She slowly found a rhythm in her new life. It took two weeks to adjust to all the changes. She spent a few hours with Quinn every couple of days helping him. He was making progress faster than she could imagine, but he still struggled and got shitty with Vincent over the required reading. Most of her days were spent studying after hitting the gym to stay in shape.

Things were quiet, and she enjoyed that. She even made sure to pull her swimsuit out a few times and go to the swimming hole to get an even tan. So far, none of them had bothered her out there. She would tell one of them where she was going, and they would let her.

There was only one problem in her life that she couldn’t avoid or let rest for a moment.

Because he was standing at her doorway.

“Yes, Vincent?” she asked, closing the book she’d been flipping through. The problem-of-a-man was wearing the most casual clothes she’d ever witnessed—a tee and shorts. He normally only wore that when he was working out. That should have given her some idea as to what he might want, but Vincent was always a surprising one.

“I need to get you qualified for a sidearm,” he said with a promptness that made her bristle a little. She knew where this was going. “Let’s go out, run over what I’ve taught you, and see if we can get it done sooner rather than later.”

Fuck. She’d been avoiding even mentioning it since returning to the plantation house. She just didn’t see why, with her magic, she needed to learn anymore. She had never really wanted to in the beginning. She just didn’t like guns. Nothing had changed that.

And training with Vincent was rife with issues she didn’t want. He liked to be very… close, and that did things to her that were forbidden.

“Right now?” She groaned.

“Did I say a later time?” He huffed, looking annoyed. She growled softly and stood up. She looked down at what she was wearing. Tiny-ass running shorts and a sports bra. It was too damn hot for anything else, and her room was ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house. The AC had gone out again. Elijah had been trying to get it back up for two days. She didn’t know the first thing about fixing it.

“I’m coming,” she sighed, grabbing her tennis shoes and sliding them on. He began to walk away, and she followed him.

They barely spoke. It was for the best, really. Sawyer didn’t know what to say to him. She found him gorgeous, rugged, cunning, and cold. But she also saw pain in his eyes when he looked at her sometimes. She probably looked the same to him. When she saw him, she saw an awful ex, a dead little boy, and this mess of shit between them both.

They got to the secondary building without another word. He picked out just one gun, a Sig Sauer XM17 MHS. It was the standard sidearm for IMPO agents in the field; she remembered that from her handbook reading.

She followed him to the outdoor shooting range, since he never let them shoot inside for some ungodly reason.

“You know what to do.” He sighed, placing it down for her.

Sawyer stepped up to the spot, looked down at the old beaten up target they used, and grabbed the gun. She fired off two rounds and saw that her aim was way off again. She didn’t care.

“No,” he said, groaning. “You’ve done better than this. Stop fooling around because you don’t like it. You can’t just stab everyone all the time.”

“Sure, I can,” she mumbled. Then he stepped up behind her, and she tensed as he did that thing. She should have worked harder to avoid this.

She also kind of didn’t want to avoid this though.

His hands wrapped over hers, and his mouth went to her ear, murmuring directions about her aim. He tried to move her around, but she was too tense and stiff. Several weeks without this made it just as awkward, if not more so, than the first time.

“Relax,” he whispered, leaning closer. His breath was hot on her ear and sent shivers down her spine. “Sawyer, relax.”

She just got more tense.

“Can you back off?” she muttered, turning her head just a little so she could see him leaning over her shoulder.

He gave her an extra inch of space. She wondered why it felt like that made it worse, as if the space between them, now emphasized, was vibrating with energy.

“Where were you shot?” he asked softly.

“Twice through the lower back. Exit wounds on my abdomen,” she confided, focusing on the target. She felt one of his hands travel from her hips, looking for the exit wounds. He found the first easily, lower right quadrant of her abdomen. The other took him a moment since it was closer to her belly button.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “Who?”

“Who scarred your chest?” she asked him. She normally never asked about someone else’s scars, as she found it rude but… with Vincent, everything was tit for tat. Every interaction was a small battle over pieces and power. Where Axel had ruled the games around him, considering himself a god above them, she found Vincent to be an active player, another piece on the board. And she found it attractive to play word games with him, to test the limits, to see where he might lose his control because of her retorts and quick thinking.

“That’s not your business,” he told her mildly.

“And my scars aren’t yours,” she reminded him.

She felt him press on her back and she didn’t move. She heard a sigh.

“Sawyer, after everything,” he said quietly, barely audible, “I think there’s a lot about you that might be my business. And if it’s not, I have the awful need to make it my business anyway. Indulge me.” There was something rough and emotional about that. He meant the awkward, shared history they had together without ever knowing it.

“No,” she huffed. Her heart was going a thousand miles an hour. She couldn’t ignore the heat between her legs. She couldn’t ignore the firmness of his chest to her back… or the firmness of something else.

His phone buzzed, and in a blink of an eye, he moved away from her to answer it. She finally let out the air in her chest that she hadn’t realized she was holding.

“What’s going on, James?” he answered, sounding every bit as professional as he normally did. A pause. “Yes, I heard about that. It might be Magi, but I’m not certain.”

She wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but she was trying to find her self-control again. She schooled her body to normalcy. Deep breaths, thoughts about kittens and shit. That would take Vincent off the brain. Or just dick. She had a lot of dick on the brain, and that was going to kill her since she could see the bulge of Vincent’s in his basketball shorts.

“Everything is going fine here.” He sighed. “Getting Sawyer ready for her sidearms cert right now. She’s doing… well.”

“Oh yay. I’m having so much fun,” she called out sarcastically. Vincent gave her a narrow-eyed look and let those dark olive-green eyes travel up and down her. Her pulse picked back up.

“Talk to you later, James,” Vincent whispered, then hung up the phone. Vincent wasted no time walking back over to her and invading her space. This time, he did it fast enough that she backed up into the table they put all their stuff on and fired from.

He pressed up against her, his hands going to the table on either side of her. His lips were too close to hers, and she nearly lost her breath. Those eyes smoldered with emotions Sawyer could relate to. Lust, a bit of anger, a touch of hate, and pain. So much pain.

“Please,” he muttered with a touch of anger. “Please, continue to be a sarcastic, arrogant thing. I feel like I need to find some way to dislike you if I’m going to make it through this without doing something fucking stupid.”

“I think you’re a glutton for punishment,” she murmured back at him, her body on fire. Whatever soft attraction they’d had before Atlanta was now a serious flame. Something was cracking Vincent wide open, and she knew what it was, but this wasn’t the place to bring it up. “I think you like it.”

“Maybe you’re right,” he growled softly. “I wish I could hate you. All of this would be so much easier.”

“I know,” she mumbled. She knew better than he could understand.

He pressed closer and buried his face in her neck. She couldn’t stop the moan as he kissed up to her jawline. She let her head fall to the side a bit as he traveled up.

He never made it to her lips. He sublimated and disappeared into the woods around them.

She was left hot, bothered, and nearly panting.

Fuck.

“You asshole,” she snarled. “God damn it.”

She turned and leaned on the table, trying to control herself. Vincent was not someone she could mess with. She knew that, and yet every time they were within speaking distance, the games came back. The verbal sparring, the ghosts between them, the lust that wouldn’t abate.

She stayed there for a long time, letting the sun move from the sky. He wanted to hate her, she wanted to hate him. But… something in her couldn’t hate him. Oh, she had moments of despising him, moments of wanting to strangle him. But she knew where he was coming from. Axel had put a similar darkness in both their hearts. That level of understanding him and connection between them left her craving some sort of more with him that she shouldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. She looked over her shoulder and saw him standing there again, still a bit smoky from not quite finishing the change. “That won’t happen again.”

She didn’t say anything. She wanted it to happen again, or at least her body did. Her head was screaming that Vincent was absolutely not the person she needed to be making out with in the woods. Jasper was a more valid option that she was avoiding. Zander would be down for it in a heartbeat. Elijah was probably the safest of all of them.

Vincent was the least comfortable and least safe choice.

And she wanted all of them for vastly different reasons. Vincent just happened to be the one in her space at the moment.

“You’re beautiful.” He sighed, walking up to stand next to her. “Don’t think you aren’t. You’re a hard woman not to want. I’ll do my best not to make you uncomfortable like that again…”

“I wasn’t uncomfortable,” she mumbled.

“I don’t want you to feel like you need to—" Vincent was talking quickly and had switched to Italian. He was cleaning up the table, organizing the magazines, making sure the safety was on for the Sig.

“I didn’t feel forced, Vincent,” she cut him off using his favorite language. “Don’t insult me like that.” He jerked to a stop and looked back to her. “If I ever feel forced to do anything,” she whispered, “you’ll know. And you wouldn’t survive the experience.”

“I find it much too attractive to hear you say something like that,” he murmured back, his eyes heated and focused on her lips, again.

“Your problem, not mine,” she huffed. “I’m going back to the house.”

“Of course,” he sighed. She began to walk away. “Sawyer?”

“What?” She groaned, looking over her shoulder at him.

“Do you think… we could play chess together? Try and… work on some sort of friendship?” Vincent asked, looking more vulnerable than she had ever seen him. “I want to know you, I do. And it sucks because there’s too much in between us. Yeah, Sawyer, I want you. But I think we should try for friends.”

“Why?” she asked quietly. She was going to accept, but she wanted to know where his head was.

“Because I can’t fix what Axel did, but I can try my best not to make it worse,” he whispered sadly, looking a little pale. “I don’t want more shit like that first morning in the kitchen, where I reminded you of him. Yeah, I figured that out. I put that together. I had never meant to trigger you like that. I had no idea that he was capable of what he did to you or…”

“I’m not a toy you can fix after your big brother broke it,” Sawyer growled, angry at his reason.

“It’s not just that,” Vincent snapped. “God, for everything you’ve been through, you can stand here and get mean. You can fight back. I don’t understand how. Lesser people would be dead or broken. Sawyer, I want to know you. It’s just hard for me to get within ten feet of you without getting fucking twisted up in all of it…everything, here.” He motioned between them.

“So, you want to play chess?” she huffed.

“Opposite sides of the table, in a controlled environment. It’s something we can both do. Or we can do something else. I don’t care, but I want us to try and be in each other’s space without getting worked up. Without pushing each other to a breaking point.” Vincent was breathing hard. “I told myself that after Axel was dealt with, I would find a way to get to know you, understand you. I don’t think I’ll ever understand you, Sawyer, but I do genuinely want to know you.”

“I want to know you too, Vincent,” she sighed. “And I do understand you. Better than you realize.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left him there. She understood him so well.

Sawyer didn’t go back to the house. Instead, she went to Quinn’s camp. She felt more comfortable doing it now that they had been working on his reading together. It was a small shift, knowing that she could now visit him without fearing for her life. She still felt the need to tread carefully, but she also saw the smiles he gave when he saw her. The same smiles he gave when he saw any of the guys while he was in a good mood.

She felt good about that. It was like she was truly a member of his… pack now.

“Quinn? Shade? Scout?” she called out for any of them, but none of them were quick to answer. She got to his big fire pit and sat down on a log. Then she laid down.

It took minutes for her to fall asleep on it.

A cold nose on her stomach woke her up, and she sighed. She wasn’t even surprised. It was a warm day, and now Scout was giving her the most intense puppy-dog eyes she had ever seen.

“Hey, buddies.” She chuckled, pushing Scout’s nose away gently. She sat up and saw Quinn watching her. “I really had nowhere else to go and needed some time away from the house.”

“Vincent kissed you,” he said blandly. “I can imagine you want to have some space.”

“I’m not sure I want to know how you know that,” she groaned with a weak smile.

“The animals in this part… report to me?” He said it with a bit of confusion, as if he didn’t know if he was saying the right words.

“That’s weird,” she huffed. “Cool, but kind of weird.”

“Yeah, I know everything that happens around here,” Quinn mumbled. “It keeps us safe.”

“That’s nice of you.” She chuckled, shaking her head. Of course, Quinn was off communing with nature and knew everything. She should have known. “Tell me, what would you do?”

“About?” Quinn narrowed his eyes on her, and she waved a hand around.

“Them. Sex, and stuff,” Sawyer told him.

“Deal with the urge and move on.” Quinn frowned at her. “I’m honestly not sure why you haven’t yet.”

“What?” Sawyer snorted. “I can’t just pick one and fuck him. There’s… feelings and shit to worry about.”

“Feelings and sex aren’t the same thing,” Quinn grunted, shaking his head. “Humans make this all so complicated. If you want one, have him. If you want another, have him the next night. If they can’t handle that, let them fight it out. You’re the only female, and they must all wait on you to be ready to mate with them, not the other way around. You are a strong female at that, so they would never be able to overpower you to handle their own urges. You have all the control. They dance to you, not the other way around.”

Sawyer opened and closed her mouth. Quinn just went Nat Geo on her, and she hadn’t expected it.

“And if none of them suit your purpose, go find someone who does,” Quinn continued. “Sex is a physical need, mating is a primal one. There’s no reason to fight it.”

“And you don’t fight it?” Sawyer asked carefully.

“No. When I’m feeling the need, I go to someone I know can satisfy it,” Quinn chuckled. “It’s that simple.”

“But it’s really not for me,” Sawyer told him, standing up slowly. “You have the one person, I have like… four asking me to go to bed with them.”

“Then make them fight for the right,” Quinn offered, shrugging. “It’s what the Druids do when they feel the need. Males who know them are allowed to fight for the privilege of it.”

She shook her head slowly. That’s just not… how the world worked, and she was wondering if Quinn knew that. He must have since he said it was humans that made this all complicated.

“I can’t sleep with any of them,” Sawyer said, confusion lacing her voice.

“Then find someone you can sleep with. I’m just not sure why you can’t fuck any of them. Elijah is great at pleasing a partner. I hear Zander is as well.” Quinn looked her over. “I can see why they all want you. I won’t lie and say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind. But you have enough male attention. Maybe you want a female?”

Sawyer coughed and began to hit her chest. Her world was spiraling out of control.

“You know what? No. This discussion is over,” Sawyer choked out, holding up a hand to stop Quinn. “No, I don’t want a woman. I’ll just handle it all myself. I have stuff for that.”

“What else do you want to talk about?” Quinn asked, seeming unperturbed by her discomfort. She groaned and looked up to the sky.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something, and please don’t kill me. Your English is good, like very good. Are you good with all languages?” It had been bugging her. Quinn’s speech was a little broken sometimes, and normally he had this strange cadence, but for the most part, he spoke like a normal person. What came out of his mouth was weird, but the language was correct.

“My mother was an English speaker. Other Druids near us spoke several languages. I picked them up so I could communicate. My mother thought teaching me to read and write was worthless, though.” Quinn’s posture grew a bit tense. “Don’t ask me more about them, please.”

“Okay,” Sawyer agreed, holding up her hands. “I don’t mean to pry… well, I’m just really curious actually.”

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Quinn mumbled, leaning down to scratch Scout behind the ears. “And someone’s animal bond can say a lot about a person.” He looked back up to her, and she grew a little cold. “You definitely deserved a feline. Midnight was her name?”

“Don’t ask me about her,” Sawyer warned softly. They both had topics that weren’t approachable.

“Okay.”

They stayed silent for a little while as Quinn went to work on something. She watched, deciding she would rather stay out in this little patch of wild chaos than go back to the house. He had several notebooks, now, and she watched him write in them. She also saw he had a collection of encyclopedias and a dictionary.

“What are you working on?” she asked softly, approaching him in the lean to.

“I said I wanted to write down things I knew,” Quinn told her, “so, I am, but I don’t know how to spell the words, so I look them up. Sometimes I find them, but many times I can’t.” He sighed.

“It might be that these are English books, and you are thinking in other languages,” Sawyer offered, kneeling next to him. “I’m not sure how to spell words in some of the languages you know because the rules are different. Sometimes even the characters or letters used can differ. I’m sure we can find out, though.”

“Are you saying I’m only learning to read and write English, and it’s this hard?” Quinn’s nostrils flared in annoyance, and she nodded sympathetically. One of the guys was going to get strangled for not realizing Quinn needed to learn to read and write in several languages if he wanted to clearly put down his thoughts. Then again, they had only been worried about him getting some sort of piece of paper to prove he was educated. She just wanted him to be happy with reading and writing. If that meant he needed to learn every Native American dialect and language’s alphabet, she was going to try and make that work.

“Yeah,” she said and sighed.

The string of what she assumed were curses were in a language, or maybe several, that she didn’t understand. He glared at the books around him, and she put a hand gently on his forearm.

“Quinn, we’ll find a way,” she murmured. “Maybe you should think of English words that mean something similar for now.” Maybe that would do until something better could be figured out.

“Many of the words I want to use don’t have English words to describe the same thing,” Quinn growled softly.

Never mind, she thought to herself. She hadn’t considered that, and she knew enough languages to understand that problem.

“Don’t lose your temper. Things like this take time,” she continued softly. She needed him to remain calm and know it was just going to be hard work, not impossible. She understood the frustration, but it didn’t help them.

“Okay,” he grunted. “We’ll work on this together?”

“We will, though I might get the help of the team on it.” Sawyer chuckled.

“Not Elijah,” Quinn growled. “Not him. We can’t tell him. Make sure they all know.”

“Why?” Sawyer frowned. “You and Elijah are like… connected at the hip.”

“I want to show him I can do it,” Quinn whispered. “Without him looking over my shoulder.”

“Ah, well… I may have yelled at him about that,” Sawyer revealed to him.

“So did I,” Quinn offered, giving her a small smile.

She snorted and then started to laugh. Quinn joined her, and they spent the rest of the afternoon and evening together in the lean-to, talking about what he was trying to do. With dinner fast-approaching, she finally got up.

“I’m going to go eat. You want to come?” she asked him, and he closed his third notebook of the day. His handwriting was atrocious, and he crossed stuff out instead of erasing it, but that was something he just needed to practice. He would go through a lot of paper until he felt confident in his writing.

“Yes. I caught dinner, actually. They are all probably waiting on me.” Quinn jumped up. “I told them yesterday that we would be having venison because a few bucks wandered onto the property recently. Shade and Scout needed the hunt to keep up their skills, and one was already injured, so we took him down. That way, healthier deer can have the resources and continue to be healthy. This buck has been aging for just over a week and should be ready.”

“Everything is the circle of life to you,” she said with a chuckle.

She followed him to a small clearing with a hut. He led her inside and she noted the cold inside. There was no floor and she felt the enchantments in the walls of the hut, blocking out heat and keeping the inside cool. Elijah must have helped him with this place. She wondered what other weird things, like this shed, were hiding all over the property.

“It’s the natural order. The strong eliminate the weak. The strong breed and have stronger children. The strong protect their young to continue after they’re gone. The weakest of them become the sustenance of others, to continue the balance.” Quinn looked at her and nodded. “You are strong. Stronger now than you were, even as an assassin. You protect strong young, and they grow into strong adults. You evolved into something that could continue in the harsh world.”

“You have a way with words, Quinn Judge,” she whispered as he pulled down the meat from a rack. There was so much of it. “We aren’t eating all of this, right?”

“No. We won’t eat all of it tonight. Much of it will go into the box freezer for later meals. I dry age the meat here for up to two weeks then move it to the house.”

“It’s not hunting season, is it? I don’t remember.” Sawyer frowned.

“I don’t know. They once tried to get me in trouble for it, but I’ve never gone by hunting seasons before. I make sure not to take does with young and bucks that are healthy. I’m not here for trophies. Their antlers are for the boys to chew on, not the wall. The coat is dried and cleaned, and I keep them for gifts.”

“Gifts?” she asked, curious again.

“I make things. I enjoy it,” Quinn mumbled like a child trying to hide something. “It’s nothing.”

She was positive that it wasn’t nothing, but she didn’t press. When Quinn deflected a topic, she now knew to not push it.

They made their way back to the house with the meat. Sawyer was carrying nearly fifty pounds. So was Quinn. Sure enough, Shade and Scout each carried an antler to chew on once they were inside. The sun was setting quickly, and Sawyer could hear the world around them changing.

They got inside, Elijah and Zander waiting on them to get all the meat to the kitchen. They all joked and talked as dinner was prepared. Elijah was making them venison steaks with help from Quinn, who obviously had a strong nose and taste for the right seasonings to use.

Sawyer made eye contact with Vincent, who gave her a small nod in greeting. She remembered their afternoon together and felt the quick pulse of lust shoot through her. Zander walked around her, accidentally bumping her from behind, and she ground her teeth.

Too many of them. There were just too many of them. At least Quinn, in the weirdest way imaginable, was safe. Yeah, he admitted to thinking about it, but he didn’t actively try. Thank the heavens. She wouldn’t be able to convince him that it was a bad idea. He would hunt her like a rabbit until he claimed her, if he wanted to. That much was clear.

She sat down at the table and pretended nothing was going on with her as they ate.

In reality, this was one of the best lives she’d had in a long time. Fucking one or more of them was bound to fuck it all up.

“James called me today,” Vincent said, looking at Elijah. “About that body in Texas.”

“I’ve heard about that.” Elijah groaned. “I’m on the fence about whether its Magi or not. That area just doesn’t have any, but without tox screenings and stuff back, no one has any idea.”

Sawyer listened with interest and noticed everyone at the table was doing the same.

“He wants us to keep an eye on it. He has a feeling that if the locals call for the IMPO to assist, we’ll be the ones sent,” Vincent told him, but it felt like it was directed at the entire table.

“They can’t send us out until they have an official ruling on Axel,” Jasper reminded them, “because we can still get called up there to present evidence again or testify.”

“That’s going to be coming soon, he thinks,” Vincent murmured, staring down at his plate. “I’ll give it another week, maximum.”

“Okay,” Jasper sighed. “I was hoping we would get a full month…”

“So was I,” Zander groaned. Elijah was nodding in agreement.

Sawyer just followed along. Apparently, they were going back to work sooner than they had originally guessed.