Harper rubbed her eyes with her fingertips and sighed out a heart-wrenching sound. “You need to eat. And then you need to clean up your house and pack your bags.”
“Can’t. I’m in this.” He rolled his eyes over the rafters of his cabin. “My bear is wanting to set up territory. I choose the Smokey Mountains.”
“Well, un-choose them and convince your bear to come back to Damon’s mountains. You can’t be here alone.”
Then stay. Stay with me. The question was there on the tip of his tongue, but she deserved better than a broken man who begged. She deserved him stronger. “Saratoga isn’t my home anymore, Harper. There’s too many shifters up there, too little territory. There is nothing for me there.”
“Except your family, Wyatt! Except your friends.” Anger sparked in her eyes. “Except. Me.”
He huffed a breath and sank down on the couch. Maybe the room would stop spinning. “Harper, you and I both know you aren’t mine. Beaston called it from day one.”
“No, he said I was destined to be with a great alpha—”
“Exactly.”
“You’re so blind, Wyatt. You can’t see the path that is right in front of you. The path you threw away.”
“I’m trying to find it again!”
But Harper was good and done, and the only answer she gave was the slamming of the door.
And then he was alone again.
Just like a villain deserved.
****
Wyatt was a dumbass, not a villain. She shut her car door beside her and slammed her open palm against the steering wheel until she felt better.
Oh, he was good. He’d trained himself to push everyone away, but she wasn’t easily moved anymore. Okay, so Wyatt had listened to some prophecy and promptly exited her romantic life. Great. That was fine. She accepted it. His absence in her love life was his choice, not hers.
But everything in her said Wyatt needed a friend right now. Maybe not emotionally, but if he was going to survive the wrath of a coven, he needed numbers.
With a growl, she hit the speed dial of her cell and glared at Wyatt’s cabin as it rang and rang. On the third chime, a familiar voice answered. “Hey, cuz.”
Harper couldn’t help the smile that stretched her lips. She always loved talking to Aaron. “Hey, remember that favor you owe me?”
“Yeees,” he drawled suspiciously.
“I’m calling it in. Can you get some time off work?”
“Well, since my family name is on the damned fire house, yeah, I could take some R and R. Please tell me we’re going somewhere tropical.”
“I found Wyatt.”
The line went silent. Several heartbeats later, Aaron asked, “Where?”
“North Carolina. He could use some friends right now.”
“To sing kumbaya with?”
“Nah, something tells me he wouldn’t be into that. You may want to bring your wooden stakes.”
“Vampires?” She didn’t miss the hint of excitement in his tone. Aaron Keller was a complete hellion with an inner grizzly that thrived on chaos.
“Yep.”
A long, deep chuckle of glee resonated through the speaker. “Send me the address.”
The line went dead, and Harper blew out a steadying breath before she hit the next number.
Aaron was always going to be the easy one.
The others were flight risks and would have to be lured in more carefully.
Two phone calls, a shit-ton of cursing and bullying, one feral roar to let one of the boys know she was serious, and an hour of pleading, and she was back to figuring out her next move.
Wyatt was fucked up.
It was more than the vampire who’d been gnawing at this neck, though that would be enough to break a proud man like him. There was something more going on here. He’d spoken of not being ready for closure, of trying to save her. He’d built a mountain of secrets over the last decade, crawled up the pile of his mistakes, and there he sat, the King of Silence. The King of Nothing. That’s not how she’d imagined his life would be.
Problem number one: Wyatt was alone.
Why the fuck was he alone? Even she could tell what kind of bear he harbored. He was so dominant it was hard to breathe around him, but he had zero submissive animals under him to keep him steady. Harper exhaled a pissed-off sigh and narrowed her eyes at his little cabin. Crews weren’t just safety in numbers. They were affection and touch, which were so important to shifters to keep their animals sated. Loner shifters went mad. They took their own lives or were put down by alphas trying to protect humans.
Problem number two: Wyatt was sharing territory with a coven of angry vamps and one scary-as-hell Blackwing Dragon. Even if he was strong enough to live as a rogue, Wyatt wouldn’t last long alone. Not surrounded by enemies like these. And Harper would be damned if she was going to leave here not knowing if she would ever see Wyatt alive again.
She shoved open her door and shouldered her duffle bag again. It was too late to get a room at the bed and breakfast in town, and she wasn’t sleeping in the car smack-dab in the middle of vamp-land.
Even the short walk to the cabin was creepy, just thinking about all those blood suckers. What would’ve happened to Wyatt if she hadn’t shown up tonight? Chills blasted across her skin, and she hurried her steps so she could see him sooner. So she could remind herself he was still here, still breathing.
Some of the living room had been tidied, but only the single light in the kitchen was on. Most of the wreckage had been kicked into a pile near the front door. Long claw marks covered the surface of the couch cushions, and the stuffing had been ripped out. All that remained of her planned sleeping spot was the hard, cushion-less backing. Two springs had even breached the thin fabric. Nope.