Page 1 of Ranger’s Justice (Lone Star Wolf Rangers #1)

PROLOGUE

RUSH

T exas isn’t just land.

It’s blood. It’s history. It’s the kind of place that breeds men who don’t back down and don’t play by the rules. Men like us.

I didn’t choose this team. Hell, I didn’t even want it. But war doesn’t leave men like us with many options. We come home different. Scarred. And the world doesn’t know what to do with us. So, we do what we are destined to do. We keep fighting.

The first time I meet Dalton Calhoun, he’s throwing punches in a dimly lit bar outside San Antonio, taking on three guys twice his size. He’s a former Navy SEAL, a bruiser with a slow drawl and a mean right hook. He’s got the kind of dead eyes that come from seeing too much and surviving, anyway.

I watch as he breaks a man’s nose with an elbow, ducks another swing, and finishes the fight with a cold efficiency that tells me he’s still running ops in his head.

I like him already.

I stop the sheriff from stepping in. I’ve made my decision. When Dalton slumps into the seat across from me, wiping blood from his knuckles, I slide a beer across the table.

“You look like a man who needs a job,” I say.

Dalton chuckles, rolling his shoulder like it aches. “You look like a man who already has one.”

He’s not wrong.

A week later, Gideon Bonham joins us. Former Marine Raider, all sharp angles and scars, the kind of man who makes silence feel like a threat. He doesn’t waste words, doesn’t waste movement. I watch him dismantle a Glock in thirty seconds and put it back together without looking.

“You got a problem following orders?” I ask him.

He looks up from the gun, his dark eyes unreadable. “Depends on the man giving them.”

I laugh. “You’ll do.”

I find Deacon Winslow in the Louisiana bayous, where the heat clings like a second skin and the smell of swamp water makes your nose curl.

He’s former Marine Force Recon, a sniper so damn good he can take a man’s head off at 800 yards and still have time to finish his coffee. He’s tracking something when I arrive—doesn’t matter what. What matters is he knew I was coming long before I saw him.

The rifle swings around to point at me. “Who are you?” he asks, although I get the feeling he doesn’t really care.

“Names Zane Rushton, but my friends call me Rush.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Yet,” I say with a grin.

“Whatever you want, you’re wasting your time, Rushton,” he snarls.

“Funny,” I reply, watching as he turns back toward whatever or whoever it is he’s hunting. “And here I thought you were the one wasting yours.”

His lips twitch. Almost a smile. He exhales slowly, brings the rifle to bear, and pulls the trigger. A rabbit drops two hundred yards away, dead before it even feels the bullet.

“You come out here to recruit or admire my shooting?” he asks.

I chuckle. “Why not both?”

He shakes his head but follows me back to the truck. He doesn’t ask questions. He already knows.

Gage Remington is the wildcard.

We pull him out of a smuggling operation in the Chihuahua Desert, running stolen cargo across the border in an unmarked Black Hawk. He’s a former SOAR Night Stalker—one of the best combat pilots in the world. They say if you’re afraid of the dark or heights, the Night Stalkers aren’t for you.

He doesn’t need us. He could fly for private contractors, make a fortune running ops for billionaires with too much money and not enough sense.

But when I tell him what we do? What we are?

His expression changes.

“I don’t enjoy following orders,” he says, kicking back in his chair, boots up on the table.

Dalton grins. “Neither do we.”

Gage watches us for a moment, the corners of his mouth lifting ever so slightly. Then lets out a low whistle. “Well, hell,” he mutters. “Guess I just ran out of excuses.”

Five men with no family. Five men who bled for this country and came back to nothing but ghosts.

We were built for war. So, when the Texas governor called us in, sitting behind his heavy oak desk like he’s handing down a death sentence, I already know what’s coming.

“The cartels have taken Texas law and pissed all over it,” he says, hands folded in front of him. “Our Rangers fight them, but it’s never enough. The Feds are too slow. The politicians are too scared.” His eyes narrow. “We need something different. Something stronger. Something that doesn’t play by the rules.”

Dalton leans back in his chair, boots crossed at the ankle. “You saying we get a badge, or are we just the governor’s personal hit squad?”

The old man sighs, rubbing a hand down his face. “You’ll be Rangers. Officially, you’re Company W—an experimental unit focused on borderland crimes. Unofficially? You’re ghosts. You answer only to me.”

Gideon doesn’t react. He never does. But I see the glint in his eye. The one that recognizes an opportunity when it’s staring him down.

I don’t hesitate.

“You put us together for a reason,” I say, my voice even. “You know what we are.”

The governor nods. No hesitation. No shock.

Because he knows—knows we’re not just men. Knows we’re wolf-shifters. He knows that’s why we’re going to win.

Because he knows the cartel isn’t afraid of men. But then we’re not men. The cartel doesn’t know what’s coming, doesn’t know who’s hunting them yet.