Page 30 of Ranger’s Pursuit (Lone Star Wolf Rangers #3)

SUTTON

T he raw bite of blood still clings to the back of my throat, burning like acid, making my stomach clench and my eyes water, when my dad's body jerks in my arms.

Not a death spasm... a breath that barely brushes my skin, ghosting across my neck with the fragile insistence of life refusing to let go.

Shallow. Weak. But unmistakably there.

"He's breathing," I rasp, cradling his head against my shoulder as tears blur my vision. "Deacon, he's alive. I bit him and it worked. He’s alive."

Wonder floods me, crashing against the edge of disbelief. I turned him. I actually turned him. And he’s going to live. Joy bursts inside me, wild and overwhelming, as I hold him tighter, my breath catching on a sob that tastes like hope.

Deacon's hands are already moving, pressing gauze from his med kit against the wound, muttering something sharp and urgent under his breath as Dalton radios for evac. The church reeks of gunpowder and old wood and fresh blood, but in this moment, all I can smell is the sweat on my father’s neck, the living heat of him against me. Alive. By a thread—but alive.

My dad's lashes flutter, the movement slight but unmistakable.

His lips part, a faint rasp of breath escaping as if it costs him everything.

I lean closer, my pulse racing, awe and disbelief coiling in my chest. I turned him.

He's going to live. And somehow, impossibly, he’s trying to speak.

A thousand emotions surge at once—wonder, gratitude, hope.

I cradle him tighter, eyes stinging. "I'm here, Dad. I'm right here."

"Howling... moon," he breathes, barely audible.

"What?"

He tries again, his voice clearer this time, but only just. "Sookie. Told me. Thumb drive. Said she left it... howling at the moon."

I go still. That phrase... the wolf. The carved one on my porch. The one Sookie always ran her fingers over when she visited. My mind flashes back to the last time I saw her standing there, her eyes too bright, voice tight when she hugged me goodbye.

Deacon looks at me. "Do you know what that means?"

I meet Deacon's eyes, breath catching. "I think I know where it is."

Dad tries to sit up and groans. He blinks, still disoriented, then looks down at the hole in his chest, his fingers brushing the dried blood around it. "I thought... I felt the bullet... I should be dead."

I grin at him. "Dad, remember the stories you used to tell me when I was a kid about beasts and goblins and things that go bump in the night?"

He smiles weakly. "Yes. You never liked the ones about the princess in the tower who gets saved by the handsome prince."

"Well, have I got a story for you..."

Back on the road to Galveston, dawn cuts across the skyline in bruised golds and smoky lavender, the air thick with the scent of salt and last night’s rain.

The breeze carries a faint chill that slips beneath my jacket, raising goosebumps across my skin.

Seagulls cry overhead, their wings slicing the early light as if to remind me that we’re still here—still standing. Still breathing.

Deacon’s Harley growls beneath us, our bodies pressed close, the warmth of him seeping into my spine. There’s no conversation—none needed. Not yet. The ride back is all motion and memory, wind and silence.

When we pull up to my townhouse, I’m already halfway off the bike before it fully stops. My boots hit the pavement and I sprint for the porch, the adrenaline from the night’s chaos still crackling through every nerve ending, sharp and electric beneath my skin.

I drop to my knees beside the carved wooden wolf that has watched over my home for years—silent, stoic, and suddenly more than just a sentimental keepsake.

My hands tremble as I reach for it, fingertips feeling along familiar grooves.

I search beneath the paws, behind the ears, and along the base, willing myself to find something, anything, until?—

There.

A panel—nearly invisible, camouflaged by time and familiarity. My fingers hesitate, then press with purpose. A soft click breaks the silence, and the base creaks open. Tucked inside: a small, battered USB drive, carefully wrapped in wax paper like a secret meant to last.

My heart skips, a flutter of awe and disbelief catching in my chest. I hold the drive out to Deacon, and the way he takes it —careful, solemn, as if it’s something sacred—sends a swell of emotion through me so sharp it aches.

"Let’s see what was worth dying for," I whisper.

Team W Headquarters

Just Outside of Galveston

An hour later, we sit around the long table in the main house at the ranch—Team W’s headquarters and home base. Rush, Kari, Dalton, Gage, Gideon, and my dad—propped up in a recliner with an IV in his arm and a blanket around his shoulders. He looks like hell. But he’s here.

"Sookie knew something," dad says, voice raspy but steadier now. "She’d been poking around, said she didn’t trust the new budget allocations coming through city contracts. Not just skimming—wholesale laundering. And not just money."

Deacon nods grimly. "Trafficking. Infrastructure manipulation. Intel-sharing with private militias. It’s bigger than we thought."

Kari plugs the drive into her laptop and begins clicking through folders, her fingers flying over the keys. Her eyebrows lift, then arch higher with each passing second, her mouth parting slightly as the sheer volume of data unfolds across the screen.

"Holy shit," she murmurs. "Emails, purchase orders, blackmail material... She catalogued everything. Even had passwords. Names. Timeline logs. She even has the start of her expose. This is explosive stuff."

"And the Reaper is still out there," murmurs Dalton.

I lean over Kari's shoulder. "Can you write it? The expose? Make it public?"

Kari hesitates. "I mean, the last journalism I did was in college. My blog’s mostly character deep-dives for my romance novels and wild conspiracy theories I use to brainstorm plot twists. I don't know that I could do it justice."

"Better to give it to some Dan Rather type—you know, someone who's trained to do this kind of thing," says Dalton.

Ignoring him, I push gently, "Yeah, but Kari's smart, and I trust her." I turn to Kari. "You’ve seen what they’ve done. You're a wolf-shifter, and you've got the Team to look out for you..."

"No way," growls Gideon. "She gets into enough trouble writing romance novels. She does not need to be pissing off cartels and killers. Right, Dalton?"

I glance between the two men and Kari who's being uncharacteristically quiet.

"Kari, you know that if we drop this into official channels, it’ll get buried. Sookie left me everything. You're the only one I trust to tell Sookie’s story."

"She's not doing it," says Dalton.

Kari glances his way and then looks back at me, eyes steady now. She nods. "I'm in."

Rush steps into the moment to break the growing tension. "Say Frank, how are you enjoying retirement?"

My dad grins. "To be honest, it sucks. What do you have in mind?"

"Admin isn't really my thing, but it falls to me as team lead. We need someone to run point on logistics. Keep the paperwork tight, liaise with the governor in Austin."

"You offering me a job?"

Rush grins. "I am."

My dad huffs a laugh that turns into a wince, pressing a hand to his side. "I’m in."

Across the table, Deacon slips his hand over mine. He says nothing. He doesn’t have to. Everything I’ve survived, everything we’ve endured—it’s etched into his touch.

Outside, the sky burns bright and new.

For the first time since all this started, I feel like I can breathe.

Sutton's Townhouse

Galveston, Texas

That night, I find Deacon standing shirtless on the balcony, a glass of something amber in his hand, the wind tugging at his hair. He turns when I step out, watching me with that look that still makes heat bloom between my thighs.

"It’s over," I say quietly.

He nods. "For now."

He sets the glass down with a quiet clink, his eyes never leaving mine.

In one fluid motion, he gathers me against him, the heat of his bare chest branding my skin through the thin cotton of my shirt.

His fingers weave through my hair, firm but reverent, angling my mouth to his.

When he kisses me, it’s not soft or tentative—it’s possession, worship, a claiming so deep it steals the breath from my lungs.

His lips demand everything, coaxing a low moan from my throat as he tilts his head, deepening the kiss until the world narrows to this: his taste, his hands, the relentless, glorious way he devours me like I’m already his and always have been.

When he breaks away, he whispers against my lips, "You’re mine, Sutton. And I'll raze every shadow and silence every threat before I let anything steal you from me."

My heart stumbles, then settles into a rhythm that echoes his. "You’re mine too, Deacon. So if there’s fire, it burns only with my permission."

His grin is wicked. "Then say it."

I laugh, but it breaks into a gasp as he lifts me in his arms and carries me inside.

The night stretches out before us—soft sheets, warm skin, love made slow and fierce. And when I fall asleep, it’s not to nightmares. It’s to the sound of Deacon’s heart beating beneath my cheek.

DALTON

Kari’s Historic Victorian Cottage

East End Historic District

Galveston, Texas

Two Months Later

The house looks like it fell out of a damn storybook—if that storybook had been rewritten by a woman who drank black coffee, trusted no one, and slept with a stun gun under her pillow.

A pale-blue Victorian, squat and stubborn in the middle of the East End, complete with gingerbread trim and a wraparound porch that’s seen better decades.

Vines crawl up the columns like they’re trying to reclaim it, but the windows gleam clean, and the old brass knocker’s been polished to a shine.

A wind chime made of spoons, bolts, and crystal pendants tinkles from the eaves.

Loud enough to startle. Pretty enough to distract. Exactly like her.