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5

Stealth Is My Middle Name

In Harry’s experience, morning-after regret usually came on the heels of a few empty tequila bottles and the disappearance of a favorite pair of panties. This time, it was due entirely to the previous morning’s run-in with Jax.

No naked shenanigans. No alcohol. Just a simple agreement that would potentially put them in close proximity again and again. Day after day.

The odometer of Nora’s hatchback rolled, and so did her stomach, a repetitive sensation since being back in Fates Haven, and one she wished she could shake off.

“It would be understandable if you want a few days to adjust to all these recent changes before diving right into things,” Harry heard herself say. “Nora mentioned picking up some stuff to make your room feel more like yours. We could go shopping… or something.”

Silence from the passenger seat had her glancing right.

“What?”

“Wasn’t the entire point of this cross-country relocation to work with the Rocky Mountain Pack to see if they can help me find answers? That won’t happen while shopping for a blue comforter.”

Of course she chose that moment to break out the maturity.

Grace studied her carefully. “Do you not trust Alpha Atwood? Or do you not trust this Alpha Atwood?”

“That’s not a simple answer.”

“Actually, it kinda is.”

Did Harry trust Jaxon?

With Grace’s physical safety? Yes. There wasn’t anything Jax wouldn’t do to keep the people under his care safe. Being a protector was ingrained in his DNA. But did she trust him with Grace’s heart?

That was the trickier answer to give.

Heartbreak happened—intentionally or not—with any formed attachment. And there would be an attachment. To Jax. To Nora. To Fates Haven itself. Though Grace was now overwhelmed by all the unknowns, the town’s magic and its inhabitants would work their way into her heart until they became an integral, invaluable part of her very existence.

It’s how the magic worked.

It’s how the town worked.

Harry mistakenly thought thirteen years and nearly two thousand miles were enough time and distance to work Fates Haven out of her system, but that idea had been nothing but stubborn denial, a flaw in her thinking that became more evident with each passing day.

She carefully considered her words. “Jax wasn’t the Alpha Atwood I pictured helping us, but there’s a reason his mother left him in charge. He’ll do whatever he can to help you, even if that’s helping us find someone who might be able to do it better.”

“Then what’s with bribing me with a shopping excursion?”

Harry kept her eyes on the road as she navigated the pebbled lane leading up to the RMP front gate. “Because the last few days have been a lot, and I wouldn’t fault you for needing time to get your legs underneath you and feeling a bit solid again.”

Grace snorted. “My legs are just fine… but something tells me yours are a little wobbly.”

Harry slid the teen a look. “You’re hanging out with Aunt Nora too much. She likes seeing things that aren’t there, too.”

“So you’re not hiding at Pierce House to avoid running into anyone?”

“I’m not hiding. Am I not taking you to the pack ranch right now?”

“Yeah. And what are you doing right after?” Harry opened her mouth answer, but Grace beat her to it. “You’re going straight back to the house.”

“Have you seen the state of that place? My descry magic is practically itching to be let out and get everything organized and in its place.”

“That’s probably the well water or something.”

Harry rolled her eyes at the teen’s obvious sarcasm. “Aunt Nora is doing us a favor by putting us up like this. The least I can do is help bring Pierce House back to its former glory.”

“So you’re returning a favor and not actually hiding?”

“Exactly.”

“Alpha Atwood is doing us a favor, but I don’t see you offering to organize his junk drawers.” Harry threw her an unamused look that had the teenager chuckling. “Just pointing out the obvious.”

“It’s rude to point,” Harry volleyed back, this time unable to help chuckling along with the teen as she slowly brought Nora’s car to a stop. “Call me any time and I’ll pick you up. If you feel overwhelmed, or you feel like it’s not working. One ring and I’m there… unless you want me to stick around and—”

“I’ll be fine. You don’t need to stay.” Grace hopped from car so fast she was almost a blur as she rounded the hood to come to a stop next to a waiting Jax.

His looming presence powered down any additional attempts to backtrack. With a few days’ stubble and wearing worn, faded jeans and a T-shirt molded to his upper body, he exuded every quintessential bad-boy fantasy she’d ever had. The only thing missing was his black leather jacket, but considering he never went anywhere without it, it couldn’t be far.

With a knowing smirk tilting up his mouth, Jax propped a forearm against the car hood and leaned toward her open window. “You’re almost late.”

“ Almost is not late. It’s on time ,” she quipped.

“This time, but the Harlow I knew was notoriously late to everything, so I’m just giving you a gentle reminder. My days are jam-packed and scheduled to the minute.”

She shot him a glare. “Well, I’m not the Harlow you once knew because, as you’ve pointed out before, that was thirteen years ago.”

“But she still occasionally runs late,” Grace chirped, rocking in her sneakers, “that’s why she sets three different alarms. The alarm. The backup. And the backup to the backup, which is all the way across the room and doesn’t turn off until you physically get up and shut it off.”

Jax cocked up a sexy eyebrow, his gaze never wavering from Harry’s. “Guess some things never change.”

Some things didn’t, namely the ridiculous urge she had to grab his hair and climb him like a redwood tree. To restrain it, she grasped for the nearest change of topic. “I’m leaving you with precious cargo, Jaxon. And I hope I don’t have to remind you that she’s only sixteen.”

“Then I guess taking her to Howlin’ for a beer afterward is out, then? Damn.” With a smirk, he tapped the car’s hood, officially dismissing her. “I’ll bring her by Nora’s when we’re through, so there’s no sticking around necessary.”

Damn shifter hearing.

She opened her mouth to counter, but he beat her to it… again. “Remember the rules, Harry. No interference. If you stay, there’s no way you’ll keep your gorgeous mouth shut. I’ll bring her home when we’re done for the day.”

Her heart skipped a beat hearing him call her mouth gorgeous, but it was quickly dampened by annoyance. “Fine. But she better be dropped off without a hair on her head singed, cut, or missing entirely… and I will count them if I have to.”

Harry caught sight of Grace’s eye roll, and with one parting glare at Jax, she turned the car toward the main road, keeping her eyes on the duo in the rearview mirror until they were little more than two specks on the horizon.

He wasn’t wrong. Grace needed concentration, and as much as Harry hated to admit it, that wouldn’t happen if she were underfoot. Grace needed to fly solo.

Or have the illusion of it…

That little devil and angel sitting on Harry’s sunburned shoulders whispered, Do I stay, or do I go?

Harry debated on the long, bouncy trek toward the main road, and before she took the final right turn that would lead her into town, she’d won the deliberation and didn’t lament over its questionable end result as she executed an abrupt U-turn.

Neither Jax nor Grace needed to know she was there, and she wouldn’t stay long. Just long enough to ensure Grace was safe and comfortable, and then she’d slip silently away with no one the wiser.

No harm. No foul. No interference. And no breaking Jax’s rules.

Stealth was practically her middle name.

S TARING AT G RACE , Jax tried drumming up something wise to say. Or, hell, anything that wouldn’t slap him with a raging case of foot in mouth. Limited kid experience—and personal encounters—taught him that he couldn’t count on having once being a teen not to make an ass of himself.

Grace shot him a coy, smart-assy smirk. “So are we meditating or something, Master Yoda? I’m not sure what this silent staring thing is if not meditation.”

“Fuck. Sorry.” Wincing, he ran his hand through his hair. “Shit. I probably shouldn’t swear around you, should I?”

Her eyebrow lifted higher. “I’m sixteen, not six. And you do know I’ve been living with Harry since before I spoke actual, full-on sentences, right? Sometimes the things that come out of her mouth would make a grumpy sailor blush.”

Actually, he hadn’t known that. That meant Grace had been part of Harry’s life since the second she’d kicked him out from it. Her Mama Bear protectiveness made so much more sense.

“Still doesn’t have much of a filter, huh?” Jax asked as evasively as he could.

“We live—well, lived —in New York City, where no one has much of a filter.”

New York City. And that answered the thirteen-year-old question of Where in the World Is Harlow “Harry” Pierce? She’d always loved the idea of bright lights, a 24–7 cupcake delivery, and an endless sea of possibilities. It made sense.

“Point made… and no meditation.” He nudged his chin toward the barn in a silent direction to follow, and she did, keeping stride with him easily.

He watched from his peripheral vision as she openly gaped at the horses, her lips twitching into what could be loosely classified as a grin.

“You spend a lot of time around horses and other animals?” Jax asked conversationally.

Her attention slid to him. “We did just talk about me living in New York my entire life, right? Its only wildlife other than man-sized cockroaches and swarms of winged rats are the actual rats themselves.”

“ Winged rats?”

“Studies have been done on New York City pigeons.” She shivered in mock revulsion. “I’d rather cuddle a rat fresh out of the toilet than one of those flying petri dishes.”

He chuckled. “So not used to animals. Got it. Then I guess we’ll ease you into this.” He stopped in front of Mamoa’s empty stall and grabbed the two shovels propped against the wall, handing her one.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Did they not have shovels in New York, either?” he joked wryly.

“Hardy har-har.” She looked at the dirty hay and back to him. “But seriously? You must be joking.”

“You’ll eventually realize that I don’t joke often.” Stepping into the stall, he demonstrated. “Body mechanics is important when shit shoveling. Bend at the knees, drop the blade with a shove and a tilt, and then lift with your legs. Do anything else and you’ll be in for a world of hurt in the morning.”

“How the hell does shoveling horse crap help me figure out what the hell I am, or how to control it?”

“It doesn’t.” Ignoring her curses, he answered truthfully. “But it does give me insight into your work ethic because, as you’ve probably guessed, this won’t be a walk in Central Park.”

“Trust me. Nothing about this has been easy,” Grace muttered, but got to work, shoveling the dirty hay and tossing it into a waiting wheelbarrow.

“I hate to break it to you, Sparks, but it’ll get harder before it gets easier. And I’m not even talking about gaining enough control and easing you into your first shift. It’s what comes afterward that will be the biggest hurdle.”

“Afterward?”

Jax paused to study the teen. “How much time have you spent around shifters?”

She shrugged. “I went to public school in a big city. Supernaturals were everywhere.”

“Sitting next to a shifter in class is a hell of a lot different from spending time .”

“My best friend is a shifter,” Grace said quietly. “Or at least, they were.”

“They were a shifter? As in, they’re not anymore?”

She refused to meet his gaze as she continued shoveling. “They’re still a shifter. They’re just not my best friend anymore. When everything started happening, things changed. It became too much for them, and I can’t really blame them. I was a dumpster fire. Almost literally.”

Something tugged in his chest at the way she played off something—and someone—that had obviously meant a great deal. “I’m sorry that happened, Sparks.”

She shrugged.

Jax slowly got back to work. “Do you know what occurs when a shifter suppresses their animal side for too long?”

“My guess would be not good things.”

“That guess would be correct. Regardless if your inner shifter spent most of its life locked up by choice or not, it was imprisoned in tight quarters. It won’t be shitting sunshine from its ass when it makes its first appearance. It’s gonna be angrier than Harlow without her morning coffee.”

“Harry doesn’t drink coffee,” Grace volleyed, her eyes flickering gold as they snapped to him. “And you think I locked it away on purpose ?”

Jax blinked. Harry doesn’t drink coffee? Once upon a time and pre–final exams, she seriously contemplated the pros and cons of begging Doc Johnson to insert an intravenous line and injecting the stuff directly into her veins.

Not wanting his barn burned, he pulled his focus back to the bristling teen in front of him and continued carefully but honestly. “Locked it away on purpose? Probably not. But when shifters sense a threat—of any kind—things happen. A shifter’s first instinct is always to defend. It’s very possible that in a threatening moment, it chose flight instead of fight and locked itself away. To protect you .”

She scoffed, her temper waning. “Great. So I’m a groundhog shifter. Case closed. Puzzle solved. Everyone can get back to their regularly scheduled lives.”

Jax chuckled. “I’ve yet to meet a groundhog that can fling flames, so I think it’s a pretty safe bet that that’s not what we’re dealing with here.”

Although Grace formed a small pack with her mother and Harry, as the lone shifter, it wasn’t the same as belonging to a pack . Way before young shifters sprouted their first fur—or feathers, young shifters learned the way a pack interacts. Family did not always mean blood, and unfortunately sometimes the opposite was true.

To be comfortable in a pack, Grace first needed to be comfortable around him. He’d sugarcoated it when he said her shifter—once freed—wouldn’t be sporting a shining disposition. Making sure there were no casualties was his top priority, and that meant there’d be times he needed to push her, and push hard. That couldn’t happen if he didn’t have her trust.

Working side by side, they cleaned out the rest of the stall in silence, Grace never once complaining. They replaced the last of the dirty hay when a very unmistakable scent hung in the air, and it didn’t belong to any of the animals.

Harry.

“Hey there, boss.” Devon, one of the pack’s trackers in training, stepped up to the stall, Mamoa on a rein behind him. Devon’s typical smile increased by ten thousand watts when he laid eyes on Grace. “You’re back! Grace, right?”

“Hi.” Grace’s cheeks pinked.

“Devon. Is me. I’m Devon.” The kid chuckled awkwardly.

“Smooth, kid. Really smooth.” Jax smirked before getting an idea. “You know what, Dev? Could you do me a favor and show Grace how to get Mamoa comfortable in the stall and set up with his feed buckets? There’s something I have to check out.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Thanks.” He clapped the kid on the shoulder and gave Grace a supportive nod. “You’ll be in good hands with Devon until I get back. He was practically born on a horse.”

Jax followed his nose and the tingle down his spine. The flowery scent intensified when he turned right, so he headed left, going out the front of the barn until the odor all but disappeared. He hung another left, and rounded the back. Midway around the barn, he let his nose and tingles guide him the rest of the way.

He silently vaulted over the back fence and stepped around the corner… and there she was.

Or more accurately, her backside.

Chest plastered to the barn as she peered through a crack in the back door, Harry listened to Devon explain to Grace how to ensure the stallion got the exact amount of prescribed grain.

Whether Jax was good at stalking, or she was too invested in whatever was happening in the barn, she didn’t hear him approach, mumbling something about horny teenage shifters under her breath.

Hands shoved casually in his pockets, Jax stopped less than a foot away. The two oblivious teens inside the barn had no clue to anything outside their four-foot-radius world.

Jax leaned close to—but not touching—Harry’s ear, and whispered, “This doesn’t look like keeping distance, sweet pea.”

“Shitholes and cum buckets.” With a startled yelp, Harry spun around, the quick move kidnapping her balance and windmilling her arms.

Jax lurched forward to prevent her from falling on her ass.

“I’m fine.” She batted his hands away and stepped back. “I—”

“I wouldn’t step back again if I were you.” He eyed the wheelbarrow behind her knees.

She shot him an annoyed look as she regained her balance. “You know what most people wouldn’t do? Creepily stalk up behind someone and then try to send them into cardiac arrest.”

“Says the witch who’s creepily stalking around corners and listening to people’s conversations.” He tucked his hands back into his pockets and waited for what no doubt would be an interesting retort… and she didn’t disappoint.

“I wasn’t stalking. I was observing .”

“From around a corner. When you were explicitly told to go home.”

A fire lit in her lavender eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing that I’m allergic to being told what to do because this doesn’t look like training. This looks like enabling teenage flirting.”

His lips twitched. “Come on. Did you forget what it was like to be their age?”

“No! I most certainly did not! Which is why I know that, while this all looks sweet and innocent on the outside, it’s just a glamour for what’s lurking beneath the surface.”

“They’re kids, not a dormant volcano primed to blow.”

Jax nearly smacked himself for the offhanded comment because they both knew they’d done a hell of a lot more than innocent flirting at Devon and Grace’s age, and judging the redness rising to Harry’s cheeks, he didn’t stroll down memory lane alone.

“They will definitely not be a repeat of us.” Harry took a small, half-measured step back, and then a second.

He didn’t have enough time to warn her.

The backs of her knees hit the wheelbarrow and this time, there was no regaining her balance. With a small squeak and wet squish, she plummeted into an overfilled and very fresh mound of manure.

He covered his mouth to hold back laughter, but it didn’t do a damn thing, a rolling chuckle quickly turning into a full-blown chortle.

“I’m glad you find this funny.” A disgusted look on her face, Harry alternated between silent gags and soft curses. “This cannot be happening right now.”

“Oh, it definitely is.” He laughed harder, tears springing to his eyes as she squirmed to shimmy her way back to her feet and only succeeded in drilling herself deeper into the muck.

“Do you think you could help me out a little?” She growled in frustration, almost sounding like a shifter instead of a witch. “Or would you like to keep standing there laughing?”

“If you remember, I did try to warn you—and help you. But you waved me off, stating that you were ‘just fine.’” He chuckled.

“What the hell…” Grace’s shocked voice joined the melee. She and Devon stood in the now open barn doorway, twin looks of horror on their faces. “Why are you sprawled in a pile of horse crap?”

Harry sighed helplessly. “Whatever do you mean? This looks as good a place as any to put my feet up for a spell.” She reached a hand out to the teen. “Can you help me out?”

“Yeah, no. Hard pass on that.” Grace stepped back as if her guardian’s hand would stretch and latch on to her from six feet away. “I’m not touching you with a ten-foot pole until you’ve showered at least twenty times, and then it’ll take another twenty for actual skin-on-skin contact.”

Jax snorted, earning himself a glare.

“Stop laughing,” Harry demanded.

“I don’t think I could if I tried.” Hooking his fingers through her belt loops, he smirked. “I’m gonna pull you up and out… just try not to touch me.”

“Please hurry. It’s starting to seep through my jeans and to my under…” She gagged. “Just hurry.”

“On the count of three…”

“Three already. It’s already three, Jaxon. Pull me out. Now.”

He yanked, and the heavy, wet squelch as she returned to her feet produced a few gags from the teenagers’ direction.

Hands still propped on her belt loops, Jax couldn’t help but tease, “It’s almost like karma was telling you that you should’ve left when you were supposed to.”

“I’m not getting in the car with you smelling like that.” Grace wrinkled her nose and stepped farther back.

Harry glanced at her clothes with a groan. “I can’t get in Nora’s car with me like this either.”

Realizing his hands were still on her body, Jax quickly dropped his hold and diverted. “The way I see it, we have a few options. You can use the shower up at the Alpha House, we can hose you off right out here, or we can end things short today and I’ll take the two of you back to Nora’s in the pickup.”

Harry bit her lip, considering her choices. “I don’t think one shower is going to cut it, and I’m not exactly relishing the idea of an ice bath, so third option it is.”

“Works for me.” Jax nodded. “Devon will drop off your car later. But I’m telling you right now, Grace is riding shotgun.”

“Where am I supposed to sit? The roof?”

He dropped the truck’s tailgate and pointed to the bed. “Do you need a boost or can you take a running jump?”

Falling on old habits like teasing Harlow Pierce wasn’t the smartest move, but, hell, if he couldn’t help himself… especially as she stubbornly attempted to hoist herself into the back of his truck.

“I cannot wait to tell Mom about this.” Grace chuckled as she slipped into the passenger seat, her fingers already flying over a text screen.

“All comfy?” Jax waited for Harry to get situated in the corner until closing the tailgate.

“What are the chances you won’t breathe a word of this to anyone?” She shot him a pleading look.

“This is Fates Haven. We both know I don’t have to say anything for word to get around.”

Harry groaned and Jax chuckled as he got behind the wheel, shooting a wink at Grace in the process. She giggled and his grin broadened.

For the first time in a while, he looked forward to the town’s gossip mill doing its thing.