Shock froze Hunter in place. Surprising, that. Usually he was the impulsive one slowing the world down one long blink and head shake at a time.

Then his bear roared in his head and shook him back to reality.

Her lips were on his. Soft and full and pressed hard against his.

Her scent filled his nose. Cinnamon and a teasing hint of more made his mouth water.

Her body brushed against him. The sweet temptation would drive him to his knees. She blew through him like a gale force wind, cleared out the haze of anger he didn’t want to unleash, and replaced it with a need for her and her alone.

Hunter growled. His hand shot out to wrap around the back of Joss’s neck and hold her steady as his lips explored hers with soft, ghostlike touches. Her body tensed, but she didn’t pull away. With a swipe of his tongue against her closed lips, she parted for him.

Her taste exploded in his mouth as he deepened the kiss. Pleasure prickled along the back of his neck and down his spine. Right on the heels was the awareness he’d rejected and spiraled his bear out of control for the rest of the damn day.

Mate.

His.

Joss Warren, fierce little mystery, was his mate. Made just for him, and belonging to another. His stomach clenched at the remembered sight of her rubbing the place where her wedding ring should be.

And yet, he couldn’t stop twisting and tangling his tongue with hers. His other hand landed on her hip and dragged her closer. By the Broken, he couldn’t get enough.

“You bitch!” Joyce screamed just as Joss was yanked away from him. “He’s mine!”

Hunter’s eyes snapped open to see Joyce tugging Joss backward by a handful of her hair.

Green eyes met his, at once brightening and killing the shock of her human half. Then they went dead. Fury coated her scent and spread red over her cheeks.

Joss dug in her feet and ripped free of Joyce before rounding on her. The inhuman snarl rattling in her throat raised goose bumps on his arms.

His bear chuffed with pride. Fighter in an unassuming package, that was his girl.

His. No one else’s.

Pops and cracks snapped Joss’s body with her sudden change, and he solved one mystery that had plagued him since their accidental meeting.

Badger. Huge, gloriously pissed off, badger. She stole his breath and stunned him to silence yet again.

Dark brown fur covered her body, with a distinctive white stripe running down her back and cute little snout. She crouched low to the ground, hissing and spitting, with long, wicked claws swiping at Joyce.

Well, fuck.

The rest of the clan streamed outside just as Joyce finished her shift into a vicious she-bear. Joyce had the weight and muscle on the little badger, but Joss didn’t back down an inch. If anything, her hisses grew angrier.

Hunter didn’t think he’d ever been so hard in his entire life.

Joyce took a swipe at the hissing beast at her feet, but Joss only dodged her and jumped for Joyce’s throat. She missed, but her huge claws still raked down Joyce’s side. Joyce snapped her jaws and narrowly missed the quick spin of the angry badger. Joss slipped in quick and bit down hard on Joyce’s leg.

Scratch that. He was entirely in love.

And probably needed to do something before one of them killed the other.

His bear ripped out of his skin with a roar. The she-bear and badger still snarled and growled and bit at one another, utterly ignoring him. He roared again, louder, shaking the windows in the cars parked out front.

Joss crouched in front of him, still challenging Joyce, and snarled again. The possessiveness wasn’t lost on his bear.

“Change back!” Ethan ordered everyone.

Power infused his alpha’s words and kicked Hunter’s bear into oblivion. Fur and fangs snapped back into himself as a painful forced shift twisted him back to his human form. By the Broken, he hated those. He panted and tried to calm the shaking in his limbs.

Joss and Joyce weren’t clan, and while they would feel the urge to listen to an alpha, their animals weren’t required to obey.

Hunter’s bear surged back to life with red-hot anger. How dare Ethan try to boss the little badger around!

“This is the trouble you invited onto my ranch?” Ethan muttered at his mate.

When Hunter lifted his head off the ground, determined to protect Joss, he found Tansey helping her to her feet. Red covered Joss’s cheeks and spread down her neck and chest. She slapped her hands over her creamy skin before he could get more than a brief look and hurried inside.

“Make your own damn lunch!” Tansey shouted and slammed the door on the scene.

Stunned silence blanketed the ranch. Hunter sprawled in the dirt and stared at the sky, wondering exactly how many puppies he’d kicked in a past life to find himself breaking up a fight between a badger and a bear, a woman he couldn’t have and one he didn’t want.

“Joyce,” Ethan growled.

Shit, that was his no-fucking-nonsense tone, too. Woman would be smart to listen.

“You’ll regret this, Hunter. I swear to all the gods in the sky, you will regret ever—”

“Leave,” Ethan snapped. “Don’t ever come back on my land. My territory, my rules.”

Joyce stomped her foot, but there was nothing to do but screech her tires on the way down the road.

Alex led the claps, picked up by Lorne and Jesse, but Hunter didn’t feel the victory. If anything, his head hurt more than ever. His bear slashed at his insides. Joyce was gone, Joss was embarrassed, and he didn’t know what to think.

Fierce woman. Possessive. Hot as sin with a laugh hidden in her eyes.

And a tan line on her ring finger.

Hunter laughed. And laughed. Even after the claps faded and they started muttering about him putting his dick away before they called the mental hospital, he laughed.

It was either that or let his bear take his skin and fight everything to death.

Fate could fuck right off.

Hunter watched the main house from his spot in the shadows of the barn. Just after dark, someone had wandered upstairs and flicked on a light. Ethan and Tansey lived on the main floor, and they had no guests, so he assumed it was Joss.

He should head home.

The thought fluttered in and out of his head like it’d done all afternoon. Still, he kept finding reasons to stick close to the house. Rubbing down horses, cleaning tack, and mucking stalls were some of the everyday tasks that he repeated as the daylight hours wore down, and all because of the redhead inside.

He couldn’t leave. The need to protect her anchored him in place. The immediate danger was gone, but the fallout was still a clear threat. He needed to know she was okay.

It was all bullshit. Fucking instincts. He couldn’t have her. He didn’t understand why his bear cared so much, but he stayed stuck in place.

She was a slippery thing. Tansey ran interference at dinnertime, and he hadn’t been able to get Joss alone since she’d scrapped with Joyce. The not knowing what ran through her mind before and after she involved herself rubbed him raw.

So he sat and watched and told himself five more minutes every time his five minutes ran out. Bone deep, boneheaded instincts held him in place.

His bear flashed him with an image of the little badger running ahead of him through the night. Play covered her scent. Hunter chased the sending away with a wave of his hand.

The front door squeaked open, and he straightened. Joss glanced over her shoulder, then eased out into the night. Loose shorts and a tank top bared her pale legs and arms to the moonlight.

His senses sprang to life. Cinnamon and fresh shampoo plowed over the dirt and musk of animals. Each step across the porch sent out waves that vibrated up through his boots.

Unbidden, unseeing, he rose from his spot. He took one step, then another. His bear rumbled deep in his head, like white noise guarding against other distractions. Joss was the only being in the world that mattered. He had to shorten the distance between them. She called to him like some siren determined to eat a sailor alive.

She’d be his ruin, too, if he couldn’t keep away.

He leaned against the railing and waited for her to acknowledge him. Instead, she just dropped her head back against the wall and stared into empty space.

It gave him another chance to study her, as he’d done at dinner. Red hair flowed around her with a mind of its own, though she’d tried to tackle the strands into submission with a braid drawn over one shoulder. He thought he knew every contour of her full lips and wanted another taste to prove his memory against the real thing.

Except… trouble colored her scent and tightened her shoulders. Her thumb folded under her fingers and stroked the empty spot on her hand.

Hunter cleared the snarl from his throat. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Joss jumped as high as a spooked cat and slammed her hand over her chest. “Don’t sneak up on a person like that!”

Any other shifter, and they would have heard him. She hadn’t heard Joyce drive up, either. Her eyes lacked an awareness right before her shift. She was bad at being a shifter, and that made him want to know more.

“Easy.” He raised his hands to show he wasn’t a threat. “I’ve been here for minutes.”

“So you just lurk around the shadows looking for women to creep on before scaring them half to death? Mighty kind of you,” she snarked.

Oh, her heart beat quickly. Fear had nothing to do with it.

Her spell pulled him forward again. He rounded the railing and trailed up the steps to take a seat next to her. Hunter stopped just short of reaching for her. He curled his fingers into his palms and stared out into the night.

“What did you do all that for?” he asked quietly. There was no doubt what he meant. The tension of unspoken words hung heavy between them.

Anyone else, and he’d have been pissed. Hell, he’d thrown down with every male in the clan for trying to stop him forcing a future with Joyce. He was a stubborn fool.

But he didn’t want this woman, either. Her wedding band tan line and amazing scent were just another heady brew of trouble that wouldn’t pan out for the future he wanted. He’d made a vow when he saw Ethan and Tansey pair up. He wouldn’t waste time on the ones who would just slip away. He wanted his true, fated mate, not the hot and cold that he found every which way he turned.

Maybe it was him. Maybe everyone could detect those dark parts of himself he buried under a smirk and a brawl. He couldn’t bear to see Joss look at him with horror when she learned what he’d done.

Joss chewed on her lower lip and slashed her eyes away from him. “I didn’t like how she talked to you. It wasn’t right.”

“There’s a lot of things that aren’t right in this world.” The draw he felt for her, for one. His bear’s fascination with her. His inability to walk away. He’d hurt others and been hurt himself; Joss would be no different. The writing was right there in front of him. “Doesn’t mean everyone jumps in to defend others like that.”

“No, you’re right.” She gave her head a tiny shake, like she fought with herself. “She’s the sort of girl who acts out when she wants attention, isn’t she? And ignores you any other time?”

“That’s been the way of it, yeah.”

Her heartbeat thundered in the silence. “I’ve been in your shoes. All you ever get are sore toes and blistered heels.”

Hunter shook his head. That sounded like something his old man would say when he wanted to seem profound. The grizzled old bull rider was anything but. Joss, though… She smelled sad. “What does that mean?”

Her expression shuttered entirely. If that wasn’t enough of a shutdown, she took a step toward the door.

“Nothing,” she said to the floorboards. “Forget it.”

Hunter followed her to her feet. “I don’t want to forget it. Any of it.”

“I should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“Joss, wait.” He took a step closer.

Joss melted away from him and through the door. The click of it shutting snapped him to attention.

He cocked his head and stared at the closed door for a long moment. Curious woman. He wanted to peel back all her layers and discover the secrets underneath.

Even if they didn’t belong to him.