“Yeah.”
“I can get there, right?” He looked terribly young in that moment, terribly lost. “I can do it, can’t I? They… they used silver on Dad, and he just couldn’t…”
“Not all of you can. But you’re stronger than a lot of the natural shifters I’ve met. You just have to find the control.” Spinning in the chair, Toronto focused his gaze on the window. “And you have to survive all of them.”
“I can handle them. The question is which one of them is going to push me too far.” He propped an elbow on the desk, staring outside along with Toronto, eyeing the two men who’d met not too far away from the main house. Charlie was one of them.
The other was Graham— the drunken bastard who’d gone a few rounds with Matt’s fists already.
“Graham’s your biggest problem.” Toronto hooked one ankle over his knee. “He mouths off, questions everything. You might need to kill him.”
Matt curled his lip. “I was ready to do that. You stopped me.”
“There’s a difference between killing him in a fight and murdering an unconscious drunk.” Toronto had thought about doing the man himself— something wasn’t right with him. But this couldn’t be his fight, not until it was forced on him. And Graham wasn’t that stupid. He thought he could maybe handle a half-grown Alpha. He wasn’t going to take on Toronto in a straight fight, though.
And Toronto had no grounds… Frowning, he spun back around and studied the kid. “Did your father have a second?”
“Yeah.” Matt’s lashes swept down. “Broderick Scott. He died first. Took a bullet for my dad.”
“So your pack is used to having one around, right?” Not every pack used them nowadays. A few hundred years earlier, the packs had warred— often. But that had been brought to a halt, mostly thanks to Hunter interference—they couldn’t have packs going to war over territory in this day and age. Bodies eventually got hard to hide and sooner or later, if they were burning them, they would be discovered.
“Yeah.”
“Make me your second.”
Matt just stared at him. Toronto smiled. “You realize when he came in here the way he did, he was insulting you. He didn’t knock. He didn’t announce himself. He used the same name for his Alpha that he’d use for a kid. They still treat you as a kid— you see some of it, but not all. Because you’re used to it. It has to stop, though, and it won’t, until you make them.” Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on his knees and studied the boy. “I see it all. I see the conscious and the unconscious challenges. I can call them on all of those slights— if I’m made your second. As long as I’m outside the pack, they can ignore me. They can challenge me over it, but I’d hurt them— since I’m here to try and play nice, I’d try not to hurt them. Then they’d get ugly and decide to gang up on me. Once that happens, I kill. You make me part of the pack, they have to follow protocol and we all know it. They issue the challenge and follow through and when they lose, it’s done, or they are outcast.”
“I don’t want a stronger bastard than me serving as my second,” Matt muttered, rubbing at his shoulder, like he could still feel the silver there, although it healed days ago.
“I don’t plan on living here forever and ever. Just until things are settled and you know what you’re doing. Get a few years on you— and figure out who should serve as your real second.” Toronto shifted his gaze out the window, studying the two men. They were walking away now, heads bowed. “You’ve got good people here. If you get the troublemakers out of the way, you’ll be able to see them more clearly.”
M
ONTANA.
He had come to fucking Montana?
Sylvia felt like she was in a different country— a deserted one. She’d been on this strip of highway for what seemed like hours, cutting through night-dark fields that were probably impossibly green in the day.
The mountains were dark shadows in the distance and if she had it pegged right, she should have another forty-five minutes to drive before she hit the city Rafe had directed her to.
After that, he told her, she was on her own.
Wonderful.
He sends her out in the middle of nowhere and then tells her she’s on her own…
But hell, how was that any different from the past couple of months? She’d been living with a gaping hole inside her ever since the day she’d walked away from that cabin in Toronto. Leaving behind the one person who had actually made her realize she was… empty. Empty in her heart, in her soul.
Now she just had to figure out where to find him.
Although, seriously, once she got to the city, it wouldn’t be that hard, she didn’t think. All she really had to do was stop hiding herself so much, she figured. Do that, and just maybe he could find her…
R
IDING a fence line wasn’t what he’d planned when he’d come to Montana.
Riding a fence line and then having to fight off an attack that came at his back was another thing he hadn’t planned on— but he was more equipped to handle the attack than the fence line.
After he’d hurled Graham to the ground, he shrugged out of his leather jacket and threw it off to the side. “We don’t need to do this,” he said quietly. “You know you aren’t going to win.”
“You don’t belong here.” Graham shoved upright, staring at Toronto with rage burning in his eyes. It was an ugly sight.
“Yeah. You’re right. But I’m not leaving until the kid is ready to stand on his own.” He cocked a brow. “Deal with it.”
“Deal with it…” Graham’s voice dropped, gravelly rough. “If he can’t stand on his own now, he shouldn’t be the Alpha.”
“You couldn’t take him on your best day. Nobody in your pack can. But you think you’ve got a right to try and run him out? Because he’s young?” Toronto shook his head. “We going to do this, or not?”
Graham sank to a crouch, his muscles already rippling as he started to shift.
Lucky bastard— it didn’t hurt a natural shifter the way it hurt a were. Toronto kicked off his boots, keeping an eye on the stupid fuck. He’d seen the guy fight. He didn’t stand a chance and had to know it—
As he rose from the ground, his body a meld of wolf and man, Toronto saw why Graham was so cocky— sunlight glinted off a glass vial in Graham’s hand. Somehow, he didn’t think it was just water in that little bottle. There was only one thing, really, that would do much good against a were. Silver.
Fury bit into him and he spun away halfway through his shift as the other wolf lunged for him.
Turning to face Graham, he said, “That’s a dick move, bringing poison into this. When you go down, I’m going to make you eat it.”
Graham’s reply was a snarl. But there was fear in his eyes now.
The bastard had lost the edge of surprise and was now completely fucked.
* * *
H
E had silver nitrate in his leg, eating its way through him, he had a dead body to haul back to the compound— Toronto was not happy.
Once he’d finally made it back, he saw several eyes cut his way before darting off without making contact. They’d already smelled the dead body. Lips peeled back from his teeth, he cut the ropes he’d used to keep Graham’s body from falling. Hauling the corpse off the back of the three-wheeler, he turned and dumped it on the ground
Hearing a door open, he looked up.
Matt stood in the doorway, his young face rigid, eyes dark.
“What in the fuck did you do?”
Cutting his eyes to Charlie, Toronto said, “I dealt with a bastard who came at my back— one who decided he’d level the playing field with poison.” Curling his lip, he looked down at Graham. The silver nitrate had burned and blackened Graham’s face, his neck as it killed him. Toronto stared at him woodenly for a long moment before shifting his gaze upward and studying the people gathered around him.
“You murderer,” Charlie growled, his eyes flashing to wolf-yellow.
“Murderer.” Toro
nto lifted his gaze, staring at the other shifter. “He comes at my back, with poison, and you want to call me a murderer.”
“He didn’t have a chance against you, fucking monster.”
“Then he should have thought of that before he attacked a Hunter,” Matt said quietly.
All eyes turned toward the young Alpha as he came down the steps, striding toward Toronto. There was nothing hesitant on his face now, although Toronto saw something in the back of the kid’s eyes. Regret, maybe… and resignation.
Charlie turned to Matt. “You can’t tell me you’re going to stand for this. This fucking outsider killed one of ours. He murdered him.”
“No.” Matt’s gaze dropped to Toronto’s leg.
Under the denim, he was bleeding. Thanks to the silver nitrate, he wasn’t going to heal until his body had managed to purge the shit from his system. And it hurt. Nothing hurt a shifter of any form, natural or were, the way silver did. He felt like something was trying to chew through his veins.
“You’re injured,” Matt said.
“He had two vials of silver nitrate on him. I’ve got one of them inside of me.” And he meant the whole damn bottle, too. Graham had gotten one good hit in— using his claws to shred Toronto’s leg and then shove the damn thing inside him, crushing it. He’d already been healing so that shit was now stuck inside him, broken glass vial and all.
A good healer could get the glass out. A good doctor could. The pack didn’t have a healer but Toronto wasn’t certain he’d trust the doctor here.
Eyeing Graham, Matt crouched down next to him and sighed. “I guess I don’t need to ask where the other one is.”
“No.”
Charlie came storming up, bumping into Toronto. With a snarl, Toronto caught him by the shoulder and shoved, sending him flying facedown. He’d had enough—
The other man came back up with his fists bunched, muscles rippling under his clothes. “No outsider gets to do that to us,” he growled.
“Toronto is no outsider.” Matt blew out a breath and then looked at Toronto, gave a short nod. “He’s my second, effective now. You want to fuck with him, do it at your own risk.”
Toronto met Charlie’s gaze and smiled.
“T
HERE’S a vampire in Gallatin.”
Toronto managed, just barely, to keep the growl behind his teeth when the wolf appeared in the doorway, head bowed. It was Jason, one of the kids who’d gone out with Matt the night their pack had been attacked. One of the two who had returned, while the adults were inside whining and whimpering.
Matt looked up over the table where his cousin Shelby was dealing with Toronto’s leg. Heaving out a sigh, he said, “I’ll head out there in a few. Tell Hank not to lose his calm.”
“You can’t.” Jason shot Toronto a glance. “She’s in the bar.”
Matt rolled his eyes. “I’ll just tell her to bring her ass out, then, so we can talk.”
“Hank already tried to kick her out. She wouldn’t budge. And… I…” The boy shifted from one foot to the other, nervous. “I think he’s scared. Didn’t want to sound that way, but he didn’t sound right.”
Staring at the mess of his leg, the skin still black in some areas, Toronto grabbed a towel. “I’ll handle it.” He looked at the doctor messing with his leg and she stopped almost immediately, dropping the forceps and gauze down by the scalpel she’d had to use to cut into his flesh.
“You need to let Shelby finish with your leg.” Matt shook his head. “You’re injured.”
“And you’re sixteen. You go into a bar in a town where the majority of the people are mortal, you’re asking for trouble. At best, you’ll get branded as a troublemaker. At worst, you get arrested.” Toronto probed his leg— the resulting pain was less than it had been. She’d gotten a lot of the glass out and the poison was burning through him. A few days and he’d be good as new. “She can finish cutting the glass out later. For now, I’ll deal with this.”
“Toronto—”
“This is the job a second would do,” he said softly. “You need to start figuring out how an Alpha is going to act, Matt. Otherwise, we’ll be doing this again in a few months. You have to show them you’re capable of this— show them you’re able to do it, or they won’t respect you, and everybody who resents you for being strong enough…” He shook his head. “You want another one turning out like Graham?”
Matt’s silence was answer enough.
He let Shelby clean up his leg while Jason brought him some clean jeans. He was sweating by the time he got them on, but he had an hour’s drive ahead of him. If he grabbed some food, he’d be good.
Although… considering the way his life was going lately, it wouldn’t hurt to be careful. On his way out, he hit his room and raided his weapons chest. His Glock, loaded with the kind of bullets that would take down even some of the oldest vamps, went into a sheath under his arm. He slid a few knives into place and then grabbed a jacket.
Hopefully this wouldn’t be anything.
It wasn’t a Hunter, though— he would have sensed that, and he probably would have been called. So it was anybody’s guess what kind of situation he was walking into.
A brief wistful moment passed through him… he knew who he wished it was.
But he figured he was as likely to find Sylvia in Gallatin as he was to find his memory. She’d walked away, as he’d expected. She was done.
He couldn’t even say they were done, because there had never been a they. A few days… they’d only had a few days and he’d still…
“Shit, don’t do this,” he muttered, his voice hoarse even to his own ears. He’d spent more than two months working his ass into the ground to keep from thinking about her, to keep from wishing things could have turned out differently. Maybe…
Hell. Maybe he should have tried to find her. Talk to her.
You still can, a sly little voice whispered, that cunning, selfish bastard— the man he was trying to leave behind. He couldn’t go back to that. Wouldn’t. Although speeding down the highway in the dead of night, it was hard to remind himself of that fact.
Fate had given him a good, hard bitch-slap, showed him just how self-centered, how much of a bastard he’d been. If he couldn’t be better than that, then he didn’t deserve her. Until he could be better, he wasn’t going to ask for things he knew he shouldn’t have.
And the ugliest part of the mess… he couldn’t be better overnight, couldn’t become better by walking away from the responsibilities he’d agreed to take on. Right?
Shit, he’d feel better if somebody would just tell him he was right— that he was doing the right thing.
“No, you wouldn’t,” he muttered, checking the miles. Gallatin was still a good thirty miles ahead. “It doesn’t matter if you change or not… if you’re doing the right thing or not, because it’s not going to help with her.”
And it wouldn’t. If she’d wanted anything between them, she wouldn’t have been so quick to walk away.
CHAPTER 27
“L
OOK, lady. It’s midnight. We don’t stay open until midnight around here.”
He gave her another nervous look, light glinting off his eyes. If he’d been human, he would have already called the cops. But then again, if he had been human, she wouldn’t be there.
If Toronto was anywhere around here, somebody would know.
Sylvia hadn’t been able to find any sign of him, so she figured the next best thing was making herself a pain in somebody’s ass. Sooner or later, she’d find somebody who would tell her something.
But this guy wasn’t that someone. She’d seen it on him the minute she walked inside. He was a midlevel shifter and he was freaked out just at the sight of her. A scared, nervous bastard who hadn’t wasted any time in going to make a phone call about her after she’d refused his “polite” request that she leave.
She wasn’t leaving. Sylvia was damn tired. She’d spent the day sleeping in the bathroom of her hotel, she hadn’t fed
in two days and water and alcohol weren’t going to cut it for too much longer. She was going to keep her ass in this bar for as long as she damn well had to. If he’d called somebody, there was a chance that somebody might have answers… and a little more spine.
A ripple rolled across her skin. That presence of something… other…
The bartender’s eyelashes flickered and he stared at her, his pulse slamming inside his throat.
“Who did you call?” she asked quietly.
“My pack. The majority of them live out on the compound an hour away.” He jerked his chin up, trying not to look too nervous. “You come onto our territory, you really ought to talk to the Alpha.”
The Alpha. Shit. That twinge of hope withered away and died.
This guy was a natural shifter. The shifters weren’t like weres— half the time, the two races didn’t even get along. If whoever she’d just sensed was the Alpha, if there was a local pack, then what was she doing here? Toronto wouldn’t be here…
Carefully, she lowered her glass. Pushing her hand into her pocket, she pulled out a twenty and tossed it on the scarred surface of the bar. He wasn’t here. She didn’t know what kind of game Rafe was playing with her, but Toronto couldn’t be here.
Head bowed, she slid outside. She needed to get to the room and refocus. Replan. The Alpha could go fuck himself—
H
E hadn’t even hit the street when he caught that scent.
Shit.
This… what… no.
A job, he thought.
She was here for a job, he figured. For a half a second, he wondered if one of the idiots back at the compound might have hired her. But that didn’t seem right. Although considering the burn in his leg, it wasn’t an option he was going to dismiss…
“Stop it. Get your head on straight.” Swearing, he hit the brakes and parked the car on the side of the road. He didn’t give a damn if it was illegal— he needed to walk for a few minutes and think, make sure he had himself under control when he saw her.
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