The GutShot wasn’t at all what Ava had expected. From the name, she’d imagined a forest and hunting theme—dark wood floors, pictures of trees, old rifle décor, and taxidermy deer and wild boar heads on the walls. This place was beer keg tables, eclectic mix-and-match chairs, and an antique green bar with a row of chrome and black motorcycle seat chairs along the front. Eight men sat on the bar stools, and each was currently looking right at her and Trig.

“The fuck are you doing here?” a balding man in his mid-fifties with no less than four missing teeth and a paunch said from behind the bar. He wasn’t looking at her, but at Trig instead. Eric, she remembered from when she lived here before. He used to run the three-screen movie theater in the middle of town.

“I’m here to get the lady a beer, boys,” Trig said smoothly. “Not lookin’ for trouble.”

How many times did he have to reiterate that? Every time he came into town?

The bartender’s frosty green eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What kind of beer?”

Uh, beer was gross. “White Zinfandel?” she asked through a bright smile.

“Dammit Hairpin! You brought some hoity-toity rich bitch in here?” Eric asked rather loudly and rather rudely.

“Jesus,” Trig muttered, guiding her toward an empty space at the end of the bar. “Eric, call her bitch again, and I’m gonna rip your balls through your belly-button. Don’t fuckin’ test me with it either. Been a whole day since I Changed.”

“No, it hasn’t,” Ava whispered, taking a seat on the stool. “You wore different clothes yesterday. The plaid shirt. You even wore a different cowboy hat.”

“Not what I meant, Ava,” Trig growled.

“I don’t have white zinfan-whatever,” Eric deadpanned, his arms locked against the counter.

“Can you just make her a glass of wine,” one of the men on the other side of the bar called out. “Anything you got. Hell, it ain’t like she’s picky, obviously.” He was pointing at Trig.

“I think you’re the rudest batch of men I’ve ever met in my life,” Ava told them. Yep, that Dorset rage was rearing its mouthy head again.

“Thank you!” slurred a man at the other end of the bar top.

“Oh, shut up, Wade,” Eric said. “I cut you off two hours ago. What are you still doing here?” He swung his gaze to the man sitting beside Wade. “Bill, I swear if you’ve been sneaking him your drinks, I’m going to throw you out right along with him.” Eric was busy making some sort of drink with about a half-dozen liquors and a teeny splash of coke while he was griping at Wade and Bill. “Here.” He slammed the drink down in front of her, splashing the bar top with a third of it.

“That’s not wine. That’s a Long Island Iced Tea,” Ava pointed out.

“It’s a GutShot special. Drink this or nothing, Hoity-Toity.”

Eric plopped a maraschino cherry into it and turned back to Wade to yell at him some more about his life choices.

“You don’t have to drink that,” Trig gritted out, looking back at the door.

Ava shuffled her brand-new snow boots on the sticky floor and shrugged as she took a sip. It was strong as hell but still drinkable, and shopping had made her thirsty. A couple of the guys down the bar she recognized from the grocery store, and from the way Trig kept casting sideways glances at them, he was well-aware, too. “I need to settle my tab,” Trig said to Eric in a deep, take-no-shit voice.

Two of the patrons laughed, and Eric looked at Trig like he’d lost his damn mind.

“Now, why in tarnation would I do that, Hairpin?” Eric asked. “Then the game would be over.”

“So?” Trig asked.

“So the game will never be over.”

Trig sighed and flicked his fingers at Ava, who was currently slurping loudly on the remnants of her yummy Long Island. “This is my friend, Ava. She is from here, but she left a long time ago to make something of herself.”

“Yep,” Ava chimed in helpfully. “I’m a—”

“Lawyer,” Trig interrupted, looking Eric dead in the face.

“A…lawyer,” Ava whispered lamely in agreeance.

Eric arched a bushy silver eyebrow. “A lawyer.”

“Yes,” she murmured, thinking fast. Sitting up straighter, she cupped the glass in front of her and raised her chin. “I don’t normally waste my time on paperwork for a two-hundred and sixteen-dollar bar tab, but since you seem to be playing a game with this man’s life, I think I’ll make an exception just for you. Let him settle his tab and call off the collectors, or I will drag your ass through a legal fight I assure you, you are not ready for.”

The bar got so quiet she could hear the beating of her own pounding heart.

“Get to the GutShot,” one of the men from the store said into his phone. “Gonna be blood soon.”

Trigger was staring at him, shaking his head slowly. His eyes looked like they were glowing in the bar lighting, but it might have been because his face was getting so red. That, or the Long Island was kicking in mega-quick. He looked downright deadly, every muscle tensed in his body, but his hand stayed gentle on her lower back.

“Let’s go,” Trig said low.

“Yeah, run, Hairpin,” the man with the phone said through a feline grin.

Trigger slapped down a wad of cash and an extra ten-dollar bill. “For my tab and my girl’s drink.”

She should feel scared right now, not flattered, but… “You just called me your girl.”

Trigger’s glare faltered and arched from behind her to her face. “What? No, I didn’t.”

“You did, too.”

Trig looked truly taken aback. “I think you heard me wrong—”

“I liked it,” she blurted out, then slapped her hand over her mouth because apparently Long Island Ice Teas could talk.

“Aw, that’s just what we fuckin’ need,” Cell Phone yelled. “He’s brought in a damn breeder, and now this town will be crawlin’ with his kind.”

“Don’t call her a breeder,” Trig said in a dangerous tone.

“A breeder? That sounds barbaric, and he didn’t bring me in. I’m working a job.”

“How long does it take to incubate one of his little demons?” Cell Phone asked Eric.

“About six months.”

“So two more Hairpins running around by this time next year. Fuck no to this.” Cell Phone swung his gaze to Ava. “You need to leave.”

A long, low, terrifying rumble emanated from Trigger and vibrated against her skin. “Well, you had a shot of us leaving before you got disrespectful with the lady. I told you, she ain’t a breeder. And we’ll leave when we’re good and ready to leave. She hasn’t finished her wine yet.”

Heartrate tripping, Ava studied her empty glass. Well maybe there was one tiny slurp of Long Island left. She made it loud and then pushed the empty toward Eric. To Trig, she murmured, “Now I’m done, and maybe we should go.”

“Nope, I want to play pool all of a sudden,” Trigger said, his eyes little slits as he stared at Cell Phone. “Go ahead and bring the Clan in. Go ahead and go for blood. I’ll paint this entire bar with red if you try.” He snarled up one side of his mouth in disgust and made a tick sound behind his teeth. “Breeder. You’ve lost your goddamn mind. Look at her, Otis. Look! This ain’t her home, and I ain’t her man. It’s not her job to pop out cubs for me. Y’all have two choices now that this little bar tab game is up. Let us play a game of pool, and fuck yes, the lady will be picking the next song on the jukebox. Call off your pussy cats, or I’ll bring in the fuckin’ Peacemaker and we’ll go to work carving y’all up like Thanksgiving turkeys. Eric, your windows look mighty breakable. Expensive as hell, too. I’d hate for you to have to spend all the money I just gave you replacing them and cleaning up blood, but fuck it, I’m in a mood, and I wouldn’t mind smelling copper.”

“The Peacemaker ain’t welcome in here,” Eric rumbled in a voice that had gone gravelly and scary. The green of his eyes looked strange now, too—lighter and brighter.

“What’s wrong with everyone’s eyes?” Ava whispered, feeling dizzy.

Cubs, Changes, six months…blood. The smell of copper. He was talking about blood. She didn’t like blood much.

“Maybe we should go,” she murmured, tugging on the sleeve of Trigger’s shirt.

But he only leaned over, pressed his lips onto her hair, his attention still on the assholes sitting at the bar. He gently eased her out of the chair, but then shocked her when he swatted her ass, and then he went gentle again as he pushed her toward the pool table near the wall. Trig made his way behind the bar. He yanked open a fridge and pulled out a bottle of cheap white wine and a couple beers, popped the tops of the brewkies with a snap of his fingers like those bottle caps were nothing, and then he jerked his chin toward the door where Colton sauntered in. “Peacemaker is welcome in here because I fuckin’ say he’s welcome in here.”

“Aw shhhit,” Cell Phone, aka Otis, said, shaking his head and looking sick.

“Tab’s paid, boys,” Trigger said in a booming voice. “The game is up, and we’ll be coming in for visits whenever the urge hits us. Call Ava a bitch or a breeder again, and I’ll let her brother loose on you, and I’ll clean up the scraps.”

“She’s the Peacemaker’s sister?” Eric snarled.

Colton sauntered over toward Ava, cracking his neck this way and that as he did. “Eric, did you call her a bitch?”

Her brother, or the Peacemaker, or whatever he went by nowadays…looked different. His face was twisted into a feral expression, and his eyes… Something was very wrong here. Her brother wasn’t right anymore. He reminded her of…Trigger. And perhaps the magic of the liquor suicide she’d just slurped down gave her super-powers, but she was pretty sure this entire bar smelled of manly odor and fur. Fur. Actual fur like when she was a kid and had an Irish wolfhound that would come in stinking like wet dog after a rain.

And there was something else, too. Something just above her senses as the men on the stools stood one by one and began to approach the three of them. It was something heavy in the air that sat on her shoulders and filled her chest with cement and made it nearly impossible to draw a full breath. It was like someone was sucking the air out of the room.

“Colton?” she whispered as Trigger eased her behind his back. “We should go.”

But as she peeked out from behind Trigger’s gargantuan back, her brother turned a bright gold gaze on her and growled out, “Colton ain’t here.”

“Oh,” she squeaked out. “Amazing. I’ll just pick a song on the jukebox then.”

Those two were definitely getting broken noses tonight. Stitches perhaps, too. Already she was tallying the cost of medical care for the boys and wishing those damn wild boys would fight a little less and walk away a lot more.

As she turned to high-knee her frightened ass toward the jukebox, Trigger slammed the bottle neck of the wine against the bar, scaring Ava half to death. Bright side though, the others hesitated in their approach.

“For you,” he murmured chivalrously, handing her the broken bottle.

Ava took it and held it in front of her, staring at the jagged edges of the glass. “Um, what if there are glass shards in the bottle now? I have a sensitive stomach.”

Trigger snorted and then handed her a plastic cup off a stack at the end of the counter. “Pour the wine in the cup.”

“And use the bottle as a shank?” she asked.

“Good girl.”

“I don’t think I would be good at prison,” she murmured. “I really wouldn’t. Communal showers aren’t my gig, and I like cooking with bacon grease and sleeping on a nice mattress, and when we were kids, my dad told me and Colton that prisoners only got bread and water for meals and that sounds very bland and very boring.”

“Ava,” Trigger muttered. “You aren’t going to prison. Drink your wine and go pick something annoying on the jukebox.”

She scoffed. “Annoying? Just what kind of music do you think I listen to?”

Trigger wasn’t paying attention, though. Instead, he was giving his attention to where the “Peacemaker,” aka her dipshit brother, was talking to the crowd of delinquents in the middle of the bar.

Fine. The Thong Song it was. Jerk.

The music player didn’t have the Thong Song, but it did have Achy Breaky Heart, and the chorus of groans that filled the air behind her made her evil-smile.

“You need to get your boys out of here,” a masculine voice said right at her ear.

“Aaah!” Ava skittered away and glared at Kurt, who’d apparently come in through the back door right beside her. It was still swinging closed and snow was drifting in on the wind. Kurt’s shoulders were dusted with the white stuff as he moved around the pool table toward the front door. He didn’t take his eyes from her though, and there was something in them. Something that pleaded with her, confused her. He was giving her a warning.

“Trigger, I want to go,” she said.

Trig looked at her over his shoulder, but his eyes weren’t in the realm of human anymore, and suddenly she felt like the ground was opening up under her, wider and wider until it would swallow her whole.

Cubs. Secrets. Always on the outside. Gold eyes and snarls in chests. Copper. Copper. Copper. House rule. Stay inside at nights. Ava backed up step-by-step until her shoulder blades hit the wall. Trigger watched her like a predator watching prey. Don’t give him your back. Stay inside at nights. Where had Trigger gone in the snow? Where had his clothes gone? You know. You always knew. You just didn’t want to see what was in front of you. Secrets. Whispers. Strange things were always happening here. Animals were always being killed by wolves, mountain lions...bears. They’re not men. What are they? They’re animals. Colton’s not here.

Ava gripped the neck of the wine bottle and winced at the stinging pain. Red welled up on a long slice down her finger. Drip. Drip. Smelled like copper. Copper and fur and something she still couldn’t figure out. Something heavy.

“Trigger?” He was close now. So fast, he’d made his way to her. There was commotion behind him, but she couldn’t see around his massive shoulders. The air was colder, and there was a breeze. The front door was open, and more and more voices sounded. Colton’s voice rose above the others. He was spewing cusswords right along with them. So loud. Her blood was roaring in her ears. “Trig?” she asked again since he wasn’t responding. All he was doing was standing inches away from her, staring down at her bleeding finger. Drip, drip.

His gaze churned with gold fire, and his lips curled back, exposing straight, white teeth in a wolfish smile. “You said you liked when I called you ‘my girl,’ but you don’t know what that means yet.”

The noise was getting louder. Was it yelling or her heartbeat? Trigger knocked the bottle from her hand and let it shatter on the floor. He angled his head like some predator calculating his prey, and then he did something that shocked her to her core. He raised her hand and kissed her wrist right over her tripping pulse. Kiss. Kiss. Nibble. Bite. He clamped his teeth down so hard, he nearly broke skin, and she gasped at the sensation of pleasure and pain. And then he released her and drew her bleeding finger into his mouth. He slowly stroked his tongue over and over her cut until her knees wanted to give way and her body wanted to belong to him.

So much noise. So much, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Trig. He looked wild. Untamed. He looked like a demon with those blazing eyes boring into hers as he sucked the blood from her finger. He pulled away slowly and gave her cut a gentle kiss. “I want to bite you so bad, Ava. I want to ruin you. Wreck your life and make you stay right here. I want to get you stuck with me. One bite, and I could keep you, and the devil inside me wants that. He begs for it.” Why was he smiling while he said such terrifying things? Chills were lifting the fine hairs on her arms. She should run, but instead, Ava took an involuntary step forward.

The yelling was getting louder.

“I’ll give you a choice,” he rumbled in a gritty voice. “But before I do, you’ll see it all.” Trigger leaned forward slowly and pressed his lips to hers. His hand went rough in her hair, and he kissed her like she’d never been kissed. It was like meeting a storm and having her breath taken away by the wind. Raw strength and confidence meets beauty, and she was scared of how much she felt, but she didn’t want him to ever stop either. He pushed his tongue into her mouth once…twice, and then he pulled back suddenly and spun. There was a crack of power like a lightning strike as his fist connected with a man’s nose. He was so fast, so confident in his movement, as though he’d thrown a punch a hundred times before. Perhaps he had.

There were three men on him, pummeling, pushing, fighting. But Trig pulled the violence away from her before she even had to edge out of the way. Time and time again, he drew a quick glance to her, as if he couldn’t help himself.

She couldn’t see Colton, but she could guess where he was. Right in the middle of a surging crowd of men, throwing hits so fast their arms blurred.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, shocked at the sheer violence the bar had erupted into.

She had to do something. For a split second, time slowed as she reached for her cell phone in her back pocket. The police could stop this. They could stop these men from hurting her boys. My boys. Mine. But Trigger wasn’t struggling. He was laying bodies at his feet like they were sacks of stones. He was making his way through the crowd, working toward her brother. The Peacemaker. What a bullshit name. He had a man pinned by the shirt against a table and was pummeling his face. He wasn’t bringing peace. He was bringing complete destruction. Colton was the Warmaker.

Chairs broke, tables buckled, men grunted in pain, and Trig hadn’t bluffed about the front windows as he tossed one man out of it like a rag doll. The sound of shattering glass brought time back in line. She couldn’t call the cops. The boys might be defending themselves, but they were laying utter waste to the ruffians in this place. Both of them had rap sheets. Both were outlaws. She couldn’t be the one to make it worse.

“Trigger, Colton!” she screamed just as red and blue flashing lights lit up the front windows. “We have to go now!”

But she could’ve been speaking in sign language for all the attention they paid her. There was no reaction to her demand, and desperate times were calling for desperate measures. She should leave and save herself from being arrested right along with them, but she couldn’t make her feet turn to the exit. “Fuck,” she murmured in a shaking voice.

Ava yanked a pool stick off the table and ran toward where a man was wailing on the back of Trigger’s neck while he fought another. With a screech, she pulled that pool stick back and slammed it into the man. But he didn’t flinch. He did something horrifying instead. With fiery silver eyes, he peeled his lips back over teeth that were too sharp, and he screamed in her face. Only it wasn’t a human scream. It sounded like an animal.

“Don’t!” Trigger yelled, rounding on him, but the man fell to the floor, and his body just…exploded. It morphed into something new. Something terrifying. A massive mountain lion lay crouched, all its muscles tensed, just feet away from where Ava stood frozen.

“M-m-m-m…” she stuttered, her heartbeat pounding double-time in her ears. Her skin tingled with the urge to run, but she couldn’t move. “Trigger,” she whispered, but he was being dragged away by five men, and Colton was screaming something she didn’t understand.

“Ava!” Trigger yelled.

“No, no, no! Trigger, don’t Change!” her brother roared. And that’s what it was, a roar, but the importance of that came secondary to what the mountain lion did next.

It bunched its muscles and rocketed off the floor, right at her, with such speed and agility, she couldn’t step out of the way fast enough. A scream caught in her throat as time slowed again. Impact was like an avalanche. Her breath was knocked clean out of her as she slammed back onto the floor, and then there was excruciating pain. A ripping ache like she’d never endured. Not when she’d cut her neck on a barbed wire fence when she was seven in an ATV accident. Not when she’d broken her arm falling out of a tire swing. Not even when her heart had broken in two when her dad left. This was pain that she would never forget.

It was the scratch of claws so deep they etched into her collar bone, and in desperation, she yelled out Trigger’s name one last time as the lion’s jaws opened and those impossibly long canines came for her throat.

Through the air, an old Colt Single Action Army, her dad’s old Peacemaker, sailed end over end in a big arch and landed in Trigger’s hand. Eyes blazing with fury, he swung that old pistol quick, aimed, and pulled the trigger.

Boom!

The cat’s teeth barely touched her neck before he was blasted sideways, and he scrambled off her with a scream of pain.

The click of Trig pulling the hammer back echoed in the new silence that had descended on the bar. Ava clutched her bleeding shoulder, wincing at the burn of the claw marks. Everyone had stopped fighting at the sound of the weapon.

“Whoa, you shot him in the ass,” Eric said from behind the bar where he was holding a bat like he was ready to hit a homerun.

“That was on purpose,” Trig snarled. His voice couldn’t even pass for human anymore. “The next one goes between the eyes, Chase. I don’t care who the fuck you think you are. Alpha? Bottom of the Clan? Don’t matter. You were gonna bite her…weren’t you, you sick fuck? You were gonna make her Clan. Claim her as your cougar? Fuck that. You could’ve killed her. You get that, right? And even with a bite, she’d be at my ranch in my clan. Don’t matter her animal, so you best get that dumbshit idea out of your head real quick. Change her like that, and I’ll let the devil out of me and bury your entire Clan. Every last one. I fuckin’ dare you to underestimate me.” The seven-inch barrel of the peacemaker was steady as he kept it aimed at the mountain lion. “We’re leaving.”

“No, you’re not,” an officer said from the doorway.

“Self-defense and we have witnesses,” Colton said from behind Trigger. He jerked his chin at Ava, who was struggling to her feet. “My sister’s got claw marks on her neck, and I’m pretty sure this town don’t need no more attention on the supernatural shit that’s been going on here. She’s human, and she’s mouthy as hell, and she don’t back down an inch. That comes along with being a Dorset. You want to piss her off and let her find her voice?” Colton nodded and dared him, “Lock us up then.”

The dark-haired officer clenched his jaw so hard a muscle twitched there. He cast one hard look to the back door and gritted out, “Get on, then, and don’t come back to the GutShot again.”

Trigger snarled up his lips in a terrifying grimace before he eased the hammer down and handed the old pistol back to Colton. “Lead on, Ava.”

He didn’t ask if she was okay or anything. He really was telling her to walk herself out of here, but she figured out why real quick. Trig and Colton flanked her, covered her back as she made her way to the exit of the GutShot. She felt like she was a newborn filly on unsteady legs as she bounced this way and that.

“It’s the adrenaline,” Trigger said low as he held the door open for her.

Her shoulder hurt so bad, and there was warmth trickling down her fingers. “Babe?” Why did she call him babe? She’d never called a man that. The world was spinning like a top. “I don’t feel so good.”

Her legs buckled, but Trigger’s hands were already scooping her up. He brought her flush to his chest, held her tight. He was warm, and she felt safe, but at the same time, this was awful. How embarrassing to fall apart in front of her brother and Trigger. She wasn’t that girl. She was tough, but here she was, going to pieces on the small, snow-covered back porch of the GutShot, the wind stinging her cheeks and freezing the water that was welling up in her eyes. She angled her face away from Trigger in shame.

“This don’t make you weak, Ava. It’s a lot,” Trigger murmured, like he knew the exact thoughts she was wrestling with right now. “You’re doing good.”

Just that tiny bit of sympathy, that tiny bit of support, meant so much, and she turned and slid her uninjured arm up his neck and squeezed as she buried her face against him. His gait was smooth as he walked them down the porch stairs and toward his truck. Was that his lips against the top of her head? There was a soft growling sound in his chest, and besides the pain, that small terrifying sound was part of the problem.

“Are you like them?”

“I’m nothing like them,” he murmured.

“I mean are you a…a…”

“Mountain lion?”

Her voice barely came out a whisper since she was shaking so bad. “Yes.”

“No.”

“But you’re something more, right? More than human.”

“I’m not a big cat shifter. I’m something much worse.” He sounded sick saying that.

“It ain’t worse,” Colton said, sounding pissed. “It ain’t.”

Steeling herself, she pulled her face away from Trigger’s warm chest and faced the biting wind so she could look her brother in the eyes when she asked, “Are you like Trigger?”

The color of his eyes said yes. They were gold like the sun instead of blue like Dad’s eyes. His cheeks were tinted red, but from anger, the winter wind, or from shame, she couldn’t tell. He spat red in the snow, thanks to a split lip, and he nodded as he reached for the passenger’s side door handle of Trigger’s old Ford. “I am. Chase was almost your maker tonight. Trigger’s my maker. That’s all I’ll ever say about it.” He opened the creaking door and then turned and walked away, his boots making deep prints in the new fallen snow. She and Trigger watched him go. He looked so alone with the evening clouds churning above him, his set of boot prints by themselves in the snow, his shoulders hunched against the whipping wind. He didn’t look back.

“I’ll never forgive myself for that,” Trigger said, and there was a ghost in his voice. “He wanted to come see you, Ava. He would’ve moved where you were just to keep a relationship. But I messed up, and I tethered him to this place. I hurt a lot of people. I ruined lives. I ruined your brother’s the most. You should know that before you start calling me ‘babe.’ That hole you feel in your family? I did that.”

Ava’s face crumpled as Trigger set her gingerly on the seat. She shook her head over and over and wished away the last ten years. She’d made mistakes, Colton had made mistakes, and Trigger had made mistakes to get them all here. But somehow, they’d all ended up in Darby to make things right or go to hell together.

A part of her wanted to get back in that little prop plane and leave this place. Pretend mountain lion men didn’t exist. Pretend she hadn’t watched her brother’s face get bloodied or clawed, or watched Trigger stand over her and pull a trigger to protect her. Part of her wished she could go back and have her world righted again. Go back to her simple, safe life and never worry about the people she cared about here. But a bigger part of her…the part that had grown loyal over the last couple of days…was relieved she finally knew. Scared, but relieved.

There was a soft ripping sound as Trigger pulled open her clawed-up jacket to look at her shoulder. It hurt so bad she just wanted to go to sleep and not feel anything.

Trig sighed and murmured a curse, then he leaned forward, popped open the glove box, pulled out flask, and told her, “Drink half.”

“This is full,” she argued, shaking it to hear the sloshing sound. “Plus, I don’t think you’re supposed to have booze in your truck like this.”

“Woman, I’ve done way worse shit than carry a flask of whiskey in my truck. Drink it. Trust me, you want to.”

“Okay.” She got brave and chugged the burning liquor. As it seared its way down into her belly, warming her as it went, Trigger opened her jacket wider and dumped the rest on her claw marks without warning.

She screamed, but cut off the sound so she could feel brave. Slamming her head back on the head rest, she closed her eyes and dislodged twin tears to her frozen cheeks. Her teeth wouldn’t stop chattering as he poured the last couple drops on her cuts, and she had to clench her hands to keep them from shaking.

“You did so good, babe,” he murmured, a slight smile at the corners of his lips.

“You called me ‘babe,’” she said, feeling too drained to care whether it was dangerous to fall a little more for Trig. He’d kept her safe tonight. He’d shot a cougar for her. He’d fought for her honor. He was helping her now. Bad boy, good man.

“I’ll give you a choice,” he said, leaning over her to turn the truck on. As he turned up the heat, he reached under the seat with his other hand and pulled out a first-aid kit. “When I was a kid, I was rough on my body. A tree climber and always falling out. Always getting scraped up. Playing with knives and cutting myself on accident because I wasn’t a careful kid. My dad gave me choices when I was hurt bad enough. Keep the scars or he could fix them so they were faint. He would tell me, ‘Boy, our life is made for scars.’ He was an animal like me. A monster. A good dad, but a monster. He would always tell me by the time I grew up, I would be all scarred up like him. He was covered because he was a rogue. Always fighting. He had to so he could keep his territory.”

“Like you?”

“Like me, and like Colton. He said my body would be a canvas that told my story. But I had options. Some cuts he could sew up, patch up, and make into small silver scars that I wouldn’t even notice eventually. Those were the embarrassing ones. The ones where I fell out of a tree but didn’t learn a lesson. Or wasn’t careful enough and cut myself washing dishes. But some he would encourage me to keep. My first fight with a mountain lion.” Trigger pulled the top three buttons apart on his plaid shirt and exposed his taut chest. Under the tattoo ink there were four long, shiny scars.

Ava ran a light touch down them, tracing each one. “He didn’t sew these up, did he?”

“No. I didn’t start that fight, but I ended it, and he wanted me to remember it. I’m good at stitches. Your cuts are clean and short, and they won’t bleed much more. I can stitch you up and make them tiny silver scars that you will hardly notice in two years’ time. Or…you can let them heal like this, own what happened to you tonight, never forget the danger of the Clan, but also never forget how brave you were, because I saw you, Ava Dorset. You had fire in your eyes and cracked a pool stick over the alpha of the Darby Clan just to protect the back of my neck. You were a beautiful badass. I’m good with whatever you choose. Neither makes you weak.”

Ava sat there, aching arm cradled to her stomach, searching his beautiful, flame-gold eyes. She lifted her hand and hesitated just before she touched his dark beard, then found her bravery and brushed her fingertips down his jaw. Trigger rolled his eyes closed and sighed as though it felt good. As though he’d never been touched his whole life. And in this moment, she knew it was going to be very, very hard when she left Darby to go back to her old life.

Now…everything had changed.

She leaned up and sipped his lips. Just tasted them, and his hand went soft when he cupped her cheek. That same hand had pummeled men’s faces to protect her and Colton tonight, but for her, it was as soft as a butterfly’s wings. Gentle giant for now, but she knew there was something big and dangerous sleeping inside of this man. She knew she should be afraid, but fear didn’t exist inside of her right now—only the certainty that she’d never felt this strongly for a man.

His tongue made gentle strokes just past her lips, and time went on and on. She hurt less. Maybe it was the whiskey, or the cold, or maybe it was the drugged sensation she got when his lips were on hers—she didn’t know. All she knew was inside that bar, she’d never been so scared, but out here, in Trigger’s care, she’d never felt safer.

“Trig?” she murmured against his lips.

“Yeah, Ava?”

She ran her knuckles down his beard and whispered, “I think I need the scars so I don’t ever forget tonight.”

A slow smile stretched his face. “Good girl.”