3

“Hey, Char,” I answered.

“How was the drive?” My best friend’s voice was a relief to hear. Charlotte had befriended me not long after I moved to New Mexico and we’d been ride or die ever since.

“We just got here.” I stepped out of the car and walked toward the house. “I’m surer than ever this was right.”

“Oh?” she asked.

“Yeah. Madd seems like a different kid since he got here. A new start is just what we needed.”

She laughed. “You were right. I just didn’t want my bestie to move so far away.”

“I know. I already miss you. But you’ll be out here soon, won’t you?”

“Absolutely, babe. Wouldn’t miss it. I’ve got my flight booked.” She was flying out and renting a car.

“Okay.” I walked in the front door and memories assaulted me. “I’m going to go settle in. Call me later.”

We hung up and I looked around the living room. The furniture had fared pretty well under the sheets I’d put over it. A thump on the ceiling above me told me the kids were exploring upstairs.

They were both into it. This had been the right thing. Finally, something was coming together for our family.

It was about damn time.

2

MAVERICK

T

he itching under my skin intensified as I turned onto the road toward my family home. I hadn’t felt so restless since my teenage years. I enjoyed my job as a sheriff’s deputy in Black Claw on most days. When we’d moved back to town, the department had been small and sad, and the crime in the town had risen enough to be concerning. With my family’s return, the citizens had voted my father in as sheriff by a landslide.

Being a deputy on his force had given me a sense of responsibility and purpose for a life that had felt restless since I was eighteen years old.

Today, all that went out the window. I felt like a teenager, wild and unsettled.

As I passed the road that led to the cabin I always glanced at, I saw lights through the trees.

“What the hell?” I whispered. The driveway was too long to see who was there, but I couldn’t resist pulling in. As soon as the woods parted enough for me to see through the trees, I shut off my headlights and peered at the cabin.

A big box truck sat out front, illuminated by the big floodlights. I’d installed those for the previous owner, many years ago.

Now they were being used to help a new family move in. I’d assumed the property had been sold years ago, but it had stood empty. My hands had turned my cruiser up the driveway many times over the last four years since we moved back. I told myself it was solely to make sure the property wasn’t being vandalized and to make sure no squatters had taken over the home.

In reality, I stopped to let the memories flood in, to remind me of the only person I’d ever loved.

If a new family had moved in, I wouldn’t be able to do that any longer—it would be an invasion of privacy. Plus, the house would change. New lawn decor. New curtains. Nothing would be like it was when she was here.

Damn it.

I let my dragon take slight control, enough to use the advanced hearing. Filtering out the sounds of the forest—a feat that had taken me years to accomplish, selective hearing—I focused on the home.

A small child, a girl, asked for Chinese food. A male voice, deep, but somehow immature sounding, interrupted her and said there was still pizza in the kitchen. I didn’t recognize either of them.

Two other masculine voices overlapped, talking about the boxes in the truck.

“You can put them in the kitchen, please.”

My breath caught in my throat like a rock. It couldn’t be. I was certain she’d sold the house. My dragon growled.

“Oh, sorry, I thought that was a kitchen box. Can you put that one in the downstairs bathroom?” Her laugh tinkled through my eardrums like butterflies had miniscule jackhammers. Soft and sweet, but also jarring, knocking my breath from me. Pull in. Go there. Now!

I grunted, barely able to process the sound of her voice. My dragon insisted I go to her immediately, but I had to think more rationally. I shushed him and listened closer.

“Mom!” the deep but immature voice yelled. So, she had a son. An older teen by the sound of it. Had she met someone immediately after I left? We’d been separated almost eighteen years. “Hailey is going to starve to death, I guess.”

“There’s pizza in the kitchen.”

Her voice. Holy shit. We must go to her. She belongs to us.

I threw the car in reverse and turned in my seat to back away down the rutted driveway before my dragon’s urges overcame my good sense.

Rocks flew everywhere, dinging off the underside of the cruiser as I roared onto the main road, slammed on the brakes, and threw it into drive. I had to get home and control my shift. If I turned into my dragon, he’d go find her right away. That would be the worst idea. He’d scare the shit out of her.

After driving around the house, I slammed on my brakes and left my car by the back door. I needed to be around my family, especially my dad and brothers. Their dragons would have a calming effect on mine. Once he was calm, I’d try to reason with him.

My mom jumped as I burst through the back door.

“Maver—”

“Did you know?”

She froze mid-stir as steam floated up from the pot on the stovetop. “Know what?”

“That Ava is back?”

Her jaw dropped and eyes widened. “What?” My mom knew what Ava meant to me. She knew what it did to me to leave her and then how hard it was to force myself not to find her. It was torture and something I’d never recovered from. “No,” she whispered.

“Yes. She’s there, right now. In the cabin, with what sounded like a teenage son and a young daughter.”

She shook her head in amazement and went back to stirring our dinner. “And a husband?”

“I don’t know. I heard men, but I think they were the people unloading their moving truck.”

My father walked into the room. His dragon, though he was beta to my own, made mine feel like a blanket of comfort had been draped over him. Dragons thrived in nests, and a lone dragon was prone to fits of rage and eventual insanity as it gave itself over to wildness.