“I’ve been thinking,” Colton said, setting his tray across the wooden table from hers.

“About what flavor of barbecue sauce you are going to eat on your brisket?”

Colton frowned down at his pile of meat nestled between a cup of macaroni and cheese, a baked potato, two ears of buttered corn, and half a roasted chicken. “No.”

“Pity,” she murmured, pouring a sauce called “Don’t You Do it” over her brisket sandwich. She was hyper aware right now, and there was a female standing behind the counter, her eyes intent on Karis. It was creeping her out.

Colton followed her gaze, frowned, and then took a huge bite of his food. Around the bite, he uttered, “I’ve been thinking your little plan to keep me at arm’s length isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m charming and a semi-good listener, and look around you, Karis. All the ladies in here are staring at me. I have sex appeal for days. I’m basically walking pheromones. You can try, but you won’t be able to resist me forever.”

Indeed, he was right. The creeper behind the register was now staring at him, and a lady pushing eighty was staring at him, too. That one winked once at Colt, who waved the tips of his fingers back at her, the flirt.

“That’s Martha, or as I like to call her, Handsy Martha. I will get my ass slapped before we leave this restaurant. I’m calling it.” He pointed to the ruined side of his face. “Chicks dig scars.” His eyes danced with self-deprecation.

Karis couldn’t help it. She giggled like a little school girl with a crush, and this needed to stop. “I have eight older brothers.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yep, and they are all worse than me. We are a miserable lot, and we don’t connect with people outside of our Clan.”

“Eight?”

“Yep.”

“Your dad must’ve had a magic dick to make eight boys and a girl.”

“God, Colt,” she said, scrunching up her face.

“He made nine babies. Nine little snow leopard babies.”

“I’m not a snow leopard, and he didn’t make me. Obviously. Shifters don’t have little girls.”

“Okay, wait. So all eight of your brothers are buffalos?”

“No, but they’re shifters. When my step-dad met my mom, we were both human.”

“Is he who Turned you?”

Karis let off a frustrated growl. “I said this was off-limits.”

Colt batted his eyelashes and waited.

With a sigh, Karis murmured, “Yes. I got to choose on my tenth birthday. He thought I was strong enough. My mom had already been Turned, so I knew exactly what to expect. I knew how bad it would hurt.”

The amused look on his face vanished. “And you still chose this?”

“Yes, and I would do it all over again to feel like part of my family and not on the outside. I grew up idolizing my step-brothers and my step-dad. He gave me a choice. He gave me a gift. I don’t have any regrets. About that, anyway.”

Colt’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa, there it is. Okay, what do you regret?”

“Pass.”

“You can’t pass on every personal question I ask!”

“I’ve given you enough for one meal. I gave you my brothers and how I was Turned.”

“Not enough. I want more.”

Karis narrowed her eyes and sighed. “All eight are paired up. They found their mates the old-fashioned way, and then there’s me. I couldn’t do it on my own. Year after year, I watched them grow their families and find happiness, and year after year, my biological clock tick-tocked away my baby-having window.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-three and no prospects on the horizon.”

Colton sat up straighter, took a bite, and watched her thoughtfully. When he gulped the food down, he murmured, “I would’ve guessed twenty-eight.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two, also no prospects on the horizon, but I want a baby for a different reason than you.”

“Why do you want one?”

“To keep me steady. To keep my animal steady. To have someone to fight for.”

“To fight who for?”

“The devil inside of me.”

Wow. Karis drew up straight. Just…wow. Such a raw admission felt like a lot from a man like Colt. She’d assumed he was a jokester. Maybe a prankster. He didn’t take much seriously, but here he was telling her he truly believed there was a beast inside of him. How sad.

“Did you grow up around shifters?”

“Yes, but I wasn’t aware until much later.”

“Your friend?”

“Trigger. Yeah. And his dad.”

The lady behind the counter was headed this way. A sudden feeling of possessiveness took Karis, and she narrowed her eyes at the intruder. The pretty blond was probably headed to talk to Colt, and now Handsy Martha was blowing kisses at her mate. Friend. Mate-friend. Fuck it, whatever. “Back off,” she snarled to the server in a voice too gritty to be human.

The woman, Trina, her nametag read in cursive letters, stopped and glared. “I was going to help you out, bitch. Best mind your manners.”

“What is with this town and the word bitch?” Colt said, standing. “Her name is Karis, she’s a nice girl, and I’m not causing trouble, Trina. Call her a bitch again, and you’ll have me to deal with.”

Trina lowered her gaze to the toes of Colt’s boots and angled her face to the left, exposing her neck. Huh. She didn’t feel submissive. Definitely a shifter from the pungent scent of fur, and the blonde’s eyes had turned a bright and inhuman green. Karis sniffed the air that was now filling with the sour scent of fear. Trina’s terror was burning her sensitive nose. But what was she afraid of? She’d moseyed straight over here without a single hesitation in her step, but the second Colt stood up and leveled her with a look, she went limp? What the hell?

“Can I talk to you in private?” Trina murmured, gaze still lowered.

“Don’t want to talk,” Colt growled. “Whatever you have to say won’t matter to me one bit. You and your people came onto our land and forced a fight. Your carcasses haunt our fuckin’ woods. Make one misstep, say one wrong word, and I’m out of warnings. My patience is at zero percent currently, Trina, and you just called my mate a bitch.” Colt’s eyes were blazing gold like the sun as he narrowed them. “Tread carefully.”

“I-I meant, can I talk to Karis alone? I need to show her something.”

“Anything you show me, you can show him too,” Karis said.

“No.” Trina shook her head hard. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” Colt snarled.

“Because I’m scared.”

“Of who?” Colt asked, in a tone that said he didn’t believe she was scared of anything.

“My new Alpha. You. The Two Claws Clan. The new Darby Clan. I’m scared of everything now. I don’t have protection, and I’m taking a risk talking to you. I-I-I…fuck.” Trina sucked in breath as though she was having an anxiety attack and couldn’t breathe.

“Just say it,” Karis encouraged her.

“I’m trying to help you, but I can’t do it with Colt there.”

When Karis looked up at Colt to see what he wanted to do, he was looking down at Trina with the most baffled expression. “Karis has a monster in her,” he murmured. “Fuck with her at your own risk.”

Okay, that’s how he wanted to play this. He wanted her to go with Trina, but he was giving the woman a warning that Karis was more than capable of handling herself in a brawl. Huh. She liked that. He wasn’t being a macho man, thinking he had to take care of her. He was having her back, but also trusting her to have her own. She really looked at him. Not his scars, but his gold eyes as he trapped her in his bright gaze. Silver and gold. Silver and gold because she knew her animal was riled up right now and her eyes were probably sterling.

“Show me what you need to. My food is getting cold,” Karis said.

“This way,” Trina said, jerking her head toward a hallway at the back of the restaurant.

Karis followed her down the hallway to a set of stairs. She hadn’t realized this was a two-story building, but when she got to the bottom and looked around, it made more sense. This was some type of basement that had been finished and separated into rooms. Trina’s hand shook so bad her keys jingled as she tried three times to get it into the lock on a red door. The fourth time was a charm, and she shoved open the barrier and ushered Karis inside quickly. The lights came on automatically and illuminated what looked like a casino room.

“Whoa,” Karis whispered. “Is this some sort of illegal gambling ring?”

“Kind of, but the cops in town know about it. They even play here sometimes. This isn’t what I wanted to show you, though. Come on.”

Trina led Karis though the maze of poker tables upholstered with green felt to a doorway on the other side of the room. Karis locked her legs in the doorway and gasped. This room was some sort of break room. There were refreshments lining the countertops by a small fridge. Danishes, cupcakes, cookies, muffins, granola bars. A six-pack of orange Fanta sat by the fridge. But on the opposite wall was what had stopped Karis in her tracks and frozen her heart in her chest.

There was a bulletin board of lude pictures of girls, only they weren’t just plain ripped-out pages of nudie magazines, no. They were nudie magazines with women’s faces glued onto the pictures. And right in the middle was a picture of a naked woman with her legs spread, ass to the camera, looking over her shoulder, and the face that was glued over the model’s features was none other than Karis’s.

“What is this?” she whispered in horror.

“Read the sign above them,” Trina murmured, sounding sick.

Breeders, it said in chicken-scratch handwriting.

“Oh, my God.” Karis’s eyes burned with tears of anger, horror, and mortification.

“This is what this town thinks of breeders. The Darby Clan is made of mountain lion shifters.”

“Is that what you are?”

Trina nodded once, but she wouldn’t meet Karis’s eyes now. “It used to be a good thing to be what I am. It used to be something to be proud of. I was safe. The Clan ran this town. They still do, but there are bad parts to every Clan. For the Darby Clan, they don’t respect breeders. You are nothing but a wet hole to them. Something to be fantasized about and belittled. I knew who you were the second you showed up here. You are a favorite of theirs to talk about. Two of the Clan have talked to the matchmaker about you, but she refuses to work with mountain lion shifters. That’s probably the Darby Clan’s fault.”

“Are all the men horrible in your Clan?”

Trina shrugged. “I don’t know anymore. There used to be someone who was good, who could’ve turned things around for us, but he went against our Alpha and killed him. Killed. Him. You’re a shifter, so I know you understand. Once you betray a Clan, you can never go back. He will be rogue for the rest of his life and I…” Trina dropped her eyes from the pictures on the wall to the ground. “I’ll always be here.”

“Why did you show me this?” Karis asked softly.

“Because this is your warning. You’ll have no friends in the Clan. They will treat you like a piece of pussy the second they realize you are in town. You will be degraded. But that isn’t the worst of your problems.”

“What’s the worst of them?”

Trina jammed her finger at the stairway. “Colton Dorset. People used to call him the Peacemaker, and now they don’t. They call him the Warmaker. You picked a savage monster for your man. It ain’t your fault, you were probably matched, but he has more blood on his hands than in his body.”

“Wait, wait, wait. Colt? We’re talking about the same Colt?”

“Yep. He was Turned by his best friend, Trigger Massey, five years ago. He used to be good, but that bear inside of him turned him into a damn demon. Being turned that way did something bad to his soul. It turned it pure black. Oh, the man is charming enough. And for a while he was called the Peacemaker because he was trying to keep his Alpha, Trigger, from murdering the whole damn Clan. But now he’s just as bad as the Alpha of Two Claws. His sister is here now, and we thought she would tame him down a bit, but nope. He and Trigger painted their land in my Clan’s blood. We were cut in half in a single night of war, and I watched him, Karis. That bear inside of him? His eyes were empty and completely soulless as he killed us. He killed a War-Bear, too, and didn’t even look hurt.” She lifted the hem of her sweater to expose long, angry red claw mark scars down her ribs. “This is the man you’re with. Save your hide and run.”

Run. From the man she actually felt a connection with. From the man she actually had a shot at a future with. From the man who was willing to give her the one thing she yearned for—a family. A home. Protection.

“What did you do to cause war?” she asked quietly, because she wasn’t stupid. There were always, always, two sides to every story.

Trina’s lip snarled up, and her eyes flashed a lighter green. “We tried to snuff out the bear Clan before it came to be. You want to be a breeder? Fine. Pick any other shifter. Bears are poison.”

Karis huffed a breath and let her eyes go dead. “Your first problem was in assuming I’m not a bear.” And then she made her way to the breeder board, ripped every last degrading picture down, pulled the board down and broke it across her knee, then turned and walked away.

Oh, she was going to heed that cougar shifter’s warning…to a point. But fuck Trina for bringing Colt into this. If Colton had demons, okay. She had some of her own, so who was she to judge? But it wasn’t up to some shifter with questionable intentions to explain his soul. That was for Colton, when he was comfortable.

As she climbed the stairs, Karis shook her head in amazement at herself. She’d just been told her arranged mate was a murderer, and what was she doing? Marching right back up to him.

The door was ajar by inches and so, good and pissed, she kicked that shit and stomped through, fighting the urge to Change and shred this entire place. Trina thought grizzly shifters were poison? Well, she hadn’t met a fucking polar bear shifter then. Karis’s aggression could stretch for days when she gave the predator inside of her the power to rage. Snuff out the bear shifters? Bears were poison? God, she wanted to throw up.

“Are you okay?” came a soft, growly voice as she stepped back into the restaurant.

Karis startled and took two quick steps away from Colton, one hand gripping her chest. “You scared me.”

Colton’s lips pursed in a thin line and his eyes churned with a sadness she didn’t understand. “You don’t have to be scared of me. I wouldn’t hurt you. Neither would my animal.”

Karis ghosted a glance down the dark stairs and back to Colt. “Did you hear what she said?”

He nodded once, blazing gold eyes never leaving hers. “Didn’t meant to eavesdrop, but Trina is a loud talker, and I had to make sure you didn’t need back-up down there…so I just…”

“Stayed right here and heard those things about you.”

A nod.

“Are they true?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Were you justified in going to war with the cougars?”

“Yes.”

Karis’s heartrate slowed, and she unhanded the collar of her shirt. “What happened?”

“It’s a long story.”

“And we have a lifetime to talk about that long story, but I need the CliffNotes now. I’m looking at you as the potential father of my cubs. I need to know if I’m in danger or if my cubs would be. Not only from you, but from the trouble you attract.”

Colt sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, which made him look even bigger somehow. Leaning against the doorframe, he tracked Trina’s progress as she passed between them. Trina gave him a fiery look and made her way back to the front of the restaurant, while Colton frowned after her with a troubled expression.

“I’ll give you the CliffNotes, and then I’ll watch you run. I don’t want you to run, but you’re asking for the truth, so here it is. Yes, Trigger Turned me. Yes, I almost died. Yes, it did something regrettable to the monster born inside of me, and yes, I’m about as fucked up as a man can get. I was vice president of Trigger’s motorcycle club for years before he dissolved it, and I’ve got a rap sheet that would make your eyes blur to read it. I have trouble minding rules now, and even more trouble keeping my fist from someone’s face if they deserve to lose some teeth.” He jammed a finger at where Trina was taking an order up front. “Her Clan got what they had coming to them. Me and Trig and Ava would’ve been happy to live peacefully for the rest of our days on our ranch, but they came into our territory to kill us. All of us, my sister included. I’ll be good-goddamned if I ever let that happen. They wanted to snuff out the bear Clan before it came to be? Well, them starting a war on our own territory was what raised the damn Clan. They pushed us too far. They came after my sister. They came after my best friend. Their fault. They started the battle”—Colt shrugged one shoulder and arched a blond eyebrow—“but we finished it.” Midway through his explanation, Colt’s eyes had turned to fire and his cheeks had gone red. Oh, there was some protective instincts with his sister.

And to Karis, that was a very good quality for a man to possess. It meant if anyone touched a hair on his cub, the Peacemaker would go to sleep inside of him, and the Warmaker would rise up to take care of the threat.

“You’re an outlaw.”

“I am. And I’m old and broken and set in my ways, so that will likely be how it is for me always. And you should also know, if anyone messed with you…they would be messing with the devil inside of me.”

“You’ve known me for one day and you can make those declarations?”

“I can and I do. Don’t matter how long I’ve known you. You’re mine until you tell me otherwise. Now, show me what had you so upset down there. You went quiet with your words, and I could barely hear your responses to Trina.”

Karis hesitated. She didn’t want to be the cause of another war. But Colton was standing here, hand out, palm up, waiting for her to trust him. And that’s how this was supposed to work, right? Trust. As friends?

Pursing her lips from the stress she felt in her chest, she laid the stack of rumpled papers on his hand. The top one was of her face glued on that naked girl’s body.

“What the fuck is this?” Colt’s voice came out way too deep and rumbly to be a good sign.

“There was a breeder board down there. The Darby Clan made these pictures.”

Colton couldn’t seem to take his eyes off her fabricated picture, and by the second, his face grew redder and redder. “Did you take them all down?” he asked, flipping through the first few before he looked disgusted and ripped his gaze away from them and back to Karis. And he. Looked. Pissed.

“I got them all. I’m going to burn them, or shred them, or I don’t know…” She frowned when he pulled out a Harley Davidson Zippo lighter. “What are you doing?”

“I’m gonna set this shit on fire,” he said plainly. He flicked the flame on and held it at the corner of the paperwork. And then he dropped the burning stack on the floor and walked away.

“What if it sets this place on fire?” Karis called after him.

“Then this place was supposed to burn, and who am I to stop Fate? She knows what she’s doing just fine. I know this is all too much,” he said, turning and walking backward. He looked like he wanted to retch on the last words. “This is your out. You have no obligation to me. Bye, Karis.”

She watched him walk away, and she was torn. Okay. He was giving her an out. Probably best because he was a killer. But…he was a killer for good reason. He was a protector. He’d gone empty and did what he had to do when his sister and Alpha were threatened. And something about that made her want to stay. What did that say about her that she saw his inner, out-of-control monster as a positive?

Con: has a pet squirrel.

Pro: is a murderer.

God, she was so broken. Maybe she should go. Maybe this out he was giving her was a sign. He was letting her go, no more questions asked. She could go back to her life… Shit, she couldn’t go back to her life. Just the thought of going back for another lonely holiday, watching her brothers all paired up and in love, making families and memories while she sat in the same place on the edge of the couch, year after year, growing older, growing jaded, growing lonelier… She couldn’t do it. Maybe she could call Sarah and ask for a re-do. A re-match.

But from here, Karis had a perfect view of Colton at the table, standing over their food with his back to her, running his hand over and over his hair. He’d hung his cowboy hat on the back of the chair, and his shoulders sagged like he carried the weight of the world. And maybe he did. She didn’t know the burdens he carried yet. Not all of them. But something inside of her wanted to. Curiosity, perhaps. This man was a walking enigma. He’d seemed surprised when she’d gotten protective of him with Cooper. He joked a lot, had an easy smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Not quite. It was as if he was a man trying to be happy, but he hadn’t figured how yet. Or maybe life had just beaten him down so that he didn’t remember what happiness was. She understood that on a basic level.

He locked his arms against the table for a second, his shoulders heaving with a sigh. And then he bumped his fists on the surface gently and sat down. “Fuck,” she heard him mutter. “Didn’t even keep her a day.”

Karis frowned. He was still in this then. And he wasn’t some chauvinistic, dominant male that assumed she was his based on a contract. He was giving her free choice to stay or to go.

What a polite murderer. What a considerate Warmaker.

And okay, truth be told, those nicknames were pretty hot. Her animal was a beast on a good day, but this man? Maybe his monster could match hers. Maybe she wouldn’t have to pretend to be submissive and normal, like she had to do with Jackson.

Just the thought of her ex made her heart drop to her toes. He’d hurt her. Hurt. Her. She’d thought he was the one. Had no doubt. Was so confident in him, but Jackson had other ideas, and apparently so did Fate. Now she just had to figure out if Fate was laughing at her, or if she was pointing her in the direction of something sustainable. At a decent life. Not a big one, but a decent one. One she could settle for.

Killer. Killer. Killer. Colt had helped kill a War-Bear and half a Clan of mountain lion shifters.

She strode into the main room and past him, scenting the air as she did. All she smelled was sadness. There was no dominance or anger. Just…resolve.

Killer. Killer. Killer. Colt had helped kill a War-Bear and half a Clan of mountain lion shifters—for good reason.

If she’d been there and it had been one of her brothers in danger? The polar bear inside of her wouldn’t have stopped with half a Clan. She wouldn’t have stopped hunting until every last one of them was snuffed from the history books.

With a sigh, she stopped at the exit door, her fingertips resting on the cold metal of the handle. Slowly, she turned to find Colt’s gold gaze locked on her.

“This doesn’t feel finished,” Karis admitted.

“What does it feel like?”

She offered him half a smile. “It feels like the beginning.”

He searched her face for a few moments, and then slowly, he kicked out her chair from under the table with his boot and tilted his chin at it. “I’m better at beginnings than I am at endings. Come here.”

Chills lifted on her arms, and Karis was thankful for the sweater she was wearing so he didn’t see her reaction to him telling her what to do. She liked it. Liked that he’d given her the option to leave, but that he could still keep control. Interesting boy. Scar-faced boy. Killer boy. She wanted to figure him out. Wanted to know what made him tick.

She hesitated only moments before she eased down into the chair he’d pushed out for her.

“I sniffed your food,” he said, his gaze flickering to her tray of barbecue.

Eyebrows arched, she drawled out, “Whyyy?”

“Because you shouldn’t eat or drink something you weren’t watching closely. Especially in this town. Nowhere here is safe except the Two Claws Ranch.”

“You’re afraid someone roofied my food?”

Biting the side of his lip, he stared at her with a calculating expression, hands clasped in front of his chin. “When my sister, Ava, was eighteen, she went to a party. It was in a field with a couple of kegs and all local kids. Safe, right? Only I got a call in the middle of the night from her friend saying she couldn’t find Ava anywhere. I’ve never been more panicked in all my life.”

“Where were your parents?”

Colt huffed an angry laugh. “I was the parent. Our mom passed right after Ava was born. I don’t even remember her, and since Dad burned all her pictures when he was drunk one night, I got nothin’ left of her. I don’t even dream about her face no more. She’s just…a ghost. My dad was a different kind of ghost. He liked booze and gambling and his kids, in that order. He didn’t work, and he let the bills pile up. I got tired of getting kicked out of rental places, so I got a job at fifteen and started supporting us. Had to hide my damn money so he wouldn’t gamble his way through our electric bill every month. Ava don’t know that part. She never asked. After he left, she missed him, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her what a fuck-up he was, or that we were better off without him. When he left, Ava was sixteen, I had just graduated high school, and I had a kid sister to finish raising. So when I got that call in the middle of the night, I just had this awful feeling something bad happened to her. Something bad she would never recover from.”

“Oh my gosh,” Karis whispered. “Was she okay?”

Colt nodded. “She was fine. She was sleeping way back in this field away from everyone. She was untouched because she knew what happened right away. She knew someone had messed with her drink, so she ran. Got as far away as she could before she passed out. Whoever put that drug in her drink didn’t watch his prey well enough, and thank God for that, because she escaped with a bad hangover, but nothing more. The next day, she told me how awful it was. Told me how she couldn’t control her body and how she laid there looking up at the moon, unable to move. Those drugs are no joke, and I trust the people of this town zero percent when it comes to my Clan. I’ll trust them even less now that you’re here. They could use you to hurt me, so no, I don’t want you drinking or eating anything you ain’t watched over like a hawk. Not unless it’s at the ranch.”

Her appetite lost, Karis pushed the tray of food away and rested her elbows on the table. It had suddenly gotten very warm in here. “You raised your sister for a couple years. That’s very noble of you.”

“Ha. I raised my sister from when she was a baby. She doesn’t remember that part. My dad sucked as a parent. Ava was my baby girl as much as his. I protected her, fed her, and got her clothes, and the second I was able, I started earning money to take care of us, and fuck my father. He’s still alive, probably, I don’t know. He ain’t called in ten years. Ava’s just now figuring out she was always better without him. If she asks questions about him now, I tell her the truth. She’s tougher than she used to be.” A slow smile spread across his face, and his eyes softened. “She’s made of gristle like me, maybe.”

“You’re proud of her.”

“Hell, yeah, I am. I hated that she left this town and left me behind, but she went and made something of herself. Ava is a force to be reckoned with. I suspect you’re much the same.”

“How can you tell that about me in such a short amount of time?”

“Instinct. That, and you damn-near Changed in the plane to defend my name against that old coot, Cooper. I was a stranger, but you were pissed enough to let your animal scratch at your skin.”

Karis couldn’t help her grin. “You keep me from getting roofied, and I’ll watch your back too.”

Colt chuckled and dipped his gaze to his food. “Deal.”

He looked back up at her once, then at the table, then back to her again.

“What?” she asked, canting her head.

“Can I pay you a compliment without you thinking I’m just trying to get in your pants?”

“I like compliments,” she said softly. Danger. Dangerous territory, but she couldn’t make herself get up and excuse herself to the bathroom no matter how much she tried right now.

“You joked that you were plain-faced. Over and over in our messages, you put yourself down.” Colt shook his head, his scars shining in the fluorescent lighting. “You ain’t plain to me.”

“But I’m—”

“Don’t,” Colton demanded. “Don’t you do it. Whatever you’re about to say won’t make a lick of difference to me. Just because you say something, don’t make it the truth, Karis. Maybe you told yourself mean shit for a while, so you started to believe it. Or maybe someone else made you feel like that, and if they did, well fuck them. Your eyes are bright like your smile, and your hair looks soft and shiny. It doesn’t matter how you see yourself, I’m telling you how I see you, and you’re real pretty.”

Her cheeks were heating like she had her face right next to a fireplace. Nothing intelligent came from her parted lips. Nothing but a soft, “Thank you,” because a man should be thanked when he made a broken girl feel like this—like some of her pieces were put back together.

“It was a boy,” she explained in a quiet voice. “He made me feel like not enough.”

Colt nodded for a long time and then asked, “You want me to kill him?”

She snorted and then giggled, thinking he was making a joke, but Colt wasn’t smiling. “You don’t have to. I avenged myself,” she murmured.

“How?”

“By becoming a breeder.”

Colt cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, which were now fading from gold to green. “I want to show you something.”

“Is it perverted?”

His blond brows arched nearly to his hairline. “Are you asking if I want to show you my dick?”

“Well?”

“Well, hell yeah I want you to see my dick, but not right now, woman. Your mind is in the gutter. I want to show you something I’ve never shown anyone before.”

“That could still mean your dick, Virgin Colt.”

“Oh good grief, I’m leaving your little perverted ass here to find your own ride if you don’t come on,” he muttered, as he stood and walked toward the exit.

Karis snickered to herself. She couldn’t help it. She’d just watched that smooth-talkin’ boy’s face blush. Colton Dorset was fun to pester.

She pushed the door open and jogged to catch up to him in the parking lot. “Where are you taking me?”

“You said this didn’t feel finished.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“You said this felt like the beginning.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Well,” he said, turning on her. He offered her the first easy smile that actually reached his eyes. “I’m taking you to the beginning.”