by Liza Street
It was unbelievable, how drawn she was to him. It made no sense. And yet, as she watched him and Shaw beat the shit out of each other, every cell in her body yearned to be close to Carter, to protect him, comfort him.
Carter’s next punch caught Shaw in the face, and he followed it with a kick to Shaw’s gut.
Shaw went down. The thud of his fall reverberated through the ground; Lena felt it in her feet. He raised his hand, just like Vezirov had done, and dropped it to the dirt.
Shaw had lost.
Lena wanted to squeal with happiness, but she knew this wasn’t the end of Shaw. He’d be here tomorrow, and the next day and the next, and she’d be afraid of him until either he or she was dead.
She hoped it was him, but she’d seen his ruthlessness firsthand. She’d entertain no false optimism about her chances.
Carter shook out his hands and bounced on the balls of his feet while Jase and another guy Lena didn’t know helped Shaw out of the ring. Lena smiled and started forward, hoping to meet Carter at the edge, but he lifted a finger and pointed.
Not at her, but at the guy next to her—Kyle.
“Kyle Rusch, I challenge you to a battle of dominance.”
“No,” Lena said, stepping in front of Kyle. “Don’t be ridiculous, Carter.”
But he stared past her. He no longer looked like Carter; he looked like a man possessed with some furious need. Lena didn’t understand it. How could this be the same man who’d only hours ago held her in his arms, comforted her, talked her down from paralyzing despair?
“It’s okay, Lena.” Kyle put a hand on her shoulder and stepped around her. “He has to do this.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, practically spitting the words. “This is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid to him.” Kyle pulled off his t-shirt and stepped into the ring.
Watching the fight wasn’t anywhere near the top of Lena’s to-do list. Shaw was off to the side, sitting on the hood of a car. He kept his head up, but from the hunch in his shoulders, she could tell he was hurting. Good. It would keep him from doing any damage tonight. She was grateful to Carter for taking him down…but pissed at Carter for challenging Kyle.
From the top of a Mustang that looked like it used to be maroon, Marcus and Jase waved her over. She went to them, careful to keep her feet out of the ring.
Kyle threw a punch at Carter, who didn’t dodge fast enough. Good. Maybe Kyle would kick Carter’s ass this time, and Carter would give him a break for awhile.
She doubted it. Carter seemed to need to fight, and he seemed to especially need to fight Kyle.
“Hey, Lena,” Jase said when she reached him and Marcus. “How are you doing? Are you adjusting to life in here okay?”
“I guess so.”
“Good.” Jase nodded at her, then at Marcus. “Go ahead.”
Marcus cleared his throat. “We were talking about a more formal grouping, or alliance.”
“Like a pack or pride of some kind?” Lena asked, puzzled. “In the Junkyard?”
“Sort of like that,” Jase said. “It’s just an idea I’ve been bouncing around.”
She’d come here to get away from that. But still, the worst thing about this Junkyard was the constant fighting. Maybe a pack’s structure would help slow that down. Shifters would always fight, of course. But having an alpha figure could be a positive.
“Wait, who would be alpha?” she asked.
“It depends,” Marcus said.
She could imagine an epic showdown for a leader, and she shuddered. Jase would make a good alpha, though. Whether he was strong enough to not only gain but hold the position remained to be seen. She hadn’t seen him matched up against Carter yet. Or Shaw.
Strange that Carter had won against Shaw tonight, though, now that she thought about it. Their fight hadn’t lasted long. She sneaked a peek at Shaw, who still sat on an old car. He caught her looking at him and smiled.
Bile collected in her throat and she spun away.
“You okay, Lena?” Jase asked.
“I’ll be fine, I think.” Should she trust him with the knowledge that Shaw was her old alpha and likely wanted her dead?
Just then, Marcus winced. “Time to get Kyle.”
Lena looked back at the ring. Kyle was on the ground, raising his hand to signal defeat.
“Get up,” Carter said, his voice a growl. “I’m not done with you.”
Kyle lowered his hand—not to slap the ground, but to lever himself back into a standing position.
“Kyle, don’t,” Lena shouted.
But he was on his feet and facing Carter.
Carter, who didn’t smile, didn’t taunt him. He didn’t even look grim or angry. Carter, the man she was growing to…to love, she realized with surprise, was nothing more than a fighting automaton.
Carter pulled back his arm. With one hit, Kyle went down.
Some of the other guys dragged Kyle from the ring. Drops of blood soaked into the dirt.
Lena hated this place.
A guy she didn’t know stepped into the ring with Carter.
“No,” Lena said. “That is enough.”
She was surprised when Carter nodded and said something to the guy. He hadn’t listened to her when she told him not to fight Kyle, but now he listened?
He stepped out of the ring and faced her. A cut on his cheek was already healing, leaving a crimson mark of dried blood on his skin. She wanted to rub away the blood, but she was too pissed to touch him.
Without a word, she grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the ring.
When they were finally away from the lamplight and Lena didn’t think they’d be overheard, she let him go and faced him. “We need to talk.”
He wiped his bloody knuckles on his jeans. “So talk.”
“Don’t be a dick. Tell me what’s going on. You attacked Kyle again.”
“Battle for dominance. It’s the nature of the beast, kitty cat.”
“I’m so sick of that bullshit excuse,” she said.
His reasoning or his excuse or whatever the hell he wanted to call it, battle for dominance, nature of the beast, wasn’t the whole truth. It wasn’t even part of it, if she was sensing him correctly. She folded her arms over her chest and waited for him to say more.
He didn’t. Instead, he grabbed one of her wrists and yanked her to him. “Come on, we’re getting out of here.”
“What?” she squawked. “Let me go.”
“I will,” he said, “as soon as we’re on the other side of that wall. Then I’ll come back to where I’m supposed to be, and you can be where you need to be—out of Shaw’s reach. Out of my reach.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” She dug her heels into the ground.
He growled, bent at the waist, and hauled her up over his shoulders.
“Carter, I will end you,” she said.
He kept a hand on her lower back to prevent her from twisting and freeing herself, and his other arm was locked around her thighs. She pounded on his back with her fists, and when that didn’t work, clawed him with her fingernails.
“Come on, mate,” he said in a determined voice.
That got her to shut up and stop struggling. Mate?
He chuckled. “Yep. If we’re mates, then we can cross the boundary. I just heard about it and I wasn’t going to do anything, because I don’t want out of here. But you need to escape. So let’s do this.”
“This is unbelievable,” Lena said. Not only was it unbelievable that they could get across, but also that they could be mates. And also unbelievable was the idea that he had considered selfishly keeping that information to himself just so he could stay in the Junkyard.
Now that she wasn’t struggling, she expected him to put her down. But he seemed to like carrying her. He kept her over his shoulder and moved his hand from her back to her ass.
“There we go, nice and calm,” he said, rubbing her gently.
“I’m not literally a kitty cat,”
she groused. “You can’t pet me.”
She couldn’t see his face, but she could imagine his smirk as he said, “I wanna do more than pet.”
After a few minutes, he stopped. “Well, here we are.”
He let her go and she slid down the front of him. This time she could see his smirk, as well as the way his eyebrows went together, almost as if he was in pain. “Rub against my dick like that again, and I might just keep you here with me forever, kitty cat.”
Shaking her head, she turned toward the gravel line on the ground.
He touched her shoulder, his voice close. “I mean it. I want you all the time.”
Her heart leaped at the words. Maybe she didn’t feel like they were truly fated to be together, but damn if it didn’t feel good to hear him say those things to her.
“Let’s do this,” she said, facing the invisible wall.
“On the count of three,” he said.
They counted to three and stepped forward, hands outstretched.
Lena’s hand met resistance, and Carter stopped moving, too. She ran her hand over the space—the wall was intact.
“Maybe if we hold hands and do it.” Carter grasped her fingers in his own.
They put their free hands out, but again they met the wall.
“Fuck, why isn’t it working?” Carter said.
“I guess we’re not really mates,” she said, shrugging before turning away from him. Her throat burned like she’d swallowed too much of Noah’s moonshine.
Why did it matter? Two minutes ago, she’d been kicking and struggling to get away from him, insisting that they didn’t belong together.
She told herself she didn’t care. She hadn’t been moving in that direction with him, nope, no sirree, not at all.
“Lena,” he said, trying to draw her into his arms again.
She pulled away. “I should get to bed. The trailer’s not far.”
“Far enough.”
She pointed down the gravel line of the boundary. “It’s maybe fifty yards that way.”
Rain began to fall. Figured. She usually loved the rain, but right now it just made her feel cold and sad.
“I’ll walk you,” he said.
Shrugging, she started forward. He walked next to her, quiet. She wondered if he was as confused as she was. Probably not. Did it make sense for him to say she was his mate and then try to get rid of her like that?
The trailer came into view, the murals on the side of it hazy in the darkness and rain.
“I still think we could be mates,” he said. But he didn’t sound entirely sure.
Maybe that was what the magical boundary required—certainty.
Well, neither of them was prepared to give it one hundred percent, not yet. Not with how he’d behaved in the ring, not with how she couldn’t give her heart.
Marcus and Kyle were both sitting outside the trailer beneath the narrow awning that overhung the side. They stood as Lena and Carter approached.
“I’ll stay and keep watch for Shaw,” Carter said.
“No, thanks,” Lena said.
Marcus came forward. “We’ll take care of her.”
Carter looked at Lena, waiting for her final answer.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. It was a struggle to keep her voice even and light. “Goodnight.”
Her heart ached as he walked off into the wet woods, but in the end, neither of them had a claim on the other, and fate seemed to want to keep it that way.
18
Everything was shit. Carter stared out his tiny cabin window, scowling at the world. Rain continued to beat down on the Junkyard. The downpour was fitting, given his current mood.
Nearly a full day had passed since he’d left Lena at her trailer with Marcus and Kyle. Nearly a full day since he’d spoken to her, touched her, inhaled her scent.
He knew she was mad at him, disappointed in him. He deserved that.
But he also knew, deep down, she was meant to be his mate. He wasn’t imagining the way she made him feel. He wasn’t imagining the overwhelming instincts he had to not only protect her, but to make her happy.
Cold seemed to have seeped through his skin and taken root in his bones. He’d slept as a bear last night, in the woods not far from Lena’s trailer. He hadn’t wanted to leave her protection up to only Marcus and Kyle. It wasn’t enough.
Yeah, he’d beaten Shaw in the ring last night, but something told him Shaw had been holding back.
Carter gripped the edge of the table until he heard the wood creak under the strain. From what Lena had said, he already knew Shaw couldn’t be trusted. But seeing it in the ring had hit the lesson home. A shifter who wasn’t even honest in his fighting? Fuck that. As violent and crude as a fistfight was, there was still honor in it.
Shaw had no honor.
After throwing on a hoodie, he left his cabin to brave the rain. Maybe he’d see if Grant was around and ask him why the boundary hadn’t let Lena and Carter through last night. Or maybe he’d go sit by the lake for a while, do some fishing in the rain. Nothing more depressing than that.
Yep, fishing it was. After an hour of being rained on at the lake, maybe he’d work up the nerve to find Lena, which was what he really wanted to do, anyway.
He didn’t even make it to the lake before he heard someone else’s footsteps. Hell. The last thing he wanted was company. The water in the air hid the other person’s scent. He kept moving forward—he’d make sure it wasn’t Lena and then continue past whoever it was.
As they got closer, he could pick up a very faint trace of her scent in the air, but it was overwhelmed by the scent of another bear. And when the approaching shifter came into view from around a cluster of fir trees, Carter realized why. It was Kyle.
“You,” Carter growled.
“Me.” Kyle held out his hands. His blond hair was plastered to his head from the rain, his pale blue eyes dark-rimmed.
Carter looked around. They were alone. Nobody else was nearby.
“I could kill you right now where you stand,” Carter said.
Kyle nodded. “Maybe you should.”
“Why won’t you just admit what you did?” Carter asked, unable to keep the pain from his voice. “He was my brother, goddamn it.”
Kyle looked away and his shoulders fell. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what? For not admitting what you did? Or are you sorry for what you did?”
“I’m sorry for it all, okay?” Kyle clenched his fists.
Carter tensed up, ready to come to blows.
“I’m not going to fight you,” Kyle said. “I’ve barely fought at all since that day.”
“I don’t understand.” And that was the truth of it. Carter had never understood Garth’s death or the hole it had left in his heart. It was too big, too dark, and too fucking sad. The grief was too much and if he tried to take it out and examine it, it overwhelmed him. Every damn time.
“Does anybody understand?” Kyle asked.
The haunted look in Kyle’s eyes kept Carter in place, even as it infuriated him. The grief belonged to Carter, not Kyle. Kyle had no right to look like that.
“Do you even remember his name?”
“Garth Varrone. He was twenty-eight. He was brash, stubborn, and the kindest motherfucker I ever knew.” Kyle’s voice got thicker with emotion. “If he’d lived, I think we would’ve been good friends.”
Carter’s eyes burned.
“I’ve spent the past two years trying to forget what I did to him,” Kyle said. “It was just a stupid dominance contest. The two of us, trying to prove we were stronger than the other. But the violence took me over and I kept on fighting, long after…” He swallowed. “Long after he’d lost.”
Carter had to turn away. He couldn’t look at Kyle anymore, at the redness around Kyle’s eyes. It was easy enough to imagine how the fight had gone down.
“He instigated the fight, didn’t he?” Carter asked, finally facing Kyle again.
Kyle gave him a short no
d.
“That was his way. Meet a new shifter, immediately start figuring out who’s dominant.”
“His first words to me were, ‘Let’s go outside. I’ll buy you a beer after I kick your ass.’”
“Fuck, that’s Garth, all right.”
Kyle inhaled deeply. “I’m so fucking sorry. I saw you here and you looked like him, but I wanted to pretend it wasn’t you. I don’t want to fight anymore. That’s why I was sent here—my alpha wanted me to fight every rogue shifter who came through our territory, but I wouldn’t. Sometimes they weren’t a threat, they were just young assholes trying to prove themselves. Anyway, I should’ve talked to you. I should’ve admitted everything.”
The impulse was still there, to clobber the guy who’d killed his brother. But just as strong was the urge to move past it, to be the kind of man Lena would approve of, to heal.
“You can do whatever you need to do to me,” Kyle said, falling to his knees. “I’ll take it. Over and over again.”
Carter stared at him. He looked so pathetic, so wretched on the ground. Taking two steps forward, he stopped right next to Kyle.
“It’s okay,” Kyle said. “I deserve the pain.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Carter said, reaching for Kyle’s arm and dragging him up to standing.
Instead of throwing a punch, Carter put an arm around Kyle and hugged him.
Kyle shook with silent sobs, and Carter joined him. After a minute, they pulled apart. They rubbed their eyes and looked at each other. Kyle’s fatigue and stress seemed diminished. Carter imagined he looked similarly improved. He felt better, that was for sure.
“You tell anyone about this and I really will fuck you up,” Carter said, and they both started laughing.
The rain washed away their remaining tears. They shook hands and parted ways—Carter to the lake, to work at comprehending everything he’d learned.
19
Lena leaped from one branch to another on cat-light paws. She hadn’t figured out where Shaw was hunkering down yet, but she would soon.
Marcus traveled beneath her on the ground, in his wolf form. Ever the protector, ever the friend.