hard.
Rose mutters something under her breath about him having rabies, and Bethany smothers a laugh as I return my glass to the table.
But Kira isn’t smiling. She’s frowning, concerned.
“We will handle this, Kira.” I take her hand under the table, giving it a gentle squeeze.
A car’s engine heads this way and this time, I’m not the only one who notices Chloe perking up in her seat. Galen is watching her carefully, a line between his brow.
I see that line and I sense there’s about to be an increase in growling from a generous thirty percent to fifty. Probably an order that Chloe won’t like.
Chloe glances at Galen, as if sensing she’s being observed. One glance and she looks away, picking up her coffee.
Ah, she must know what’s coming too.
I want my packmates to be happy. As leader, Galen does too. But Chloe and Shawn…
There is no way that can end well.
Chloe’s wolf needs to go on regular runs. It wouldn’t take Shawn long before Chloe’s nighttime activities made him suspicious. Chloe would want to tell him she’s a shifter because no couple with a big secret like that lasts long.
If things don’t work out between them after she’s told him, it leaves the entire pack in the dangerous position of having someone know our secret.
Shawn is generous with his smiles as Nick lets him in.
He joins us at the dining table, taking the black coffee that Rose offers him. His expression is serious. “I heard there was some drama in town,” he starts. “Strange you didn’t mention it at Lacey’s.”
“Someone took a potshot at me,” I say before Kira can mention the bloody shirt she found in the washing machine. If Shawn sees that, he’ll want to see the wound that healed under an hour after I got it.
Shawn returns his coffee to the table without taking a sip from it, his brow furrowed. “And were they successful?”
“I’m okay.” I nod at Kira, not answering his question. “Kira was concerned about Bryce causing more problems. We wanted to talk through those concerns and figure out if there was anything we could do to prevent the situation from getting worse.”
It’s a strange thing to have a cop sitting at our dining table, talking through a problem we ordinarily would have dealt with ourselves. But Kira is human and Bryce is a sheriff. Shifters don’t marry or divorce. We mate. None of us has any idea about how divorce works.
Bryce could come at Kira through the courts, and we can’t fight that kind of battle on our own. We need a cop’s viewpoint, and we have a good one in Wylder, even if we can’t be fully honest about what we are.
“Well, the fax didn’t come with a name, just that cops from Missouri were leading the search,” Shawn says.
Kira’s hands tighten around her mug. “Bryce. He’s the sheriff there and my…” Her voice trails off, her head dips, and suddenly, I get the sense she’s not the only one looking at the band of pale skin around her ring finger.
She clears her throat, her head still bent as she speaks. “The attorney I spoke with in Chicago said he was still my husband, even if I’d signed the forms and returned my ring.”
I straighten in my seat. “What form?”
She lifts her head and looks at me. “I filed for divorce when I left Bryce. It was… expensive. More than I thought it would be.”
She filed for divorce.
This isn’t the time to grab her and kiss her, but it’s taking everything to hold myself back.
“I left him when he was at work. It was… a spontaneous decision to go when I did. I hadn’t meant to do it then, but I just…” Her voice trails off as she stares down at the table. “I was coming back from the store and I saw his truck parked in the driveway, and I couldn’t walk into that house or sit in the garage in my parked car and scream anymore.”
A rumble starts up in my chest hearing Kira’s soft words. And her pain. She was suffering for so long, and I wasn’t there when she needed me.
A shoulder bumps into mine.
I rip my attention from Kira’s bent head and meet Galen’s stare. There’s a warning in his eyes, and when he darts a rapid glance at Shawn, I understand why.
The rumble in my chest is my wolf growling. The sound was too low for Shawn to have overheard since he’s focused on Kira, but Galen caught it. If I don’t do something about it, that rumble will become a growl that Shawn can’t help but hear.
I silence my wolf and bottle up my rage for when I find Bryce.
“Then you came here?” Rose gently prompts.
Kira lifts her head, and her cheeks are pink. Hopefully not because she’s embarrassed. Admitting her pain isn’t anything to be embarrassed about. I give her hand another squeeze and she smiles faintly at me before she refocuses on Shawn.
“The attorney said…” Her eyes widen. “Shit. Uh, sorry about the swearing. I, uh…”
Shawn waves away her apology with a smile. “A few shits never did anyone any harm, me included.”
She blushes and continues. “The attorney needed a forwarding address. I filled in the form, signed it, and I had to pawn my watch to pay for the fees and sending the letter. I didn’t have anywhere to go, so I just said I would be here. She assured me that he wouldn’t have the address, but maybe that’s how Bryce knows I’m here.”
I’d guessed she had nowhere to go since she and Aaron were orphans with no living relatives. I want to hug her, but now doesn’t feel like the right time to comfort my mate. Even if my wolf is scratching my insides, wanting to rub up against her.
“He won’t get to you, Kira,” I promise her.
“I wrote a statement and left it with the attorney,” she says softly.
“A statement saying what?” Why am I getting a bad feeling about this?
She avoids my gaze. “Bryce truly believed in his vows. His mom left his dad when he was in middle school, and he grew up with his dad bitching about her. It doesn’t excuse the way he treated me, but I think that’s why he was so controlling. That’s why I left the statement. When I’d be a fuck up, he would?—”
“Kira,” I gently interrupt, waiting until I have her full attention as I struggle to contain my simmering rage. “You are never a fuck up, okay?”
She doesn’t look like she believes me now. That’s okay, I’ll convince her.
“Till death us do part. That’s the part of the vow he would say over and over, so if he didn’t sign the form and something ever happened to me…” The room is pin-drop silent as Kira continues in a quieter voice, “I wanted someone to know who was responsible.”
In the silence, a chair leg scrapes along hard wood floors.
I look at Shawn.
His lips are flat and his eyes glint with anger. “Is there anything else you can tell us about him, Kira?”
“I don’t think he will ever let me go,” she says quietly.
“He will,” Galen says firmly.
Shawn gets to his feet, his coffee untouched. “I’ll head to the station to get to work. We’ll start sweeping the area for him. If he’s here, we’ll find him, and I’ll speak with the town attorney. That man has no right to force you to stay married to him, so if you need to speak to an attorney here, I can set up a meeting. Now, the letter. How did you send it?”
“Special delivery,” Kira says. “I have a receipt in my glove compartment, so he definitely got it.”
Shawn nods. “Good. He received it so he can’t deny it later. We’ll get you through this, Kira.”
When Shawn leaves, Kira is quiet.
I glance out of the window. It’s a slightly gray overcast day that threatens rain. Not a good day for a walk, but it’ll have to do. “You’re going to need a sweater, Kira. We live in a beautiful part of the world, and today I want to show you it.”
She looks bewildered. “But you were just shot.”
“Even a shot man has the strength to take a beautiful woman out for a walk.”