Protect Me (Sawtooth Shifters, #3) (4 page)

I loved how cozy this place was. A huge fire roared, and the mismatched wood tables were positioned around it. Instead of the expected hunting souvenirs on the walls, they featured pieces from local artists. “I know we just got here, but I’m having a great time already tonight. I can’t wait to tear up that mountain later,” I said.

What I wanted to say was
thank you for not running after I showed you the worst of me.
I’d gone to war, I’d run toward ticking bombs, but nothing had been scarier than taking off my shirt last night and showing Baron the price I paid.

“Me too.” Baron reached across the table and took my hand again. I wondered if he had any idea what that little gesture was doing to me. “It’s going to be the first of many, if I have my way.”

B
aron

I caught Kiera by surprise when I grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into me for a kiss in the ski area parking lot. All I could think about all day, while I listened to Shadow ramble on about his plan to best everyone in the forest, was kissing her again. It was the only thing that got me through it. The way her soft lips moved against mine, telling me things she didn’t have words for. I had a lot that I needed to tell her too, and this was the best way to do it. No words to get in the way, no complications.

“Told you you’d love the pulled pork.” If I didn’t stop kissing her we’d melt all the snow from the mountain.

“It was good, but I’m not changing my whole life over it yet. Traditions are kept for a reason.” Our footsteps crunched in the ice and dirt in the parking lot. “So what do you usually do here? Half pipe? Rails? Don’t tell me you stick to the green trails. If you do, I’ll stay on them because you paid for dinner, but I’ll give you shit the whole time.”

Keira had to know how much her trash talk turned me on. She did her best to contain her grin but it wasn’t working.

“Bunny slope,” I deadpanned. She laughed, but when I didn’t elaborate, she raised an eyebrow. “I like the back trails,” I added.

I was so close to turning wolf I’d be tearing these trails apart. If it wasn’t the first run of the season, I wouldn’t have brought Kiera with me tonight. At least I’d have a little rust to shake off. I didn’t want to scare the shit out of her on our first official date.

“Black Diamond. Nice. I didn’t expect anything less.” We got our passes and geared up in the ski lodge. The first night of the season was packed, and we waited in line for the ski lift. Kiera looked up the mountain, chewing on her lip. Envy crept over me, I wanted to be doing that. “I’ve never been out there. I always stick to the trick stuff. What’s it like?”

“I get to show you something you haven’t done?” She nodded. Now I was torn between controlling my wolf and ripping down the mountain because Kiera wouldn’t know any other way. I wouldn’t dumb things down for her. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

We settled on the ski lift, the bar locking down in our laps. “There’s a lot of things I want you to show me.”

“Like what?”

She put her hand over mine on the bar. It wasn’t the same wearing gloves, but electricity managed to jolt everything inside me to life. “I want to see you as a wolf. Now that you’re healthy, I’m dying to see you run free.”

“It’s going to be soon.” I glanced up at the sky, the moon just needed a few more days to be completely full. “This month it will be too dangerous for you to be around when we shift. Shadow wants to take care of Ryker.”

Ryker wasn’t the only danger we had to thwart. Major was making himself clear that human mates were unacceptable in his pack. I understood his reasoning, but it was becoming harder than usual to care what Major wanted.

“You should just let me have at him,” Kiera snickered. “He’d never see me coming.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to spend the rest of my life nursing my brother’s bruised ego.” And Major would lose his mind if we brought Kiera into pack business. I was smarter than that. She’d already involved herself, but it needed to stay on a human level. “He needs to be the hero. Let him.”

“What about you? What’s your role going to be in that whole thing?” she asked. I couldn’t read Kiera’s face. Her cheeks were flushed from the cold, and her hat pushed down her eyebrows. Goggles still hung around her neck. In the lights from the trails, confusion and a little bit of fear swirled with my reflection in her eyes.

“I do what I’m told.” The night air crept under my jacket. I couldn’t wait to ride. “I’m second in command to my brother. He and Major are at each other’s throats for control of the pack. No matter who comes out on top, it’s my job to carry out their wishes.”

“But you hate that.” She frowned. “It’s obvious. Your tone changes every time you mention it. Is it being told what to do or being involved in the pack?”

There was a way things were done in Sawtooth. I didn’t have a death wish, so I never questioned what Shadow or Major asked of me. I had to think about my answer. “I love being a part of the pack. We work together as a team, everyone has a job to do. We depend on each other because if one of us doesn’t do what we’re supposed to, the whole thing falls apart. But when I don’t believe in the bigger cause, I can’t do my best.”

“What do you actually do?” she asked. We jumped off the ski lift and the wind cut sharply between us on the top of the slope. “Every time you talk about the pack, you tell me you do what you’re told. But I don’t know what that is.”

“Before we got captured, I helped Shadow run his building business. I wrote bids, I hired subcontracting teams, but my favorite part was actually working on the job sites. Nothing is more satisfying than seeing an empty lot become a home. While we were in captivity, our house burned down. I’d lived with my brothers, and no one had heard from us. We were presumed dead. We lost our house and our business. We need to rebuild. Everything.”

“You’ve been building houses in the new developments?” she asked.  I nodded. “Wasn’t that pack land?”

“Yeah.” Holy shit. We were slapping everyone in the face, building these beautiful houses most wolves couldn’t afford on cleared parcels of forest. Many packs respected my brother because he always made sure to hire wolf labor when the packs desperately needed work, but Shadow struggled for others’ respect. It all made sense. This is why we needed women in the pack. They saw things in a way we didn’t. “Never thought of it like that before. It explains a lot. Both things I love are at total odds with each other.”

“Maybe the silver lining of all the crap that you guys have been through is that you can fix that. Change your business model, do what’s right for your business and the pack,” Kiera suggested as she put her goggles over her eyes. All that was left was her red cheeks and nose, and those luscious lips. A little bow that begged to be unraveled. I knew the real prize was yet to come. “It’s our turn. What am I supposed to do?”

The panic in her voice surprised me. “Trust yourself. Glide down the mountain. Use the natural layout as jumps or pipes if you need to slow down. I’ll be right with you.” I squeezed her hand before launching down the slope. I couldn’t wait any longer.

I’d been starving for this for almost seven months. Wind in my hair, moving with nature, relying on my instincts—riding down the mountain was the closest I’d been to wolf in way too long. We didn’t stay wolf long enough in my opinion when we were free, which made being trapped in our wolf form for six months without being able to run even more torturous. Once all the shit got sorted out, I was taking a vacation. I wanted to spend a month as a wolf on this mountain. Explore every single inch of it.

Kiera wasn’t behind me. Shit. Snow sprayed as I pulled up my board to stop. My muscles burned in the best way, but my heart pounded. I expected to see her come into view, pom pom on her hat bobbing above her board. Even if she hadn’t tried the Black Diamond trails before, she’d need to be a strong rider to do the trick course.

When she didn’t come, I unhooked myself from the board and ran back up the mountain. It was a bitch in these boots, but since I was so close to shifting I moved easily through powder. “Kiera!” I called out, avoiding riders and skiers as they navigated the slope.

No answer.

A small crowd formed ahead, and I had a bad fucking feeling as I ran toward them. Two people protested as I pushed them out of the way.

Kiera lay unconscious. Someone had pulled off her hat and was unzipping her jacket to check for injuries while another person worked on unbuckling her feet from the board.

“What happened?” I asked, dropping to my knees beside her. No blood splattered the snow, just the imprints of footsteps and board grooves. That had to be a good sign. Her eyes were closed, her mouth frozen open in an O. Brushing my fingers lightly over it, I detected slow breath. Better than nothing.

“She dropped like someone hit an off switch,” the person at her feet said.

“Something hit her,” one of the spectators added. “It came from the trees.”

I stood up, searching for bright blue or gold eyes that would catch hints of moonlight between the trees. Ryker liked to admire his destruction, but his goons were pussies. They’d run. Ryker didn’t do his own dirty work. It didn’t stop me from running to the trees, in the direction the rock came from. I didn’t need to see the aggressor, I could smell him. A burning acid filling my nostrils, the stench of rotting hope, a flashback to my time in captivity. I’d never forget that smell. Kiera wasn’t the only one with scars.

Footprints led me to my target. A human, puffing as he lost steam running through the deep snow. I remembered this guy from my time imprisoned on Ryker’s farm. He’d been one of the goons who led us to the fighting ring.

So close to the shift, I gained strength. The assault on Kiera brought every dark, barbaric instinct rushing to the surface. It had been too long since I hunted. I’d either shift or kill this man.

I ripped a fat, low branch from a tree with the same ease that I’d peel a banana. He struggled for air as he turned around to defend himself. He didn’t stand a chance. The branch connected with his skull, knocking him unconscious before he landed in the snow.

Out cold wasn’t good enough. That’s how he’d left Kiera, but I wasn’t giving him the chance to have better aim next time. With Ryker, there would always be a next time. He wouldn’t stop until we were all completely broken.
No.
He’d taken enough from us. The branch in both hands, I continued leveling it down on his head, like Ryker had beaten me and my brothers with a baseball bat too many times to count. Hot, wasted blood turned the snow to strawberry slush. The man’s face had been replaced by pulp. Holy shit. He was definitely dead. The gravity of what I’d done brought me to my knees beside him.

I’d never killed a human before. Deer, elk, and moose, of course. We needed them to survive. One lonely area of my brain attempted to think rationally, reminding me if I hadn’t done this Kiera, one of her friends, or my brothers could have suffered the same fate. But it didn’t take the absolute finality away from being responsible for someone’s last breath.

This secret would follow me to the grave. Baron Channing didn’t kill humans. I didn’t want this war between the packs and everything that went along with it. Especially this. But I’d never forget the way I felt now, my heart pounding against my rib cage with adrenaline, the nausea from looking at the attacker’s ruined face. This could never be just part of my job. Shadow and Major might be able to look themselves in the mirror after something like this, but I wasn’t going to recognize the man in the reflection anymore.

Thankful my ski jacket and pants hid the blood splatters, I went back to Kiera. The crowd had thinned.

“What the hell are you doing?” the woman who’d been checking Kiera for injuries cried. “You can’t move her. We don’t know what happened. Help is on the way!”

“I am the help,” I roared, pulling her limp body into my arms. “She’s going to be fine.”

Protests echoed behind me as I broke away from the crowd. I didn’t respond, I couldn’t convince them I was right. I’d been stupid to ride so far ahead of Kiera. No one followed me, just gave me glares and odd looks as I marched through the snow, the dead weight of an unconscious woman hanging from my arms. I had to go slow to keep my footing, not to hurt her anymore. As far as I knew, the blow to the head was the only injury she had.

This afternoon we’d all laughed at Shadow’s orders to keep an eye on the girls. Now I wondered if I put her in more danger by bringing her out or if they would’ve found her tonight without me.

Kiera moaned. I dropped to my knees, laying her back down in the snow. “Kiera. It’s Baron. Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.” Her voice was mushy and she struggled to open her eyes. “Where are we?”

She had no idea what happened.
Please don’t let her realize there was anything different about me. She’s human, she won’t smell the blood and the evil.
“On Baldy. Do you remember snowboarding?”

“Kinda.” She winced, bringing her hand up to her head. “The last thing I remember is you kissing me.”

Pulling her up, I slanted my lips over hers, recreating our last kiss the best I could. I was so fucking grateful that she was awake and talking that I wanted to add some flourish, but I refrained. This kiss several jobs: to jog her memory, welcome her back to me, and make me forget what I’d just done.

Kiera ran her fingers over my face. She still needed help remembering. “My head hurts.”

“You’re not bleeding. Can I touch it?” She nodded, then stiffened, surprised I knew right where to go. “You’ve got a lump. Someone said they thought you got hit. I should’ve never gone so far ahead of you.”

She laughed softly. Good sign. “I shouldn’t have fallen behind.” She sounded sleepy. “Do you think it’s the same people who came for Trina?” I probably should’ve waited for a medic, but mixing pack and human business would be far messier in the long run. She had a concussion. As long as we were careful, she’d be okay.

“I know it was,” I growled. Kiera slumped against me. Shit. I needed to keep her awake, right? “Can you walk?”

“I think so. Don’t leave me, Baron.”