Chapter One

The woman watched him with hungry eyes. He bent to lift the heavy box of books under her gaze, feeling the heat of it travel across his skin. It brought a smile to the corner of Archer’s mouth. He let her gaze cascade over him as he carried the box to the moving truck, tossing it in with little effort. A human might have struggled with the weight of the hardcovers, but they were nothing to him.

He turned and pushed his tawny brown hair out of his eyes with massive hands. The woman had sauntered up to him. Beyond her, he could see a few more boxes that still needed to be loaded into the truck. Yet, he still looked down at her with a broad smile pasted onto his face.

“I thought this would feel awful,” the woman confessed with a wry smile. She inched a bit closer to him, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. She had a petite body that grew wide at the hips. His eyes caught on them as she spoke. “Divorce should leave you with guilt, right? Shame for being unable to make it work like it should have.”

Archer shrugged. He didn’t buy into the things people tried to say about love.

“But, it feels like I can breathe easier now. I can’t believe how… great this feels.”

“You’re not quite there yet,” he reminded her with the false smile growing into a true one. He knew what she was doing, the rush of freedom getting to her head. She was an attractive woman, but he wouldn’t feed into what she wanted. “I still have to serve the divorce papers to your husband later.”

Her face fell. “Ex-husband.”

He nodded and sidestepped her to grab another box. She didn’t have much to pack. Her husband had constricted her life until all she knew was him. Archer figured, with the number of book boxes he carried back and forth, that she’d tried her best to escape by reading. But, at the end of the day, there was nothing she could do to salvage what they’d called a relationship.

Archer knew why, but he’d learned early on that clients didn’t want to hear it. At least, some of them. There were always women who would cling to the sensational idea of love; this new woman was probably one of them considering the book that fell out when he hefted the last box.

She rushed over to claim the paperback and shoved it behind her back. Archer snorted. He’d already seen the man on the cover, chiseled chest bare and his hands riding the bodice of a Victorian woman’s dress.

Oh, yeah. She was one of those.

There would be no telling this woman the truth, that love was a lie. He would just smile at her as he finished packing up the back of the truck and move on. If he let her gaze reach any deeper and let it pull him in, she would latch on. It wasn’t her fault she ate the lie like chocolate cake, but even though it was sweet, it clearly left her with a stomach ache.

Or else she wouldn’t have called his company.

“Is that everything?”

She glanced around the small yard and nodded. When her eyes shifted to him, they heated. She glanced at the back of the truck and how much space was left before her lips twisted into a demure smile.

“My ex-husband shouldn’t be home for hours,” she began, hoisting herself up so that she sat on the truck’s bumper. She pulled the hem of her shirt lower, revealing more peach-colored skin above the V of the neck.

Archer felt a growl rumble through him. It’d been a while since he’d felt the touch of a woman and the bear inside him growled with appreciation. The woman was a snack, juicy like a ripe fruit, but this was not the place to be picking up women.

He shook his head, shoving the bear back where it had come from, when a car slammed to a stop in the driveway. A man staggered out of the driver’s seat with horror written across his face. It quickly transformed into murderous anger as he stalked toward the woman.

She shrank in response, the vixen breaking down into a mouse. Before her ex-husband could reach her, Archer stepped between them. The man’s head fell back to glare up at Archer. The threat washed over him, ineffective.

“Who are you?” the man snapped.

“Just doing my job,” Archer grumbled.

The man’s eyes darted between Archer and the woman he still considered his wife. “Looks like you were about to do more than that.”

Well, Archer couldn’t argue that he hadn’t thought of it. But, it was clear that wasn’t going to happen anymore, so he held his hands up.

Sensing the uneven match between the two of them, the man sidestepped Archer and headed toward the cowering woman. Guilt was now written across her face. With a sigh, Archer spun around and reached out. He grasped the man by the back of his collar and jerked him back.

The man let out a surprised oomph.

“I’m going to call my lawyer,” the man cried out.

“Go ahead. She already called hers.” Archer caught the woman’s attention and jerked his head toward the truck. “Her lawyer called me.”

With no effort, Archer tossed the man to the side. He landed on his ass before scrambling back to his feet, face nearly purple with rage. This was a side of Archer’s job that made lawyers call him. He was shaped like a bear on the outside, towering over others and blocking paths with his wide frame. Usually, it didn’t come down to a physical fight.

The man screamed at his wife, saying he was ready to fight for her as he ripped off his shirt. Archer suppressed a laugh. This was ridiculous. Why would anyone fight so hard for another person, especially one that was leaving? Archer didn’t understand it. Yet, the drive never left the man’s eyes. The jilted husband approached him, trying to imitate a fighting stance, when the phone in Archer’s pocket buzzed.

It took both of them by surprise. Archer groaned. He’d told Gage he would be busy. His brother knew better than to call while he was working. Noticing an unfamiliar number on the screen, Archer hoped this wasn’t his one call from jail as he swiped the red button across the screen.

“You think you can come into my house, take my wife, and ignore me?”

Archer sighed. “I’m not stealing her like some dragon stealing the damned princess. She filed for a divorce. She did. Not me.”

The man looked stricken. It was almost as if his world had been ripped out from beneath him. Good, Archer thought, maybe then they would both learn. They put so much of their time and energy into something that would never work. It was a futile exercise and a damned waste. He wanted to tell the man to get on with his life, to go do something truly worthwhile, but the phone in his pocket buzzed again.

Archer cursed and yanked it free. This time, he watched the green button slide itself across the screen. His stomach dropped, the air around him suddenly cold. He fought the urge to rub his arms. The man beside him gave a visible shiver.

“Archer? Archer Vancourt?” a hauntingly familiar voice asked over the phone.

Where had he heard that voice before? It jabbed at the back of his mind, in a place he’d wrapped up and hidden away for the past few years. Archer let out a groan.

“I don’t know who you are, but…”

She cut him off. “That doesn’t matter. You need to fix your mistake.”

“What damned mistake?” The phone groaned beneath the pressure of his fingers. He had to force himself to ease up on it before he had to drop another chunk of cash on a new device.

Archer hadn’t thought of home in eight years. Not since he’d been tossed out on his ass for having an opinion. He refused to think about a place where traditions trumped someone’s happiness. Archer wanted to believe what he’d done had benefitted not only him, but Joanna, too.

“You know what I’m talking about. We both know it’s the first thing you thought about.”

A long moment of silence passed. Not even the jilted husband could find anything to say as he stared at the phone with a confused look on his face. There was some kind of magic in the air, pulling the world around him to a stop.

It made chills race over Archer’s arms and down his spine.

“I don’t have to do a damned thing,” he snapped, even though his mind was already dragging him back to a small town in Upstate New York. When he’d left, his own father had looked down at him with such disappointment. The fact that he’d taken his brothers with him had angered the man even more.

“The place you remember is gone. Honestly, everything has gone to hell in a handbasket,” the voice on his phone said. “You can make it all right again if you come fix your mistake.”

Archer growled, an inhuman sound that rumbled through the magic wrapping around him. It broke the bubble and the jilted husband snapped back to life, immediately stumbling back from the sound. Archer ended the call, shut off his phone, and jammed it in his pocket.

There was a woman waiting in the truck. He had a job to finish. He couldn’t waste time thinking about Stonefall or Joanna or any of that. None of that was his mistake. It’d been his Pack’s problem.

Yet, the woman’s words circled his mind. They wrapped around him in a vice until he could barely think of anything else. After he dropped the woman off at her relative’s and helped unpack the few boxes in the back of his truck, he knew he wouldn’t be going straight home.

Archer hated what he was about to do, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to free himself until he set it all behind him. That’s all he was doing, closing doors left open.

He turned his phone on long enough to leave a voicemail for Gage, telling him he had to go out of state for another job. It was only half of a lie. He wouldn’t be gone long enough for Gage to find out the truth.