Chapter Ten

Luke

 

Approaching the house was different now.

I never knew if Reagan was going to pop out and run her eyes over me, checking for injuries. Or if I’d find her playing with the dogs, sprawled in the yard reading, or napping on the couch. Or just waiting for me, usually with some infuriating, sassy comment. One that made me laugh and want to angle for more.

She was starting to become enjoyable to be around—so, I’d been around less and less.

Reagan had taken over the house in one too many ways. Even the second floor wasn’t an escape anymore. Up there, if I tried even a little, I could hear her or smell her. Tossing in her bed, walking around the house, her warm scent calling up to me. I tried not to do that, but invariably, I found myself checking in on her every few minutes instead of sleeping.

All that aside, though, this pain in the ass refugee hadn’t given up a single hint as to what she was. Hell, Reagan Grace knew more about me than I did about her. Even trying to get her to talk about her pre-Rift life or the events of the Rift was next to impossible.

Although that wasn’t unusual. A lot of people didn’t like to bring it up. It might have been over a year ago, but for most of us, still, the wound was still raw.

Xander had noticed that odd note in her scent, too. Apparently, Reagan had been brazen enough to chat and make him laugh. Then the bastard had the audacity to suggest that I’d been waiting for a Reagan to walk through a gate to claim.

And he wasn’t the only one. Honestly, between my idiot friends and Winfyre gossip, I couldn’t escape Reagan Grace. Even the woods reminded me of her, thanks to the wolves and that incident from a few weeks ago. Oh, and no leads on that demonic lurker, either.

Hesitating outside the house now, I turned and headed back to town. I had to get a report in to Xander anyway. I wasn’t avoiding—I was being prudent. But when I got all the way across Cobalt and into his office, he wasn’t there. Dammit.

Wandering through Cobalt, I ducked into a small restaurant and took a seat up at the bar. There wasn’t a lot of booze, but it had the best fried onions in all of North America, I swear.

By some stroke of luck, we’d found gallons of oil, and the cooking man, Eddie Reid, had a successful run with a giant plot of onions. We’d had more onions than we’d known what to do with.

After getting me a glass of water and some fried onions, Chef Eddie leaned on the bar and gave me a dubious look. "Son, if I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were avoiding someone."

“What?” I asked.

“Well, ya seem kind of twitchy," he said and gave me a bright-eyed look. Few things escaped his notice, and I honestly wondered if he’d gotten some kind of psychic gift from the Rift. Or if it had exaggerated his inborn talent for perception. “Looking over your shoulder. Trouble with your girl?”

“No,” I said shortly. I didn’t mind people being familiar, but I drew the line at gossip. Especially false gossip about Reagan Grace.

“Whatever you say,” Chef said and left it at that.

But I sighed as I dipped the onions into salt. Dammit. It was exactly what I was doing, hoping no one saw me and asked why I wasn’t with Reagan.

I don’t need to be with her. The thought was loud in my head. Too loud. It echoed with a rich and itching kind of falseness. Trouble was, I couldn’t stop thinking about her barging into the bathroom or that spontaneous hair washing. It had been sixteen days ago, and still I could remember every damn moment of it.

I’d known Reagan was a ferocious and protective older sister, a loyal friend on my level, and a warrior with a heart like the Vixens. Yet I hadn’t anticipated becoming part of her circle. And from that brief flicker in her eyes when we’d had that bathroom staring content, I think she hadn’t, either.

Never mind the heat. Christ, that girl had me half-hard in a second with her hands in my hair. Of course, having Aunt Rogda there put a damper on things, thankfully. Who knows what I might have done if she wasn’t there?

Ever since the Rift, the wolf had made me more impulsive. Reagan made it worse. It was like she’d awoken some latent Rift instinct, one that was constantly distracting me. When or if she touched me, it became a roar that drowned rationality. Unraveled some deep knot of longing buried inside of my heart and singed my veins. Burned away judgment and restraint.

That worried me. The wolf had never responded to a woman before.

I’d been a Special Forces Op, a Green Beret, a Bearded Bastard, and she was my weakness?

A startled breath escaped me. That thought was quiet. Intense. It hummed through my veins, and I closed my eyes. Stop. Don’t go a step further.

Tristan often gave me shit for worrying, but if I didn’t think of all the possible outcomes, who would? It was planning. Not all of us could be brilliant bastards with harebrained plans that worked in a pinch. I wanted to know that if the worst did come to pass, I had a plan and a few backup plans. I’d served—it went without saying that half those plans would go to shit.

Winfyre was safe, but all around was as precarious as a nuke dangling on a threaded piece of string. Each day, we heard of more horror and bloodshed, mixed with uneasy rumors about new Excris. Reagan was an unknown Riftborn, living in my house and possibly attracting danger.

I couldn’t let part of that danger or attraction be me.

A bottle clinked down in front of me, and I looked up to see Chef had dug out a beer from somewhere. I gave him a half-smile and shook my head.

“You should sell this, Eddie,” I said.

“Boss, I’m sorry for the joke about your girl,” he said quietly. “You look stressed. Rumors?”

I nodded. Eddie could be trusted to be discreet. “I’ve heard reports of all kinds of nasty shit edging this way.” I blew out my cheeks. “But the joke wasn’t unwarranted. Don’t worry about it.”

Eddie gave me a grin. “Man, if you’re not going to drink free beer, then go home.”

I went to fish out some money, as we hadn’t exactly worked out how to barter or pay for things in our damn home, but Eddie waved me off.

“You barely ate.”

“Smell of onions calms the nerves,” I joked.

Eddie let out a booming laugh. “Tell that to my wife.”

I cracked a small grin and nodded, bidding him goodnight. Outside, the air had cooled, and the stars had leaped into the sky. It still blew my mind to see a night sky like this. Before, you would have had to go out into the middle of the ocean to see even half these stars. Now that we were so far north, too, there were northern lights on occasion.

“Every day above ground is a good day,” I murmured. It was something my dad had said often. He’d have given me shit for brooding on a night like this. Man, I miss you, Pop.

Trekking through the quiet and peace of Cobalt, of all of Winfyre, letting the breeze and scent of the bay soothe me, I took my time walking home. When I got back, Reagan was asleep. I hovered outside her door, listening to her soft breathing and wondering if it was locked.

Gently, I laid a hand on the door and closed my eyes.

I gotta figure out a way to keep you safe. And, honey, that might mean from me.

 

“Shit.”

I’d shifted back, and blood was oozing from a deep gash on my arm. Bastard did get me.

An hour ago, this patch of woods had probably been nothing but soft, springtime earth and gently waving trees. Now it was a torn-up mess of a battleground and Northbane shifters.

Nearby, healers were rushing from person to person. Mud, blood, and torn flesh filled my nose, making me want to gag. More than that, I wanted to go after those assholes.

A massive white bear came roaring over the top of a hill, and everyone jumped.

Except me. I had a grim smile as Kal came thundering towards us, shifting and stalking towards me. His broad shoulders cut a path to me, and he gripped my hand briefly.

“You all right?”

I nodded. “They turned tail and ran once I got there. One of ’em sliced me with an arrow, though.” I gestured to the blood. “It’s nothing, but…” I choked on the words, anger burning in my gut. Kal’s eyes flashed. “They almost got Brinney.”

Kal whirled and saw Brinney stretched out on the ground, with Rogda and her eldest son, Niles, working over him. “Who?”

“Bounts, I think.” My voice snapped with sarcasm and ice on the epithet the Northbane had for Bounty Hunters. “Skrors, too,” I said, naming an infamous gang of them that roamed the Pacific Northwest, and nodded over at Jeques. The leopard shifter was still pacing, agitated and deep in thought, probably memorizing the events of the day to write down later. “J got the logo, although by now he might’ve eaten it.”

Kal’s eyes glittered, and I saw him glance south. Skrors were the worst of the worst. Not affiliated with any kind of law organization, if that even existed at this point, the gang had cropped up after the Rift like a disease. One that passed from stasis to stasis with a terrible and vicious irony.

No shifter was easy prey, though. It wasn’t easy, as most guns stopped working around shifters, and old-school ones that got a shot off were easily dodged. But some of them had gotten good at wielding crossbows, as evidenced by my arm.

Skrors were ruthless, hunting shifters like actual animals and displaying the few they felled like prizes. It made me sick, and I wasn’t alone in that. Before today, though, those cowards had never ventured this far north. Usually, the Northbane found them.

But today, a large group of Skrors had caught one of our southern patrols by surprise. Only by their sheer numbers had they managed to inflict damage on our shifters.

I’d caught wind of the patrol’s distress first, shooting off into the woods.

Yet even before I’d arrived, they’d started to flee. To put it bluntly, even those cockroaches wouldn’t screw with an Alpha.

However, I hadn’t been in time to save Brinney from having his limbs made into a pincushion. A young and quick mountain lion shifter now laid low.

God, what if those shitheads had inflicted some kind of irreparable damage?

“What are you still doing here?” Kal asked, snapping me out of my gruesome reverie.

“Waiting for Rogda,” I said stiffly and gestured at my arm. “Bleeding.”

He glanced over at her. “She seems busy, my friend.”

“I can wait,” I said.

“Didn’t she train your Reagan?”

“Not mine,” I growled. “And yes. But I also don’t want to leave until I know I’m not needed.” Kal glanced around. There were now about a hundred shifters in the area. “Okay, maybe not needed, but I didn’t know if Xander wanted me here.”

“You do know. You're avoiding her." My friend was cool, amused, and concise as always. "Go home, Wolf, or I will drag you there."

If Rett or Tristan made that kind of a threat, I’d tackle them to the ground and teach them otherwise. But you couldn’t win with Kal. His indifference, cracking knuckles, and crazy strength meant none of his threats were idle. He’d knock me over the head without a second thought and dump me on the porch.

Begrudgingly, I went home.

To my relief, Reagan wasn’t there. Once upstairs, I stripped off my shirt and sat down beside the bathtub, dabbing at my wound. My movements were clumsy and tired, but not painful. No flare-up, thank Christ.

I was pretty drained, though, since I’d gotten almost no sleep in the last three days. I was still trying to track down that creature that had attacked Reagan and been lurking around Winfyre’s borders. Up before dawn, working through the night, climbing far mountains, napping in caves, and following dead end after dead end. That had been every hour of the last three days.

Tipping my head against the side of the tub, I blew out a sigh and closed my eyes. Just needed to rest for a second, then I’d take a bath. Maybe finally sleep in my own bed.

 

“Luke.”

My name, on a soft and shocked exhale. Reagan’s warm hand on my shoulder.

I jerked awake, heat and alarm spiking through me, then I winced. “Ow,” I muttered, my ass and side all pins and needles from the hard floor and tub. “Dammit. I must have fallen asleep.”

“Oh my God, I should’ve been here,” Reagan said. “Please don’t move.”

I ignored her and rose to my feet, wincing at the crack of stiff tendons and the resistance of overworked muscles. With one hand, I twisted on the hot water of the tub and shook salt in.

Suddenly Reagan was at my side, peeling off the cloth on my bicep and pressing a poultice to it. That gave me instant relief, but her touch caused the heat inside to spike higher.

I yanked my arm away and snapped out, “Don’t.”

“What? Luke, it needs to be cleaned,” Reagan said.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked in a low and vicious voice as she came closer. “Do you even know what happened today?” She stopped and shook her head. “Bounty hunters and Skrors.”

Those green-gray eyes went wide. “Inside Winfyre?”

“Christ, no,” I spat. “I’d die first before I let that happen. But about twenty miles south of our borders. Far too close. Hunting shifters.”

“Was anyone hurt?” Reagan asked quietly.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Brinney. Young kid. Good kid. He’ll live, though.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

My lip curled. “Oh, that sounds really friggin’ helpful, Grace. Yeah, shifter kid gets half-gutted by a bunch of lunatics who think he’s a monster.” A pressure was building in my throat, and I let out a growling, bitter laugh. “Only reason they didn’t succeed was because one showed up.”

“What?” Reagan asked. “That thing from the other day?”

“No,” I said, momentarily distracted and softening the edges of my voice. “Me.”

There was a ringing silence, and Reagan went still, her lips parted and spine locked. Her huge eyes took me in, gray melting into green. Layers and layers of empathy and tenderness. It made me want to fall to my knees and apologize.

It also made me want to break something.

Taking a deep breath, Reagan began to say, “Luke, you’re a good man—”

“Am I?” I asked and prowled closer, staring her down. “What do you even know about me, Reagan Grace? Tell me.” Surprise blossomed on her features, but not fear. Not yet. “What?”

Her chin jutted up. “I know you’re an insufferable ass most of the time.” My jaw cracked, and I looked away. “I didn’t realize you were also one of those macho guys who shoves it all down and pretends it doesn’t hurt so it can explode later. Gee, what a strong guy.”

“Get out,” I said, glaring at the wall and clenching my fists. “I don’t need you.”

“Luke—”

"Reagan, I am covered in the blood of my friends and enemies. Get the hell out.”

She drew in an irritated breath and stormed to the door. But she opened it slowly, and I sensed her looking back. I made myself stare at the wall still.

“You’re not a monster, Luke,” she said. “And I’m not afraid of you or your temper tantrums.”

A hollow laugh rang around the room. “You’re not afraid of me?”

“No,” she said quietly.

“You should be.”