Page 5

Chapter Three

Lake

Someone’s inside.

My heart races, beating wildly. Someone is in my house.

I stare at the door to the tiny little home I rented. The doors closed, but I can feel there’s a person just on the other side of it. A shiver courses down my spine. Whoever the person is, they’re a shifter. I don’t know how I know this, I just do. I’ve always been able to tell shifters apart from regular humans.

I should probably turn and run. Leave everything I own in there and go. Get as far away from here and not look back.

However, my feet refuse to do such. Instead, I find myself creeping toward the door. I barely get my hand on the doorknob before the door is thrown open, and an enormous beast of a man is standing there just inside the tiny house. Eyes glowing gold, lips drawn back, teeth flashing.

“Mate,” he snarls, animalistically. One of his hands clamps on my wrist and yanks me through the threshold, slams the door closed, only to shove me against it and get in my space. With him this close, I not only feel his head but see the stripes licking at his skin the way it did my dad and uncles when their animal was close to the surface.

“Mate,” he says again, dipping his head down as he sniffs. He surprises me further when he lets go of my wrist and cages me with his full body against mine as he nuzzles my hair and murmurs again. “Mate.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” I blurt out, not understanding him. I mean, I knew what a mate was for shifters. My mom had been my dad’s fated mate. He never found another after her. He says the love he had for her was too strong for him ever to replace it.

“Mate.”

The gruff, harsh, gravelly voice sends tendrils of sensations along my spine. Something in the back of my mind screams at me to run. However, that little voice isn’t as loud as the other one, telling me I need to lean into this man and hold on tight, which I don’t get. I’ve always run. This beast of a man, this tiger shifter, I should be fighting to escape from him.

“Found you, Mate,” he says, nuzzling the side of my neck.

“Again, why do you keep saying that? And you need to step back. Haven’t you heard of personal space,” I mutter. My survival instincts finally kick in, overriding the other sensations that want to cloud my judgment.

I press my hands firmly against his chest to shove him away. What I didn’t expect was the heat radiating from him to flow through my palms like a warm fire does when you’re cold inside.

Thankfully, he does as I want him to and steps back, though only a step. Still, it’s enough for me to get a good look at him.

The stripes on his face recede, and his dark eyes are taking me in as much as I’m taking him. His head is shaved and smooth, and I wonder if he has to wear a cap of some kind to keep the cold at bay. Shifting my gaze further, I take in the neatly trimmed but longest beard. I can feel a tingle at the thought of feeling how soft his beard is—and maybe having it touching another part of my body. A place where no one has ever touched me before.

At his ear, he has a bar going through the upper lobe and another circle thing. I’m not sure what it’s called at the bottom.

Thanks to always being on the run, I didn’t get to go to school or even keep up with a lot of modern things. I did at least learn from my uncles and dad. They taught me to read and to write. Use my head. I wasn’t stupid by any means, but I didn’t have time to keep up to date on all the newest stuff in the world or why people pierced their bodies or got tattoos.

This is the first time I’m actually staying in a house in a town rather than finding a no-name motel where no one asks questions. It’s different for me. Probably even stupid because I risked someone finding me. And in the end, I was found.

Just not by the ones looking for me, but a whole different type of threat. One I don’t understand just yet.

Looking farther down, I take in the leather jacket he’s wearing overtop of a black tee, the very tee I have my hands pressed against. His legs are clad in jeans, and his feet are covered in motorcycle boots. I lift my gaze back up, stopping on his chest and seeing more than just his jacket. It has patches on it, just like the ones I saw earlier in the day on the men riding motorcycles.

My dad and uncles always said they had friends, allies who were a part of clubs, so I knew what this man was associated with. At one time, my dad called upon one of his friends to help us lay low for a few days. I remember it as clear as day. It had been my ninth birthday. Dad and my uncles took me to their friend’s place. They said we were staying with them so they could celebrate my birthday. But looking back, I knew it was because my uncle Trace was hurt. He needed time to heal. They all still made my birthday special.

Shaking the thoughts away, I clear my throat and finally meet his gaze. “Would you like to explain what you’re doing in my home?” I demand, dropping my hands from his chest to plant them on my hips. “Maybe explain how you got in here? Oh, and a name would be good so I can chew you out by name.”

The beast of a man looks at me closely. His lip twitches, and he reaches up to touch the right side of his jacket. “Name’s Tucker.”

My eyes follow to see just that. His name is sewn into the jacket, and underneath it, another patch that reads Enforcer. I don’t know what that means, but I’m not stupid to the definition.

“Okay, Tucker , you going to answer the rest of my questions?” I demand, but I’m sure it doesn’t come out as such.

Tucker’s lip stops with the twitch, and he outright grins.

The nerve.

“Got in using the key to the house.” Tucker dips down, and the grin turns devious. “I own the place, little Fae.”