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DEACON

D awn is just breaking when I stretch my limbs, the earth cool beneath my paws. The wilderness surrounding Team W's headquarters isn’t completely untouched, but it’s wild enough—marshy air, the distant hiss of waves, and trees that creak like they’re whispering old secrets.

I run through it like I belong here, but I don’t—not really.

Not like I did back in the Mississippi River Delta, where I was born.

Back home, the land’s got a different rhythm—thicker air, deeper mud, and a kind of ancient wildness that sinks into your bones.

Here, the ground is drier, the salt more brittle, the wind sharper.

It doesn’t feel like home. But my wolf adapts.

He always does. My wolf doesn’t think. He senses.

He tastes the salt in the air, the soft pulse of birds fluttering just beyond reach, the scent of raccoon, deer, and oil-soaked wood.

The wind brushes through my coat as I tear through low brush, over fallen logs, across the broken shell of a forgotten dune. There’s freedom in this skin. No command structure. No orders. Just instinct and motion.

But eventually, I feel the tug of time. My legs slow, my senses tighten, and the sharpness of instinct begins to blur at the edges.

The call back to my human form is quiet but relentless—a gravity pulling at my bones, reminding me I can’t stay wild forever.

My wolf resists it, snarls against the transition.

But I’ve learned to listen when the world starts tilting back toward responsibility.

I head back to the ranch and move to the outdoor shower.

The ground is soft, accepting, and I let the change come.

Mist coils around me like breath from the earth. Thunder echoes somewhere distant, deep, and hollow. Light splits the air in jagged flashes of color as the change takes hold. My body reforms in the heart of the mist—no pain, just pressure and heat, like being poured back into flesh.

And then I’m standing naked under a bleeding sky.

I head into the outdoor shower behind the barn and crank the water cold. It blasts across my shoulders, down my spine. My breath hisses through my teeth. There’s a kind of reset in it—like scrubbing away the beast and everything he picked up along the run.

By the time I’m dry, I’ve pulled on jeans and boots. Shirtless, I make my way up the steps and push open the back door into the kitchen.

I sniff the air. Chili cheese cornbread.

Gideon has been busy. It burns the hell out of the roof of my mouth as I take a large bite out of the piece I cut.

I don't care. The heat gives me something to focus on—something real—because the quiet in this house always feels like it's waiting to be broken.

Something's coming. I can feel it pressing at the back of my skull, just out of reach.

I'm halfway through my second beer, legs stretched under the farmhouse-style kitchen table at Team W headquarters, when I hear the front door slam.

Heavy boots. Rush.

He doesn't knock, doesn't call out—just moves through the house like a storm on a schedule. I glance up as he walks in, expression like granite and eyes darker than usual.

“Hope that’s not the last of the cornbread,” he mutters, but he's not reaching for a plate.

Instead, he slaps a piece of paper down in front of me. I wipe my hand on my jeans and look.

A sketch. Clean lines. Intense eyes. Mole near the jaw.

Scar near the temple. My stomach clenches.

It's him. No doubt. After all this time chasing shadows and whispers, the bastard finally has a face again. And it feels like someone just dragged a straight razor down my spine. I didn’t realize how much I needed this until right now.

“Where’d you get this?” I ask, voice low.

“Galveston PD,” Rush says. “Came through an unofficial channel. One of Frank Blake’s contacts.”

I stare at the sketch. The pencil work is sharp. Confident. No guesswork. Whoever drew this saw him up close.

And I know that face. I’ve been chasing it across six states for five years.

The Reaper.

Rush leans his hip against the counter, arms crossed. “She gave it to Detective Wilson. Got brushed off. Sketch is already in the wind.”

“She?”

He nods. “Witness. Civilian. Sutton Blake.”

I go still.

“Frank’s daughter?”

Rush gives me a look. “You know her?”

“I’ve heard of her. Quiet reputation. Forensic accountant. Worked a couple federal cases. Keeps her name out of headlines.”

“She’s not out of anything now. Her neighbor was murdered. And she saw the guy who did it.”

“Damn.”

Rush lowers his voice. “You know what that means.”

“She’s a target.”

He nods. “Which means you’re going to Galveston. Effective immediately.”

I push my plate away, appetite gone. “She the only witness?”

“The only one that matters.”

The Harley roars beneath me as I ride into Galveston, wind whipping at my face, the scent of seaweed and distant refineries mixing in the air.

The roads are flatter here, the horizon wider—less shadowed than the bayous I grew up in, but no less haunted.

Back home, the trees are thicker, the sky lower, and the wild has teeth.

Galveston’s wild wears perfume and a smile you shouldn’t trust. I keep the throttle steady. Miles peel behind me like old skin.

I’ve been through Galveston more times than I can count—we’re stationed just outside it—but this ride’s different.

Because the last time I felt this raw, this rattled, I was riding backroads through Louisiana, helmet off, wind in my face, with nothing but rage and grief to keep me company.

I was heading home to bury Verity—my sister, my anchor—and the silence that rode with me was the loudest damn thing I’ve ever heard.

That trip carved something out of me I’ve never been able to fill back in.

We’d gone fishing—just the two of us—the last time I'd been on leave. She’d taken a break from court before the start of her big case.

We caught nothing but catfish and sunburns.

She brought that shitty pink cooler and called it her “mobile bar.” Every time I tried to cast my line, she’d hand me another canned cocktail and say, 'You’re on leave, soldier.

Your mission is relaxation.' I told her she was going to get me court-martialed by the fish.

She laughed so hard she nearly fell out of the boat.

She talked about starting her own firm. About how she wasn’t afraid of the cartel case. That she had protection. That the system worked.

I knew better. But I didn’t say it.

Flash forward. A quiet hallway. A body bag.

They let me see her face for three seconds before the zipper closed.

I decide to stop at the Devil's Den. They make a great Cajun blue-cheese burger and it's close to dinner time. I might as well get something to eat before getting started. I've got some contacts here. If the Reaper's been here, I might be able to pick up his trail.

The woman at the bar doesn’t belong here.

I know it the second I walk in. I ignore the buzzing in my head that has kicked up in intensity.

The Devil’s Den is the kind of place where desperate men come to make bad decisions, and where worse men come to make sure those poor decisions turn into something permanent.

A hole-in-the-wall dive sitting on the edge of Galveston, it reeks of cheap whiskey, greasy food, and violence waiting to happen.

And yet, there she is. Perched on a cracked leather barstool, her shoulders squared like she’s daring someone to look at her the wrong way. A whiskey glass sits untouched in front of her, and her gaze flicks around the room like she’s memorizing faces, looking for something—or someone.

She’s got trouble written all over her, and my wolf is on high alert.

Not in the usual way, though. She’s not a cartel princess slumming it in the dark corners of hell, and she’s sure as hell not looking to pick up one of these lowlifes.

She’s dressed casually— dark jeans, a fitted jacket, and a ponytail that doesn’t do a damn thing to hide the sharp edge of her jawline.

She doesn’t belong here. And she knows it, but she’s not leaving.

I belly up to the bar and order a beer, keeping my posture loose, casual, even as my gut tightens. Because I know who she is. Who she has to be. Sutton Blake.

She's the daughter of a decorated officer. A good girl with bad luck. She's the witness to something she shouldn’t have seen. She’s also not supposed to be here.

We started tracking Hollister’s last remaining enforcers weeks ago—the Reaper is one of them.

As long as any of them are left out there, Rush's mate might still be in danger. Hollister might be dead, but his reach lingers, his men still moving in the shadows, covering their tracks, settling old debts. Sutton’s name came up exactly once and only recently in our intel—just a blip in a report, a neighbor who noticed too much.

We'd been keeping a casual eye on her, but she'd gone to the cops after the murder of her neighbor and her friend. We had hoped she wouldn't stick her nose in places it didn’t belong, and we could keep her safe from a distance.

I guess not. She's already gone to the cops, and I suspect the Devil's Den isn't on the list of her usual haunts. Yet, here she is, parked in the middle of a cartel place of business, probably looking for a man who would snap her neck before she had time to scream.

I exhale through my nose, tapping my knuckles against the bottle in my hand. A slow beat. Calculating.

How the hell do I play this? If I walk up to her and tell her to leave, she’ll dig in deeper. I’ve seen the type—determined, guilt-ridden, too damn stubborn for their own good.

But if I let her stay? I glance toward the back of the bar. A group of men sit huddled in a dark booth, their voices low, their body language tense. I don’t need enhanced senses to know they’re watching her too.

I curse under my breath. Too late. She’s already made an impression.