“Don’t you have better stuff to—”
“No, Aaron! I don’t. My job comes second to you and the boys. It’s different for me now, and I’m going through all these protective instincts I have no idea how to control, so spill it or I’ll make it my mission to pry it from you.”
“He was telling me to kill you.”
Harper’s mouth dropped open. “W-what?”
“Yeah. He can control what the animal inside of me says. In Bear’s voice and everything. And for a second…for a second, it felt like a real good idea. He told me I should kill you and take alpha.”
“Jesus.”
“Jesus has nothing to do with Aric, Harper. Should I quit? He’s been working night shifts at the station for years and has seniority. What do you want me to do?”
“Firefighting is your livelihood. If you give it up, what will you do?”
Flounder. Spiral. Lose his purpose. But Harper didn’t need to know how much leaving his career would demolish him, so he shrugged and leaned against the counter, eyes passive like he didn’t care either way.
Harper knew him, though, and her sense of awareness had heightened since she’d become alpha. She bit her bottom lip and then told him, “Don’t quit. You aren’t a runner, and Aric doesn’t own Bryson City.”
Aaron snorted. “Just Asheville.”
“Bullshit,” Harper said, looking none-too-impressed. “He is king of one coven of eight vamps, not a million. They’re small-time. Find a way to work with him, Aaron. You need some kind of tentative alliance. Aric won’t convince you to hurt me. He can’t. You’re stronger than him.”
As she made her way to the door, Aaron hoped with everything he had that she was right, because hurting Harper would be like ripping his own heart out.
“Oh,” she said, turning at the door. “Wyatt needs another fight.”
Aaron groaned and rocked his head back. “He can have Second, Harper. I just got him back as a friend. I don’t want us to keep bleeding each other.”
“Look, I get it. I do. But this is how new crews work, and both of your bears need to establish a pecking order. Right now, you two are both dominant enough to run your own crews. You wanted under me, so this is the gig. You fight, you establish a Second, and then we move on.” Her eyes softened as she leaned on the doorframe. “Look, Wyatt’s bear is struggling. He’s used to being alone, and his control is slipping. I really think it’s because of the crew being unsettled still. It feels too chaotic for him. It’s hard for me to watch him go through this.”
“Because you love him?”
“Yeah. I love him more than anything. And I love you, you big dumb oaf, and I don’t care who is my Second so long as it gets worked out, okay?”
As he’d been watching Harper and Wyatt for the last few weeks, something inside of him had been shifting. He’d never wanted anything serious with anyone, but maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if a mate could help him feel settled, like Alana had done in her coffee shop.
Maybe a fight would distract him from the confusion surrounding the pretty woman with the crooked smile. “Fine,” Aaron muttered to Harper. He tossed the unused bandages back into the first aid kit and pulled his shirt off as he followed his alpha outside because, apparently, he wasn’t done fighting for the day.
Alana’s kindness had been wasted on a beast. Aaron had felt the effects of her thoughtful burn cream gesture for less than an hour before Bear was ready to rip out of his skin and brawl again.
Chapter Four
Alana marked out number fourteen on the dream man list. Pursing her lips in concentration, she carefully and completely blacked it out with a permanent marker, then folded the paper and tucked it in her back pocket.
Snatching the basket of pastries off the end of the counter, she strode for the door, turned the hands on her clock sign to say be back in fifteen minutes, and made her way into the crisp winter weather outside. A few stores down, she gave a friendly wave to Fiona Cooper and her daughter who were walking along the sidewalk across the street.
“Hey, Alana!” Fiona called. “How’s business?”
“Just fine,” she lied. Business had never boomed for the coffee shop. In fact, to rent the space and keep up with her bills, she was barely breaking even every month. She’d had all these ideas for her café. Pretty paint colors, a mural on the back wall, chandeliers instead of the crappy, rusty lighting fixtures her landlord insisted on keeping for sentimental reasons. She wanted wood flooring and better display cases for her pastries and an updated kitchen in the back, but all that took money. She’d emptied her savings on startup costs two years ago, and if she was perfectly honest, Alana was disappointed she hadn’t made enough profit to fix it up yet. She’d had all these plans, all these to-do lists, but all those dreams had circled the toilet when she’d failed to make enough to keep the place afloat long-term. She loved the café. It had made her feel brave for starting a business, and her heart belonged in between those four walls. But now she felt like a huge failure that she hadn’t been able to do more for her café. That was the pitfall of starting a niche business in a small town. Not enough customers to sustain shops like hers.
Her heels clacking on the concrete, Alana ducked into the giant open garage door of the fire station. She’d never been in here before, but there were three men cleaning the bright red fire engine that shone in the hanger. And one of those men was none other than the Sexy Yeti she’d met the other day. She’d known he would be here since she’d watched the firehouse for the past three days, waiting for him to show up on his Harley. And this morning, her stalking had been rewarded with the deep rumble of his bike echoing off the early morning Main Street.