Wedged between them, Zac grinned. “Dude, these seats are fleek. How did you get such good tickets so late?”
“I already had them. Dominic and Trick were going to come with me.” They hadn’t been too happy to lose their tickets and had pointlessly complained. Ryan had stared at them until they had thrown their hands up and walked away. “Are you any good at football?”
“I’m all right. I play with Colton and some of the other guys at the shelter sometimes.”
That name made his wolf growl; he viewed the male as a rival. Personally, Ryan didn’t believe Makenna was dating Colton. That didn’t mean he wanted to hear about him.
“Makenna used to come along and watch . . . but they banned her from the games.”
Ryan blinked. “Banned?”
Makenna adjusted her sunglasses. “It was totally unwarranted.”
Zac laughed. “You punched the ref, and that was before the game even started.”
“He told Cady she couldn’t play because girls were too fragile for football. I was merely proving to the chauvinist asshole that not all females are fragile.”
There was genuine outrage in her voice, and Ryan was getting the impression that Makenna was a female who would stubbornly stand behind any key causes that she believed in. He liked that.
Originally, he’d suspected that she was using the shelter as a place to hide or to seek redemption. But now he was thinking . . . “Supporting the shelter is your way of fighting for loners, isn’t it?” Those shifters had no rights, no protection, and had a terrible reputation—it was an injustice that the Makenna he was coming to know would despise. Maybe because nobody fought for her.
Makenna didn’t like that he’d read her so well. She gave him a breezy smile. “The shelter’s pretty cool, right?”
She was good at evasiveness, Ryan acknowledged. It was irritating. “Do you often answer a question with a question?”
“Do you think I do?”
He barely fought the urge to grind his teeth. Instead, he bit into his hot dog.
“Makenna told me you’re a tracker,” said Zac. “Where did you learn to track?”
“One of the enforcers in my old pack taught me when I was a kid.”
“A kid?”
“I spent a lot of time with the enforcers.” At first it had been because his mother frequently dumped him on them—wanting his father, who was a trainee, to care for him. Ryan hadn’t minded. He’d been fascinated by it. So they had given him the same training, taught him to fight, to hunt, and—later—to kill. Those enforcers had given him the skills and confidence he had today as well as a talent he could take pride in. At home, he’d felt like an inconvenience and a burden. Being around the enforcers had given him a sense of belonging, made him feel useful and worth something.
“Do you like being one?”
“Yes.” It was all he’d ever wanted to do.
Zac scoffed down a few pieces of popcorn. “What’s it like?”
“Hard. Grueling. Rewarding. Long hours.” Although, to be fair, he worked longer hours than most. “This morning, I was up at six a.m.—”
“Seriously? Dude, I don’t even know what six a.m. looks like.”
Makenna smiled as Zac listened avidly to Ryan’s bullet-point description of a typical day for an enforcer. She couldn’t help but notice that Ryan didn’t include any of his feelings on his position or the responsibilities. It didn’t even seem he was being evasive or bottling his emotions. It was as if it didn’t occur to him that people would care to hear about his feelings on matters.
She wondered if it had anything to do with his parents. When she’d researched Zac’s family, looking for potential guardians, she’d learned about Ryan’s parents. His mother was a selfish, chronic complainer and his father was a retired enforcer who had a big fondness for whiskey.
Growing up around such emotionally absent, self-absorbed parents would certainly lead a kid to believe that their feelings simply weren’t relevant. The thought of a small Ryan being overlooked and emotionally isolated made her ache. Her wolf growled, protective of Ryan. Makenna could admit that she, too, felt a little protective of the surly male. She didn’t bother questioning why—her thoughts often made no sense. Besides, she didn’t have time to think on it any further, because the stadium announcer’s voice suddenly blasted through the speakers.
Although Makenna wasn’t necessarily a big fan of football, she found herself enraptured by what was happening. The game was pretty intense. Like most of the crowd, Zac cheered, gasped, cursed, yelled advice, and complained about penalties. Ryan remained as reserved as always. Sometimes he would grunt or shake his head, and his eyes would twinkle whenever a touchdown was scored.
Zac spat a particularly loud curse when the ball went wide, zooming in the air toward the crowd, and—
She winced as it bounced off Ryan’s head, almost making his neck snap back. Damn, that had to have hurt. “Wow, are you okay?”
His scowl harsher than usual, he grunted before throwing the ball down to the field. By the time the game ended and they were leaving the stadium, he had a goose egg on his fucking head.
Riding shotgun, Makenna simply couldn’t resist pointing out, “You know . . . if you hadn’t sat in that seat—”
“Don’t say it.”
“—the ball would never have hit you.”
Ryan flexed his grip on the steering wheel. He’d known this was coming. “It hit me because the player hurled it in my direction, it had nothing at all to do with the number of my seat. If the ball had sailed just a bit in your direction, it could have hit you.”
“No, it couldn’t have. I have my rabbit’s foot on my keychain.”
He did a double take. “What?”
“It wards off bad luck.”
“You really believe that part of a dead animal’s limb protects you?”
“Obviously, jeez. Don’t you know anything?”
“Tell me you’re kidding.” Because he didn’t want her to be beyond help.
“It’s common knowledge.”
“It’s not knowledge, it’s superstition—otherwise known as utter bullshit.”
She huffed. “You can be so irrational sometimes.”
“I’m irrational? I don’t have part of a dead animal on my keychain!”
“Maybe if you did, the ball wouldn’t have hit you!”
Struggling with a response, Ryan shook his head. “I can’t do this. I just can’t have this totally illogical conversation.”
A deep laugh burst out of the teenager behind them, who was struggling to sit upright. “You two are funny.”
Ryan exchanged a look with Makenna before frowning at Zac in the rearview mirror. “I’m never funny.” He sincerely doubted that the word had ever before been—and would ever again be—used to describe him.
“You are when you lose it with Makenna.”
Ryan’s frown deepened. “I never lose it.”
The kid held his hands up, smirking. “My mistake.”
But it wasn’t a mistake, Ryan begrudgingly admitted to himself. She had a way of getting under his skin. Yet, he still wanted nothing more than to take her home and fuck her to sleep. That just increased his frustration.
Ordinarily, Ryan was impervious to external distractions. But Makenna Wray was a walking, talking, and completely illogical distraction that drew him. Technically, she shouldn’t. She was whimsical and unpredictable, she asked unusual nonsensical questions, believed her rabbit’s foot charm warded away danger, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy provoking him. He was very good at analyzing people, but it was impossible to read someone who didn’t react normally.
In short, she made no sense to him. Ryan was all about logic and reason; he liked things to make sense in his world. Yet, he found himself a little fascinated by her. His wolf, too, found her intriguing; he was constantly hungry for the female with the mouthwatering scent and the wild spark in her eyes.
Quite frankly, it pissed Ryan off. He prided him
self on being an extremely disciplined person. He didn’t have problems resisting temptation, he didn’t have cravings, and he didn’t obsess over anything. But Makenna . . . she made him fucking ache.
Finally, Ryan pulled up outside the shelter and parked just behind her Mustang. “Wait here.” Sliding out of the Chevy, he scanned his surroundings as he circled around to the other side of the car. Satisfied that there were no signs of Remy or his pack mates, he opened both passenger doors.
Zac hopped out with a smile. “Thanks for taking me to the game. It was pretty awesome. Except for the part where you hit your head.”
Ryan might have bought the kid’s sympathetic comment if laughter wasn’t gleaming in his eyes. So Ryan just stared at him, daring him to say more.
“And now I’m going to go.” Clamping his lips together to hold in a laugh, Zac jogged to the entrance.
Makenna waited until he was inside before she turned to Ryan. “He enjoyed himself. It was a productive day.” She wanted him to know that pushing past his comfort zone had paid off. “You did good.”
At her genuine compliment, Ryan’s irritation left him. She was hard to stay mad at. Especially when she was standing there looking pretty and approving, and smelling so damn good. That wild scent had kept his cock hard and heavy all day. “I can’t see Zac tomorrow.” He was meeting with Myles’s pack mates. “But I’ll arrange something for the day after.”
Makenna nodded. “Text him with the specifics when you have them.”
She turned away, and Ryan found that he couldn’t let her go yet. “Farrah Grove.”
Slowly twirling to face him, she searched her memory for the name and came up blank. “Should I know her?”
“She left her pack when she was twelve. Some say she vanished, some say she ran away. She fits your description.”
“Oh, I see.” He thought she could be Farrah. Nope. There were a lot of things Makenna didn’t know about her past, but she knew enough to be certain that she wasn’t Farrah Grove—particularly since she was younger than twelve when she left her pack. “You think I’m her?”
Actually, now that she was in front of him . . . no, Ryan didn’t. She didn’t look like a “Farrah.” She looked like . . . well, a “Makenna.” “If you’re not Farrah Grove, who are you?”
“There are these things—you might not have heard of them—they’re called ‘boundaries.’ That means that if there are things I don’t want to share, you need to respect that. And let’s not forget that it ain’t your business, White Fang.”
Before he knew it, his hand had shot out and fisted in her hair. Tugging her close, he said, “You are my business.” That she’d say differently . . . it offended some part of him. The same part of him was urging Ryan to taste and bite her mouth.
Makenna swallowed hard, disturbingly turned on rather than pissed by his dominant, possessive hold. “You should let go.”
“Why? I want you.” Ryan almost winced at the gruff words. He probably shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that, but he’d never been smooth. Still . . . “And you want me.” She looked ready to deny it, so he tightened his grip on her hair. “It’s in your scent, so don’t lie to me.”
“My body wants you. That doesn’t mean that I do.”
He spoke against her mouth. “I said, don’t lie to me.” Punishingly, he bit her lip. Her mouth opened on a shocked gasp, and he drove his tongue inside. Fuck, her taste was as addictive as her scent. Sweet and almost bubbly, like sparkling Champagne. Unable to get enough of her, he ate at her mouth, sipping, licking, nipping, and biting hard enough to leave prints of his teeth on her lower lip. His wolf growled his approval at the mark as Ryan soothingly laved it with his tongue.
“You bit me,” said Makenna in pure wonder, her heartbeat racing.
“I did.” As he stared down at that mark, masculine satisfaction thrummed through his veins, filled every part of him, and settled into every cell and bone. And that was when he knew the truth. There was no denying it, because nothing else made sense. Nothing.
Ryan didn’t question his thoughts, actions, or urges. But it didn’t take self-reflection to conclude that this female was his true mate.
“Mate” . . . the word felt right to both him and his wolf. Like a puzzle piece sliding into place.
It would explain all the primal feelings that had been taunting Ryan since he first caught her scent: the urge to possess and own, the right to protect and defend, and the obsessive hunger that just kept building and building. It didn’t matter that Ryan couldn’t feel the tug of the mating bond. The facts spoke for themselves.
“Makenna . . .” But he didn’t have the words to explain his thoughts. Hell, he never did. Instinct told him that blurting out his belief with his usual lack of tact wouldn’t work out well. He needed to think about this. He needed to come to her with the right words, make a case she couldn’t argue against . . . because she would argue against it. Instinct told him that too.
He took a moment to breathe her in, to take that scent deep into his lungs. Then, with one last lick over the mark, Ryan released her and stepped back. It was hard. Damn fucking hard. Now that he knew—and he did know, he was sure to his bones—that she was his mate, walking away from her . . . it felt wrong.
“Be safe for me, Makenna.” Because he’d lose his fucking mind if anything happened to her. Her forehead crinkled—most likely in confusion at his choice of words—and he smoothed it out with his finger. “Remember: if there’s a problem, call me.”
As Ryan slid into the driver’s seat, he took one last look at Makenna. It was a mistake. Because the sight of even that small distance between them pissed him the fuck off. His wolf paced angrily, wanting to return to Makenna. Wanting to take, and bite, and own.
They’d claim her, he assured his wolf. There was no chance Ryan would give up this one good thing he could have. She was his mate, she was born for him, and she’d never get away from him.
When the Chevy disappeared into the distance, Makenna took a steadying breath. The guy certainly knew how to mess with a girl’s equilibrium. He kissed the way he did everything else—dominantly, confidently, and with enviable skill.
And then he’d bitten her.
Part of her had bristled at the possessive act, but she’d been so damn shocked that she’d done nothing more than state the obvious and stare at him in dismay. Well, Madisyn had warned her that he looked at her like he wanted to take a bite. Makenna just hadn’t thought he’d actually do it.
That little interlude had confirmed what she’d already suspected; he was a pushy motherfucker who she’d be completely unable to handle. So why did she want him? Because all that strength, confidence, and animal energy was like a damn aphrodisiac for Makenna. So now she was wet and aching for more . . . and the fucker had driven away. She might have been offended, might have suspected that he was put off by her being a loner, if it hadn’t been for his parting words.
“Be safe for me.”
Why? And why had he seemed reluctant to leave her?
Shaking off the matter, she headed into the shelter. Madisyn and Colton were chatting near the reception desk. Madisyn slowly came toward her. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” sighed Makenna. “I’m just tired.”
“Oh.” Madisyn patted her shoulder. “Guess it was that kiss that drained you, huh. Don’t growl at me, Wray.”
“Fuck off, feline.”
Colton laughed as Madisyn began singing, “Ryan kissed Makenna, Ryan kissed Makenna, Ryan kissed—ow, let go of my hair, heifer!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Some people got utter joy from teasing others. Trick was one of them.
His attempts to irk Ryan very rarely worked. When they did, it wasn’t so much that the things he said bothered Ryan; it was that Ryan lost his patience with the whole thing. Still, the majority of the time, Ryan simply drowned him out. Or stared at Trick until he stopped. It depended on his mood. Today, though, his efforts to rile Ryan were paying off.
/> “I was just making the very obvious point that Makenna’s hot,” said Trick, who was riding shotgun. “No need to snarl.”
And how had Trick made his point? By complimenting her body—her eyes, her mouth, her breasts, her ass, and her legs.
Dante locked gazes with Ryan through the rearview mirror, looking curious. “What’s wrong with you? You’re gruffer than usual.”
Ryan didn’t respond. All he wanted was to get this meeting with Myles’s pack mates over with. He’d had a shitty night’s sleep, having spent hours simply lying there, deciding what he’d say to Makenna. He wanted to see her. Touch her. Inhale her scent.
He hadn’t yet told his pack mates about his belief that she was his mate. It seemed wrong to do it before he’d had the conversation with her.
“I don’t suppose you know if Makenna’s dating anyone, do you?” Trick asked.
Ryan growled at the interest in his voice—it came from both him and his wolf.
Trick grinned. “If I’m not mistaken, there was some possessiveness in that growl.”
“You’re different with her, Ryan. I mean, you talk to her,” Jaime marveled. “And I don’t mean in monosyllables. You actually converse with her.”
“And she talks to you,” added Taryn. “Dominic said she can interpret your grunts.”
“I hope she’s single,” said Trick. “It’s been a while since I’ve been with a female who—”
Another growl rumbled out of Ryan. “Don’t say it.”
Trick’s grin widened. “Ho, ho, ho, Ryan’s finally showing some real interest in a female.”
Leaning forward, Trey smacked Trick over the back of the head. “Ignore him, Ryan.”
Sounded like a good idea to him.
Before long, they were at the border of Myles’s territory. The wolves on guard waved them through, showed them where to park the Chevy, and then escorted them into a large pack house. In the dining area, a mated pair rose to their feet—identifying themselves as the Alphas. Travis Bradwin was a big man. Tall, broad, and muscular. His mate, Elise, was just as tall. If they were nervous about having six strange wolves on their territory, they didn’t show it.