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S ecrets keep those around you safe. The reason Shep doesn’t understand why I was investing so much into the workshop was because I never told him the full purpose—I couldn’t. I didn’t want to repay his kindness by putting him in danger. If The Husk ever found me, I knew they would drag me back kicking and screaming. And they would use the people around me to make it hurt.

No one ever escaped The Husk. The Warren wasn’t just a fortress; it was a prison. The vault underneath my workshop is more than just a secure place to store my jewelry. It also doubles as a computer room of sorts. A way of protecting myself and staying one step ahead.

I may have left The Warren, and the work I did there—but I still kept my toe in that world. The only difference now is there wasn’t someone pulling my strings. I got to choose what to get involved with and what to ignore.

When a message pops up on an encrypted app on my phone late on Monday evening, I head out to my workshop and down into the vault. Starting the generator, the three screens flicker to life. The planning board on the wall is bare. It had been a while since I’d taken a job, focusing on getting the workshop finished and my online store running.

Eventually logging in, I video call my friend and accomplice, Tawny. I met Tawny on an online forum when I was a teenager, looking for ways to escape.

A hacker, Tawny was always wheedling his way into various websites and accounts, stealing information, money, crypto, anything he could get his hands on. The tech genius liked to balance out his sticky fingers morally by helping those less fortunate than him when he came across them, and there I was, alone in the world, searching for a way out.

From behind his screens and firewalls, he helped me plan my escape and built a new life for me every time I moved.

“Blue! Baby! I have a job for you, nice and easy, but it will make that omega Muridae charity you like so much a cool $25,000. A pair of earrings. In and out.” Tawny’s voice is excited as he hits me with his sales pitch, and it was a pattern I’d come to recognize. The more excited he was and the easier he made the job sound, the more personal the target was to him.

“Hey T, how's it going?” I chuckle, looking at the hacker's big eyes, his light brown skin looking a little pale on the screen. His long dark hair is scraped back into a loose braid and his glasses are perched on the end of his nose. “Getting much sleep these days?”

“Mehh, you know how it is.” He shrugs, looking a little ruffled. His nocturnal nature slipped out into his human side, meaning he often kept strange sleeping patterns, currently being made worse by his new neighbor—who liked to listen to loud music and have guests over at all hours.

“How’s that neighbor of yours?” I probe. He’d been a little tight-lipped about the hot but inconsiderate man next door recently.

Tawny grumbles something to himself, sinking into his oversized hoodie, making himself look smaller but cozy. Making a clicking noise with his tongue, he looks irritated. “Still an annoying fucker.”

“Go on, tell me more about the job.”

Instantly perking up, the corner of his mouth lifts into a wide grin. “So, about 3 hours away from you there’s a nice little dinner going down this weekend.”

“T...” Narrowing my eyes, I look at my best friend.

Holding his hands up, his expression sheepish. “I know, I know you hate public thefts. But the Mayor's wife is a real piece of work and they’ll all be at dinner downtown. So, you just need to slip into their hotel room and slip right back out.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You want me to steal from a mayor?”

On any job there were risks, but on public, high-profile jobs, those risks went through the roof. They had time, money and resources that the average person didn’t and that made them dangerous. It didn’t mean I couldn’t do it, just that a little more precision was required.

“Trust me—they deserve it.” Tawny’s face darkens, his thick dark brows knitting together as he frowns. “This is just one part of what I’ve got planned for them.”

Rubbing my temples, I sigh. “Can’t Tuesday do it?”

Tawny hadn’t been the only online friend who’d also helped me escape. I met Tuesday by chance, on a forum about black market jewelry and valuing pieces. He’d been distant at first, but then we’d had a run in on a heist. He’d wrongly assumed I wanted the pieces he was after. I thought he was stalking me. Turns out we were both partly right.

Tuesday, curious about me, had chosen a job he knew I might be casing as I’d asked a few pointed questions in the forum. Since he’d arrived on the site first, he assumed which pieces I wanted, and took everything from the safe. Once we’d confronted one another and he realized it was only the one diamond pendant, he offered it to me in exchange for my contact details and that had been that.

“Tuesday is currently pouting with both of us,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck, looking guilty. I have no idea how Tuesday and Tawny met, but without the two of them, I wouldn’t be free today.

“Why?”

“Because I may have told him that you moved.”

I blink. “Yeah, a year ago...”

It wasn’t always safe to share my current location. If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘even the walls have ears’, well, the dark web was like that, but worse. You never knew who was watching, lurking, looking for an easy way to make a little cash. There was no honor amongst thieves.

“Well, it turns out he didn’t know.” Tawny pushes his glasses up his face with his middle finger. “And now he thinks we’re excluding him.”

“What the fuck?” I scrub my face. It wasn’t like Tuesday to care about things like this. He was always a bit of a loner. Just wandering into my life whenever it pleased him, creating a bit of chaos and then wandering right back out again. I don’t know if you’ve ever encountered a pissed off cat, but they weren’t much better in their human forms.

“You know what he’s like. He’s a Maine Coon.” Tawny rolls his eyes, the emphasis on ‘Maine Coon’ meaning ‘high maintenance’.

“Cat shifters are grumpy assholes.” I grumble, leaning my head back. When I designed this place, my secret little hideout, there was a part of me that hoped one day I might be able to invite Tawny and Tuesday here in person. I’d never done that. Had friends over for dinner, or even to work on a job. It was all done online apart from the times I ran into Tuesday. But without anyone else, the vault felt too big. Too cold. “I’ll drop him a message.”

“So...are you in?”

I narrow my eyes at the screen, almost feeling sorry for the mayor’s wife. Whatever Tawny had against the woman, it wasn’t going away anytime soon. “When’s this dinner?”

“Saturday.”

“Can’t. I have work.”

“Blue. C’mon man. Easy money for a good cause.”

He was right. A quick in-and-out job at a hotel might seem like more effort than it was worth to me, but to the omega charities I supported, that money made a huge difference.

“Urgh. I’ll text my boss, if he gives me the day off—I’ll do it. If he says no, then you’re outta luck.” That was a fair compromise, right? I knew Shep would likely give me the day, since I rarely took any leave. I had no reason to. No family, and my friends were virtual. There wasn’t much to do in Aurora Pines, so what did I need days off for besides rough patches in mating season?

“Deal.” There’s a loud thumping and Tawny looks over his shoulder, a flash of anger on his face.

When he doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Any news from The Warren?”

One day they’ll give up.

They have to. I am never going back.

“Only the usual. Every now and again they offer up that bounty for you, but I bury it pretty deep so they hardly get any uptake.” Tawny’s face softens, the anger from whatever the noise was fading. “I’ll keep you as safe as I can.”

“I know.”

*****

C iro sighs as he pops the cap off a bottled beer for Parker Johnson. That man liked a cold drink with his lunch, probably to drown out his wife’s nagging when he got home. That woman was never happy about anything.

“Do you think we might get to see him today?”

“He’s not a bloody Monet painting. He’s a person.” I chuckle. “And people have to eat.”

There’s only a handful of places you can get lunch made for you in this town, so the chances of running into Mr. Tall and Mysterious were pretty big. Every night this week folks in The Antler have been buzzing about the newcomer, speculating about the handsome man renting out Jeremy Biles' apartment while he’s off traveling the world for six months.

They say he’s 6 foot five with short reddish-brown hair and a touch of gray at the temples. Nerys, a gossipy woman from the general store, thinks he can’t be any older than 35, with what she calls ‘kind soulful eyes’. What the fuck does that even mean?

I have yet to see our handsome stranger, nor am I really that interested either. Every time someone new arrives in town, my senses are on high alert, wondering if it’s The Husk coming to find me and drag me back to The Warren.

Over the last three years, I’d moved so much, never staying too long in one place or leaving a trace behind, but Aurora Pines was the longest I’d lived anywhere. I thought it might finally be safe—safe enough to make friends and maybe put down a few roots. I didn’t want to be proved wrong.

Quickly, I learn that the rumors prove to be true. And it turns out I am interested. Very much so. Not only is the new edition to the town drop dead gorgeous with copper colored hair and gray eyes, but he’s also extremely patient. It hadn’t taken long for some of the locals to latch onto him during lunch on Thursday, sitting at his table, asking questions like it was a quick fire around.

What was his name?

Where was he from?

How old was he?

What did he do for work?

Why was he in Aurora?

Was he staying long?

Was he single?

Was he looking for love or perhaps a partner for his next rut?

That one garnered the most attention, all eyes swiveling to the rugged, sexy man in the black jeans that hugged his ass and thick thighs. Eventually taking pity on him, I shoo them away from his table, including an overeager Ciro. He could explore his daddy issues elsewhere and leave the stranger to eat his cheesesteak sandwich in peace.

“I apologize for them. They mean well,” I offer up with a one-shouldered shrug as I place his food order down, not missing the way the stranger’s gaze moves over my face.

I wasn’t oblivious to my looks; they were one of the most used tools in my arsenal, but I knew I was like marmite—you either loved me or you stayed well away. People were drawn to my dark eyes and unusual silver hair. There was something about the grungy but painfully pretty omega they couldn’t seem to resist.

The man sitting before me was almost my polar opposite, big and broad with lightly tanned skin and gorgeous fiery hair that was going gray at the temples. He was a wash of color, whereas I was the absence of it.

“We don’t often see new faces in Aurora Pines, so you’re a bit of a novelty.” It’s the truth, there’s not much worth moving to a tiny mountain town that's buried in snow for half of the year.

“Were you born here?” He asks with a head tilt. In this light, his eyes look almost like ammonites, swirled through with a darker gray. Pretty.

“No.” Replying slowly, I flash him a smile. I don’t know this stranger and I don’t know how much is safe to share even if something about him makes me want to. Instead, I settle for a generic comment. “I was once the one sitting in your place. The new shiny toy. Ahhh, how quickly they grow bored.”

“You still look pretty and shiny to me.” He groans and I laugh. His cheeks flush as he buries his face in his hands. I’ll take the compliment, the ‘and’ with the blush making it even sweeter. “So, you have the inside scoop on how to survive one of Nerys interrogations?”

“I know a thing or two,” I wink. Flirting comes easily, especially with eye candy like this before me to feast upon. There’s a reason I always made decent tips and always had someone to share my bed if I wanted. Not that they did. I never brought anyone back to the cabin.

“Good, because some days a man just wants to buy a bag of chips, beer and maybe some strawberry lube without it being a discussion on my plans for the evening.” The way his eyes crinkle at the corners tells me he’s teasing, but I can get on board with the flavored lube.

There’s a tightening low in my stomach as I catch hints of wood smoke and moss. Mating season was just around the corner and already I could feel that familiar itch beneath my skin. Something about his scent is recognizable, tickling at the back of my brain, daring me to remember.

“Maybe I could persuade you to share your hard-earned knowledge over dinner on Saturday.” Leaning back, he spreads his thick jean clad thighs. The corner of his mouth lifts while mine waters. Tree trunk thighs are a weakness of mine. That’s how those bear shifters kept luring me in.

Sighing dramatically, I hold my serving tray to my chest. “While I admire your audacity, I’m afraid I already have plans this weekend.”

“I would say confidence. Audacity makes it seem like I don’t have a shot.” With another charming smile, he swipes his thumb against his bottom lip. “That’s a shame, I feel like we’d have a lot to talk about.”

“Is there anything else I can get you Mr....”

“Smith. Jonah Smith.”

Something about the name feels off. He doesn’t look like a Jonah. I make a mental note to ask Tawny to do a little digging to find the skeletons in Mr. Smith’s closet before I let myself be sucked into those brooding eyes. What was the point in having a hacker best friend if they couldn’t vet your potential dates?

“And you are?” There’s something sharp in his gaze, like a predator latching on his prey, and a shiver runs down my spine. My skin warms slowly, the heat oozing through me.

“You can call me Blue.” It’s not my real name, the name given to me by the High Leap, but it’s a name I chose. The person I want to be.

“Beautiful Blue,” he murmurs, and fuck if it doesn’t make my cock twitch. Would he say it like that as he fucked me?

“Well, I like that even better.” Smiling, I walk away with a wave, but I can feel his eyes on me. And who can blame him? My ass is fantastic.

I barely make it through the next hour of my shift as his stare keeps landing on me, perusing like I’m some sort of artwork on display. It does nothing to help the semi I’m rocking or the building heat spreading through my limbs.

When I’m back in the storeroom, fanning myself in an attempt to stay cool, I wonder what the hell that was? Was I closer to mating season and my ‘heats’ than I first thought? My body feels like someone shoved a cattle prod up my ass and let loose with the electricity. That was never a good sign. Now was not the time to fall into lust with anyone, not when I had a job to do this weekend. Distractions result in mistakes. Mistakes mean they’ll find me. Find me equals no more freedom.

Heading to my locker, I pop out two heat suppressants and toss them back without bothering with water. The bitterness makes me gag, but it also serves as a reminder to get my head on straight. Handsome men weren’t worth the risk.

Goddess, I bet he looks incredible naked.