Chapter One
Wyatt
Any more slow days like this one, and I was at risk of losing my mind. I needed to keep moving, both as a personality quirk and because with everything going on lately, if I didn't move, I brooded. And though the brooding only made me sexier, lately, it'd ended with me closing the bar early and getting up close and personal with a bottle of whiskey until I passed out on a table. And that just wasn't good for business.
I scanned the interior of my bar. The Greasy Stump. This building, these four walls—including the small office space upstairs—was the only thing in the world that was completely mine. Not shared with my twin or my cousins, but mine. With as cramped as things were getting at home, these hours in the bar were becoming increasingly important.
If I didn't have customers to keep me moving, I'd start thinking about the pack on the other side of the bay, how they were circling toward their own destruction. I'd think about my mother and the suffering she'd gone through on her own. I'd think about the abnormal number of blessed babies I'd witnessed in the past year. The normal number was zero. We'd had three: Riley's and then Phin's twins. I loved them all, but that shit was weird.
And I definitely didn't want to be whipped like my cousin Branson and twin, Nash. Two men, chopped down in the prime of their life to serve one man for all of eternity. They'd lucked out—Riley and Phineas were top-grade humans—but I still shuddered to think about chaining myself to one set of genitals for the rest of my life.
There was no telling what I'd miss out on, like the CILF sitting on a stool at the end of the bar top, nursing a cup of coffee. It was four in the afternoon, not so late that the cup of coffee seemed odd. I'd been in the office when he'd come in, and Jasper, my daytime bartender, had served him. Jasper was a trans man who would kick someone's face in if he caught them staring at his ass. Those had been his exact words during his interview, and I'd hired him on the spot.
Normally, I'd tell people who came in ordering coffee there was a cafe across the street that served the real stuff and save him from the battery acid we sold. I made it like my customers liked it: strong. But this customer I'd like to fool around with had come in when I'd been in the back, and I wasn't going to chase away someone as pretty as him.
I sauntered down the empty bar toward him. "Need a refresh?" Propping my elbow on the bar top, I balanced my chin in my hand.
The man had a small mouth with a thin upper lip. His bottom lip stuck out, slightly plumper than its companion, and curved into a smile. "You look like you need something to do. I should say yes to be kind."
The drumbeat to my internal soundtrack began to tap. I didn't dance with steps or pelvic thrusts but with my words, my gestures. "But are you kind?" I asked, letting my words linger on my lips.
He tapped the rim of his mug with a long index finger. "Some people would say no."
Interesting. I liked someone with a little intrigue.
"What about you?" the man asked. He had a frenzied restless energy about him, tapping his finger, looking up and down the bar. It didn't matter how many times he looked away when he gave me the full force of those spa-blue eyes, I knew exactly what I'd be doing tonight. And it wasn't pass out with a bottle of whiskey.
"Am I kind? Depends on who you ask, I guess." I poured him a fresh cup and pushed the dish of creamers toward him. He tapped them back.
"Pure, unadulterated jet fuel is how I prefer it." He winked. His sandy brown hair and small face made the man seem tinier than he was. He lifted the mug to his lips, sending his forearms rippling. The man had some substance to him. Good. He wouldn't break easily.
The thrill of the chase simmered in me, burning to a boil. How long had it been since I'd encountered a fresh face? Accessible only by ferry, the city of Walkerton and the larger area of Walker County didn't get a lot of tourists around this time of year. "As flattering as it may be to think you came all the way here for a taste of my coffee, I don't think that's the case."
"Are you asking me what I'm doing here?" He set his cup down and leaned back so that his blue-and-white polo stretched tight over his trim chest.
"I know what you're doing here." I bat my eyelashes. "Saving me from an afternoon of boredom."
"I see." The man nodded. "So, I'm here to serve you. There isn't anyone waiting for you at home? No one depending on you?"
That was an odd question, but not the oddest, all things considered. The answer was a little more difficult. There were a ton of people depending on me.
Not solely me, but all of us, my two cousins, twin brother, and two mates. We lived together, looked after one another. It wasn't as if any of us, Riley and Phin included, had very much experience with children. Nor had we spent our lives dreaming of the day we'd have them. But the little tykes were hashtag blessed—as I liked to call it—and they'd come despite the odds or the lack of birth canal. I didn't want to bring all that into this conversation, though.
This conversation was supposed to block out all of that, not become the highlight. "Nope, no one is depending on me."
The corner of the man's mouth twitched. "Not even a pet?"
My smile stretched over my face. He could have no idea why that was so funny, both because I could turn into a wolf and because there was a little inside joke going that we did have a dog. I couldn't explain either of those things to this man, though. "I wouldn't mind a dog, but no. No pets depending on me either."
My head buzzed like I was the one sucking down coffee. I enjoyed every part of the hunt, but this part, where one wrong word could mean disaster, thrilled me. What did this guy have planned that he needed to know my whole evening was clear of responsibility?
"What about you?" I asked as the bell over the door chimed, indicating a new customer. Jasper was here. He'd help whoever came in while I helped myself.
"I'm a cat person."
He wouldn't be tonight. If I had my way, we'd both be howling to the moon.
"What about enemies?" the man asked. "Got any of those?"
My eyebrows squished together, following the direction of his glance. Paul and Tyrone from the pack stood behind the bar. Paul held a manila envelope while Tyrone had his smooth brown arms crossed menacingly over his chest. It certainly looked like I had enemies. But Paul was a family friend, and Tyrone had only ever been friendly with me. Judging from the looks on their faces, they weren't here to shoot the shit. They were here on pack business.
"I've got tons of enemies," I mumbled. "Excuse me for one moment. Don't move."
I slipped out from behind the bar. Paul and Tyrone slunk back into the corner, and I gestured to the table in the corner for us to sit. "What's up, guys?" Months ago, I would've been pissed that the pack had seen fit to come into my business with what was clearly their business, but things were murkier now.
"Elder Delia sent me," Paul said. He didn't often address his pack sponsor with her official title outside of pack lands.
I never did because Delia was a soulless demon who cared about money and power. And she was my aunt.
My curiosity sufficiently piqued, I spun a chair around and sat on it with my forearms braced over the back. "She thought you'd need muscle?" I jerked my chin to Tyrone. He hadn't taken a seat.