Canon rolled his head, cracking his neck. “You want out, don’t you.”
I exhaled slow. “I want to not feel like I’m about to punch through a wall every second.”
He considered me, eyes narrow. “You know what helps? Booze and whores.”
“Never liked the taste,” I said. “Of either.”
He grinned wider. “You’re a goddamn liar, Shivs. But that’s why I like you.”
He headed to the game room, but I stayed, listening to the clatter of pool balls, the thump of boots, the scrape of chairs on tile. The restlessness had only grown, a drumbeat in my veins. Something out there wanted me. Called to me. I didn’t know if it was prey, or trouble, or just the part of me that could never fit in a room full of men pretending to be wolves.
I flexed my hands until the bones popped, then got up and walked to the window. Outside, the night waited, still hungry. I watched it for a long time, jaw clenched, wishing I was brave enough to answer.
The game room was always too bright, even with half the bulbs shot out and the rest flickering, but tonight it felt likestanding onstage in a jailhouse talent show. Moab, the oldest bastard in the chapter and mean as a mule, was parked on the sagging pleather sofa with a can of Milwaukee’s Best in one fist and a remote in the other. I barely registered the sound of the TV at first—a babble of local news, farm reports, a weather girl too perky for this side of midnight. I tried to tune it out, but something about the anchor’s voice made my hackles rise.
Canon wandered in and slumped across the ratty loveseat, propping his boots on a cinderblock coffee table that doubled as a gun cleaning bench. His gaze skittered to me, then to the TV, then back to me. “You look like shit,” he said.
“Feel like it,” I replied.
He grinned. “Maybe you should try sleeping once in a while.”
I started to flip him off, but Moab turned up the volume just then, the ancient TV coughing up a warped blue glow. “Shut it,” he grunted, voice raspy from sixty years of unfiltered Camels.
The screen cut to a press conference, the camera zooming in on a woman standing behind a field of microphones. My vision tunneled so fast I thought I’d passed out. Her hair—chestnut, thick, rain-streaked—was all wrong for this town, for this state, but it was her eyes that cracked me open. Green shot with gray, sharp as switchblades, the kind of eyes that saw too much and forgave nothing. I felt them cut right through the camera, right through the wall of the clubhouse, right through my sternum. My heart stopped, then restarted in double time, like a chain-smoker’s after a ten-mile run.
The caption said: CAROLINE STILLWATER, NEW OWNER, STILLWATER DISTILLERY.
She was talking about her father, about legacy, about “continuing the tradition of excellence.” But the words were background noise, static, nothing compared to the pulse pounding in my neck. The wolf in me surged forward, nearly toppling me out of my seat. I gripped the edge of the tableso hard my fingers dug trenches in the particleboard. Sweat prickled my scalp, down my back, everywhere. I couldn’t look away.
Canon snorted. “Damn, Shivs. Didn’t know you had a thing for bourbon princesses.”
Someone else—one of the prospects, a kid they called Hooch—leaned in from the hallway. “She’s fuckin’ hot, right?”
Canon shot him a look. “Too rich for your blood, little man.”
The room started to buzz, brothers lobbing crude jokes, but it all washed over me. The animal inside was keening, panicked, desperate, clawing at my insides like it needed to be let out now or we’d both die.
Moab, eyes never leaving the screen, leaned forward. “You smell that?” he said, so quiet only I could hear.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
He thumbed his nose, beer sloshing onto his bare, tattooed chest. “It’s the pull, son. Happens sometimes, once in a generation maybe. She’s the one. Your one.”
The room snapped into focus. Jax was watching me, all traces of humor gone. He knew what Moab meant. They all did. But only the old man said it out loud.
“She’s bourbon royalty,” Canon said, voice tight. “You know what that means.”
I found my voice, hoarse. “Doesn’t matter.”
He shook his head. “It matters. We don’t mix with her kind. That’s how wars start.”
Moab cackled, then coughed, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Fuck wars. If the wolf wants, it takes.”
Canon shot him a warning glare. “Don’t encourage him.”
Moab just laughed harder. “Let him run, boy. Let him run, or he’ll tear the house down around us.”
The room was closing in. The heat, the light, the smell of old booze and stale adrenaline. My skin was crawling, literallycrawling, the hairs standing on end, the sweat now a cold river under my cut. I could barely see, barely hear, but her image on the screen stayed locked in my skull, like a branding iron pressed to my brain.