Page 18 of Ranger’s Honor (Lone Star Wolf Rangers #4)

KARI

I wake to the slow, pulsing ache of Dalton’s bite low in my neck, the heat of it still thrumming beneath skin tender from his claim.

The sheets are twisted around my thighs, warm with the imprint of our bodies, and for a moment, I let myself feel it—how right it felt to be held, to be chosen, even if the world outside might tear it all away.

The scent in the air is unmistakably us.

Musk, salt, and the faint sweetness of my shampoo still clinging to his skin.

Early light filters through the curtains in hazy gold, casting a glow that catches drifting dust motes and bathes the room in quiet stillness. Everything feels saturated with what happened between us. The ache, the scent, the warmth—it’s all a vivid echo of surrender and everything it altered.

The mattress dips under his weight, his chest a solid wall at my back, breath steady at my nape.

There’s a deep, bone-heavy warmth in the room, the kind that speaks of safety, of belonging.

My body is sore in ways that have nothing to do with pain and everything to do with him—his hands, his mouth, the way he claimed me like he’d been waiting his whole life to.

Still, it’s that pulsing ache in my neck—warm and insistent—that centers me in this moment, reminding me what we are now.

What I am to him. What he’s becoming to me.

The pressure isn’t painful—it’s a steady beat that hums in the background of my awareness, a low, rhythmic beat that anchors me to this moment and the mark he left behind. Like a brand that belongs.

His arm is heavy across my waist, holding me fast with a quiet possessiveness that makes something deep in me settle.

There’s a safety in the weight of him, a sheltering pressure that eases the last tendrils of uncertainty from my chest. For the first time in what feels like forever, my breath doesn’t catch at shadows or what-ifs.

I let myself believe—if only for this moment—that I’m not alone anymore. That maybe I never was.

His body is warm against mine, breath steady, one leg tangled with mine like he’s still holding on even in sleep. Everything feels... right in a way that slips past logic and lodges deep beneath my ribs.

That’s the word that keeps echoing. I don’t feel owned or overtaken. I feel rooted. Centered. Like something inside me has locked into place.

I ease myself upright, careful not to wake him as I slip from beneath the sheets and pad toward the bathroom.

The mirror catches my reflection, and for a second, I don’t recognize the woman I see there.

Hair wild, bite dark and healing, eyes bright.

There’s a confidence in my posture that wasn’t there before, a steady flame where self-doubt used to flicker, where I used to second-guess every move, every instinct.

Now, I stand like someone who knows her own strength and isn’t afraid to wield it.

There's a steadiness in my spine that doesn’t depend on anyone else’s validation.

He didn’t make me strong. He just reminded me I already was.

I head downstairs, still rubbing the last of the sleep from my eyes, and move straight to the kitchen.

My hands move on autopilot as I brew a cup of coffee, the familiar rhythm grounding me while the weight of everything starts to settle deep in my bones.

The machine hisses softly, and the rich scent of roasted beans slowly fills the air, curling upward in warm tendrils that offer something close to comfort.

By the time I make it to the table, that same scent lingers like a promise. The tile is cool beneath my bare feet—solid, anchoring. I wrap my fingers tighter around the warm ceramic mug and take a slow sip, the bitter edge cutting clean through the fog of sleep and leftover heat.

There’s a different kind of tension humming through my system now—not the kind that made my limbs melt beneath his hands last night, but something sharper.

More urgent. And yet, beneath that urgency, a quiet awareness lingers.

The knowledge that he’s upstairs, likely sprawled across the sheets, warm and strong and mine for however long the world lets me keep him.

His presence anchors me in a way nothing else ever has.

There’s weight to it, a dense kind of comfort that wraps around me like a quilt still warm from the dryer.

The ache in my neck dulls beneath the steady rhythm of my heartbeat, soothed by the simple fact that he’s here.

It doesn’t dissolve the tension, but it reshapes it—steadies the chaos in my chest just enough for my focus to sharpen.

The energy inside me coils tight, not frantic, but ready.

Like the charged stillness before a storm.

My mind is already shifting, switching gears.

The lingering imprint of last night coats me; not just in scent, but in sensation.

It clings like heat trapped after lightning, lingering in the ache between my thighs.

It's a visceral, lingering reminder not just of the physical, but of the emotional realignment last night carved into me. For the first time, I let myself want something real, something more. And now, that want hums like a struck chord still reverberating, at the base of my spine like the aftermath of a slow-burning storm. It pulses through my bloodstream, speeds up my heart, tightens behind my ribs like a piano wire drawn too tight as I settle at the table. My thoughts begin to move—measured, strategic—threading together files, patterns, names that haven’t made sense yet but soon might.

I fire up the laptop, ignore the low battery warning, and open the decryption string Gage sent me. The one he said was 'buried so deep you’d need divine intervention and a gallon of caffeine to crack.'

Luckily, I’ve got both.

Lines of code tumble across the screen, slow and stubborn. I trace each one manually, muttering under my breath. Something’s off. A delay in one sequence. A redundant loop in another.

A cold thread knots low in my gut, tightening with every heartbeat.

I isolate the string. Run it again.

It’s a tracker.

A spike of disbelief lances through my chest, sharp and disorienting. No. No, this can’t be right.

The realization doesn't crash in—it seeps, slow and jagged, like frost spreading across glass, delicate and merciless, threading into my chest and locking around my lungs.

I reread the line once. Twice. Each pass burrows deeper, stripping the air from my lungs.

My heart jolts hard enough to hurt, and my hands tremble as I lean closer, willing the screen to rewrite itself. It doesn't.

The words are carved there like a scar—unforgiving, inescapable. My pulse pounds in my ears as dread knots low and cold in my chest. Not just a bug. Not just a line of suspicious code. It’s a fucking embedded uplink.

My skin flushes hot, then icy. I feel the blood drain from my face. A ringing starts in my ears. My throat tightens around a breath that won’t come. My fingers jerk away from the keyboard like it’s burned me. Nausea swirls up from my gut as I force myself to reread it. Again. Again.

The screen swims.

My pulse stutters and gallops. I’m suddenly hyperaware of every beat, every breath, every tick of the cursor blinking in silent confirmation. The room doesn’t feel safe anymore. It feels watched. Infiltrated.

A cold sweat breaks across my shoulders.

I push the chair back hard enough to scrape against the tile, the sound sharp and jarring as I stagger to my feet.

My blood runs ice-cold.

Whoever planted it didn’t just sneak past the firewalls—this was designed to piggyback on the encryption itself. I check the logs. It’s been active for weeks. Feeding location data, system access, and—god—file previews.

He’s seen everything. The Reaper has seen everything.

The thought slices through me like a razor.

He’s seen my notes, our plans—and if he’s hacked into the camera, he’s also seen the quiet moments.

The soft, stolen touches. The unguarded side of me I’ve only ever given Dalton.

It’s not just intrusion—it’s an attack. A deliberate strike meant to strip us bare.

My skin crawls at the thought of those private fragments being watched, dissected, maybe even cataloged.

I feel exposed, targeted, like every boundary I thought I had has been razed to the ground.

The warehouse plans. Sookie’s notes. Our movements. Me. All of it, laid out like prey.

“Oh my god…”

I slam the laptop shut, pushing back my chair and moving away from the table like it might bite me. My hands are shaking. Every hair on my arms is standing up. The room is too quiet. Too still.

He’s been in the system this whole time.

And if he’s been watching…

“Dalton,” I whisper, heart hammering. “Dalton!”

I bolt for the stairs. He’s already halfway down them, jeans half-buttoned, shirtless, eyes sharp.

“What is it?”

I stop short. “There’s a tracker in my system.” The words scrape out on a ragged breath, and for a second, I can’t move.

My hands clench around the edge of the table, fingers white-knuckled as the implications rip through me.

A cold sheen of sweat breaks across my skin, and I swear I can hear my pulse hammering in my ears.

My stomach drops, breath catching in my throat as nausea claws its way up.

I grip the table harder. “It’s been feeding data out—everything.

Notes, locations, our route to the South Pier—everything. ”

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t blink.

Then he’s moving.

Straight to my laptop. He yanks the power cord free, flips it over, and ejects the external drive like it personally offended him.

Without a word, he grabs a fireproof pouch from the cabinet—one I didn’t even know was there—and slides the drive inside.

Then, without hesitation, he crosses to the microwave, opens the door, and places the pouch inside before shutting it again.

I blink. “Wait—what are you doing?”

He doesn’t look at me. His jaw is tight, a muscle ticking along the edge like he’s biting back the urge to snap the door clean off its hinges.

“Microwaves can act as a Faraday cage—a metal enclosure that blocks wireless signals by redirecting electromagnetic waves, cutting off all digital communication inside. It won’t stop the uplink, but it isolates the drive while I decide how to wipe it properly.

Right now, I’m cutting the cord between you and whoever’s watching. ”

"There's only one person who would be watching my computer, and I don't mean one of the trolls from one of the review sites."

He nods; the tension in his body gives him away. Shoulders bunched, jaw tight, like he’s holding in a snarl. Like he’d rather shatter the microwave with his bare hands just to be sure it’s really done.

“Dalton...”

“Sit. Over there. Don’t touch anything.”

His tone is low and controlled—but there’s nothing calm about it.

It’s the kind of voice a man uses right before violence: cold, measured, final.

I’ve read it in books—hell, I’ve written it—and seen it in films, but hearing it from Dalton is something else entirely.

It’s not fiction. It’s real. And the weight of it is unmistakable. Lethal.

I obey.

He grabs his phone, fires off a text I can’t see, then paces toward the windows. Checks the locks. The blinds. Every movement deliberate.

“He’s been watching,” I whisper, the words scraping out of my throat like broken glass.

My knees weaken as the full weight of the violation hits me.

My throat tightens to the point of pain, ears ringing like a silent alarm has gone off inside my skull.

It’s more than panic; it’s a visceral shutdown, as if my body is trying to reject the knowledge outright.

I feel gutted; exposed in a way I’ve never known, as if every intimate thought, every plan, every kiss has been laid bare.

My breath hitches. A flush of nausea climbs up my chest. I wrap my arms around myself, like I can physically hold in the fury clawing beneath my skin.

He stops pacing and meets my eyes. “Yes,” he says, sensing the extent of my distress, and placing a calming hand on my shoulder, drawing me into his body.

“Do you think he saw…”

“I don’t care what he saw.” His voice is a snarl now, barely restrained. “I care that you’re not safe.”

“I didn’t know. Gage ran two full sweeps...”

“Gage didn’t catch it because it was embedded in the image metadata. Low-level. Smart. Subtle. Neither you nor Gage missed it, Kari. The Reaper's good. If he wasn't, we'd have caught him a long, long time ago. There's no telling how long it's been on there.”

He's right. I know he's right, but it means the Reaper is smarter than we thought. More patient. More surgical. And now we’re exposed.

“We have to get out,” I say, standing. “My place could be compromised.”

“It probably is.”

“So we go to Gideon's...”

“No.” He’s shaking his head before I finish. “Gideon’s house isn’t secure anymore either. If we’re being watched, if he’s this deep—we can’t risk dragging your brother or the others into it until we’ve isolated the breach.”

“Then where?”

Dalton goes silent. His jaw flexes. I can see the calculation behind his eyes.

“There’s a safe house on Bay Point. Old stilt place, retrofitted two years ago. Runs on a satellite uplink, fully tied into Team W’s systems, but buried deep enough it doesn’t show on any public or utility grid. No wireless signals to trace. It’s off-map.”

“Can we get there without being followed?”

“We’ll find out,” he says grimly. “Pack a bag. Nothing digital. No phones. No laptops. No Kindle. If the Reaper has eyes on us, I’m not giving him a goddamn window to get into position.”

I nod, my throat tight. I head for the stairs, but before I reach the landing, he calls after me.

“Kari.”

I turn.

His expression is steel—but his voice is rough-edged, stripped bare. Something in it hits me low, right where fear and longing collide. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this—a man holding himself together for both of us. And somehow, that makes it worse.

“You did good. Catching it.”

I swallow hard and nod. But his praise doesn’t touch the fear crawling along my nerves. Because if I hadn’t caught it in time, he’d already be dead, and I’d be bleeding out beside him.