AllFreeNovel
Share Us
When Virginia caught me on her front porch like a watchdog, I tried to play it cool. I tried to make it seem like I was just doing the community a favor instead of her personally. But when I saw the twins pop out the door, I knew it was more than that. These kids didn’t have a father. Whether he was nearby didn’t seem to matter, as he wasn’t in the picture.
Seeing her abandoned like that made me irate. How could a pack held together by wood glue turn away one of their own and leave her by herself? The whole mating thing was to ensure protection. But if that was the only form of protection for people like Virginia, then those people were truly fucked.
This was a service. I was a protector. I would make sure that my pack remained safe, even if those within the pack didn’t do the same for me. Rebellion occasionally worked in my favor, and today it had worked beautifully, keeping those leech-like parents away from the woman who couldn’t defend herself.
Though as the afternoon dragged on, I knew I had to get to Bravecrest land. There were projects happening that needed my attendance. Wendell was working on the new school for the Bravecrest side, and I was the lead in charge. A few texts from my protégé stole me away from Virginia long enough to realize the time.
Sun baked right into my skull as I marched to the other side of the property. Gertie met me at the halfway point, sweating something fierce while holding up a water bottle for me. I waved it back to her, encouraging her to drink. Short red hair clung to her neck and her bangs were plastered to her forehead, pasty coral skin patched red in various places.
Vicious crimson eyes peered at me over the water bottle. She wasn’t mad or anything. That was just how she looked all the time.
She gasped. “Buddy, did you have to make me trek all that way?”
“You gotta cover my ass for this morning.”
“Slater, did you pick somebody up again last night?”
My eyes couldn’t have rolled harder. That was one thing Virginia and I shared—we rolled our eyesa lot. Maybe I got it from her, or she got it from me. It was hard to say when we’d been attached at the hip so long ago. Having her by my side again ruffled some feelings I thought had been cemented in the past.
I rustled my hair thoughtfully. “Well, no.”
“So, what’s up?”
“Nothing.”
She huffed and started heading to the construction site just past the neighborhood houses. “Bull.”
“Do I look like I have a septum piercing?”
“It’s about a chick, isn’t it?”
She wasn’t wrong, but… “No.”
“I can’t cover you if I don’t know why.”
“It’s not a chick. It’s a woman.”
She swigged the water victoriously.
“Shush,” I warned. “She’s a single mother with twins and she had some creep-o stalking her. Nobody else was going to do anything about it, so I did.”
“Did you smash his teeth?”
I laughed briefly and then cut the sound with a frown. “No. Do I look like someone who would waste that kind of energy?”
“Is she cute?”
“She’s—” I blinked through the brain fog. This sounded like a trap for more information thatdidn’tneed in Gertie’s head. “Irrelevant, okay? Just tell Wendell that I was working out of sight or something. Sheesh.”
She waved me off. “Fine, fine. But you owe me a burgie special atThe Greasy Jester.”
“That the shifter bar in town?”
She nodded. “You in?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m in. Get out of here, you twerp.”
She giggled, capped the bottle, and took off ahead of me. Gertie was the kind of gal to want to get her hands dirty rather than cake makeup on her face. She did a lot of things that Virginia would probably do, like hopping trains and going camping. She had never been my type, but word around the neighborhood was that she had the hots for somebody who worked at that damn shifter bar. No idea the guy’s name.
