“That’s not true, and you know it, Roman. Deep down you always knew. Rhett pushed him out of his own pack, and then he murdered him. And…”
“And what?”
“Roman, we were all there.” Mila closed her eyes against the memory of Noah being killed in the woods right outside of Winter’s Edge. “Rhett made us watch so we wouldn’t ever challenge him as alpha. Drake tried to stop it, but Rhett killed him, too. And that tactic worked. Any potential coup on Rhett’s throne was shredded the second we watched him murder our alpha and then murder the Second. We’re all stuck, Roman. Rhett is quicksand, and none of us can escape.”
Roman rolled her off his lap and stood. He paced to the kitchen, scrubbing his hand in irritation down his bearded jaw. He jammed a finger at her. “You can.”
Mila shook her head. Roman didn’t understand how this town worked anymore. He didn’t understand pack dynamics. “I can’t.”
“You want to break the bond to that asshole, Mila? You want to leave the Bone-Rippers? Leave Rangeley? I can give you that.”
Roman was speaking fast, not making any sense.
“I don’t understand.”
Roman flicked his gaze to her arm, hidden by the thick blanket, then back to her eyes before he murmured, “Yes, you do.”
Realization slammed into her like a tidal wave. Slowly, Mira let the blanket fall away from her arm, which was now tingling with what he’d suggested. Mila didn’t think much about the double layer of bitemark scars on the inside of her elbow. She’d gotten the first when she was eighteen and had pledged to Noah’s pack, and the second, Rhett had given her when she pledged to the Bone-Rippers, moments after Noah had died.
“Pledge to me,” Roman said in that sexy, deep timbre of his. The one that had always been so steady and confident. The one that said he was completely serious right now.
“Rhett will kill you.”
“He’ll try and fail.”
She’d seen what he’d done to Noah and Drake. “Roman, he’ll kill you. He has no honor. No feelings. No remorse. Rhett owns this town—”
“He doesn’t own you! No one does. I can protect you, Mila. I have the means. I have the wolf to do it. My body can protect yours. I’ve trained it to.”
“Roman,” she murmured, already denying him. She cared about him so deeply she couldn’t be the cause of his demise. Couldn’t. It was her job to protect him. Job? Yes, that felt right. Roman had always been special, not only to her, but to her wolf. Mate. Roman was hers to protect. “We can’t. If you take one of his wolves—”
“Think about it,” he rushed out, striding for the door.
Running Roman was doing it again before she could get her rejection past her lips. “Roman!” she called, standing as he pulled open the door and let the frigid air in.
“The fridge is stocked. Eat. Odine says you need to eat.”
“So do you! Where are you going?”
Roman gripped the handle to the door, but turned just enough to tell her, “I’m going to Winter’s Edge. Just…think about it. Promise me.” There was a desperation in his eyes she didn’t understand, and when she was quiet too long, he said it again, louder. “Mila, promise me.”
His eyes were so gold it almost hurt to look at them, and his face looked fearsome, as if he were right on the verge of a Change.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I promise.”
The door clicked closed, and Roman was gone. Mila padded to the window to watch him stride for the dark trail in the woods that would lead him the back way to Winter’s Edge.
The sickness was back. It nearly doubled her over, but it made no sense. Since he was getting farther away from her, she should be feeling better, not worse.
Or perhaps Odine wasn’t the only one in this town with magic. Roman saw ghosts and understood darkness in a way she couldn’t comprehend. He’d just offered her the world, and she’d never once questioned whether he could really make it happen.
Do you trust me?
She shouldn’t, but with all of her heart, she did. Roman was different now. He wasn’t the boy who had kept her at a distance. He wasn’t the irresponsible jokester she’d thought him to be.
Risking his own survival, Roman Striker had just offered the protection of his body as her ticket to freedom.
Chapter Seven
Roman finished the last bite of the fourth grilled cheese he’d made in the kitchen of Winter’s Edge. Thankfully they were close enough to the Grand Opening that food was stocked. And booze. He took another long swig of his beer to wash down the rest of the sandwich and narrowed his eyes at the freezer door at the back of the kitchen. It was one of those massive, silver ones.
Once upon a time, Gentry had locked him and Mila in there. Seven Minutes in Heaven, and he’d waisted every damn second of it trying to escape. God, his childhood self was a pecker.
Mila had told him she’d hidden pictures in there. Was that why she’d chosen the freezer? Because of those seven minutes of Roman being a typical idiot? Maybe she remembered it differently. He hoped she did. He should’ve made out with her then just to see if she liked him as much as he’d liked her, but he’d been busy trying to distract himself with pretty humans at the time to keep from ruining sweet Mila.
Humans. A couple wild nights with a junior varsity cheerleader at the local high school was what had gotten him kicked out of the pack. Asher had been banging a human at the time, too. It was the big secret shame, and now Roman wanted to laugh at Asshole Dad because he’d been shagging Odine, who was not only a mother-frickin’ black witch, but was definitely human. “Should’ve kicked yourself out of your own damn pack,” Roman muttered, making his way to the freezer.
Furthermore, coming back to Rangeley had been one bullshit experience after another. His brothers went to brawling with him whenever they had a spare moment, the Bone-Rippers were a literal pain in his ass, Winter’s Edge had taken a ridiculous amount of work to bring back to its former glory, Dad had apparently been freaking murdered, a black witch had stolen some of Roman’s soul juice, and now Mila was going to reject his one and only offer to be anyone’s alpha. He’d seen it in her eyes. She was going to push him away, or run away, or maybe both. Maybe he was the stayer now, and she was the runner.
This town blew a bag of donkey dicks.
Everything had been so heavy lately. Not enough laughing, not enough smiling. It made him feel like he had man-PMS, which he was pretty sure was a thing. He’d researched it last week when Blaire went on her period. He’d been afraid her moodiness was catching. Yep, her hormones could fuck with him. The internet would never lie.
Roman flipped on the stereo system on his way to the freezer, and the Thong Song blared at full volume through the kitchen and bar. Ha. Perfect.
The freezer was big, and two of the walls were lined with shelves of boxes. It was all hamburger patties, cheese sticks, mushrooms, and pickles ready for the fryer. Giant boxes of frozen crinkle-cut french fries took up almost an entire wall. Where would Mila have put a few pictures?
He trailed his fingers over the frosted cardboard as he made his way to the back. He checked every label, but it was all just food. Maybe Gentry had cleaned it out and thrown it away accidently. Or not accidentally. Gentry wasn’t a fan of Dad either apparently. Maybe he had done it on purpose.
Speaking of Dad, Noah-freaking-Striker was in here with him, staring, just like he always did. Only this time he wasn’t staring at Roman. He was looking toward the corner at an old wicker picnic basket.
“Move,” Roman muttered, waving his hand at the ghost as he walked through him. God, sometimes he imagined he smelled the old-man cologne Dad used to wear. He opened the lid to the basket and, bingo-bango, he had a winner.
On top, there was a black and white framed photo of Dad standing right in front of the Winter’s Edge sign with a big grin on his face. He’d seen this one before.
Roman still felt a little shaky from whatever Odine had done to save Blaire and Gentry, but eating h
ad helped, and before that, making out with Mila had super-helped. He could only imagine what kind of healing powers she would’ve given him if they’d had sex. Just the thought of her naked, straddling his lap, and how fucking hard it had been not to push for more gave him yet another boner. He should start counting them for the Guinness Book of World Records. He’d had like four hundred since he’d started crushing hard on Mila again. She should dress up like Viagra for Halloween.
Roman pulled an old crate from the wall and sat on it. Despite his breath fogging the air as he slid the picnic basket in front of him, he wasn’t cold anymore. He pulled out the picture of Dad and wiped a healthy layer of frost from it before he lifted his beer to the ghost watching him and said, “Looking good Dad. You look happy in this one.” Asshole.
The next one he hadn’t seen before, and it made him draw up and set Dad’s picture down gently on the floor beside the basket. It was one of Gentry leaning on the bar top in Winter’s Edge talking to Tim. Gentry was maybe seventeen, smiling, the background darker because the walls were made of those stained logs, but there was a light right over Gentry’s head, highlighting his dirty blond hair. He’d worn it longer back then.
The next picture was of Asher. He’d always been the tallest of the three of them, but this one made him look like a giant. He was in his baseball uniform, probably ten years old, high-fiving Dad as he stepped on home plate. He was lanky as hell, and the helmet looked too big, but he was grinning huge and looking right at the camera. He’d loved baseball until he couldn’t control his wolf and Dad pulled him from the team.
“Roman?” Gentry called.
Roman cleared the emotion from his throat and yelled, “In here.”
“I swear to God if you’re jacking off in the freezer I’m going to kill you. That’s a health code”—Gentry opened the door, and his eyes went right to the picture in Roman’s hand—“violation.”
“Apparently Dad had these hanging in the bar,” Roman explained, lifting up the one of Gentry. Nope, he wasn’t going to look at Ghost Dad right now because that geezer was probably looking at Gentry all lovingly like he was his favorite person on earth. Prodigal son and all.
“Wooow,” Gentry drawled.
Asher appeared in the doorway and startled Roman. “God, Asher, creepy much? It’s a bar, and you aren’t hunting. Make a little noise, for fuck’s sake.”
Asher was smiling as though he’d scared him on purpose. Clearly everyone was feeling recovered from the witchcraft.
“What are you doing here?” Roman asked.
“Blaire and Mila are apparently having a girls’ night,” Gentry explained, pulling up a crate. “Me and Asher were making Mila sick, but Blaire makes her feel better. Some alpha order technicality or something. She’s supposed to stay away from Strikers, but Blaire isn’t a Striker. Yet.”
“The pawn shop is probably running a special on rings for the holidays,” Roman offered, because he was romantic and all.
“Blaire and Mila are painting their toes together,” Asher said with a disgusted look on his face as he leaned against the farthest wall with his arms crossed.
Roman snorted and tossed his oldest brother the baseball picture. “Look, Asherhole, Dad looks like he loves you in this picture.”
“I remember this day,” Asher said low, wiping his hand across the frame. His palm came back filthy, but there was the ghost of a smile on his lips. “I hit a homerun. Since you and Gentry made yourselves sick on beef jerky at the game, I couldn’t go to the pizza party with the team after.”
Roman high-fived Gentry and said, “Job well done.”
Asher flipped them off with an empty smile on his face.
Gentry reached into the basket and pulled out the next picture. It was one of Roman in a yellow hard hat and a white T-shirt he was sweating through. He was up on a stack of logs. “This must’ve been the summer I worked on Nelda’s crew. Geez, who took this picture?”
“Probably Nelda,” Gentry answered. “She always went around with that old 35-millimeter camera, remember? And she would always bully us for group photos after every pack meeting. I never saw any of the pictures, but I remember her always clicking away on that thing.”
Roman narrowed his eyes on the depths of the basket. “Well, looks like this is your chance to see some of Nelda’s artwork.” He pulled out a stack of pictures taken private-investigator style of Dad and Odine.
He flipped through them one at a time and flicked them onto the floor, where Asher squatted and picked up a few of them. “What the fuck?”
Some were of him and Odine having dinner at a place Roman didn’t recognize. It wasn’t in Rangeley. Some were of them sitting on Odine’s front porch. She was smoking something, and he was laughing in most of them. One was of their backs to the camera, Dad’s arm slung around Odine’s shoulders as he kissed her temple. There were some branches in the way that said Nelda had been hiding in the woods. Some didn’t have Dad in them at all, but were of symbols carved into the trees around Odine’s cabin. And some were just of Odine…looking over her shoulder outside of the grocery store, fixing her make-up in her truck, laughing as she talked on the phone. The last one was of Dad and Odine sitting on the front porch of ten-ten, huddled under a blanket on the swing. They were both looking at each other, smiling the same way Gentry and Blaire smiled. The same way Mila made Roman smile.
Roman pulled out a stack of letters bound in twine. He opened the first addressed to Mila.
Run all you want. It only makes me want you more.
Rhett
The next one said,
Someday I’ll make you scream for me. Your voice will sound so sexy, all hoarse and scared. Do you keep my letters, Mila? Do they make you think of me when you see them, when you touch them? Do they make you want to touch yourself? I like something physical of mine in your den. Keep them safe until I’m the one inside your den.
Rhett
And the next read,
I liked last night. Kissing you is fun when you try to bite me. Keep pushing, bottom bitch. I like when you fight.
Rhett
Bottom bitch. Bottom-of-the-pack bitch. Rage boiled in Roman’s blood, and he barely controlled the urge to rip the vile notes to little microscopic pieces and take a piss over them.
Tomorrow night is the night. Shutting down Winter’s Edge. We’ll make it a party, trash the place. Be there at eight, or I’ll take it as an act of treason on my pack.
Rhett
Whoa. Roman read that one out loud to his brothers, and then he read the next ones, too. “Bottom bitch, you weren’t there when I came to see you today. Rhett. Or today. Where are you, Mila? I like this game. Rhett. I saw you with him. Saw it with my own eyes. You thought you could casually date, Mila? Wrong. His blood is on your hands. Don’t push me again, or it’ll be your blood next. Rhett.”
“Jesus,” Gentry murmured, looking sick. “I wonder who he killed?”
“Well, half the damn Striker Pack is missing,” Asher murmured. “So I would venture a guess at all of those. Brian, Sam, Voigt, Robert, Matheson, Krueger, Drake—”
“Dad,” Roman said quietly.
Asher nodded and wrung his hands between his knees from where he’d squatted down. “That hunter in the woods.”
“Sick wolf plus serial killer human,” Gentry gritted out. “No wonder the pack went to battle as soon as Rhett said to attack me and Blaire. They know good and well he’ll kill them if they disobey.”
“Why don’t they leave then? Why don’t they find another pack? A safer one?” Roman asked.
Asher shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Roman read the last letter out loud as gooseflesh rippled across his skin. “Pack meeting at eleven in the woods behind Winter’s Edge. No challenge, no wolves. That fucker dies dishonorably. I’ll be the hand of justice tonight. Pack law will be upheld. Mixing with that human bitch ended his life years ago. Tonight he will be held accountable for all the disgusting things he’s done. Noah
has tainted this pack for long enough. It’s my turn as king now. Be there behind me or die with him. Your choice. Pledges to the new Bone-Ripper Pack will happen right after Noah’s last breath. Rhett.”
Mila’s handwriting was at the top. “This is the worst day of my life.” And then she’d jotted down the date. It matched the day Dad died.
The basket was empty now. She’d put this here for him to find, even before she’d known he would come back to Rangeley. She’d put this here out of desperation that if something happened to the pack and to her, there would be proof of what had gone so wrong in this messed up town.
Mila hadn’t ever been Bottom Bitch. She’d been stronger than any of them.
Roman gripped the letters as his mind spun like a top. This was a huge risk, her leaving this here. If Rhett had caught her… Geez, what did Mila do?
Asher looked right at him as if he’d read his mind. “She just gave us the proof we need to go to war. Now who wants to take on this pack? Who wants alpha? Can’t kill Rhett without taking his throne, so which one of us wears the crown?”
“Not I,” Gentry said in a hard tone.
All Roman wanted was Mila. He’d be miserable as alpha over anyone but her. “Not I.”
Asher swallowed hard and stared at the back wall, as if he could see Ghost Dad, too. “Not I.”
Chapter Eight
“Are you sure you’re okay to be by yourself right now?” Blaire asked. Her bright green eyes were worried.
Mila giggled and shook her head. “Blaire, you almost died, and you’re worried about me right now?”
“I didn’t almost die,” Blaire scoffed. “I had everything under control.” One handed, she turned the old worn steering wheel of a truck Gentry had bought last week. His other one had gone boom the night the Bone-Rippers had attacked him and Blaire.
“Blaire?”
“Yeah?” she asked, pulling into the parking lot of a fast food burger joint on the edge of town where Mila had parked her car earlier.