Axton's hand was still shaking when he reached the truck, and there was nobody out here to see it but Tate.
Behind him the office lamp stayed on, and the woman under it was still standing where he had left her.
He hauled himself into the seat and slammed the door harder than he meant to.
Tate: You going to tell me what the fuck that was, or am I supposed to guess?
Axton: Nothing.
Tate: Nothing. Right. You went up to that glass like a man walking into his own funeral and came back like somebody cracked your ribs open.
Axton drove four miles with his jaw locked before he pulled off the ridge road, killed the engine, and kept both hands on the wheel.
He could still smell her on his own coat. Coffee, cheap soap, and under that the warm skin smell of her.
She had looked at him with her chin up and her pulse banging, and every part of him had wanted to close that last inch.
Tate: Axton.
Axton: She's my mate.
Tate did not say a word for so long that Axton heard the engine ticking and a dog barking somewhere down the hill.
Tate: Say that again.
Axton: Lainey. The clerk. She's mine.
Axton: I knew it the second Vernon put his hand on her wrist, and I have been trying to talk myself out of it since.
It came out flat, like he was reading off the debts the pack owed instead of the one thing that had ever knocked the wind out of him.
Tate: The human. You're telling me the Alpha takes a human mate. A night clerk who counts towed cars on a dead lot.
Axton turned his head slow, and Tate's mouth shut on whatever was coming next.
Axton: I know what she is. I know exactly what she is.
Tate: Then say it plain. Because what I'm hearing is Charlene's daughter, and Vernon's leftovers.
Axton had Tate by the jacket before he knew he had moved, and the whole truck rocked on its springs.
Axton: Say that word about her one more time and I'll put you through the window and explain it to the pack after.
Tate: All right. All right. Shit, Axton. Let go of me.
Axton let go and sat back, knuckles aching, wolf still shoving at the inside of his skin.
He had put his hands on his own second over a woman who had walked away from him twice tonight and had no idea she was the reason his hands were still shaking.
Tate: So what happens now. You claim her, the pack howls about it, and the Duval girl's father takes his money somewhere else.
Axton: Nothing happens. She doesn't find out.
Tate: That's not how a bond works, and you know it.
Axton: It works how I say it works. That's the whole job.
Axton looked down at the town and the little yellow lights of people who ate because he kept the money moving and the peace kept.
Axton: You want the truth. The bond is a risk. Not a gift.
Axton: Half the pack already thinks Anya Duval has my name. Her father's money holds up the ridge.
Axton: And my mate is a night clerk with a dead brother and an ex who likes to put his hands on her.
Axton: You tell me how that reads to a pack that's already looking for a reason.
Tate: Bad. It reads bad. A cold damn risk with a woman's face on it.
Axton: Then it stays quiet until I decide otherwise.
Axton: Nobody hears it from you. Not the healer. Not the boys. Not your own fucking shadow.
Tate: And when it slips anyway?
Axton: Then I'll know who it slipped past, and it won't be a good night for him.
Tate: And when Vernon puts his hands on her again?
The growl started in Axton's chest before he could stop it, low and rolling, and the windows hummed with it.
Axton: Vernon's done putting hands on her. That's the one thing that isn't a secret.
He drove home the long way, which meant past the yard, and he told himself that was about the ice on the ridge road.
Her light was still on. Two shapes behind the glass, the red-haired girl talking with her hands, and Lainey laughing.
His wolf went quiet for the first time all night, and that scared him worse than the shaking had.
Axton: Not a word, Tate. Not one fucking word.
He pulled away before she could look up, with her laugh still sitting in his chest like a fist.