Page 45

Harper

Everyone was safe. The bad guy was dead. The cops had been fobbed off with some shifter bullshit that never would’ve worked if we were all human. Life was good, right? Right? But as we pulled up outside Daria’s place, that’s not how it felt.

“So…” I’d never head her voice shake like that. My hand shot out, grabbing hers and giving it a squeeze. “You got me home in one piece.”

“Daria—”

She cut me off with a shake of her head.

“I should get inside. Mum, Dad, they’re gonna lose their shit when they find out what happened.”

“And if they need to blast someone…” I tried to smile and failed utterly. Some deep part of me wanted to reanimate Dax, then kill him all over again, this time slower for what he did to my friend. “Send them to me. It’s my fault.”

“No—”

“Dar, it is.” I didn’t cry when Dax took me, nor when he squeezed my arms so hard I was pretty sure there were fingerprints left on my bones. Not even when I shot the fuck. I was fine, just fine, until I said this. “I should’ve been there.”

“Then we’d both be sitting in some renovated mine shaft,” she said, “hoping that those skeezes kept their weird pee-pees in their pants.”

“I should’ve warned you that you were in danger,” I ground out. “Called, messaged, sent a carrier pigeon or something. This is my?—”

She slapped a hand over my mouth and then leaned forward. Her eyes were just as shiny as mine, red with unshed tears.

“That Dax, Max, whatever the fuck his name was, this was all on him.” I saw her stiffen, then turn to face the front of the car where Mack was riding shotgun.

“You better not have any other psycho family members lying in wait for my bestie, or I’ll take her back to the hardware store and look for a different pack of shifters. ”

“No family left to speak of.” Mack cited that grim fact with something like relief. “Harper’s safe with me.” His eyes narrowed as he looked me up and down. “At least until we get home.”

“Why?” I looked around the car, but Kieran’s expression was carefully blank. “Why? What happens when we get home?”

“Harper’s gonna get it. Harper’s gonna get it.”

I could hear the ghost of my friend in her sing-song voice as she started teasing me, and sure enough, she was grinning like a loon.

Didn’t erase the tears, though. When one rolled down her cheek, that got me started, forcing me to throw my arms around her.

She hugged me right back, because that’s what best friends do.

“I owe you,” I growled. “You have an ingrown hair on your bikini line that needs fixing, I’m your girl.”

“After you made such a fuss last time? No thanks.”

“I’ll do your laundry for a month. No, three months. I’ll wash your delicates by hand like a Victorian housemaid, if that’s what it takes.”

“Weird way to say you wanna get into my pants.” Daria shrugged. “But whatever.”

“I’ll name my first-born child after you,” I swore.

“First. Born. Child?” I ignored the guys’ choked off response because Daria burst out laughing. Somehow, I needed that.

“You? A mother? Are you sure that’s such a good idea? Remember the goldfish?”

“Oh my god, are you ever going to get over that?” I spluttered.

“My Goldy?” She grinned. “More like Mr. Mouldy, because you left him floating belly up in his bowl, dead for days, then walked around wondering why the apartment stank.”

“OK, fine?—”

“Then there was that rotating carousel of house plants that died.” She held out a hand. “Overwatering, underwatering, wrong fertiliser?—”

“Yeah, but if Harper decides she wants to be a mother.” Kieran’s arm went around me, pulling me back against his side. “She’ll have us and the entire bear community?—”

“Tiger community,” Tor said with a sigh. “Like try and keep the women of my family away. You’d be fighting to hold your own child around them.”

“And me.” Everyone went quiet at Mack’s input. “I’ll never let another thing happen to my girl.” He snorted, then shook his head. “Or hypothetical daughter, Daria Two.”

“Daria Two?”

The name was utterly ridiculous, but it didn’t stop my bestie from grabbing my hands.

We both tried to smile, failed, quickly becoming a blubbering mess.

I cried, for her, for me, for Mack, for everyone who had to deal with this kind of shit, and Dar cried along with me.

The guys gave us some space, just quietly waiting for the emotional storm to blow over.

After we cleaned our faces up, they followed at my heels as I escorted Daria to her parent’s front door.

“OK, well, I’d love to say this was fun,” Dar said, forcing herself to smile. “But it sucked.” She pointed a finger at me. “You, me, a bottle of tequila for a catch up in a week.” Her hand went to her cheek. “That way the swelling will have time to go down.”

“Dar—”

“Go home, Harper,” she told me in an uncharacteristically gentle voice. “Be with your guys.” Her hand moved so fast I yelped when she swatted me on that arse. “Get that weird shifter dick and be ready to report back.”

“Oh my god, did you just spank me?” I spluttered.

“A precursor for what’s to come.” Daria’s eyes went wide as Mack pulled me into his arms. “I told you I’d smack your bum raw for what you pulled today and I meant it.”

“Hey, can I stay at your parent’s place too?” I asked, trying to lunge forward, only to be hauled back. “Daria, help me out here? Dar?”

Of course, with all the noise we were making, the front door opened and Daria’s mum stood there.

“Sweetheart?” She opened the screen door, then gasped when she saw her daughter’s face. “Daria, what happened?”

“I want all the details of that spanking too,” my best friend told me, winking before walking inside. “All of them. If I am not satisfied with your answers, I’ll ask the guys.”

“Done,” Mack said, before taking my hand and marching me right back to the car.

“So, maybe I should go home?—”

“Nope,” he said, slapping his hand down just above my head.

“I mean, there’s probably a mess?—”

“Not gonna happen,” Kieran said.

“So, I think I get the whole ambush dynamic now.” Tor flicked his finger at all three of us. “Before I was the reckless one who did dumb stuff without thinking. Then our fated mate comes along and she does really dumb stuff that makes me look positively levelheaded.”

“In my defence…” I shot them a weak smile. “I did it for you.”

“I look forward to hearing your spirited defence of why you decided to have sex with me, accept the mating bond, then sneak out while I was asleep.”

Mack’s steady gaze made clear that nothing I could say would get me out of that spanking.

“Damn…” Tor hissed. “That’s how it went down.”

“So…” Mack’s voice was full of dark intent as he leaned in. “What made you think that was a good idea?”

“It’s their fault.” Kieran and Tor shook their heads when I pointed at them. “They told me to jump.”

“What?” Mack looked over his shoulder at the two of them.

“With your heart,” Kieran hastily explained. “That’s what we meant, Harper. To let us in.”

“Well, I did.” I couldn’t look at them as I said this. My eyes made a very close inspection of Daria’s parents’ curb, noting that they needed to get some weedkiller onto the dandelions springing up everywhere. “And my heart said I needed to protect you.”

“That’s our job.”

“And it’s mine too.” I forced my head up, meeting their gazes head on.

“You want me to be your mate? I’m gonna throw down to protect you as well.

That’s why I did it, why I shot Dax. Mack.

” His arm was rock solid with tension as I placed my hand on it.

“You’ve been traumatised, shut down by the crazy shit your family pulled.

” I shook my head. “I may or may not know something about that. It felt like history was repeating itself. That you’d need to kill the last remaining member of your family. ”

“Something I intended to do to protect you.” I caught the moment when Mack’s eyes bled from blue to yellow as he stared at me.

“I thought I could keep Dax away by avoiding bonding with you, then when it was clear that was never going to happen, I knew I’d have to put him in the ground.

I’d…” He swallowed hard. “I’d protect you the way I failed my mother. ”

My hand went to his cheek, my eyes aching as I traced the pattern of stubble down that plane.

“And I wanted to protect you from having to go through that all over again.”

Mack had more to say about that. I could see it in the way he shook his head and then sucked in a breath. Tor appeared beside me, leaning against the car with a smirk.

“Seems like there’s a whole lotta protecting going on.” His smile faded for a second. “Not quite enough on my part, though if you need me too, me and Dina can feign a blood feud and then I’ll fight for your honour.” His forehead wrinkled. “I think I’d win.”

“Or we can go home and finally accept what we all know is true.” Kieran scanned the lot of us. “That we’re meant to be together as a sleuth?—”

“Ambush,” Tor corrected.

“Pack.”

Mack’s nod made me think that maybe, just maybe, he’d get past this little oversight of mine.

“And now we don’t have any dire threats hanging over our head, maybe it's time to work out what we want to do with the rest of our lives,” Kieran finished.

“So does this mean we can finally, finally have sex?” I may or may not have begged just a little. “Because all that dream clit teasing is kinda getting old.”

“After,” Mack growled. That should’ve been a warning, because his hand slapped down on my arse, far harder than Daria had managed. “I promised you a spanking, Harper, and now you’re gonna get it.”