Gen pulled away from their kiss suddenly and searched Grey’s eyes with this look of fear on her face.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, careful to enunciate his words for her.

I don’t want to leave tomorrow, she mouthed.

Oh. That. Grey sighed and pushed her bangs out from in front of her eyes so he could see her better. “I’ll take care of that. Don’t worry. We’re not done yet.”

“Are y’all gonna do it,” Whiskey Barney slurred from the mouth of the alley. “Cause if so, I’m gonna video it and make a million-trillion-billion dollar. Dollars. Dollars is a weird word if you say it a lot. Dollars.”

Greyson chuckled and shook his head. “Sorry, WB. No alley sex this time around. Better luck next time.”

“Okay. Jessie said I’m cut off. He kicked me out.”

“Well you sound three sheets to the wind, so that’s probably best. How long did he say you’re cut off?”

Barney burped and swayed on his feet, then ran a hand over his balding dome and gave a goofy grin. “’Till I sober up again.”

“So forever.”

“Pretty much. I’m gonna go to the old bar. They like the Barney show over there.”

“Don’t drive!”

“My car ain’t even runnin’. I forgot to put gas in it,” he slurred, walking away. “Over his shoulder, he called, “Your girlfriend is hot. Stay bad to the bone you wild and crazy…crazy…dollars.”

Gen looked concerned and formed the words, Is he okay?

“Oh, yeah. That’s just Whiskey Barney. He’s one of the many characters of this town. He comes into the bar a lot.”

A regular?

“Yep. Come on, I can hear your stomach growling from here. I wish we could stay right here and make out all night, but I have this instinct… I need to get you fed. Is that weird?”

Her smile turned so fucking cute, and pink painted her cheeks as she shook her head. She liked when he took care of little things, he could tell. Oh, she was tough. She had to be to live the life she had without being able to hear, and she hadn’t let it turn her bitter. She was sweet instead. The world hadn’t made her hard, just strong.

Gen was complicated. He used to think he wanted the simplest girl, the simplest relationship he could find, but this girl had layers and depth. She had everything. He hadn’t found a single thing about her he didn’t like.

He held out his bent elbow, and she slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. Her grip was strong. That unintentional strength was probably a gorilla thing, but he didn’t mind. His body was made to be roughed up. He could handle her, and there was no doubt in his mind she could handle him, too. She might be shy and sweet, but Genevieve Taylor, only daughter of the legendary Kong, was anything but fragile. Sexy, sexy, little Lowlander. Grey had got so fucking lucky.

Gen was a beauty, but she didn’t know it. That much was clear from the way she ducked her head and blushed at every compliment and from the way she avoided eye contact with people who looked or stared at her on the street. She probably thought they saw her as deaf, but how could they? She was stunning with her dark hair, light blue eyes, and her make-up done all pretty. He bet she was really good at her job and made women feel gorgeous when she did their hair and make-up. He was probably going to kill Sean. He wished she’d told him that douchebag’s last name, but he would find it. When he got home from work tonight, he would get on the computer and track that prick down. Taking money from Gen. Taking surgery money? What a horrible person. Grey wanted to rip his throat out. Slowly.

Gen was looking up at him as they walked, her delicately-arched, perfect dark eyebrows in the cutest fucking little frown he’d ever laid eyes on.

You okay? she asked.

Huh. He liked how she made him feel when she cared. She probably wouldn’t appreciate if he told her he was imagining ways to murder her ex, so he put his arm around her shoulders and gathered her close to his side instead. She liked when he touched her. She always softened against him. Good mate.

And fuck Ben for trying to lay down the law when it came to Greyson. The alpha had let everyone else pick their mate, and then balked when it came to him? It was bullshit. Just because their pairing was arranged didn’t mean it couldn’t be something worthwhile.

Gen nuzzled her soft cheek against his chest as they walked, and it did something strange to his heart and his dick at the same time. Hard dick, soft heart. She was so damn easy to be around. Not just because she was beautiful, sweet, and interesting. But her being deaf? That was never a deal breaker. Sure, he’d been shocked at first, but he was quiet naturally and didn’t need a woman who filled silence with empty words. He would never wish the disability on Gen, but she suited him just fine the way she was. Hearing impaired or not, it didn’t matter to him. He would just learn how to talk her language, and that would be that.

The second they walked in through the door of the restaurant, he smelled the lions. Fuck. Seth, the new alpha of the Cold Mountain Pride, and Abel, his Second, were sitting at a table in the corner, staring at him. The second Seth’s eyes slid to Gen, Greyson wanted to shove a fork in his eye.

He was completely distracted by the staring contest with those assholes as he followed Gen and a waitress to a table on the opposite side of the restaurant.

He had to rush to pull out Gen’s chair before she sat down because he was in his own little world of wondering what the hell he was going to do about the pride. He needed to get his head back on Gen so he didn’t hurt her feelings. She was more sensitive than him.

She started texting the second after the waitress got their drink orders.

Lions?

Smart girl, she had been watching through the window of the laundromat as he’d argued with the leaders of the pride.

He nodded and clasped his hands in front of his chin, debating on what to tell her. We are on the verge of war, he mouthed. No sound because Gen didn’t need it, plus he didn’t want the lions with their oversensitive hearing to catch wind of this conversation.

He texted her, explaining something he hadn’t even told Ben or the others in Red Havoc. We’ve been going back and forth with these battles. They’re pushing into our territory, we’re defending it, their last alpha came after Kaylee and her son, and now he’s gone. Dead. There is a new alpha in the pride. When power shifts, it’s hard on a crew, and right in the middle of that, two of our cats went after them a couple weeks ago. We got in a scuffle that should’ve never happened. It’s their move now. I’ve been trying to slow the retaliation down without my crew knowing. The more people who get involved, the worse it is. I can’t avoid war if I have Barret and Anson and Jaxon and even Ben pushing the pride to the edge. Send.

She texted back, You’re like the Red Havoc Guardian, but no one knows.

He huffed a breath and shrugged. I guess. I’ve done quiet stuff like this since Ben let me in. Stopped battles from happening before they became an issue. The others are too loud. Too ready to fight. Too reckless. I want to keep the crew together, and safe. Send.

Because you were kicked out of your crew when your dad went to prison?

He nodded. I do best in a crew, and I like Red Havoc. They get on my damn nerves most of the time, but they’re mine. Mine to protect. God, he wanted to tell her she was his to protect, but it was too soon. He didn’t want her to run if she saw how protective he already was over her. If Gen had been under a big domineering silverback in that family group and hurt by that, he didn’t want her to lump him in with that kind of man. He wanted to be better for her. So instead of saying that, he typed out, After I was kicked out at seventeen, the loneliness made my panther hard to manage. I don’t want to go back to that, and no one else is going to take me in but Ben. Shifter memory is long, and no one has forgotten my dad getting that crew outed and forced to publicly register. No one forgot the video of him Changing in the middle of a bar parking lot and killing the alpha of our crew. He messed up, and it’ll follow me for always. I’m okay with that, so long as I have a place in a crew. Send.

After reading, Gen sighed and cocked her head. Then she texted him, What if I get you kicked out of Red Havoc? I don’t want that.

“You won’t,” he murmured, forming his words carefully. “Ben will have to just accept us eventually. Let me worry about him, okay?”

She still looked worried, so he brushed his work boots against her knee-high fashion boots under the table. So fucking pretty, looking all worried that she would get him banished from his crew. She was a protector just like him. A guardian. It was natural for her. He loved that about her. For the rest of his life he would never forget her charging into that fight with Ben, her powerful, black-furred arms punching the ground with every deliberate stride, her eyes blazing an inhuman silver, her smooth black lips curled back to expose long, curved canines that rivaled big cat shifters. So fucking dangerous. Powerful. Gorgeous. His.

“You’re easy to talk to. I feel like I can confess things to you that I don’t to other people.”

You’re quiet?

“Red Havoc bitches about it all the time, me being quiet. I just don’t talk if I don’t have something important to say. I think actions speak louder than words. I keep them safe quietly. I’m good with not talking.”

Her full lips mouthed words as she typed the next text into her phone. She probably didn’t even realize she was doing it. He wished he could hear her voice. Her laugh was different from any he’d heard, but it was perfect. It made him proud when he could make her smile like that and lose her self-consciousness.

His phone chirped with her message, and he read it. I like that you talk to me.

He inhaled deeply as the waitress set their drinks and food on the table between them. It was one of those old-fashioned family-style joints that only served fried chicken, mashed potatoes, biscuits, and corn. Gen started filling up her plate while he typed the next message. It was a long one.

The pride came to me a week ago, pressuring me to cut them in on our moonshine business. They want the profit. Not only that, but they want us to make bigger batches and expand territory so they have a big income coming in. They would assume none of the risk though. Red Havoc would. Right now, we make smaller batches and sell it to regulars. Locals. I know all of our customers and keep our risk of getting caught low, but the pride will get us caught, arrested, and human law won’t go lenient on us. Making more means more illegal profit. We can’t get caught doing huge batches or human law enforcement would use us as an example. I think the lions want that. They’re playing the money angle, but there are only four males in the pride right now, and Red Havoc has been growing with females that could fucking annihilate them, even without the boys. Their only play if they want our territory is to use the humans to cut us out of the Appalachian Mountains.

By the time he hit send, Gen was handing him a full plate she’d made up for him. She didn’t look for thanks or anything, just went to unwrapping her silverware. It made him grin. She was so much more comfortable with him now than she was even yesterday. He loved it.

It took her a while to read his text, and when she finally finished, she mouthed, What will you do about the lions?

Gen watched his lips, so he mouthed the answer. I don’t know. I’m stalling as much as I can. We can’t up moonshine production without getting bad attention. They’re threatening war, but right now, I’m banking on them being too small a pride to really come after us. It would be a stupid move on their part. We have a crew of monsters.

Gen texted a quick response and started cutting her chicken off the bone like a girl with manners. Cute. He was going to eat like an animal and see if she ran. Test. She made him want to test if she would stick around when things went to shit, because they would. If it wasn’t war with the Cold Mountain Pride, they still had a Dunn lion cub, Bentley, whose massive and violent Dunn relatives would come for him someday. And then there was Eden, Barret’s mate. She was an albino falcon. Eventually her people would come for her too, and Red Havoc would go to war to defend its own. He could understand Ben not wanting to bring in a female gorilla shifter on the run. He understood, but it didn’t change his mind. She had a place at Grey’s side if she wanted it. If she passed his tests. If she stuck around even through the hell that would come for the Red Havoc Crew.

The little blue light on his phone was blinking, letting him know her message was waiting for him to read, so he did. You could kill the lions. Problem solved.

For a moment, he thought she was joking, but as he stared at her, she just kept cutting up her food and eating, like she saw nothing wrong with making the problem disappear by way of death. He was going to have to do more research on gorillas. They were even more reclusive than panthers and hard to find information on. He was starting to think they lived by different rules than other shifter crews. More violent ones perhaps. And now he had the feeling that if he could get her to bond to him, Gen would be a true ride-or-die mate. No wonder she hadn’t been scared off by his confession that his father was in prison. She didn’t seem like the type of woman scared easily by inner demons. The more he got to know her, the more interesting she became. And now his inner panther was practically staring at her like a trained seal waiting for a fish. If he was good to her, she rewarded him with little insights to herself.

Sean had no idea what he’d let go, the dumbass.

As he watched Gen eat her food, Grey thought there wasn’t much he wouldn’t do to keep her safe and happy. Too soon? Fuck it. That’s the way he’d always hoped it would work when he found a mate.

She was his now, and that was that. He just needed to convince her they were a match, and then he was going to burn her other two Bangaboarlander option sheets to ashes.