Shit, shit, shit. Wyatt swallowed hard, over and over, and clenched Aaron’s shirt harder. “I’m sorry.”
Aaron gripped the back of his neck painfully hard, then released him and slung his arm over his shoulder. This was so strange. The Aaron of his memories was a lanky boy who looked downright emaciated next to the other men in the Breck Crew. He’d hit his grizzly growth spurts and now was a dominant bruin with at least seventy extra pounds of muscle on his frame. Tattoos peeked out from under the edge of his sleeves, and he had blond facial hair, only a couple shades darker than the hair on his head. He had piercings and ink and was built like a tank, and Wyatt was having a damn hard time meshing the way Aaron looked now with the memory he had of him.
Aaron beamed. “You should see your face right now. You look like you’re seein’ a ghost.”
Wyatt laughed. “I am. I’m looking at the ghost of the kid I used to know. I’m gonna call you Roid Rage from here on.”
Aaron shoved him hard and shadow boxed with him for a minute. “Yeah, well, you don’t look the same either. You been hittin’ the weights?”
“No,” they both said at the same time and laughed. Bear shifters didn’t have to spend time in the gym. They just had to feed their bodies plenty of red meat.
“Other than that, though, you look like shit,” Aaron said, blond brows arched high. He jerked his chin toward Wyatt’s neck. “You been feedin’ vamps?”
“Long story.”
“Which you will tell me because I’m gonna be here for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“I heard you’re fighting vamps…I want in. I’m bored out of my mind in Breckenridge. It’s like an ice cream social every other day, and I know all the girls there.”
“Oh, yeah? And they aren’t putting up with your shit anymore?”
“Exactly.” Cupping his hand around his mouth, Aaron greeted his cousin with a bellowing, “Harper!”
Harper stood on the broken porch, leaning against the post with a mushy smile on her face as though she’d seen their entire exchange.
Aaron pointed to the soggy pile of ash in the distinct shape of a man on the broken stairs “Gross.” He hopped over and lifted his cousin into the air, squeezing until she giggled.
To Harper, Wyatt mouthed, Did you do this?
Those sexy lips of hers curved up even higher as she nodded. Huh.
More rumbling sounded from down the road, and son of a gun, what now? Wyatt was already damn near weeping like a twelve-year-old girl at a boyband concert.
Two jacked-up Chevy’s raced up the driveway toward them, zigzagging through the woods when the road got too thin for both. Someone was laughing like a psycho out their open window, and Wyatt squinted at the heavy tint to try and figure out who was driving.
The gunmetal gray truck skidded into the yard first, rooster-tailing mud until it rocked to a stop in front of the other one.
“You cheated, you mother fucker!” That voice was sort of familiar, but deeper.
Two slamming doors echoed through the clearing, and two more ghosts from Wyatt’s past strode up to him, both of them looking like a pair of body builders jacked up on protein.
Ryder’s hair was redder and his freckles darker than Wyatt remembered from the last time he saw him. And when the strutting giant grinned right before he pulled Wyatt into a hug that nearly killed him, he looked nothing shy of feral. He picked Wyatt up off the ground and drove him backward, whacking him on the back hard enough to sound like the snaps of a whip.
“This guy,” Ryder said, dropping him abruptly and shoving Wyatt back to arms’ length. “Fucking North Carolina? That’s where you were hiding this whole time?”
“For the last few years, yeah. Man, the last time I saw you, you were nothin’ but a scrawny pipsqueak,” Wyatt said in disbelief.
“I growed up,” Ryder joked.
“Yeah, but is all this necessary for a snowy owl shifter,” Wyatt said, whacking him on the stony chest.
“Nah, but the ladies love it. I need to have a pretty lure if I want to catch the pretty fishes.”
“Really?” Harper muttered from behind them.
“Have you ever been fishing in your life?” Aaron asked. “That’s not at all how it works.”
“Aaron!” Ryder called out. “Damn, Harper’s calling the riffraff in.” He bolted up onto the porch toward a chuckling Aaron.
Wyatt blew out a breath before he turned to Weston. He’d been the only one who had come and found Wyatt after he’d left. Maybe the others had tried, he didn’t know, but Weston was the best tracker Wyatt had ever known. And for years, the Novak Raven had it in his head that he was gonna bring Wyatt back to Saratoga. They hadn’t parted well on their last encounter.
Weston had a camouflage baseball cap covering his jet black hair, and his eyes were darkened from their normal green to the bottomless black of his inner raven. He wasn’t smiling like the others. Instead, he stood there with his arms crossed over his chest and his face angled, exposing his neck. Wyatt hated that. It was his formal way of respecting Wyatt’s dominant bear, but he wished it was an easier greeting, like the others had given him. He understood, though. This tension was on him.
“I’m here because Harper asked me to be.” Weston offered his hand for a shake, then yanked Wyatt forward. “Hurt her again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
“Noted,” Wyatt gritted out, pulling his hand from Weston’s and putting space between them.