The sign was dilapidated and some of the lightbulbs behind the letters had burned out. Inside, the tile floors had been cracked, and the walls a bland shade of eggshell white. She’d hung colorful pictures on the walls, but not even those could distract from the water-damaged ceiling tiles near the door or the shoddy wainscoting that had been installed. She probably rented the building and wasn’t allowed to make many changes. He could do a lot for the place.
Aaron shook his head hard again. Stop it. She didn’t need his help to fix up her shop. That woman was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
The café was right down the road from the station, and damn it all, as much as he wanted to convince himself she wasn’t a big deal, he was already plotting ways to go back after every shift and fuel up on coffee and boners before his trip back to Harper’s Mountains. Pathetic.
The coffee wasn’t half bad, but it was Alana’s animated eyes and crooked smile that had thoroughly distracted him from the verbal reaming he’d taken from Chief. “You can’t kill your co-workers,” and yada, yada. Aaron had stopped himself from staking Aric with the wooden handle of his ax, so really, Chief should be giving him a damn trophy for his self-control, not giving him a speech about how he’d hired Aaron because of his family name, and how he needed to live up to expectations. The Kellers were Fire Bears with a well-known honorable name in their Breckenridge community and around the world. They were the origin—the first to come out as shifters to the public over twenty-five years ago. For a long time, Aaron had been part of the chaos that surrounded those uncertain times, working in the same firehouse with his father, Cody Keller, and two uncles, Boone and Dade. Aaron had lived in the shadow of his name, and apparently that shadow stretched all the way to Bryson City, North Carolina.
He didn’t regret moving here to be a part of Harper’s crew, but damn it was hard figuring out how he fit in.
Pulling through the gate of Harper’s land gave him a warm sensation like it always did. No matter what was going on in the firehouse, this place felt like home. Maybe it was the people here, the Bloodrunner Crew he was a part of, or maybe it was the land itself. Maybe it was the first cabin he passed with the lopsided house number 1010 beside the door. Or maybe it was that he’d pledged his fealty to Harper Keller, one of the last Bloodrunner Dragons. The invisible thread that linked them had been pulled taut during his shift at the station, but it loosened as he made his way past 1010. He was bound to Harper now and always felt better around his alpha.
Farther up the dirt road on the right, there was a double cabin sharing a roof, but separated by a breezeway in the middle. Weston Novak and Ryder Croy were probably still asleep in their beds. Aaron drove slowly up to the last cabin, the smallest. His humble abode. His bear settled even more when he parked his bike next to his old truck under the metal awning he’d installed. On snow-days, he would have to give up his bike, but it wouldn’t be as bad as in Breckenridge where snow reigned in the winter months.
He had two days to recover and find his center again before his next twenty-four-hour shift at the station, and he planned to use that time to work on his cabin. The old creaky shack had barely been livable when he’d moved in last month, and he needed to make it weatherproof for the oncoming winter.
The first thing he did was turn on the heat. His little two-bedroom house was just as cold inside as it was outside right now. Since his arm felt like he was holding a hot poker against it, Aaron pulled the giant first aid kit out from under the bathroom sink and rummaged around in it for some pain relief. Shifter healing was one of the perks of having the inner animal, but burns were rough. They were slower to heal and most of them scarred. Yet another mark from Aric. Someday, he was going to kill that mother fucker. He was biding his time now, sure, but someday, someway, he was going to drive wood through that vamp’s chest cavity and piss on his ashes.
“Knock, knock,” Harper said softly as she rapped her knuckles on his bathroom door.
He startled and let off a warning snarl. “Dammit, Harper, you can’t just barge in here. What if I wasn’t decent?”
“I’ve seen your dick every time you’ve shifted since we were practically zygotes. Calm your balls, man.” Her eyes, one brown, one blue with a long pupil, pooled with worry. “What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he murmured, the same answer he always gave her. Talking about what happened on his fire shifts never made him feel better. The faster he pushed everything out of his mind, the better for Bear.
The long, low rumble of Harper’s dragon vibrated the bathroom as he cleaned the wound under cold water. “I could order you,” she ground out.
“But you wouldn’t because you’re better than that.”
“Alphas make orders all the time, Aaron. Don’t act like me caring is me being weak.”
He inhaled, then blew out an irritated sound. “Aric has mind control abilities.”
“What,” Harper drawled out. “You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not. He made a woman tell me her baby was still in a burning house, and then he was in my mind telling me…” He made a ticking sound behind his teeth and winced as he slathered his burn with medicine from the kit. “Forget it.”
“Telling you what?” Harper lowered the lid on the toilet and took a seat on the porcelain thrown. His queen. “Tell me now, or I’ll bug you all day.”