Page 20 of Found by the Pack

Shep grins. “You kind of were.”

I roll my eyes. “She just looked… familiar. That’s all.”

Boone leans against the table. “Maybe you’re the one with a crush on the girl.”

That lands heavier than I expect. My mouth goes dry. Maybe. Or maybe I just saw the same kind of hollow in her eyes that I see in the mirror sometimes.

“Whatever,” I mutter. “It’s not important.”

But it is.

It must be.

Because I can’t stop thinking about the way she ran.

Like I was something to be afraid of.

After we leave the bar, we make a pit stop at Jensen’s to pick up the new grill. One of those fancy four-burner outdoor beasts with a smoker compartment and a rotisserie hook.

I’d been eyeing it for months. Told the guys it was for the house, but really, I just needed something new to fuss over on my off days.

Boone helps me load it into the truck bed, muttering something about Alpha overcompensation. I flip him off. He flips me off back. We laugh.

That’s how we are, the three of us. Different as hell, but solid.

Boone and I met during fire academy. Him, me, and his brother Sawyer. We were young, hot-blooded, cocky as hell. Swore we’d climb every ladder, beat every record, rescue every damn kitten from every damn tree.

Then Sawyer died.

A factory blaze that went sideways fast. Boone was outside on EMT duty. I was trapped inside. I still remember the way his comms cut off. The smoke. The way Boone screamed through the mic. The funeral.

The silence after.

Me and Boone clung to each other like brothers after that. Not the blood kind. The bonded kind. We decided we’d build something new. Something that honored what we lost. A two-man pack.

And that’s how Shepard came in.

He’d lost his place in a fire—his memorabilia, all of it gone. We pulled him out of a collapsed staircase, still gripping a box of old books and a picture frame that survived.

We saw something in him. Gentleness. Grief. Hope. That rare kind of Beta energy that could ground a room just by being in it.

We asked if he wanted in, and he said yes.

Now we live in the same apartment building although they love crashing at my house. Boone’s always playing guitar in the living room. Shepard’s always falling asleep on the couch with a book in his lap. And I spend half my nights at the station because it feels safer.

But the place is ours. This life is ours.

Family by fire. Built by grief. Held together by stubbornness and coffee.

And for the first time in a long time, I wonder what it would feel like to bring someone new into it.

Someone like Sadie.

Not yet. I shut the tailgate.You don’t know her. You don’t know anything.

Still. She looked like someone who could use a place to land.

CHAPTER 5