Chapter Two

“Okay,” Joanna began. “Spill. Why does Cohen stalk you like a lost puppy?”

Ashe’s head shot up. Her eyes were wide, and she knew it. Kaylee and Joanna watched her expectantly.

“I don’t know what you mean.” She dipped her California roll into a small bowl of soy sauce and jammed it into her mouth.

Joanna gave her a look. They’d been friends for far too long for her to lie and get away with it. They both watched Kaylee smear a large chunk of wasabi onto her roll with a mixture of awe and disgust before turning back to the conversation at hand.

“I think you know and you just don’t want to talk about it. You know everything, so for you to suddenly not know something is suspicious.”

Her shoulders sank. Cohen was… terrifying. He was a monster, one she did not wish to have in her life. The shadows that swirled across his eyes echoed the violence of her childhood. Yet, when they cleared and showed the soul behind them, she thought she saw hope.

He was confusing, at best.

Yet, her cards seemed insistent that they were bound. There was no future for Ashe without Cohen. No future for Cohen without Ashe. It scared her. When she was around him, her mouth seemed to act independently. One of these days, she was going to say something that pissed him off.

He was less the man she once knew and more the monster that lived behind his eyes. She didn’t know how to explain it. There’d been a time when the Vancourt brothers had been her friends. She’d hid with them when the Pack became too much, when her father wanted to try to pull out her shifter again. Archer would lie and say he hadn’t seen her. Gage would keep her father busy with his pranks. Cohen would… just exist beside her. He was the tall force that guarded the door, which used to make her feel safe. Even then, he’d been quiet and scary. They hadn’t tried to fill the space with small talk, hadn’t tried to get to know one another.

The silence between them had always been enough.

Since then, his monster had grown into something far more violent. It shifted over his eyes, as if manifesting its own cursed body. The shadows rippled and writhed around his form. Whoever he’d been before seemed gone. All that was left was the monster.

“We used to… have an agreement.” Ashe pushed her sushi rolls around her plate. “I think Sampson told them not to talk to me, which they didn’t really, but they protected me. Some days, Cohen was the wall between them and me.”

Joanna and Kaylee sat in stunned silence. Neither of them knew the history she shared with the brothers. Kaylee had an idea, after what they’d spoken about during the drive downstate. Joanna knew what Ashe endured, but Ashe never really spoke about it. She didn’t want to give the past a voice. No more than that happened and now it’s over.

“Okay,” Joanna ventured. “So, you have a relationship already?”

“What?” Ashe’s head shot up. “No!”

“I don’t think Joanna means sexual or romantic. I think she just means you have more history with Cohen than anyone else for at least a three-thousand-mile radius.”

Joanna snorted. “And that’s putting it lightly. No one knows crap about Cohen other than his own brothers and even then, it’s been a while since they’ve seen him. Archer said about a year after they were ousted, Cohen upped and left them.”

Ashe cocked her head, curious.

Joanna nodded. “Apparently, Cohen took a trucking job and just never came home. They completely lost track of him until you called them back to Stonefall.”

That explained the change, she thought. He’d shut himself off from the outside world. Limiting human interaction could drive humans insane. She shuddered to think about what it would do to the pack mentality of a shifter’s mind. Her eyes drifted away from the women before her. If Ashe could get Cohen to stay, it might help reverse the change.

No, she told herself. That wasn’t her problem. She’d brought the brothers back for them to fix their mistakes, for them to save Joanna’s family from Killian, for them to take leadership of the Pack that needed them. She’d partly hoped that Archer would rise up to both challenges. She looked to her friend. Archer had helped Joanna take back her family, but he hadn’t taken lead.

While Gage was a sweet boy, he was wild and unpredictable. He was not a leader. That left Cohen. She wanted to groan, but stifled it. He would be a good leader, she thought, but it was not her job to convince him to stay. She wouldn’t take part in that. It was up to Archer and Gage.

“I think they’d make a cute couple,” Kaylee said with a sparkle in her eye.

Joanna choked on the shrimp tempura roll she’d shoved into her mouth. After they patted her back, the conversation strayed away from the subject of Ashe and Cohen. They talked about Archer and Joanna’s attempt to start a family. They talked about Kaylee’s new tattoo shop.

It was almost normal.

Ashe wanted to enjoy it, but a cloud hung over her. She remembered the cards she’d drawn. There was still a fight on the horizon. The sense of calm and happiness they shared was only momentary.