"It's a big one," she said, winning the fight.
Her shoulder was against his, and her face was just a few inches from his jaw. Her scent surrounded him, making his inner wolf whine. Lilac and clean cotton filled his nose.
He'd smelled her scent before, at Steel Protection and at Sweet Summit. But right beside her in the boat, the scent was a thousand times stronger. He could smell something under the lilac scent. A scent he'd learned to recognize from the pack's new mothers.
Reese was pregnant.
She kept reeling while his mind spiraled. The fish came within reach. He dipped the net under it and lifted it out of the water. The trout was big and solid, easily twice the size of everything they'd let go. He crouched silently beside her with the netted fish between them.
His mate was carrying her abuser's child.
The wolf rose in his chest, a low growl in his mind, claws scraping his eyes, teeth lengthening in his gums. He was stunnedstill while Reese worked the hook free of the trout's jaw beside him.
Whether Wade knew about the pregnancy or not, the threat assessment increased a hundredfold. A man hunts a runaway wife one way. He'd hunt the mother of his child another. Axel had the net handle in his fist and made himself loosen his grip before the plastic cracked.
Reese sat beside him, not paying attention to his shocked state while she wrangled the trout. He finally made himself move.
"You're keeping that one," he said, giving her a bright grin.
"Oh yeah." She slipped the trout into a plastic bag, sealed it, and set it in the cooler. "That's lunch."
Axel hadn't even noticed she'd removed the hook and dispatched the fish. She grinned, pleased with her catch. He sat back at the oars and started rowing, trying to keep his face straight.
"There's a fire ring on the far shore," he finally said. "I brought lunch, but I also prepared for if we caught something."
He continued to row toward the shore, but everything he thought he knew about Reese's case had changed.
Chapter
Ten
Axel roweduntil the front of the boat scraped onto the gravel. He lifted the oars out of the water, stepped over the side, and pulled the boat farther onto the beach. Reese climbed out with the rope in her hand and tied it to the iron ring in the boulder.
He carried the cooler. Reese got her water bottle and her bag, and they went up the beach together.
The picnic ground sat just above the beach. There was a steel fire ring, a weathered table, and fir trees close behind. For a moment, the quiet pressed in. She was far away from town and alone on a secluded strip of shore with a man she barely knew. Anxiety sprang in her chest.
Then Axel set the cooler on the table, and she stepped back out of instinct. She took a breath, and the fear passed. Axel had helped her scrub her name from the internet. He was protecting her. She had no reason to fear him.
He built the fire quickly, using shavings and kindling. It lit on the first match, and he added larger pieces as it grew. Shewatched him crouch over the fire, the T-shirt stretched across his shoulders, the muscle in his forearms shifting as he fed the flames. She thought there were worse ways to spend an afternoon than watching a quiet man build a fire and not ask her for anything.
He laid the grate across the fire ring and unpacked the cooler. Salted tomatoes, crusty bread, butter, peaches, lemonade, oil, herbs, lemon, plates, forks, and folded cloth napkins. He had packed for the fish before they caught it.
He cleaned the trout at the water's edge, rubbed it with oil, herbs, and lemon, and laid it over the coals. The bread toasted beside it. When the fish flaked, he gave her the bigger share, spooned tomatoes onto her plate, and poured her lemonade. The peaches went cut-side down over the heat for later.
She thought of Stella in the window booth while Blaze put her new shoes on her tired, pregnant feet. She took her first bite of trout, and it was the best thing she'd eaten in years. She'd caught it herself, and Axel had been by her side, cheering her on while he let her take the glory.
She'd been looking at the tattoo on his forearm all afternoon. It was a river, inked in gray along the back of his forearm, with lighter lines where the water moved fast and darker shading where it slowed.
"What's the river tattoo about?" she asked.
He turned his forearm so she could see the whole of it. "It's the South Platte. A river that runs through Denver. There's a fire station near it, a few blocks off the water." He looked at the ink instead of at her. "Somebody left me at that station when I was a few days old."
The fire ticked. She didn't know what to say. So, she let it sit, the same way he had when she told him such heavy things.
"The state named me. Axel, a play on words for the part of a fire truck. And Rivers for the South Platte."
He told her the rest without making her ask for it — the foster homes that never lasted, the knack for computers that became his one constant, Dom finding him through the work and offering him a place with Savage Steel. No family had ever come back to claim him.
