Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Blaze took the trail at full speed. His paws hit the packed dirt and his wolf pushed harder, covering ground in long strides through the Douglas firs above Fate Mountain.
The predawn air was cold in his lungs. The forest was still dark under the canopy, the eastern sky just starting to brighten.
He’d left town an hour ago, drove up to the trailhead, shifted, and let his wolf run.
He didn’t care about the cold or the dark, or anything else for that matter.
His wolf wanted to run. He pushed faster up the slope, claws digging into the wet leaves.
The trail climbed for another quarter-mile and then opened onto a granite outcropping that looked east over the valley.
He stopped at the edge and watched the sun rise over the mountains.
It was a beautiful sight: the orange light seeping over the granite peaks.
But his wolf was restless. The run hadn’t relieved his tension.
Nothing did, no matter how hard he tried.
Blaze turned and ran back down the trail.
He shifted in the empty parking lot where he’d left his motorcycle, pulled on the sweatpants and T-shirt he’d left in the storage compartment, and climbed on his Harley.
The morning air was cold against his face, and the engine vibrated up through his thighs on the drive back to town.
The dark shapes of the firs gave way to the lights of the village as he came around the last switchback.
Main Street was just coming to life. He pulled in at 1019 and parked his bike on the sidewalk in front of Steel Protection.
He parked alongside Dom’s Road Glide, Hunter’s Road King, Siren’s Iron 883, Axel’s Softail Slim, and Ryder’s Low Rider S at the end.
The Steel Protection building was a two-story brick building with the agency sign over the entrance.
He went around to the side entrance and unlocked the door.
He took the stairs two at a time and walked down the hall to his apartment.
It was three doors down from Dom’s corner unit and across the hall from Hunter’s.
This place was now the pack’s forever home.
The first home Blaze had had since he left home at fifteen.
He’d furnished the living room with a single deep couch he’d bought at a thrift store, a low coffee table from IKEA, and a small TV that was usually off. A faded kilim rug that he’d picked up at a market in Chiang Mai ran the length of the room.
A framed Kris dagger with a wavy, dark blade hung on the wall.
It had been given to him by a Filipino trainer named Manny, who’d told him to put it somewhere it could remind him to be still.
On the bookshelf in the corner was a small wooden Buddha.
He had books on fighting, meditation, and a brass holder for Baieido incense.
He walked into his bedroom as he pulled off his T-shirt. The bed was made, the comforter dark and smooth. On the wall above the dresser was a single framed black-and-white photograph of the gym in Bangkok where he’d trained the year before he met Dom.
In the bathroom, he stripped off his sweatpants and climbed into the shower. The hot water hit the bruise on his ribs from yesterday’s spar. Hunter didn’t pull punches, and that’s why Blaze sparred with him.
After his shower, he got dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and boots.
He looked at himself in the mirror above the dresser.
He had three days of stubble on his chin, an eye that wasn’t quite swollen but wasn’t fine either, and a crooked nose from where a Filipino boxer had broken it for the third time.
He went downstairs and walked into the offices of Steel Protection.
He could smell the cinnamon coming from the breakroom before he walked through the door.
Hunter’s mate, Brie Rayner, was unpacking Sweet Summit boxes on the table by the window.
Cinnamon buns. Apple cider donuts. A tray of cranberry-orange scones with a sugary glaze.
Hunter was at the counter making coffee, and Brie rubbed her pregnant belly.
“I brought treats,” Brie said brightly.
“That’s thoughtful, Brie,” Blaze said, loading a paper plate with pastries.
“I told her to take it easy on her day off,” Hunter said, turning to him. “But she insisted on bringing over all of yesterday’s day-olds.”
After breakfast, Blaze walked through to the office.
Valeria was at the front desk with the baby in a playpen beside her.
Adrian Steel was just over a year old now, which Blaze still couldn’t quite believe.
The kid had his mother’s eyes and his father’s scowl.
Blaze stopped to look at him on the way past. Adrian stared back as if he were deciding something.
“He’s judging you,” Valeria said.
“He’s been judging me since he was born.”
“He learned it from his father.”
Blaze almost laughed.
Dom was in his office with his coffee, a bear claw, and a stack of folders. He looked up when Blaze came in. Dom was six-three, gray at the temples, and always seemed ready for anything.
“Morning.”
Dom gave him an appraising look. Blaze knew that Dom saw everything. It was one of the reasons he’d followed him out of the fighting pits in Thailand without asking questions. The other reason was that Dom had been the first person in seventeen years who looked at him without flinching.
“Where am I today?” Blaze asked.
“I need you to check in with the Cascade Timber account.”
“What’s it about?”
“Some kid is pissed off about losing his job. He’s been sending threatening letters. Knock on his door, look big, talk slow. Take Ryder along on the doorstep visit. He needs to see one done right.”
A few minutes later, Blaze was riding shotgun in one of the company’s Suburbans. Ryder had a podcast on, something about cryptids, and he kept trying to make Blaze weigh in on whether Bigfoot was a shifter cover-up.
“Bigfoot is humans seeing bears,” Blaze said.
“That’s what they want you to think.”
They did the south-end loop. Ryder kept up a steady stream of commentary the whole drive. Half of it was funny. The other half, not so much. The kid was all right. But he was young and talked a lot.
Cascade Timber was a forty-minute drive up the highway, then up a logging road that climbed into the hills.
The smell of cut cedar filled the air when they stepped out of the car.
There were stacks of milled lumber under tarps and the whine of the blades through the open bay door.
The foreman, a bear shifter named Hal Beckett, met them in the parking lot.
He was Blaze’s height, gone soft in the middle, sawdust on his jeans, and his sleeves rolled up to the elbow. He shook Blaze’s hand.
“Appreciate you boys coming up,” Hal said.
Hal walked them through the latest letter in his office. It was the same as the others. Threats against the mill, threats against Hal’s wife, a vague line about the saw line. Hal wasn’t sure if it was a real threat or just talk. Blaze read it once and decided it was talk.
“He’s not going to do anything,” Blaze said. “He’s writing letters because it’s all he can do. But I guarantee the talk stops today.”
They drove back down the logging road and out to the kid’s address.
“You’re quiet on this one. Just watch,” Blaze said.
The letter-writing kid lived in a double-wide in a trailer park outside of town.
The smell of stale weed wafted through the door when he answered it.
His eyes went to Blaze, then to Ryder, then back to Blaze.
Blaze told him who he was and who he worked for.
He told him what the letters had said. He told him that the letters were going to stop.
The kid started to argue. Blaze let him get two sentences in. Then he took one step forward, and the kid went silent.
“The letters stop,” Blaze repeated. “You’re not going to drive past the mill. You’re not going to call. You’re not going to email. If we have to come back here, it’s not going to be a conversation.”
The kid nodded. His hands were shaking by the time Blaze turned to go.
They got back to Steel Protection in the early afternoon.
Axel was at his bank of monitors with his headphones on.
Valeria was on the phone with someone, voice low and patient, the way she talked to clients.
Adrian was asleep in the playpen with a teddy bear Blaze had given Valeria for her baby shower.
Blaze finished the report on the kid with the letters.
When he was done, he headed to the break room for water.
He heard Siren laughing halfway down the hall and stopped in the doorway.
Her mate, Reed Bright, was at the counter making sandwiches.
Siren was bent over the counter beside him, leaning on her elbows, watching him with puppy-dog eyes.
Blaze had known Siren for seven years. He had seen her shoot a man between the eyes, point-blank.
He had seen her interrogate a hostile in a basement in Memphis and walk out with everything they needed in under an hour.
He had seen her go three weeks without saying a full sentence to anyone.
He had never seen her look at anyone like that.
Reed said something Blaze couldn’t hear. Siren blushed and giggled. Siren “Reaper” Cross… giggled. She then leaned up and smooched Reed on the cheek. Reed grinned and ran his thumb over her cheekbone, gazing into the eyes of a killer.
Something shifted in Blaze’s chest that he couldn’t identify. The deadliest woman he’d ever known was acting all lovey-dovey with a computer nerd who wrote love songs. Blaze’s wolf sat up and paid attention, the way a wolf watches another animal that has something it wants.
He turned around and went upstairs. His apartment door shut behind him, and he sat down on the couch. He thought about Siren and Reed. Dom and Valeria. Hunter and Brie. They’d all met on .
Blaze pulled out his phone.
He thought about going for another run. He thought about a lot of things. Anything that would make him stop feeling whatever he was feeling. Anything that would make him forget Reaper Wolf making googly eyes at that folksinger in the breakroom. He opened the App Store and searched for .
After downloading, he opened the app. The signup screen was bright and friendly and hit him like a small physical assault, all those smiling shifter couples in their soft clothes living their soft lives. He almost closed it. But he made himself start a new profile.
Username: Fighter Wolf. Age: Thirty-four. Species: Wolf shifter.
Photo. He scrolled through the few pictures he had. Most of them were taken on jobs. He chose one Ryder had snapped of him at the brewery that summer.
The questionnaire opened. There were a lot of multiple-choice questions.
Favorite color, dream vacation, conflict style, how he handled stress.
He answered them fast. Black. He’d never been on vacation.
Direct. Hitting something until it stopped being a problem wasn’t an option, so he chose to meditate.
Halfway through, there was a question about what kind of vegetable he’d be if he were a vegetable. He picked bok choy because it took heat without falling apart. He hit next.
The bio field came up on the screen at the end. He stared at it for a minute and typed: Threat Response Specialist. Pack matters. Cooking is good. Quiet is better. He read it back. He hit submit before he could change anything.
The screen flashed. A loading bar moved. Analyzing your profile…
He set the phone face down on the couch and stood up. He went to the window and looked at the back lot. The sun was on the brick of the building across the alley. A crow was eating something out of a takeout container by the dumpster. His wolf was more restless than ever.
After a minute, he picked the phone back up. The battery icon flashed once, and the phone shut off in his hand. He groaned, staring at the black screen. He hadn’t charged it last night. He hadn’t charged it the night before. He’d been letting it run down for days.
He checked the kitchen counter and his desk. No cord. He pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. The pocket of yesterday’s jeans. Nothing. Then he remembered. He’d plugged it into the truck for Ryder to play his dumb podcast and left it there.
Screw it. He set the dead phone on the nightstand, stripped down to his boxers, and got into bed. His wolf grumbled and rolled over. The phone could wait until morning. The whole stupid thing could wait until morning.