Page 22 of Cold Foot Sentry (Wreck’s Mountains #6)

Tawk chugged his beer and tried to control the roaring in his head.

“I’m not you. You’re human. You would be a better match for her than I w—fuck.” He couldn’t even finish that sentence because thinking of her with someone else pissed him off and made him want to Change. He couldn’t do that here in this little bar. His skin was already burning and tingling.

The bartender set a couple of cheeseburger baskets in front of them.

He ate the entire burger before he was calm enough to speak again. “What’s next?” he rumbled.

“Evil eyes, evil voice now too,” Dylan pointed out.

“Talking to you is like rubbing my balls across sandpaper.”

Dylan laughed. “Thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment. Not even a little one.”

“You know what?” Dylan asked. “I like you.”

“I don’t feel the same.”

“I think deep down you do, you just don’t know how to process those—”

“Keep your therapy bullshit to yourself. I’m going away now. I have an errand.”

“Good luck with everything,” Dylan called, and damn it all, Tawk could hear Cash’s annoying voice in his head saying, ‘say thank you.’

With a growl, Tawk turned at the door. “Thank you,” he grumbled, but because Dylan was a human, he couldn’t hear him very well and said, “Huh?” with his hand scooped around his ear.

“Thank you.”

“I don’t think I’ll see you anymore Tawk.”

“I won’t be seeing anyone. I’m leaving.”

“So am I.” Dylan lifted his beer in a silent cheers. “Good luck with everything.”

Tawk frowned as he watched the man give him his back and drink his beer. Dylan was leaving? But he had it good here.

So do we.

The dragon’s whisper in his mind startled Tawk. He needed to go. He forced himself to shove open the exit door and get outside where he could inhale fresh air.

That lunch had been…well…it had been something else. Infuriating in some ways, and enlightening in others.

He didn’t know how to feel about it.

Lost in thought, he made his way to the auto parts store and went inside. The clear-tone bell above the door dinged as he opened it.

Behind the counter, a barrel-chested man in his late fifties or early sixties nodded a greeting. Cliff , his nametag read. The store was called the same, so this must’ve been the owner.

“What can I do for you?” Cliff asked.

“I ordered a set of headlights for a 4Runner. I got a notification that they had come in,” he murmured, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket.

“Sunglasses inside, huh?” Cliff asked as he typed away on his computer. “Cool guy.”

Tawk swallowed a growl, and lowered his sunglasses, then glared at Cliff.

“Holy shit,” Cliff uttered, and staggered back into the wall.

“That’s why I wear the sunglasses,” Tawk gritted out, putting them back over his eyes.

“You a shifter?”

Tawk ignored the question. “How much do I owe you?”

“One seventy-nine ninety-nine.”

He held out his credit card and waited for Cliff to compose himself enough to reach for it and start processing his payment. “I never seen a red-eyed shifter.”

“Yeah, me either until recently.”

“You having problems with your animal?”

“Does everyone in this damn town just ask whatever is on your mind?”

Cliff made a tick sound behind his teeth and gestured to whoever was coming in the front door. “I just know a shifter is all. Pardon the hell out of me.”

Tawk tasted her power before he even turned around, and rolled his eyes closed, praying for patience.

Jess.

He clenched his fists at his sides and turned to look at her. “What are you doing here?”

“Working,” Jess muttered, blowing right past him to go behind the counter. She had an armload of boxes.

“You work at an auto parts store?” he asked as Cliff handed his card back.

“Yep.”

Okay, now he was completely baffled. “Never once in all the years we lived as neighbors did you ever show an interest in us working on cars,” Tawk said.

Jess gave an empty smile and shrugged. “I’ve changed.”

Tawk agreed. Her little mind-control trick the other night said she’d changed for the worse.

She began scanning the boxes she’d just brought in on the second computer, and called out, “Byron, I have the intake you’re waiting on.”

The Byron in question called, “I’ll be there in a minute!” The big window behind Jess and Clint exposed Byron, who was working under a car at the moment.

“Since you two are buddies, can you go pull his order?” Clint asked, handing Jess a slip of paper.

“We aren’t friends,” she clipped out, but took the paper, and disappeared into the garage on the other side of the window, boxes in tow.

“She’s quick,” Clint said, returning to his work on the computer. “You can look around a few minutes while you wait.”

Jess reappeared before he’d even had a chance to meander down a single aisle of grill guards. She came in through the open door staring at the box in her hands, a deep frown etched into her features. She looked up at him with question in her glowing eyes. “Are these for Tammy’s 4Runner?”

“That’s not any of your business,” he said, approaching. He took the box with the pair of headlights and strode for the door.

“It feels like my business. I know Tammy.”

“Do you now?” He shook his head and shoved the door open, and escaped into the fresh air.

“I thought you were already gone,” she called after him.

Did no one in this town get the hint that he wasn’t interested in talking?

“I’m leaving after I take care of one last thing.”

“You’re going to fix her truck,” Jess said.

“Stop following me!” he barked out, rounding on her.

“I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Well too bad!”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” he demanded.

Jess stopped advancing and flinched like he’d slapped her with his words.

“I was the one who was going to claim you and protect you, without a single feeling between us. I was sticking up for you and Kade when I left Sister’s Edge.

I was the one defending you still to Connor and your brother, and I had it handled.

They were about to leave. Who the fuck were you to make me do anything without my knowledge?

Who the fuck were you to control my dragon, and who the fuck do you think you are now demanding that I talk to you? ”

Her glowing eyes sparked with intensity, and then she dropped her eyes to the ground.

Tawk lowered his voice. “I don’t have friends, but if I did, you would be one. You and Kade.”

“You said we are a symbiotic relationship,” she said softly. “You need me to feed you power, and I need you for protection. That’s what that was. Connor was here to hunt me, and you protected me.”

“You forced protection. You aren’t supposed to use spellcasting on your own people, Jess.

Your lack of remorse is something I don’t understand.

My dragon isn’t some trained monkey for you to use however you please.

He is me. He is mine. If I’m going to take blood onto my hands for something I believe in, or for someone who needs protection, that should be my choice. Not yours.”

“But…I needed protection.”

“No, you don’t, Jess. No, you don’t. I saw what you’re capable of. You’ve been growing into something big. You were the one who ate Connor’s fucking hand, and you were the bringer of chaos that night. You don’t need to force my dragon to murder for you. You can handle revenge yourself.”

“But…you came here and said you wanted to protect me and mine. I don’t understand what you want from me.”

“To be a decent fucking person, Jess. Whatever is happening. Whatever power you’re bloating yourself on, it’s messing with who you are. Did you tell Kade what happened?”

She stared at the ground.

“No? Why not?”

She shook her head, denying him an answer.

“Because you know he would be disappointed.”

A tear fell to the concrete, and he backed away a few feet, not liking how her crying made him feel.

“It felt good,” she said in a small voice.

“Not to me,” he said softly. “Tammy could’ve been hurt.

If I had to wake up to that…” He swallowed hard, not wanting to even imagine it.

“You have enough monsters in Cold Foot. Connor is angry and conniving, but he isn’t a threat.

Samuel has about one percent of your power, and Misty just doesn’t know where to land after everything.

“They won’t come back. I could see the resolve in their minds.” She looked up at him. “We did that together. We both fed on power. We are both stronger now.”

He shook his head, so disappointed that she didn’t understand.

So disappointed that she wasn’t hearing him.

“You will become something that will hurt the Cold Foot Crew if you don’t get right with your power now.

” He switched the box to his other side.

“I’ve seen the bad witches can do, Jess, and I’ve seen the good they can do too. You’re going the wrong way.”

As he walked away, he could only hope that his words would sit in her mind and reach her. As for him, he couldn’t stay here and be a weapon for a witch with a moral-compass problem. Not when she could take the dragon.

His chest hurt as he climbed into his truck, and he looked at Jess again. She’d sank down onto the curb and was staring vacantly at the road, lost in thought.

He’d meant it. He didn’t do friends, and didn’t attach to people in that traditional sense, but Jess and Kade felt close to that.

Now, there was this cloudy, awful feeling in his gut that he’d come here hoping to find a safe place to land near them, near people who were familiar, and it hadn’t panned out.

He felt betrayed, and he’d never felt that in all his life. He felt used. If Tammy hadn’t been there to stop Jess’s control, he would have Connor’s death on his soul.

But worse than that…much worse…was coming to terms with the fact that after he fixed Tammy’s truck, he really would have to leave for the betterment of all of Wreck’s Mountains, Tammy most of all.

His instincts told him to protect her, but here, the one he needed to protect her from the most was him.

Everything had gotten so messed up.