Dawson Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire 5) (4 page)

Dalton watched Kate lock her basement door and make her way up the stairs and through the front yard to her four-wheeler, coffee thermos in her hand. She wore a heavy jacket and pink ear-muffs to match her petal-pink scarf. White rimmed sunglasses hid her eyes. She looked so fucking cute with her tight little scrubs hugging her sexy curves as she ripped the engine of her ATV.

Kate passed right by the street he was parked on, but she didn’t look up from the icy road in front of her.

Go get her.

Dalton growled a warning to his wolf to shut up. He scrubbed his hand down his face and resisted the urge to follow her. He would not hunt her like some McCall. Clearly Miller had already done that.

She was that asshole’s perfect target—kind, overly-caring, and submissive with a generous heart. Miller had used up women like her when he was alive. Dalton had seen it personally on the few occasions he’d visited a town at the same time as Miller. Dalton had hated him and Cole McCall both.

Miller complicated things, even from the grave. He was Link’s late brother, and here Dalton was, unable to pull his gaze away from one of Miller’s ex-girlfriends…or whatever she’d been to him.

A long snarl rattled his throat just thinking about Miller fucking her in that stupid video.

Gritting his teeth, he shook his head at what he was about to do. A wise werewolf didn’t catch the attention of a ruthless enforcer like Clayton, much less ask favors. Right now, though, he was helpless to leave her like this. He had to do something to make her life a little better. He’d be a shit mate for her, but he could do this.

Dalton hovered his finger over the damning number for a moment before he jammed it down and waited for Clayton to pick up.

“Dalton,” the enforcer greeted. What the hell? He’d never talked to him on the phone, so how had Clayton even recognized this number?

“I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course you do,” Clayton said dryly.

“It’s not for me. It’s for a woman Miller McCall hurt.”

Silence grew thick as fog over the line. “Did he kill her?”

“No, but he posted a video that is shaming her. Tagged her name to it and everything. Do you have any connections for someone who could take that offline?”

“My focus is more on enforcement and the McCall cure.”

Dalton gritted his teeth and adjusted his position on the cold seat of his snow machine. “So is that a no?”

“I’m not some fairy godfather, Dalton. I have no interest in granting wishes for nothing.”

Dalton spat in the snow and barely resisted a dark laugh. “I’ll owe you one.”

Clayton sighed into the phone. “Who is she to you?”

The one.

Dalton swallowed his wolf’s words down. He’d said that before, and he’d been wrong. “She’s a nice lady who doesn’t deserve what Miller did to her.”

“Hmmm,” Clayton said noncommittally. “What’s her name?”

“Katherine Hawke. Miller did something to her. Broke something. She can’t sleep after him.” Shit. He shook his head at the memory of Kate screaming out in her sleep last night. Of how he’d held her tight until she’d settled against his chest. She hadn’t asked for him to sleep beside her. That had been his first lie to her. Dalton hadn’t been able to help himself when her nightmare had started. And already, his wolf would die just to ease her pain if he could.

With Clayton, Dalton was giving too much away and forgetting who the Silvers’ father really was. He wasn’t a friend. He was a dangerous grizzly shifter with the power to give kill orders on a whim.

“I’ll get it taken care of,” Clayton said low. “Give me a day. You owe me.”

The line clicked, and when Dalton drew his cell in front of his face, the call had ended and the screen blank. Nice.

With a growl, Dalton shoved the phone in his back pocket. He had to get out of here. His April First spiral had to be over early this year because it was dangerous to stay in town. Here in Galena, he was too close to Link and that beautiful baby girl of his. He was too close to the family who reminded him the most of what he’d lost. But that wasn’t the only reason why he would have to leave town first thing in the morning.

The meat of the matter was that his interest in Kate was dangerous for them both.

His wolf was marking his territory with every moment he sat in front of her apartment and laying claim to a woman he had no shot in hell at keeping happy.

Whatever had happened with Miller had brought her to her knees, and Dalton didn’t want to be the weight that pinned her to the ground. He was a wildfire, burning everything good in his life to ashes. Only shifters survived him—Chance, Link, the Silvers.

Dalton was a realist, and the cold, hard fact was he’d given his first mate all he had—everything he was—and still, he’d fallen miles short.

Kate was a good person. Maybe she was the most selfless person he’d ever met.

And she definitely deserved better than him.

Dalton pulled his snow machine through the last line of piney woods before the clearing that housed Link’s old cabin. His alpha was still making payments on the place, but for the life of him, Dalton couldn’t figure out why. Last year, Link had moved into Nicole’s cabin on the next property over, and now this cabin sat vacant except on the rare occasions he and Chance made their way to Galena. Not that he was complaining. This place sure beat the hell out of staying at some bed and breakfast in town. His wolf liked to roam the land here. In a way, it felt like a second home to Dalton, right under the temporary room he lived in at Silver Summit Outfitters where he worked as an outdoor guide.

Dalton narrowed his eyes at the figure sitting on the front porch stairs. Chance Dawson, his cousin and the final leg of their pack, was waiting for him with an overnight bag sitting on the snowy porch beside him. Freaking great. Just what he needed.

Angry enough to spit nails, Dalton skidded to a stop and cut the engine. “Please tell me you’re not here to intervention me.”

“I’m not here to intervention you,” Chance said blandly. The douche-wagon didn’t even try to hide the lie.

A snarl ripped through Dalton as he climbed the porch stairs two at a time and blasted past his cousin and into the house. Chance followed him in and set his overnight bag just inside the door.

“Nuh uh,” Dalton said, pacing the kitchen. “There’s a cabin out back for you. This ain’t a slumber party.”

“That’s a shed.”

“It has log walls, a furnace, and a bed. It’s a damned cabin.”

Chance’s gaze drifted to the picture frame on the coffee table. Gritting his teeth against a string of curses at being busted, Dalton slammed the picture face down. “One week, Chance. I asked for one week alone. It hasn’t changed in four years, yet here you are, breaking my one damned request for the fourth year in a row. Why can’t you let me have it? I just want one week to get out of my head.”

“You done?” Chance asked, sinking into the couch cushion and lifting his boot onto the coffee table. He came dangerously close to hitting the picture frame.

Dalton cracked his knuckles as he paced. “I’m going back tomorrow.”

“Why?”

Because I met someone who scares the shit out of me.
“Because I’m tired of being here.”

Chance narrowed his eyes to bright green slits, and his blond brows drew down suspiciously. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees as he studied Dalton in silence. “What’s going on? Where were you last night?”

Dalton scrubbed his hands roughly through his hair, then busied himself with stripping off his winter layers. When Chance only watched him in that uncanny, annoying, knowing way of his, Dalton admitted, “I was with a woman.”

“Like fucking a woman?”

“No.” Dalton swallowed hard. The last thing he needed right now was Chance giving him shit over a crush. There was no escaping this conversation, though. Chance wasn’t like Link, who didn’t know how hard and how long to push. Dalton and Chance had grown up together, and his cousin knew that all he had to do was wait and Dalton, like an idiot, would spill his guts eventually.

Letting off a short growl, he sank into the single chair across from the couch. Glaring at Chance, he muttered, “I didn’t fuck her. I just slept beside her.”

Chance’s brows rose so high they made wrinkles on his forehead. Huffing a surprised sound, as if he’d been punched in the gut, Chance relaxed back into the couch cushions. “Did you spoon?”

“See, I knew you’d give me shit—”

“I’m not making fun of you, man. It’s a serious question. Did. You. Spoon?”

After a few drawn-out seconds to make sure Chance was being serious, he answered, “Mostly I hugged her to my chest. I was supposed to sleep on the couch, but she had a nightmare and I…I don’t know…calmed her down.”

“And how did that feel?”

“Are you a therapist now? What do you mean how did it feel? It felt awesome. She wasn’t repulsed, she didn’t flinch away, she pet me in her sleep like I was her favorite parakeet, and when we woke up in the morning, she wasn’t disgusted with the fact that she’d slept beside me. There was no guilt. She looked at me like I was normal, and she told me I make her feel safe. So, yeah. It felt nice.”

“You make her feel safe?” Chance’s lips stretched in a slow smile. “Well, that’s a new one.”

Dalton sighed. “Yeah, well I didn’t say it made any sense. I just said it felt nice. I heard you told Link about April First, you dick.”

Chance shrugged one shoulder unapologetically. “At some point, he should know. He’s our alpha.”

“Out of convenience.”

“Bullshit. Link is doing a better job than we thought he could. He’s doing better than either one of us would do at the head of a pack. You just want to keep everyone at arm’s length.”

Dalton leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at the wood floors between his boots. “Can you blame me?”

“Nah, I don’t blame you. I blame Shelby.”

“Don’t.”

“Think real hard, Dalton. Did Shelby let you cuddle her? Did she let you console her? Did she calm from a panic because you were there? I was there for the aftermath of every hard day with her. I saw Shelby for what she was. You didn’t. You still don’t.”

“She was my mate.”

“False. She talked shit about you behind your back whenever she got the chance, and she never allowed you to claim her.”

“She didn’t know I was a werewolf.”

“Why? Why didn’t you ever tell her?”

Dalton clenched his jaw as he was pummeled with the hundred reasons why he hid the biggest part of him from a woman he’d loved. “Because she wasn’t trustworthy with our secret,” he ground out.

“Then how could she be your mate? You didn’t give her a claiming mark. You hid yourself away. You let her verbally ream you all the fucking time, and I hated to see it. I hated her. You’re a beast, Dalton. You always were, and you let someone make you feel less than. You
let
her. You let her bend you until you almost broke.”

“She was the mother of our child.”

Chance scratched the blond, three-day beard on his face. His eyes pooled with sympathy but his words didn’t match. “
Your
child, Dalton. You and I both know Shelby never wanted that baby.” Chance flipped over the picture frame. “Look at her. Look at her eyes. There is no softness there, no kindness. She could barely muster a damned smile for a picture, Dalton. You weren’t the unworthy one. She was.”

Slowly, Dalton leaned forward and picked up the picture frame. In it, he and Shelby were standing in front of their house in Anchorage. He had his arm draped around her shoulders, and his other hand proudly cradled her round belly. The smile on his face was big, dopey almost. But Shelby’s mouth only lifted a little at the corners, and her eyes looked dead. It wasn’t the baby that had drained their relationship either. Every picture they took together was like this. She had liked the life he could provide her, but beyond that, she didn’t like him touching her. She didn’t like holding his hand or kissing him in public. Now that he looked back on it, she hadn’t seemed to enjoy kissing him at all. How had he not realized that until now? He’d brought this picture because she’d looked beautiful in it, full with his child, but Chance was right. Her eyes were cold. They always had been, even when she told him she loved him.

Dalton dropped the picture in a rush, desperate not to touch it anymore.

“When you lost Amelia, it ripped my guts out,” Chance said in a thick voice. “I know how much you wanted her to be a boy so she could live. I know how much you wanted to be a dad. But you didn’t see it there in Shelby’s eyes.”

Dalton couldn’t look Chance in the eye, not when he was riled up and reeling like this. “Didn’t see what?”

“The relief on her face.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You couldn’t see it, but I was right there, standing in the doorway while she held Amelia’s little body, and she wouldn’t even look at the baby. She just stared out the window with this relieved look like she’d dodged a bullet, man. She wasn’t the mate for you, and she sure as fuck wasn’t the right mother for your child. You said it yourself. She. Wasn’t. Trustworthy.”

“Why didn’t you tell me all of this before?”

“I tried, but you weren’t ready.”

“But I’m ready now?” Dalton had tried and failed to hide the disgust from his voice. All this time, he’d been mourning a breakup with someone who hadn’t felt the same, who wasn’t mourning him back.

I wanted her to love us back.

Stupid wolf had fogged his vision. Dalton shook his head, his thoughts spinning as each memory took on a new meaning. All of the I-hate-yous hadn’t been his fault. They’d been hers. Who even used those three words as weapons? He hadn’t deserved them as he’d thought. She’d just known how to cut him the deepest.

And he’d let her. Chance was right. He’d opened himself up and allowed it.

“I feel so stupid,” he murmured, linking his hands behind his head.

“Nah, you aren’t. You would’ve dealt with it differently if you hadn’t lost Amelia. If she’d never been pregnant, you would’ve left her. You bonded with that little baby in her tummy, not Shelby. It got you all mixed up.”

In a flash of anger, Dalton stood and yanked the frame off the table, then strode for the front door and chucked the picture as far into the woods as he could. A part of him felt liberated, but a bigger part of him felt shame for allowing Shelby to taint his April First. That had been the day Amelia had died. Female werewolves hadn’t been able to survive before Vera cured Link’s little girl. She’d passed at the beginning of April, the day after she was born, and Shelby had ended their relationship then, too.

He’d lost everything he’d ever wanted, everything he’d fought for, in one day.

Chest heaving, he scanned Link’s winter white woods as his throat tightened up.

“What’s her name?” Chance asked softly from behind him.

“Who?”

“You know who. The one who made you ready to hear what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

“Kate.” Dalton rolled his eyes closed and inhaled deeply, imagining the scent of honey. It calmed him little by little until his breath came steady. “Kate Hawke.”