1. Chapter 1 #2
She didn’t look at Jace when she set his plate down. The part of him barely holding the line was grateful. His wolf slammed itself against that gratitude, restless, eager, and a long way from done.
Halfway through his burger, the bell rang.
A man came in. Late thirties, jeans, work jacket. He went to the counter, ordered a coffee to go, stood waiting on it. Nobody in the place gave him a second look. He had the wear of a man who passed through Braxton twenty times a day on the way to somewhere that mattered more.
Rhys went still. Not a still anyone else in the diner would have caught. The kind Jace had learned to read across a booth.
Thornwood.
The Thornwood wolf took his coffee and didn’t leave. He slid onto a stool with his back half to the corner booth and his face to the pass, which put his eyes on the kitchen door.
Maren came through it with two slices of pie.
He stopped stirring his coffee. Two full seconds went by before he moved again. Then he drew his phone, checked the screen, put it to his ear. Jace caught the rhythm of someone answering on the other end. Caught the wolf say yeah. Caught him say here. Caught the phone not going back in his pocket.
His attention went back to Maren and stayed on her. Stayed.
Something in Jace’s chest went cold and very, very quiet.
He was halfway up out of the booth before he’d decided to be. Murder running clean and simple through him, the whole of it narrowed to crossing that floor. Theo’s hand clamped his arm.
No! Rhys sent. For her. You can’t. For her.
Jace’s eyes flashed gold across the table at him.
For her, Rhys said again, fast, before Jace’s wolf could win.
He’s already made the call. You kill him now, we lose the only thread back to whoever’s on the other end.
They already know she’s here, Jace. Killing this one just moves the problem somewhere you can’t see it, and leaves her standing in it.
Jace breathed in. Out. Made himself sit. The displeasure came off him in a wave nobody at the table missed.
Theo and Declan came in behind Rhys on the link, agreeing.
I want him dead, Jace sent. Him and whoever he called.
I know, Rhys sent. Not tonight.
He felt his wolf settle, barely, and only because Rhys was right and the wolf knew a true thing when it heard one.
He ate a bite of the burger. Didn’t taste it.
He could feel the Thornwood wolf’s eyes on Maren like a hand laid flat against her back, and he sat there and let it happen, because letting it happen was, tonight, the thing that kept her safe.
She crossed the floor. Refilled a coffee. Rang a check. Laughed again, soft, at something Hal said, and the laugh pulled the Thornwood wolf’s head a half-inch toward her, and Jace swallowed the growl before it cleared his teeth.
The wolf’s phone dimmed. He glanced at it, stood, threw some cash on the table then walked out.
Jace was on his feet before the door finished closing.
Alpha. Theo, one word.
Paying the check, Jace sent.
From the look that went around the table, not one of them believed the check had been his first thought.
He crossed to the register. Jenny was there. “All set, Jace?”
“Just the check.”
He paid the meal, added a tip, signed. Jenny's glance went between Jace and Maren, and she smiled like she'd just had something confirmed and said not one word about it.
He kept his eyes off Maren. Wiping a table three steps behind him, close enough that his wolf threw itself at the inside of his ribs, telling him to turn around, go to her, claim her, end this.
He held the line. It was the hardest thing he’d ever had to do.
Past Theo's shoulder in the window, the Thornwood wolf who'd just paid his check crossed the lot toward Maren's sedan.
Bent at the back wheel for half a breath.
Was gone past the streetlight before Jace had cleared the register.
Theo and Rhys waited by the door.
“Eyes on her every minute,” Jace said, low.
“Already moving,” Theo said. “Cade and Brennan are inbound.”
“Who is she?”
“Maren.” Declan, back from the restroom. “No last name anyone’s got. Started here a week ago. Pays cash for everything. Drives the gray sedan in the southwest corner, plates that don’t run clean through the DMV. She’s hiding from something, or running from someone. Maybe both.”
The other three looked at him.
“What? I’ve eaten here half my life?” Declan looked honestly wounded. “You think I don’t run an eye over anybody Jenny hires new.”
They walked out. The wind cut at Jace again on the way to the SUV. Maren’s sedan still sat at the far end of the lot under the streetlight, snow starting to catch and hold on the hood. He looked at it longer than he meant to.
He turned the SUV on. Stale air from the heater that wasn’t yet warmed up blasted from the vents. Theo in the passenger seat, Rhys and Declan in the back.
“We stay on her,” Jace said, and his voice came out rough, the wolf still right up under it. “Anyone Thornwood’s mutt called shows up, Cade and Brennan take them. Nobody gets near her.”
“Got it,” Theo said.
Jace backed the SUV into a spot with the whole lot in front of them and put it in park.
Six hours until she’d come out of that diner and drive home to wherever she was hiding.
Six hours of keeping his distance from a woman who didn’t know he existed yet, didn’t know he’d walked through Jenny’s door tonight and straight into her and the rest of his life.
Six hours, and then he could start. Slowly. Carefully. The work of courting the woman his wolf had already, permanently, called his. However long it took. Whatever it cost. The claiming would wait. That part would always be hers to choose.