A tic had developed in Range’s jaw. He could feel it pulling against his cheek. Luckily, it was on the side that wasn’t facing Eira. He kept his eyes focused on the road, trying to deal with the emotions battling within him.

He’d never been one to talk about his brothers or his life. Or their time with Mae, the military, or the testing even. But she’d opened up to him; she had a point about that.

“You’re right. There’s no group that my brothers and I are a part of that’s threatening to kill us if we divulge any information about ourselves. But…” He took a deep breath. He hated talking about this shit. He’d rather keep his past buried.

She watched him silently, her look telling him she still expected him to push through it and fill her in. And he supposed he owed it to her. He’d brought her into his life. He’d made promises with his lips and his body. And she’d accepted those promises. And above all, she’d shared with him. Told things she’d never shared with anyone else, and sharing those things could get her killed.

He didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe she’d be happy with a brief summary, and perhaps later, he could fill her in, bits and pieces, as time passed.

“My brothers and I live in a remote area because we’d rather not be found. Once, long ago, we served in the military. In a unit composed of shifters only, a special ops unit under Joint Special Operations Command. We signed up together and were scheduled to be released when we were approached and asked to be a part of an experimental study.” Range wished he could have kept the sneer that he knew had come to his face, as it did every time he thought of that decision. “Mae advised us against it—”

She sat up a little straighter. “Who’s Mae?”

“Mae—” He rubbed his jaw, and couldn’t help that his sneer turned to a smile. Every time he thought of her, he smiled. “Mae’s the woman who took me and my brothers in when we were younger.”

Eira raised a brow.

He knew where that expression was going. “We can cover some of the details of our lives later, right? I mean, it’s not like we can tell our entire life stories in one sitting, right?”

She conceded the point with a nod, then waved her hand as if inviting him to keep on telling her his story, adding, “So against Mae’s advice, I’m guessing you…”

He nodded. “Right. We agreed and went into this study. Pretty much a black ops situation. Secret laboratory. No telling anyone anything, we weren’t to know where it was, we couldn’t leave. Testing, blood drawn, injections, blah, blah, blah. A year later, we were gone.” And worst for wear.

But Range wasn’t going to get into that. He wasn’t going to tell her how messed up he and his brothers were when they were set free from their obligation. How the repercussions from that still followed them, affecting their lives, and not for the better.

“And after you were gone?” She pushed her hair away from her face impatiently then swooped it into a loose bun and secured it with a band she retrieved from her back pocket.

“We found that we were being observed. And followed. You see, they wanted to keep studying the effects of the testing, but we were done with it. So, we went off the grid. Bought the property in Alaska under someone else’s name, handled everything through him as far as utilities and such.”

“You really are under the radar.”

He nodded. “Yeah.” What he didn’t add, and my brothers will be livid when I bring an outsider in.

Outsider, that’s what Eira was, whether he wanted to admit it to himself or not. And he’d taken it on himself to decide to incorporate her into the mix. Oh, yeah. Asa’s going to flip. Asa, who had a quick trigger finger before the study, was now even quicker to jump to conclusions and solutions. Though, really, it wasn’t as if all four of them didn’t rise to occasion a little too quickly at times.

He glanced at her and caught her studying him with an odd expression—one he couldn’t pin down. He raised a brow “What?”

“Just wondering what you’re thinking.”

That the shit’s going to hit the fan when my brothers see you. “That we’re pretty close.”

Her expression turned quizzical. “How close?”

He pointed. “That driveway right there.” And he reached for the remote for the daunting gate that would halt all progress halfway down the two-mile driveway.