Chapter 7 Nora Hayes
NORA HAYES
The bus wheeze-screeches, then lurches to a stop. Jamie's hand curls in mine like he's terrified I'll let go. My fingers are cramped but steady. I tell him, low and flat, "Look at me. Count to three with me." He breathes. I breathe with him.
The white truck rolls up too slow. Too deliberate. Two men in the cab. One leans his head out and smiles with the wrong teeth.
My skin pricks the way it did the night Ethan's scent hit me—an old, impossible flame under my ribs. Fated mate—that word still surprises me when it rises—but there is no room for that now. There is a child and a truck and men who have gone too far.
"Excuse me, miss," the taller one says, voice butter-smooth. "Is this Jamie Hayes? We got a call—supposedly your—friend said he could come by."
He glances at Jamie with that light that measures children. My stomach twists.
"No." I crouch and slide between the truck and Jamie. "He's fine. Sit—stay." I put myself in the line like a shield. "Bus. Come on, Jamie. We gotta go."
Maybe it's the way I move. Or the way my voice holds—stubborn, exhausted, refusing to break. Maybe the men expected an easy mark. The shorter man steps out, hands in his pockets like he's casual. He moves fast.
The taller reaches over the hood. A hand goes for Jamie.
I react before my mind does. I shove the man's chest. My heel catches on gravel. He grabs me instead and laughs like a man who owns too much and fears nothing.
"Let him go!" I bark, sharper than I mean. The bus driver freezes, eyes wide. Mothers look up, clutching grocery bags. Somewhere a small kid starts to cry.
A low, animal sound answers me. It isn't the bus; it's under everything—a howl the ground remembers. The truck's radio clicks off. Both men freeze like someone cut the air.
The first wolf I've heard in full fury comes out of the pines. Then another. Then five. Then Ethan's voice, close and cold as winter: "Easy."
He doesn't run. He steps. No fanfare—just the pack, a wall moving with human faces, a dozen hard shoulders in jeans and boots. The men back up against the truck like prey pressed into a corner.
Ethan is a shadow apart from the group. Up close his scent is a tide that pins my lungs—protective, dangerous. It anchors me to the place I've not allowed myself to be anchored: that farmhouse, the child, him.
"Hands off," he says. Two syllables with a promise buried in them.
The taller man tries to grin. "Look, we—"
"You stop talking," Ethan says. His voice is ice and a blade. A pack member jerks the man by the collar; his partner sees the teeth bared and drops to his knees, suddenly smaller than his boots.
They were clumsy—their plan leaking in the way they fumbled names and used the wrong pronouns, too certain about routes.
That carelessness is a gift once muscle and scent and old habit set in motion.
Miguel and Rowan flank them. Lena ties them with rope like she used to string hay bales.
Nobody makes a show. The kids on the bus whisper and point, then frown and look away.
I shake as I pull Jamie to my chest. He clings, and for the first time since the funeral his body unfurls against me like a thirsty plant drinking. "It's okay," I murmur. "I'm right here."
Ethan's eyes find mine. No warming smile—only gravity and the kind of hunger that used to terrify me.
He steps close, too close; the warmth of him seeps into my gloves.
He smells like wood smoke and rain and something that says home.
My heart jumps. My hands press harder into Jamie's back until he breathes against my throat and the sound steadies me.
"We saw them." Miguel's voice is blunt. He holds up a mud-streaked phone. The taller man had dropped it when Lena cuffed him. "Phone's busted, but—" He hands it to Ethan.
Ethan thumbs it open. My name and the child's photograph blink on the cracked screen. Messages: short, businesslike. Arrangements. Money. A line that sends cold through my bones: "Make it uncomfortable. Let them think county will step in. He'll sell."
"Who?" Ethan asks. Not angry—anger comes later.
"Agent called," the man on the truck says, voice small. "Suit. Said he wanted the place. Told us to make Jamie a liability. Said a rough night would get 'em to sign."
The smaller man keeps trying to pull yarn out of a knot, names tripping from his mouth—Rivers. "Kane Rivers. Paid good. Said he'd handle loose ends."
Kane. I swallow. The name had been a rumor at the diner—a man who smells like money and brings services that come with broken promises.
Kane Rivers and his developer crew have been circling landowners, offering 'fair' buyouts and drifting like vultures.
Ethan turned one down earlier; I remember his flat, tired laugh when he told me.
"I don't sell the ground my hands know," he'd said.
Now there is a card pressed into my palm: KANE RIVERS—K. RIVERS, CONSULTING. Under it, a rubber stamp with a symbol I don't recognize. A number scrawled. A single handwritten note: "Make it look like someone else."
Ethan's jaw tightens. He moves with a quick economy that says he has no time for theatrics.
He searches the truck: a cut blanket, a red smear on a rag, tire marks pressed into the wet shoulder of the road.
Miguel kneels and studies the treads like a man reading scripture.
"Not local," he mutters. "Bigger rubber. Out of town."
Lena comes up with a calling card from a security firm. Different firm. Different hands.
"Phone's still on," Rowan says. "We pulled location: pinged from the east side, county line."
Ethan looks at me, the math on his face—what to do, how much to tell, how hard to push before the law knocks the door down and drags the rest of the world in. He's good at hiding struggle. Not with me. With me, his shoulders show the calculus.
"Do you want me to—" he starts and doesn't finish. The pack responds without orders. They gather the men, truss them up under Miguel's barked commands, drag the truck's plate. Someone calls the sheriff. Someone else calls an attorney. The ordinary machines of consequence start to click.
I gather Jamie's duffel, pressing my fingers into the frayed fabric of a childhood full of mismatched socks and the smell of soap. The bus empties like a broken hourglass. Parents converge, questions bristling. I answer in short sentences. "He's okay." "Police will handle it." "We need to go home."
Home. The word tastes strange when Ethan's scent seems to line the farmhouse walls.
We don't go straight to the ranch. Ethan's truck sits a short distance from the bus stop, engine ticking.
He doesn't offer the passenger seat like a man on a date; he offers it like an instruction.
I know better than to accept a ride without a plan that includes who will be at the house, who will document the scene, who will deal with the sheriff.
"Jamie will be safe there," he says. "We have people. You should come now, get him in, call the social worker—"
"No." My voice is a small weapon. "No calls. Not yet. He gets nervous with strangers and the worker will turn us inside out. They can use any little thing to separate him. I want to keep this quiet until we figure the ring."
He watches me like a man deciding if a fire is friendly or a trap. "You trust me," he says—less a question than an observation.
Part of me wants to say yes and lean into him like he's the only harbor left. Another part remembers what it took to get Jamie out of that last house: the piled threats, the exhaustion, the paperwork. Trust isn't a switch. It's a ledger you balance.
"We don't have time to dance," he says, patience gone now that danger shows itself. "Come with me. We get you inside. We secure Jamie. We take evidence to the sheriff. We file. We push back."
"You want to take it public." It isn't a question.
"I want to keep you safe." He says the words like a prayer.
My hands shake when I lift the phone that had fallen from the man. Someone left it unlocked. There are recordings—voicemails. A clipped, oily voice leaving instructions: "Make them feel like risk. The county is the lever. Rivers said make it messy and they'll sell. No blood."
Then another voice—rougher, older, a shifter name that makes the air drop. "We do it quiet. We don't drag a child's name. He wants the house. He will pay."
Ethan sees it before I can speak. He reads the threads of the messages like a man who's untangled similar snares. His fingers tighten on the phone until the edges whiten.
He looks at the men he still holds—small potatoes, hired hands. "Who sent you?" he asks.
They mouth names. Rivers. A contractor. A spot east on Route 9.
"Do you know them?" I ask.
Ethan's face becomes a map of old battles and new calculations. "I know the type."
Miguel crouches beside him. "This ain't random. Kane Rivers uses a network. He hires men who weld and throw fires. The shifter names I heard are a different story. There's coordination."
Coordination. The word lands heavy. It means a hand with legal paper could be linked to boots that slash a blanket and to hands that shove a child. It means the threat isn't just money. It's muscle—and something older than paperwork.
I look at Jamie. He's staring at a scraped knee, proud of his dirt like a medal. He's too young to carry this. He smiles at me, tentative, trusting. The ache in my chest has nothing to do with mate scent and everything to do with this small human and the life I promised him.
Ethan kneels so he's level with us. "Will you come to the station?" he asks.
I almost say no. He's asking for my permission in a dozen ways. Our lives have knotted. I can pretend otherwise, but that won't make his arms or his pack any less the place Jamie and I have landed.
"I'm not ready to hand Jamie over to a stranger," I say. "I want him kept with people who know him."
"You won't hand him over," Ethan says. "Not while I'm breathing. Not while my pack stands."
A warmth rolls through me that isn't only the mate ache but the burn of being seen. He doesn't offer protection like a trade—he offers it like a vow. My stubbornness hums against it. So does my fear. For once, neither wins outright.
We pile into his truck. Jamie curls into the space between us like a secret. Ethan's hand finds mine for a second—heavy, sure—then it's gone, business in his spine, wolf in his eyes.
At the sheriff's office the deputy looks at me with equal parts curiosity and pity. He asks questions by rote. Ethan answers when I falter, giving names, timelines, details—things he could have learned from watching us in the kitchen these past days. He protects without pressing.
We give the phone and the card to the deputy. We tell them about the truck, the tire treads, the place they said to meet. Paperwork, signatures—bureaucratic ritual that makes threats official and also draws attention.
I feel both relief and a familiar dread. Once a complaint is filed, eyes open wider. Once there's a paper trail, a prosecutor can demand everything. Once the sheriff has a name like Ethan Cole attached to violence at a bus stop, rumors teeth out.
When we're finished, the sheriff takes Ethan aside in the hall. He speaks low; I can't hear at first. I busy myself with Jamie's shoelace.
Then the sheriff's voice carries, flat across the linoleum. "You were seen, Mr. Cole. People saw you and your men. Tell me everything."
Ethan's shoulders stiffen like someone bracing for a winter wind. The deputy's hand closes over a pen like it's a lever.
My breath stops.