“Uh, got jumped by some psycho,” he said, scratching the side of his nose. Josh was once a buff guy on the football team, but time had worn away all that brawn. Now he stood around five feet ten inches and had a potbelly. His reddish-blond hair was shaved close to his head, and his once golden skin was now mottled and freckled in places.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. “Robbery at the gas station?”

“Nah. I was driving around and, I don’t know. So how you been? You still seeing that big dude with the pythons?”

By pythons, he meant Beckett’s arms.

“No, we split up.”

“That’s too bad. I just broke up with some chick I met online. Stay away from those dating services.”

“Why’s that?”

He nodded at the man behind the counter. “Ham and cheese to go. And a pickle.” Josh put his hand on the counter and scoped out a blonde who walked inside carrying a small dog under her right arm. “Most of them use pictures they took ten years and two babies ago.”

What a pig. “You don’t have kids?”

“Hell no. At least, none that I know about.”

I impatiently glared at the manager. He was putting the last toppings on the salad and I suddenly wished I had ordered my lunch to go. Please do not let Josh get the bright idea to join me.

“I love kids,” I declared in a bright voice. “Can’t wait to have a bunch of them.”

His brows popped up.

“Miss, here’s your salad.”

The man behind the counter slid my tray forward and I grabbed the ends, looking back at Josh. “Well, take care, and good luck with everything.” What else could I say? It’s not as if he was an old friend, and the conversation was just weird and a little sad.

I walked to the back of the quaint little deli and set my tray on a small wooden table beside the soda fountain machine. When the heavy legs of the chair scraped back, Josh sidled up beside me. “Can I join you? I’ve got the afternoon off and we can catch up on old times.”

Old times of him pawing me in the front seat of his dad’s Pontiac? No, thanks.

“Sorry, Josh. I have a lot on my mind and I’d rather be alone,” I said, sitting in the wooden chair.

“Maybe we can talk about it,” he suggested, leaning forward with his hand on the table, obscuring my view.

I poked my plastic fork in a boiled egg and sat back. “No offense. I really need to be by myself right now.”

“Problem?” a deep, scary voice rumbled from behind him.

Josh stiffened and looked over his shoulder. Austin stood with his arms folded and the most volcanic gaze I’d ever seen. He looked wolfish, like a predator stalking his prey. His dark brows sank over his bright eyes, and the way he looked at Josh gave me the chills.

Apparently, it gave Josh the chills too.

“See ya, Lexi,” Josh mumbled, walking swiftly to the door without waiting for his sandwich.

“You seem to always show up at the most convenient times,” I noted. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were following me.” My statement was a question in disguise.

Austin pulled out the chair across from me and slowly sat down, resting his forearms on the table. He was wearing a sleeveless black shirt and my eyes stole a glimpse of his remarkable tattoos.

“How did it go with your mom?”

“Are you following me?” I repeated.

Austin rubbed his jaw and gave himself away. “What did that asshole say to you?”

I tapped my finger on the table and something clicked. “Are you the one who put those bruises on Josh’s face?”

“I heard everything you said at the cemetery and that’s all I needed to know. I didn’t like hearing about the way he treated you.”

“I was fifteen, Austin. He was just doing what boys do.”

That pissed Austin off something fierce as his expression tightened and he scorched me with his eyes. “Time doesn’t erase stupidity. You should have told us back then and we would have taken care of it. Do you think I treated girls like that? Do you think Wes did?”

I snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you rolled out the red carpet and showered them with rose petals and poetry before popping their cherries. Don’t play knight, because boys are boys and all boys think about is s-e-x.” I stabbed a tomato with my fork.

His voice became smooth like molasses as he leaned forward. “I’m not a boy anymore, Lexi. Are you going to sit there and tell me you never think about sex?”

Damn if that didn’t make my toes curl.

“If I had known all this was going on when we were younger, you might have wound up seeing a darker side of me, Lexi. I didn’t have sex until I was nineteen, and fuck it if that makes me a big pussy because I waited so long, but having sex with a girl who wasn’t even a woman never seemed right, even then. That’s the difference between Shifters and humans,” he said in a quiet voice. “I got a lot of shit for it back then from Wes and some of my human buddies in school, but none of my brothers said a damn thing. That’s just the way it is in our world.”

“My mom confirmed what you said. I’m adopted.” I bit into the tomato and sighed. Suddenly, it didn’t taste as good as I’d hoped. It had all the bitterness that was already in my mouth from learning the truth.

“You okay?”

I flicked my eyes up and my heart skipped a beat. Austin had that look.

The look.

The swoon-worthy look that made my palms sweat. All the rough edges in his voice were gone, and it was the smooth timbre of concern I’d heard on rare occasions when he was being soft and not treating me like his best friend’s kid sister. Except now, with his broad shoulders and bold tattoos, he was shrouded in mystery.

“I guess.” My shoulders sagged and I set the fork down. “She doesn’t know where I came from because I wasn’t adopted. My father brought me home and my mom doesn’t have a clue who my real parents are.”

“Palmer, your order is ready,” the cashier called out.

Austin rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Shifters, of course. But we don’t give up our own.” Austin ran his index finger along his eyebrow and glanced at my salad. “Eat your lunch.”

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

Austin leaned in closer and slowly pushed my bowl toward me. “It’s not good to starve your wolf,” he warned. “They get angry and pace until they’re ready to take over. Don’t try to deny what you are, Lexi. It won’t go away just because you choose to ignore it. I need to talk to you later about this—tonight. I’m here because I’ve been keeping an eye on you today. I don’t want anything upsetting you or else you might shift.”

I licked my dry lips and held my breath. Something in me was starting to believe him and I didn’t know if it was brainwashing or insanity.

“Could that happen?”

Austin slid my salad to the side and leaned across the short table, curling his finger for me to do the same. I leaned in and his mouth grazed against my ear.

“I’m a bounty hunter, Lexi, and I protect what’s mine. You don’t have anything to worry about, because if you shifted in this room, I’d lay to waste any man who tried to capture or kill your wolf. Are we clear?”

My cheeks flushed and the bristles of his jaw immediately rubbed against my skin. Something had changed in Austin, all right. There was raw power in not only his words, but in his presence. I felt it, just as sure as I felt his whiskers prickling against my cheek. A thick tension built between us and something inside me began to pace.

Austin was offering me more than his friendship—he was offering protection.

“Just so we’re clear,” I pointed out, “I’m not yours.”

I felt his smile stretch across my cheek and his breath melted against my ear like hot wax. “What time do you get off work? I want you to meet my pack.”

* * *

“This is where you live?”

I scanned our surroundings in the dark woods, leaning against Austin’s black Dodge Challenger. The gravel road led to a rather large house nestled in the middle of nowhere. The front yard was dirt and pebbles, and to the right, a couple of cars were parked beside horseshoes and a rusty metal pin staked into the ground. A crooked light pole lit up the side of the house and the woods were thick with native trees. I cupped my elbows and a twig snapped beneath my foot.

Austin chuckled. “Come on, Lexi. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

He took a few steps and looked over his shoulder at me. It was out of character for me to be so timid, so he walked up and held my face with his strong hands. “You’re always safe with me, Lexi. I want you to know I won’t let anything bad happen to you. My brothers are good guys, even if they are rough around the edges. You can trust them.”

“Pack or brothers?”

“What’s the difference?”

Austin took my hand and led me to the front door. A motion sensor light clicked on and he slid the key in the lock. I could already hear rowdy chatter inside and found myself gripping his hand tighter.

The door swung open and I stared into an entryway with a view of an atrium that was in the middle of the house. It was a small, grassy enclosure with a barbecue grill in one of the corners. I might not have seen it had the light outside not been flipped on, and there was no roof, so it was open. The wall on the right stopped at an entrance to another room, but I hadn’t moved from the front door because I was a bundle of nerves.

“That must be Austin,” someone said from the room on the right. “Hey, Aus, I hope you brought some beer because dickhead drank the last of it.”

I stepped back a little and Austin shut the door, kicking off his shoes and adding them to the pile in the corner. As a courtesy, I took off my white tennies.