Protect Me (Sawtooth Shifters, #3) (2 page)

“I like any sort of extreme sport. The crazier, the better. I’m dying to go rock climbing, but the girls would never come with me.”

“I’ll totally go,” Baron said immediately, his voice finally infused with life. “If you’re looking for company.”

“As a matter of fact, I am.” I reached for him, putting my hand on his thigh. He was rock solid under his jeans. Baron put his hand over mine and squeezed. “What else do you like? Can I interest you in a little snowboarding and skydiving, too?” I asked.

Baron’s mouth dropped. “Marry me.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth, pretending to hold in a laugh, but I was really trying to stop myself from accepting his proposal. If I drove fast enough, we could be in Vegas by morning and the ink would be dry on the contract by the time we had matching ink healing on our ring fingers. “Not so fast. I need to make sure you don’t cry like a little bitch when you jump out of a plane before I agree to anything.”

His eyes got huge. “Stop flirting with me, Kiera,” he deadpanned, fighting a smirk.

“What? You started it with wanting to write your own vows and shit.” I whacked his leg harder than he was probably expecting. “Four brothers and four years in the army, I can give it as good as I take it.”

“Oh yeah?” Baron leaned in close. “I promise to give it to you good.”

Holy shit
. “I’m going to hold you to that.” Our eyes locked, and I was melting from the heat of his promise. But not tonight. That whole not being girlfriend material thing made it impossible for me to sleep with someone on the first date. My track record in this department was flawless. No one had ever called me back after I gave it away like it was late afternoon at the swap meet. This wasn’t even a date. It was more like house arrest. I sat up, repositioning the pillow between us like a battering ram. “What do you think is going to happen with your pack?”

I’d helped Trina, my boss, break up a dog fighting ring. We had no idea that the dogs were actually wolves and the wolves were actually werewolves. Ryker, the shitbag running the ring, wanted revenge. He’d attacked the animal shelter we worked at and a couple nights ago, one of his goons paid Trina a visit at home. He didn’t come back alive. As a result, my roommate Lyssie and I had been assigned bodyguards. Baron was only here because his brother was forcing him to keep us safe, not because he was interested in me.

I could probably fuck an attacker up better than any werewolf, but my days of challenging anyone’s masculinity were over.

“My brother thinks he’s going to kill Ryker the next time he shifts. Major’s never going to accept Shadow as alpha, and he’s stirring up some serious shit of his own.” Baron didn’t seem to like either option.

“Major’s a dick.” I wanted to make Baron laugh, but it was true. He turned his backs on all of us as soon as he shifted. He thanked us before he hauled ass back to the forest, but the words had probably tasted like battery acid coming out of his mouth. I wasn’t going to tell Baron that Major and I had history beyond that. “Can’t you do anything to stop them?”

“Nope.” Baron smiled, looking more like a wolf than he had since he’d shifted. “I’m second born. I don’t lead. I follow.”

“Like hell I’d accept that if I were you.” If it made him happy, that would be something else. But I could tell it didn’t. “You just said everything is changing, and if neither of those are good options, this is your chance to step up and do something about it.”

“We’re headed for war, and I’m expected to be a soldier. Soldiers don’t have opinions, they die for what other people believe in.”

I couldn’t breathe. He had no idea how much he hit the nail on the fucking head. “I think you should go.”

“Kiera, I didn’t mean it like that. I—“

“Then what the fuck did you mean like that?” I glared at him. I’d given him a chance to leave, but since he refused, he better have a damn good explanation.

“I didn’t choose this. Our roles were decided before we were born. I follow my alpha’s lead, no questions asked.” Baron didn’t break the gaze. No shame in his statement. To him it simply was what it was.

“Isn’t Shadow your alpha? Your brother that you spend practically twenty-four hours a day with? I find it pretty hard to believe that he’s never asked you what you thought about the pack. And you’re not a soldier. Stop tossing around words you don’t know the meaning of.” Baron opened his mouth to counter, but I shook my head. “Please. Go.”

B
aron

My words hit Kiera like a lightning bolt, burning something deep inside. It left a scar on my heart, a reminder not to be so stupid if she ever gave me another chance.

Kiera had served in the army, and I’d slapped her in the face. She thought I was fucking spineless for blindly following a cause I didn’t believe in. She was right on both counts. Defending myself made me sound like more of an asshole, so as always, I did as I was asked. I left her alone. It was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.

This bullshit needed to stop. Following pack protocol almost got me killed, and not just this time. And for what? There was no reward, just more fighting. I preferred to be wolf, but I wanted peace when I was human. It wasn’t too much to ask. Most people in Granger Falls lived in ignorant bliss of the war that was about to erupt around them, but something haunted Kiera. I’d seen it many times before I shifted. She never had her back to the room, and she’d stare down things I couldn’t see. I’d never question her, because I understood. My sight was better than anyone else in any of the local packs. I had plenty of time to stand back and watch. But even I couldn’t see what Kiera did.

Tonight was my turn to invade the girls’ house. I didn’t expect to be met with a warm reception after my last visit. “Where’s Lyssie?” I asked when Kiera let me in. Frost crawled over the imaginary wall we’d built the other night, vaporizing all the things I wanted to say. But it wasn’t going to stop me.

“In her room, reading. Why?” Kiera narrowed her eyes, moving around the living room under the guise of picking up clutter that didn’t exist. Anything but look at me. Great.

“Just wondering.” It was pretty obvious Kiera didn’t want to talk to me, but with Lyssie as a referee, things wouldn’t be so fucking awkward. We could watch a movie and maybe laugh about something. Ease into being normal. “Hey, they’re opening night skiing on Baldy this week.”

“Oh yeah?” For the first time she stopped and smiled. “I’ve been waiting for that all year.”

“I’m going tomorrow. I’d love some company.” Every woman I’d ever met had been off-limits for me. Even if they were human and I spent the night with them, we had no future. I never fooled them by hanging around. Now I wanted to and I had no idea how to make it happen.

“That would be awesome,” she said, flopping down on the other end of the couch and picking up the remote. “What do you watch on Netflix?”

I was still buzzing from the fact she said yes to think about anything else. “Orange, and Arrested Development. What about you?”

“The same, and Grace and Frankie. I stick to comedy. When I want someone to tell me a story, I want them to take me out of my world. Not depress the hell out of me.”

Ouch. “Speaking of that, I’m sorry about the other night. I didn’t mean to be a disrespectful asshole—“

“You weren’t,” Kiera snapped, sitting bolt upright, irritation could shoot her straight into the sky. “I was tired and I wanted to go to bed, that’s all.”

“What happened to you in the army?” If it wasn’t there, it was somewhere. I didn’t want to keep guessing.

“Nothing happened to me.” Kiera paced in front of the TV, the opening scenes of Arrested Development playing behind her. “What, you want to say that a woman can’t handle combat? Or should keep the hell away from a man’s world? If it wasn’t for me...never mind. I’m here to get away from that.”

I got up, blocking her path. I took a chance, putting my hands on her arms. She could get away, if she wanted to. Kiera wasn’t that tall, but her presence filled every room she was in. Her shoulders rose and fell, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. “If you tell me what’s wrong, I can stop doing it,” I said softly. “Instead of feeling like I’m dancing in a field full of landmines.”

“Touché,” her eyes flicked up, clouded with some emotion that threatened to break with the storm. “I never thought of it like that before. My strategy has been if I don’t talk about it, I don’t give it power.”

“You’re giving it all the power.” I caught her chin and tipped her face up to me. I wasn’t letting her run from this anymore. “You’ve let it chase you into a box, and it’s closed in on you. Sometimes you have to run to the enemy and call its bluff.”

It was so easy to give someone else advice, and hard as hell to put it into action in my own life.

“Sometimes when you run to the enemy, things blow up.” Kiera’s voice was dry, and I knew she wasn’t speaking hypothetically. “And they can never be the same again.”

She trembled under my touch. “Did you go to war?”

Keira nodded. “Iraq. Two tours.”

Holy fuck. I knew the answer was yes, but I didn’t expect her to say she’d gone back. I couldn’t imagine what that would be like. A taste of freedom then knowing exactly what Hell was like when she returned to it. “You’re a bad ass, you know that?”

Kiera’s face lit up. “I am pretty bad ass.” She motioned to the couch and sat back down, pausing the TV show. “I’ve never told anyone I went to Iraq without answering a ton of questions. Honestly, I don’t know how much I’m going to be able to tell you, so don’t give me a hard time if I have to stop talking about this.”

Everything was starting to make sense. “I’m honored that you chose me to hear your story.”

She sized me up. “I don’t think the two of us are all that different. Anyway, I told you the other night I grew up with four old brothers. We lived on a farm in Kansas, my mom homeschooled us. They were my whole world, and I would’ve done anything to make them think their annoying little sister was half as cool as they were. So when they all went into the military, it was the only answer for me, too. I wanted to be CIA. Because what’s cooler than that? Working as a spy, knowing the world’s secrets? Sign me up. After spending eighteen years in pretty much the same place, there was no adventure I wasn’t ready to grab by the balls.”

“That would scare the hell out of most people who’d lived such a secluded life.” I was in complete awe of this woman. I’d never met anyone like her. “But you were the exact opposite.”

“I couldn’t wait to get the hell out of there. I enlisted before I graduated from high school. In the army, I got assigned to the Explosion Ordinance Disposal unit, the bomb squad. Stateside, that’s the unit that makes sure big events are safe, and works with the president and other dignitaries. Secret Service, basically. In Iraq, there was no predicting what we’d find, because those guys aren’t playing by our rules. Here we get weeks of intel to work with—over there it would be minutes before we’d have to detonate a device. No matter where it was, lives were on the line. Soldiers and civilians. And the thing with bombs and homemade explosives is no two are exactly the same. They don’t come with instruction manuals.”

I knew she was as tough as nails, but she’d served in the most dangerous capacity. There was no reason for her to apologize that the memories haunted her. “Did you get hurt?” I asked.

She nodded. “I got burned pretty badly. A fireball exploded and I didn’t see it coming until too late. My left side is pretty messed up. But at least I didn’t lose my limbs. Or worse.” That look was back, the one where she saw things I couldn’t. Now I knew what they were, and they gave me chills. “I was lucky.”

Kiera wasn’t with me right now. She was back in the desert with her unit, reliving that awful day. All the color drained from her face. If it was a sheet of paper I would’ve drawn her a picture, written her a story, done anything to replace the vision she saw. But I could wrap my arms around her, so that’s what I did.

She didn’t know how to react. Her body stayed stiff as I guided her head to my shoulder. I rubbed her back and she relaxed, unlocking her arms from around her own body and reaching for me. Lightly at first, like she didn’t want to admit that she needed someone else for anything. After a couple minutes, she realized that letting someone in wasn’t a sign of weakness. I wanted to make her stronger.

She gasped when my fingers brushed against the skin between her top and her sweatpants. “What are you doing?” She jumped away from me, yanking her shirt down. “Don’t touch them.”

Her scars.

They didn’t feel different until she pointed them out, then I realized they were hard and smooth. I wanted to see them. It was a sick fucking thought, but I knew they’d be able to answer all the questions that Kiera couldn’t. And I wondered, if she freaked out over someone touching them, how long it had been since she’d let anyone really see her, offer her any comfort. All I knew was that the US pulled out of Iraq years ago. But a piece of Kiera had been left behind.

“It was an accident.” I tried to lure her back in with my hands safely on her back, but she resisted.

“Fuck it,” she said, peeling her shirt up over her head. “I’m sick of not being a whole person. And you...need to know what you’re getting yourself into if you want to spend time with me, Baron. I’m far from perfect. And this is always going to be a part of me.”

Her eyes locked with mine in challenge. She was completely bare under the T-shirt. I had to rip myself away from her gaze and take her all in. The scars rippled from her shoulder down the side of her arm. They completely covered her left breast, and dripped down into the waistband of her sweatpants. In their own way, they were beautiful. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her that, so I didn’t. They looked like lightning, the fire frozen inside her, earned from a place few were brave enough to ever venture to.

I don’t think Kiera took a breath while she waited for my assessment. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.”

“I was.” She chuckled. “Now I’m a professional dog walker.”

“You forget who you’re talking to.” I wanted to touch her so badly. Run my fingers over the lines of the scars. Kiss her lips. “If you weren’t a dog walker, you would’ve never saved me. I’d be dead or just waiting around for it to come. You’re still a hero. You’re my hero.”