Or that’s the way it used to be before Trina. Now she was his therapy. She had been for weeks. She was his motivation, his peace. But working wood helped in the hours between seeing her. And this work was an income. There was now a drive inside him to take care of Trina. Oh, that lion never asked since she was independent as fuck, but if she ever slipped, he wanted to be there to prop her up. And that meant saving. It meant putting money away for help if the bar ever went into a dip, money for presents…money for a ring someday because, hell yeah, he was reaching for the damn stars at this point. He would one-hundred percent go crazy or die before he went shopping for diamonds, but it was still fun to think about, still a goal he wished he could achieve, still a gift he would give his bones to be able to give her someday. Trina deserved everything.
He had three orders for matching chair sets sitting in his email right now but was falling behind thanks to the damn wolf. He took the body for too long. Every time Kade woke up, he’d lost days. He’d lost time. He’d lost life. Too much of his time was spent as a wolf. Which sucked for lots of reasons, but most of all he missed Trina. And he missed his shop.
He loved the way it smelled in here. Like sawdust and oil and metal and smoke, paint and wood stain... And one familiar wolf.
Kade turned on his stool. Behind him, Mick, the Second in the Wulfe Clan, was standing in the doorway, blond hair mussed, a motorcycle helmet dangling from his hand, and a dead-eyed stare directed right at Kade. Kade flipped the switch on the saw mid-cut and sniffed the air. There was something else on the breeze, just below the scent of dominant werewolf. It was sickness. Mick was sick. His wolf was unsteady, and the man’s eyes were changing from brown to green and back again. Kade knew all about crazy wolves.
“You’re pretty fuckin’ brave to stare down a beast with a taste for blood as big as mine. Dumb as a post to come into my territory, too.” He pulled off his gloves and tossed his baseball hat onto an old wooden chair in the corner. Shaking his hair out, he asked, “What the fuck do you want, Mick? Besides a slow death?”
“You’ve been causing us problems. Problems. You’ve been causing me problems.” Mick had a tick. He twitched his head twice hard and growled something indecipherable to himself.
“Maybe I’m not the problem,” Kade said.
“We’re considering peace with every Clan in the territory, but we just can’t seem to get you to shut the fuck up or stop fighting.”
Kade smiled, canted his head, and then softly he howled, “Owoooooo.”
“I’m here to give you a choice. Option one, you come into the Clan. You’ve messed with the entire pecking order every fight. We need it steadied out, and something tells me you won’t quit fighting just because we ask politely.”
“Ha! Are you fuckin’ serious? You want me to join your Clan? I would rather piss on an electric fence. Listen carefully, Mick, because I won’t repeat myself. I’ll die before I ever pledge to a werewolf Clan.”
Mick twitched his head twice again. The hand that held the motorcycle helmet shook. “Well, that brings me to option two.”
Kade huffed a laugh. He was already so fuckin’ ready to fight just seeing this asshole in his shop. Inside, his wolf was snarling to be released, and his arms and legs were already tingling with the first signs of the Change. There would be no stopping it now but…go on Mick. Give the wolf even more reason to kill you for trespassing on his territory. “And what’s option two?” He already knew the answer. He just needed Mick the Prick to say it out loud to get his wolf bloodthirsty.
“Option two, you die. Either way, you won’t be messing with the hierarchy of my Clan anymore.”
“You and what army are gonna kill me, Mick? You couldn’t do the job with your entire Clan at the GutShot. I damn near killed your Alpha, so tell me,” he barked out, “why the fuck are you really here?”
Mick lifted his chin higher and stared down his nose at Kade with an empty smile. “I was ordered to give you options. You picked option two, just like I knew you would.”
Mick’s eyes blazed bright green as he pulled a Glock from the back of his jeans.
Coward. Mick was a fuckin’ coward. He had a wolf inside of him, and he brought a gun? Weak. Kade was going to kill him.
Time slowed to a crawl as Mick lifted the weapon. His finger was already on the trigger. His feral eyes were dancing as though he couldn’t wait to pull it. As though he couldn’t wait for revenge for all those times Kade had bested him and his Clan.
They should’ve been stronger.
Kade let the wolf have his body and, shhhhhit, it hurt. When the wolf came out enraged, it was like falling into a fire. He was fire. He was fire and death and everything dark. Kade used to hate it, but in this moment, he embraced the darkness. It was time to use the poison inside of him as a weapon.
He hit the sawdust-covered ground on all fours and dug his claws in, bolting straight for that asshole. There was this satisfying look of shock on Mick’s face. He hadn’t expected Kade to charge him. That much was clear from the way his eyes went round.
Better aim good, Mick. One bullet ain’t gonna save you from me.
With a ripping snarl, Kade bunched his muscles and sailed through the air right for Mick.
And Mick…that coward…that weak wolf…
He pulled the trigger.
Chapter Twelve
Biting her thumbnail, Trina frowned at the door to the bar. Her shift had ended an hour ago. Kade had planned to pick her up and take the motorcycles on a trip to Corvallis, maybe eat lunch along the way. She’d been so excited when he’d asked her, but he hadn’t shown up. It wasn’t like him. Sure, she had to get used to days at a time when he was out in the forest running around as a wolf and unable to Change back, but he usually told her before he was going to go off the rails. Or she could tell from the shaky control he had over the wolf. When it got worse, he was usually close to a Change. But when she’d left his bed this morning, he’d been calm and relaxed. His eyes had even been their human color when he’d walked her to her motorcycle and kissed her goodbye.
Trina had been harboring this awful feeling in her gut all morning—like something was wrong. It was that animal instinct that roughed her fur up the wrong way. Like that clammy feeling right before a big storm that told her to take shelter.
But she’d pushed those feelings to the side while she worked because everything was fine. Kade was doing better with Changes, and Dad was doing good, on a flight to pick up supplies for the Two Claws Ranch. Ten and Kurt were happy as little clams when they’d come in for lunch earlier with Kurt’s little boy, and the bar had actually turned a little profit this month. Life was good. She needed to stop waiting for that other shoe to drop and just accept that she was all right. That she was allowed to be happy without any strings attached.
It was probably just the loss she still felt. When the Darby Clan had made their decision and got themselves killed, she’d had to accept that the ache in her chest was a part of her now. That emptiness was something to get used to. But today, it felt bigger, and she didn’t want to go back to feeling scared of letting people in. She didn’t want to go back to being terrified of loss. Trina wanted to keep moving forward.
He was just running late.
Probably just lost track of time while he was working. He was like that. Very driven. That woodshop out behind the Blackwood Clan house was like Kade’s church. That’s where he found sanctuary, so she should just call him again and see if he picked up.
She hit his number and waited as it rang and rang.
Well…okay…maybe he had his phone turned down and the music up. She imagined his phone on his workbench in between piles of tools, the screen lighting up as she called but the vibration of the call lost in the noise of a rock song. And then she imagined Kade in there working away without a shirt on, sweat dripping slowly down his perfect chest and abs. And then her daydream turned to him pouring a bottled water over his head in slow motion with the saturated sunlight behind him and, holy shit, she needed him to give her some relief.
I need dat dick, she texted, smiling at her own wit as she hit send. Just to let him know she meant business, she glanced around quick, checking to make sure no one was paying a lick of attention to her. She drew her arms in and squished her cleavage together in her V-neck shirt and then took a selfie real fast and sent that to him as well. She wasn’t a man-chaser anymore. She, Trina Luna Chapman, was now a bona fide man-catcher.