Ford

I slam out of the car, gun trained on Juliet.

The safety's on and I have no intention of shooting her, but she won't know that. She thinks we're enemies, a fact she proved by ditching me in Bumfuckville without a ride and people who wanted to kill me swarming the streets. "Get in the car," I say, motioning toward it with the barrel. "Now. I took out two men behind the motel, but I don't know how many more there are or if any of them followed me out of town."

"You should have covered your tracks," she says, glancing between me and the bike on my left, a strange light in her eyes.

"Like you did?" I shoot back. I glance discreetly over my shoulder at the small cabin, but there doesn't appear to be anyone inside, and it doesn't smell like this place has been occupied in years. Settling my full attention on Juliet again, I add, "Heading into remote territory was the worst thing you could do. There's nothing out here to hide the smell of the bike exhaust. Or you. The people trying to kill us might not be able to spot Zion pack scent a mile away, but I can." "You," she says, her voice so soft I can barely hear her.

"What?"

She swallows, her throat working for a long beat. "Not us. You're the one they want to kill."

"For now," I say. "But once your dad realizes you're no longer a card-carrying member of the freak show, don't you think he'll put a bounty on your head, too? I'm not the only one in trouble here, Juliet, and I'm not the one you should be running from. I'm the only ally you have right now, and if you're half as smart as everyone thinks you are, you'll realize that and stop f*****g with me."

Her eyes narrow as she takes another step away.

I lift the gun, taking aim at her right shoulder. "Stop right there. As much as you pissed me off, I'm not leaving here without you. Like it or not, we need each other. Get in the damned car and let's get out of here. I'll shove the bike in the trunk and-"

"You don't want to do that," she says, fear flickering across her features. "And you don't want to keep standing there. Can't you hear it?"

I pull in a breath, but my words die as I catch a whisper-soft beeping sound coming from my left.

From...the bike.

I turn just as the sound's pitch spikes sharply upward.

"Run! Run!" Juliet is suddenly at my side, her bony fingers digging into my elbow as she tugs me toward the woods.

Gun falling to my side, I spin toward the tree line and take off, leg muscles burning as I go from zero to full out in a matter of seconds. I overtake Juliet in the first few strides and turn back to her, running backwards.

She shouts, "Don't stop, keep going," a second before a thunderous boom fills the air.

I see her feet leave the dirt and then she's slamming into me, her thin body flying with enough force to knock us both to the ground. The momentum sends us rolling toward the trees. I hold her to my chest and lean into it, wanting to get us both as far from the bike as possible.

I can hear pieces of it thunking down onto the earth-and the top of my already piece of shit car-and I'm not about to be taken out by a piece of shrapnel. I didn't survive everything I've survived the past two years to go down like this.

We roll to a stop against the thick trunk of a tree, and I curl my body over Juliet's to shelter her from any remaining fallout, but the air is already silent again. Aside from the screams of birds as they flee the treetops and the buzzing left in my ears from the blast, it's like the explosion never happened.

But it did, and we've just learned a very important lesson about how careful we need to be moving forward.

And how much we need to be on the same f*****g team.

I pull back, gazing down into Juliet's flushed face. "You could have let that bomb kill me."

She has the grace to look a tiny bit ashamed of herself as she says, "No, I couldn't. I only kill people who want to kill me. Or who give me no other choice."

"Like the woman in front of the motel? Saw her on my way out of the parking lot. After I took out the two guys who tried to jump me by the dumpster. They were hiding inside. Surprised you didn't smell them while you were hot-wiring my bike." "They were in a dumpster," she says. "All I smelled was garbage."

"You shouldn't leave dead bodies on the street like that, by the way. I'm pretty sure I got her back to the dumpster before anyone saw, but I can't be sure. The lobby was empty when I left. The guy could have been on break or in his back office calling the police. Another reason we need to find a place to lay low for a while."

"I had my hair tucked up under the helmet," she says defensively. "Even if there was a surveillance camera, there's no way they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was me."

"Can we just agree to keep the murder to a minimum in public in broad daylight?"

She sighs and her gaze slides to the left, making me think she's probably lying as she says, "Fine." "How'd you learn to hot-wire a bike anyway? Didn't think they taught auto theft at Pepperdine."

"Motorcycles are easy to steal. Gorey always took a couple dozen when we went through South Dakota in the summer, during that big biker festival. The handlers let a few of us come along to help out. If we did a good job and didn't get caught, we got to share a bucket of fried chicken as a reward." Her focus shifts back to my face. "I agreed to it because I thought I'd be able to escape, but they put electric ankle bracelets on us. If you got too far from the handler holding the remote control, it would send electrical shocks through your body. Made it impossible to move, let alone run. But the chicken was still good." Her gaze drags from my lips to my eyes, sending another unwelcome surge of hunger rippling beneath my skin. "Is there a reason you're still on top of me?" "I don't want you knocking me over the head and stealing my car," I say. "I want to be sure we're on the same page before we hit the road. Why did you ditch me?"

"I don't trust you," she says without missing a beat. "You were terrible to me when we were kids and I seriously doubt years of fighting to the death has improved your temperament." She sniffs. "If that's even what happened. You could be lying about all of it." "I'm not, and I can prove it as soon as we get to a computer," I say. "There's a site on the dark web where they take bets for the fights. I'm sure my profile is still up. Edward never updates that part of the site. All he cares about is the money. And years of fighting to the death is exactly why I don't want to fight anymore, especially with people I need on my side."

"Is that why you rolled in here with a gun on me?"

"I didn't know who else I'd find down here and the safety was on," I say.

Her nose wrinkles in a way that reminds me of the pig-tailed brat she used to be as a kid. She was always following me and my friends everywhere, trying to "hang out," even though she was five years younger and the Alpha's baby girl-which meant we had to watch our mouths around her or get a beating when she tattled on us for cursing.

But she's right.

She might have been annoying, but we weren't kind, either.

"And I'm sorry I was a shit when we were younger," I add in a softer voice. "I was trying to grow up to be the man the Zion pack wanted me to be and that didn't include being sweet to little girls. You know that. As a boy in that pack, once you turn thirteen, you're pushed to become a macho a*****e, obsessed with proving you've got the biggest balls around. It wasn't personal."

"Except that it was," she says. "You knew I was your competition for Alpha. You wanted to break me down so Hammer and all the people who doubted I could handle the job would see me as weak. I never saw you treat any other girls the way you treated me." "None of the other girls had the guts to try cliff-jumping with a bunch of teenage boys," I counter, lips hooking up. "You were ballsy, even back then. Guess I shouldn't be surprised that you're a f*****g handful now."

Her brow arches. "I'm not a 'handful.' I'm a grown woman and my father's rightful heir. I also have allies with deep pockets who are waiting for me to make contact."

"Is that right?" I ask, smelling a lie in there somewhere. "Who?"

"That's none of your concern." She hitches her nose higher in the air. "The point is, I don't need you to succeed. I don't want to be your enemy, but I have no intention of sharing control with you. There have never been two Alphas in the Zion pack. It would only confuse the people and lead to more infighting and confusion about who's really in charge."

"You're wrong," I say, deciding now is as good a time as any to plant the seed of my big picture plan.

She's going to hate it at first, no matter when I do it. Better to get the whole truth out before we go any further.

"Alphas rule as a team all the time," I continue. "My mom was as much a part of running Zion as your dad. More so when he left to do whatever he was up to out of town. She's the one who started construction on the marina and who upped the maternity leave time for women in physically demanding jobs and she didn't ask Hammer's permission for either of those things." "They were married," she shoots back. "That's different."

I hold her gaze, knowing I won't have to spell it out for her. Juliet's clever brain will sort the puzzle out in a minute or two.

It takes only seconds for her eyes to widen and her jaw to drop. "But y-you're my brother," she stammers.

"Your stepbrother. Not a blood relation," I say. "And it's not like we spent that much time together growing up. I moved into the teen barracks a year after Mom and Hammer got married. After, I only saw you at home during solstice celebrations and the rare 'family' meeting."

"It's still weird," she says. "And gross."

My brows lift. "You didn't think I was gross this afternoon, when you kept pressing my hand to your chest."

She scowls. "That didn't mean anything. I was scared and confused."

I tip my head closer to hers, not missing the way her breath speeds as I whisper, "And that's fine. I'll hold you when you're scared and confused. I like you in my lap, holding onto me for dear life."

"Barf," she says, but I can feel her skin heating against mine.

It's one of the best-and worst-parts of being a shifter. We always know when other shifters are getting turned on. We can feel it in the rising temperature of their skin, smell it in the shift in their scent. It doesn't leave much room for lies or games and nowhere to hide when you're feeling things you wish you weren't.

"You don't think I'm gross." I drop my nose against her cheek, grazing it slowly down the curve of her jaw before I nuzzle into her neck. The sweet and ocean salty smell there makes me smile. "You like me on top of you. You like it a lot."

"I haven't been touched in years," she says, her voice tight. "Not in a non-violent way, anyway. That's all it is."

"Oh yeah?" I slip my knee between hers, nudging her thighs open and settling between them, pressing against her through our clothes.

She pulls in a breath that shudders out as she says, "Get off me."

"You don't want me to get off you," I say, rocking my hips slowly forward, grinding my erection against her p***y, covered only by those sad, thin white panties she wears. I can feel how hot she's getting through my jeans, smell the saltier scent of her getting wet for me. "You want me to make you feel good. You need pleasure after all that pain. You deserve it."

Her hands come to my shoulders, but instead of pushing me away, her nails dig into my muscles through my sweatshirt. "I can't."

"You can." I kiss her neck, loving the way her pulse throbs under my lips. Seducing Juliet into seeing things my way has always been on the table in my mind, but I didn't think I'd enjoy it this much, that I'd want the woman she's become so badly my balls are starting to feel bruised. "And you should. Let me relieve some of that stress that's got you wound so tight. No strings attached...for now. I'll save those until you're addicted to coming on my c**k."

She pushes at my shoulders, forcing me back far enough to see her entire face, showcasing that unexpected strength of hers. "You said we needed to get out of here. That people could be after us. Is that true, or something you were making up to get me to do what you want?"

I sigh and sit back on my heels. "You're right. We should go." I glance over my shoulder, wincing as I see the heavily dented roof on the car. "Assuming the car still runs. It wasn't doing real well before a bike exploded all over it."

She rolls over and hops to her feet, which are bare once again.

"Where are your shoes?" I ask.

"I think the blast blew me out of them," she says, moving toward the car, scanning the ground as she goes. "I need something better than flip-flops, anyway. Hard to run or fight or drive a motorcycle in flip-flops."Belongs to - All rights reserved.

I move past her toward the car. "Let's get back on a main road and put a few hundred miles between us and the dead bodies in that dumpster. Then we can stop somewhere to buy clothes." I pull a few pieces of still smoking rubble off the top of the Oldsmobile. "And maybe a new car. Though we'll have to steal one or something this time. I'm almost out of money. This piece of shit cost nine thousand dollars, if you can believe that."

She appears beside me, holding her two ruined, ripped-down-the-middle flip-flops. She tosses them through the open car window. "Best to leave no trace behind. Aside from the wreckage."

"For sure." I nod toward the cabin. "Find anything good in there?"

"Just some canned goods and a few little things. I'll grab them.

She starts toward the cabin, but I grab her elbow. When she glances back at me, I say in my most heartfelt voice, "And don't worry. We'll find time to make you come later. I promise. You can count on me."

She rolls her eyes and jerks her arm away, muttering irritably beneath her breath as she picks her way around the wreckage to one of the windows.

I smile as she goes, not bothered by her crankiness in the slightest.

She can grumble all she wants.

I still have my new secret weapon, and things are looking up.

If I can't reason Juliet into seeing my way, maybe I can s*x her into wanting to keep me around. At least long enough to take back what's ours.