“She oversees it, but Farris is running it now.”
Fuck, Farris would be a harder sell.
“Why?” Mila asked suddenly, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. Wolf eyes. God, he loved that wild color on her face. She was so good. Roman wanted to corrupt her and release that bad wolf he knew was buried in her somewhere. Buried…in her. Fuuuuuck, he wanted to take her out to the back of his jeep and lose his mind, strip her down, and push into her until she was screaming his name.
Mila was staring at him like he’d already lost that sanity. What had she asked him? Oh yeah, why was he asking about Nelda’s logging crew. “I was thinking about asking for a job.”
“I thought you had a job.”
The lace was the exact same shade as her skin. “Hmmm? Oh, right, the bar. Extra income.”
“You’ve been around humans too long,” she murmured so quietly no one would hear but him. “Your lies work with them. Not on me.”
Oh yeah, crap. “Fine, I want a pack job so I can stir the shit in the Bone-Rippers.”
“Is that what you’re doing here with me?” she asked carefully, her eyes downcast as she cut her waffle into perfect squares.
“I don’t know yet.” She wouldn’t find a lie in that because now he was confused about why he’d asked her to Jack’s, of all places in this town. It was like he’d wanted her to remember that hug in the woods. Had it meant as much to her as it had to him? All he knew was that when he’d held Mila, the ghosts in the woods had scattered, and he’d found peace for a few minutes.
“Roman, why are you here?” she asked softly, lifting those pretty eyes to him. He wanted to see all of them, wanted to brush her bangs out of her face, smooth them back, see if her skin was as soft as it looked. See if she was as soft as she looked…
“I came to be with my brothers when my dad’s ashes were spread.”
Sympathy pooled in her eyes. “Did you already scatter his ashes over the river?”
“Uuuum, no. Asherhole dumped them right behind Winter’s Edge while me and Gentry were trying to stop him, and we all got covered in Dad. It was fucking gross.” And now Dad’s ghost wouldn’t leave him alone. That probably had something to do with it, which was why Roman currently hated Asher the most out of his brothers right now.
Mila hid a smile, but not well enough.
“It’s not funny. I got ashes in my mouth.”
She snorted and pursed her lips harder as her eyes got round like dinner plates. And now a cute pink color was staining her cheeks. Roman liked making people laugh in general, but Mila was serious, submissive, and she’d always presented him with a challenge. She didn’t give smiles as easily as other people, but she was giving him one now. A feeling of triumph slowly unfurled in his chest.
“Your dad would be so disappointed in the three of you,” she teased. “All he ever talked about was fishing on that damn river.”
“Please, he would be disappointed in Asher, not me and Gentry. Gentry was his favorite son, and he never gave two shits about me. No feelings, no disappointment. But Asher broke the urn on a tree. I’m pretty sure we were supposed to…I don’t know…keep that as a memento or something.”
“Your dad cared about you,” Mila said, her pretty face scrunching up in a frown. “Noah talked about all three of you, all the time. There wasn’t a single pack meeting where you three weren’t brought up. Not just Gentry, not just Asher. He always talked about how you worked your way up a construction crew faster than anyone he’d ever heard of, and how you were always so good at fixing anything.”
Roman laughed unsurely. “You’re making this up.”
“No, I’m not.” She gave a quick shrug. “He even had your pictures hanging in Winter’s Edge until…”
Roman narrowed his eyes. “Until what?”
Mila froze, her eyes big like a deer in headlights. The smell of her fear ripped a snarl out of his throat. The aggression wasn’t directed at her. Instead, it was a protective instinct to murder whatever had scared her. But at the sound in his throat, she whimpered and shrank back into her seat. Roman then realized what had scared her…was him.
She knew things. She knew about the mysteries he and his brothers had been trying to unravel since the day they had come back into town, but Mila had a loyalty problem. She was pledged to the Bone-Rippers, and apparently bound by black magic to Rangeley. Roman was an outsider, one she didn’t trust. But he wanted to change that. And not just because he wanted to fuck with the pack anymore. It genuinely bothered him that Mila still couldn’t relax around him. It wasn’t like they’d just met. They’d grown up together. He wanted her trust. Wanted to earn it, wanted her to give it.
Dad was standing across the bar. He wasn’t being normal ghost Dad either. He was standing half in the wall, right under a pair of deer antlers, staring…still staring. He’d kept pictures of Roman in Winter’s Edge. Did you, Dad? Did you secretly care?
Mila slid her legs forward under the table and rested her ankles against his. Shocked, he jerked his attention to her, but she didn’t look scared anymore. Her eyes were soft. He wished he could say something witty and make her smile again. Her legs felt good against his. It had been a long time since someone touched him on purpose.
“Who’s there, Roman?” Mila asked.
Roman dragged his gaze back to the wall, but there was no ghost there anymore. “No one,” he murmured. “No one but you.”
Mila rubbed her ankle against him gently, and before he could stop himself, he reached under the table and gripped her under her knee. So warm. So fragile. She was small, and he could snap her leg without much effort, but she didn’t jerk away. Instead, as he rubbed his thumb along the seam of her jeans, she rolled her eyes closed and released a quiet, shaky breath. So fucking beautiful.
“Mila,” Rhett barked out from the door.
She instantly froze like a statue, every muscle in her leg tense, and the scent of her fear was all Roman could smell. The reaction of her body made Roman want to rip Rhett’s throat out. He released her knee slowly and leaned back on the bench seat, glaring at the alpha of the Bone-Rippers. Another black mark against Rhett, another reason Roman wanted to pull his intestines through his mouth hole.
Mila didn’t say a word but pushed out of the bench seat, eyes downcast, and slunk over to Rhett. His face was red with fury, and he pulled her against his side hard. Roman snarled, but Mila gave him a warning glance. Right…there were humans in here.
“Stay away from my girl, Striker,” Rhett said in a low, gravelly voice. His eyes were too bright. If anyone was going to get them busted in Jack’s, it was going to be Rhett.
His girl? Mila was huddled into his side, sure, but her expression was a mixture of terror and disgust.
“You forgot your purse, Chicken,” Roman murmured. Come back to me.
Mila hunched into herself even deeper and shrugged out from under Rhett’s arm. She walked in jerky steps back to the table, leaned over the seat, then grabbed her purse and jacket. “Look in the freezer of Winter’s Edge. I saved the pictures right before we closed the bar,” Mila said on a breath. Her face was pale as a sheet as she stood with her things. “Goodbye, Roman,” she said at normal volume. Mila looked as if she’d never curved her lips into a grin her whole life.
“For good,” Rhett called. “Mila, I forbid you to talk to him or any of the Strikers again.” Power wafted through his words, and Mila’s eyes rimmed with tears. She looked sick as the power of the order pushed her forward gently, then rocked her back. She hadn’t taken her eyes from Roman’s, and now they lightened even more. There was no snarl or fight from her wolf. Just acceptance. Roman had always thought her lucky to be submissive, to have her life planned out, to have a wolf that would demand protection from the males around her.
All this time he’d been wrong.
“Come here,” Rhett demanded.
And Mila did. She turned and made her way right back under his arm, where she probably stayed when he wanted to manipulat
e her. Rhett kissed her hard. It was a second, and then it was done, but his eyes had stayed on Roman. When he jerked her back by the neck of her shirt, he was smiling and Mila’s lip was bleeding.
Roman wanted to stand up and put himself between her and Rhett. He wanted to drag the alpha out to the parking lot and beat his ass into a puddle of nothing. Into a stain in the snow.
Roman had given Mila smiles, and that asshole had stolen them away.
Chapter Five
No one but you. You’re my first choice.
Oh, Roman was good. Much smoother than he’d been as a boy, and now she felt like she was in trouble, especially with the order Rhett had just thrown down in the doorway of Jack’s. He wasn’t careful. He never had been. He’d pulled that crap right there in front of six tables of humans.
That order had hurt so bad to accept. But even now, as she thought of sneaking to Winter’s Edge to see Roman again, her stomach curdled with nausea. It would get worse if she tried to disobey her alpha.
Rhett was gripping her arm too tight as he dragged her through the parking lot of Jack’s. He felt terrifyingly heavy right now. So heavy she couldn’t drag the cold air into her lungs, or even catch her breath enough to tell him she didn’t want to get in his car with him.
He shoved her into the passenger’s seat of his truck and slammed the door so hard the vehicle rocked up on two wheels. Frantically, she looked around to see if anyone had seen his show of strength. Rhett was wearing his police uniform, and the truck was a black and white with lights on the roof. He was on duty, so why was he here messing with her?
Rhett slid behind the wheel and slammed his own door, then roared, his breath freezing in front of him like a dragon blowing smoke.
“H-how did you know where I was?” she asked in a mouse voice.
“Because you’re mine!” he yelled as he jammed the key in the ignition. “I can feel you. I can feel when you’re betraying me. Betraying the pack. I can feel when you’re being a little whore.” He skidded out of the icy parking lot and onto Main Street. “I’m taking you out tonight.”
“Out in the woods?” she asked, terrified.
“I want to pretty fuckin’ bad right now, Mila! I want to fuckin’—” He wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed, and then he shook her as he blasted down Main. “Seeing you with him makes me want to punish you, Mila,” he said in a softer voice, releasing her neck. “It makes me want to give into my urges. Do you understand?”
No, she didn’t understand. What urges? Sex? Murder? Mila was too terrified to ask. Rhett’s wolf had always been broken.
“I hate when you kiss me like that,” she whispered.
“I know.” He tossed her an evil smile. “That’s why I like doing it so much. Any other female in my pack would revel in the attention, but not you. When I fuck you, you’ll make it a challenge for me. You’ll scream. You’ll get me off because you’ll fight it. I’m going to take you out so we can say the courting is done. Buy you a fucking hamburger or something, get through technicalities, and then I will call a Pack meeting tomorrow. I will announce my choice in alpha female. You don’t belong to Roman, or to anyone else, Mila.” He flashed her a fiery glance. “I own you. You’re my bitch, you understand?”
“I don’t want to be alpha female,” she forced past her tightening vocal chords. “You don’t own—”
“Bullshit, I don’t!” he yelled, slamming his fist against the steering wheel. He was driving too fast, scaring her even more. “Since the day you pledged to me, I knew I would have you.”
“But you sleep with Amanda and Ashley.”
“And I’ll continue sleeping with them. It’s in my nature. But if you so much as glance at Roman Striker ever again, I’ll kill you both, and I’ll be brutal about it. I don’t share well.”
“No.”
Rhett slammed on the brakes and skidded his truck sideways, right on the edge of town. “What did you just say?”
Mila pressed her body against the door and wished she could move enough to roll down the window, just to give herself some relief from his anger and his dominance. Just so she could breath and clear her head enough to be strong. “I said no,” she whispered. “I don’t want you. I don’t want alpha female.”
Rhett blasted a furious laugh. “Mila, your first mistake is in thinking I give a shit what you want. Your wants don’t count, Chicken.”
She shook her head hard, pissed he was using Roman’s nickname to hurt her. She hated Rhett. Always had, always would.
“You’ll sit on the throne I give you, and you’ll spread your legs when I demand it, give me the pups I want, and you’ll be at my back as I bring this town around to our ways.” He stomped his boot on the floorboard hard and yelled, “Am I fucking clear, Mila?”
A honk sounded. Someone in a black Mazda was trying to get Rhett’s attention from his side of the truck. He sighed a snarl and then plastered on a smile before rolling down the window.
This was her chance. Mila shoved open the door. Rhett’s hand went immediately to her sleeve, but she wrenched her arm away from him. Riiiip. He was left with shredded fabric and her jacket and purse as Mila bolted from his truck.
“Mila!” he yelled.
She plugged her ears, hoping to hell that would help as she bolted for the snowy tree line. Please don’t give a command to go back to him! If he did, her wolf would betray her. She always did.
Mila sprinted into the trees, her boots crunching in the ankle-deep snow, her breath heaving in her chest, the frozen fog blurring her vision. Limbs whipped at her face and arms as she ran. Inside of her, the wolf writhed and scratched to escape her skin. Mila couldn’t allow it. She would go back to him. She would go back to the pack. She would go back thinking she was safe with their alpha, but her wolf had never understood safety.
Subservience had cast a fog over her instincts, and now she walked a fine line between life and death.
Her tears were cold on her cheeks. Through the woods, movement flashed. Gray fur. God, Rhett was hunting her. A sob wrenched from her as she pushed her legs harder. Don’t Change. Not even if he howls. Not even if he calls you.
The inky tendrils of black magic wafted over her skin in the same second all the whispering started. No, no, no. Something bad must’ve happened in these woods, but Mila couldn’t stop running or Rhett would catch her. Catch her like a bunny. Like prey. She didn’t want to be prey anymore.
Movement flashed on her other side. It was a charcoal gray wolf, one of the biggest she’d ever seen. Gentry. In front of her, a monster pitch-black wolf bolted through the trees. Pumping her legs, she checked her right side again, but the gray fur didn’t belong to Rhett. It was Roman’s wolf. Gray and brown with lighter points. Massive. Monster. Gold eyes, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking straight ahead. Not hunting her. Running with her.
Wait…she’d done this before.
Mila skidded to a stop in the snow. Her hands flickered to mottled gray wolf paws, then back and forth again. Chugging breath, she looked up at the circling Striker brothers. Friends. But Asher started melting away, not disappearing, but his skin liquefied and slid onto the snow in strips. He looked like a zombie wolf for a moment before he fell into a pile of bones. Gentry did the same. “No!” she screamed as Roman sat in the snow right next to her. He trapped her in his gaze before his skin, too, began to melt away. Mila fell to her knees as he turned into a pile of nothing. Behind him, the same color as Roman’s bones, the White Wolf of Winter’s Edge stood, staring at Mila with glowing green eyes.
You still have me. Still have me. Me. You have me. The words tumbled over and over in Mila’s head. She grabbed her hair and shook herself hard. This wasn’t real. Wake up!
The stink of black magic made her retch in the snow, but when she looked up again, the white wolf was gone, and Blaire sat there on her knees instead.
“Mila?” she asked, wiping her bloody nose.
“What’s happening?”
Blaire shook her h
ead and let off a frightened sound in her throat. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know how I got here. My wolf won’t come out. Mila, I’m scared.”
Bring her to me. Odine stood near a towering pine tree. Mila, bring her to me.
Then Odine disappeared in a puff of dark smoke.
Black magic did this to the woods. Until it dissipated, horrors would live here. Mila ran her hand over the snow where Roman’s bones had been just to convince herself he was still okay. Blaire was real, though. Maybe the bad magic was coming from her.
“What do you see?” Mila asked her.
Blaire looked around the woods with wide green eyes, her red hair lifting in the stiff wind. “Nothing.”
Shit. Blaire was in deep if she couldn’t even tell the effects of the magic that was pulsing from her body. Mila stood and made her way to the woman, but hesitated touching her because she didn’t feel right. She felt dangerous.
Mila knelt and scooped her up, then carried her through the woods toward Hunter Cove. She followed Blaire’s tracks until she could see the smoke from the chimney of the inn. And then Roman was there, standing on the tree line, leaned against a spruce, his arms crossed over his chest like he’d been waiting for her.
Mila was happy to see him. Relieved, but her stomach hurt worse every step she took toward him. Defying Rhett’s order was making her sick.
She stumbled with Blaire in her arms, but he blurred to her and took the burden of the weight from Mila.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked shakily, wrapping her arms around her stomach to keep herself from shredding apart.
“Best if I don’t say.” He turned with Blaire in his arms and made his way toward his Jeep.
“W-where are you going?”
“Psychodine’s.”
She would’ve laughed at his unexpected nickname if all of this wasn’t so seriously un-funny. “Roman, I don’t think that’s a good idea. She’s been summoning Blaire—”
“Blaire’s really sick, Mila. Can’t you smell it? She and Gentry have a few days left at most. He hasn’t woken up all day. It’s the witch or death, and I just got my brother back. This is your pack’s fault. This is your alpha’s fault. You want to help fix this? Get in the Jeep.”