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“Same goes for you, babe. Yet you carried her broken body ten miles back to the cabin.”
“I didn’t have a choice.” I give him a meaningful look.
“She’s fragile.”
“Fragile like a nuke.”
One wrong move, and she detonates in a shock wave of seething words and destruction.
“I’m fucking over it.” I swipe a hand down my whiskered face. “She’s spent the past week crying for her husband. When she’s not bawling his name, she’s cursing it and plotting his murder. The woman has issues, and we don’t need this shit upsetting the balance we’ve worked so hard to establish.”
“I don’t care. She’s here now.” With a shrug, he treads toward the stairs. “I like her.”
Of course, he does. And that’s a fucking problem.
“Love is cruel,” I call after him. “You could fall for a goat.”
He flips me off as he descends the stairs.
I turn back to the door as Denver steps out.
“Don’t ask me to fetch her meals again.” I meet his tired gaze.
“I didn’t ask, Son. And I’m not asking now.” He nods at the door. “Clean up the mess.”
Or what?
But I already know. The repercussion isn’t worth it.
“I’m going to take a shower.” Denver squeezes my shoulder. “Watch her until I return.”
I know what he’s trying to do. It won’t work.
Not on me, at least.
I grab towels from the bathroom and return to the bedroom to find her sitting on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest.
She looks feral, the way she tracks my approach with slitted eyes, her teeth bared, and her hair knotted around her shoulders. She looks like she wants to set me on fire and eat my charred heart.
Pretending to ignore her, I tackle the oatmeal sprayed across Kody’s bed and the wall beside it. He hasn’t slept here since she arrived. I’ve hardly seen him. But I’m not surprised. He’s smart enough to keep his distance.
As I pull the soiled bedding off his bed, she breaks the silence.
“You knew I was pregnant.”
I pause and peer at her over my shoulder.
She’s not looking at me, her eyes locked on the box of first aid supplies Denver left on the desk. The stockpile includes some new additions from his last flight, medications he stole, such as antibiotics, painkillers, and…
Prenatal vitamins. That’s what holds her attention.
“I didn’t know.” I drop the bedding by the door.
“Bullshit.”
“Why would I lie? I don’t give a fuck what you think.” I pick up the bottle of vitamins and toss them in the trash. “Denver obviously knew about your condition.”
“My condition…” Her voice chokes on a sob, and she swallows it. “Why would—?”
“Why would he kidnap a pregnant woman? Take that up with him.”
“I did. His answers are as convoluted as Wolfson’s. If there’s a sane person in this house, I’d like to speak to him.”
A smirk pulls my lips as I return to the oatmeal on the wall.
“Why do you call him Denver?” she asks my back.
“That’s his name.”
“He’s your father.”
“I’m not a child.”
There are too many alphas in Hoss, and none of us are willing to submit to a pecking order. That wasn’t a problem until she showed up.
“Do you have a close relationship with your dad?” She clears her throat. “Does he love you and treat you well?”
Loving us has never been an issue. The problem with Denver is he loves us too much.
“Yes.” I dump the dirty laundry in the hall, shut the door, and lower myself onto the chair at the foot of the bed.
Silence is my companion. I live with it for weeks at a time when I go hunting or when my brothers need a break and seek isolation in the other buildings. But I’ve never shared the stillness with a beautiful woman.
Even in her state of sickness and grief, she’s shamefully gorgeous. Where did Denver find this creature?
Sitka, she said. Do all the women there look like this?
I try not to stare at her slim, pale legs, bent at the knees, heels digging into the white comforter. Only days ago, that bedding was soaked in her blood. A river of it endlessly leaking from between her legs. She should’ve died.
I wish she had.
Her fingers wrap around her tiny ankles, her arms willowy and so very breakable. She’s impossibly small, too delicate for this place. Denver never should’ve brought her here.
My gaze flicks between the sleep shorts that expose her thighs and the green eyes that expose her anger as they bore into me.
Her lips purse. “Why am I here?”
“To tear apart our family.”
Denver wants control back, to become top dog again, and he intends to use her to achieve that. That’s the pretty explanation. The whole truth is much uglier. Darker. Too unfathomable to consider.
“I want no part of your family. Let me go.” She blasts me with those huge emotional eyes. “Or let me die.”
