Blackwing Defender (Kane's Mountains Book 1) (12 page)

Kane was pissed. Logan could tell from the moment he drove across the territory line of the dark dragon. There was a vibration in the air that settled in his chest and made him sick to his stomach. He and everyone in this truck were insane for wanting to be a part of his crew.

He pushed the brake, unable to help himself. He couldn’t make himself take Winter any closer to the angry Dark Kane.

“Go, man,” Dustin said around a mouthful of French toast. “The later we are, the angrier he’ll be.”

“Do you feel it, too?” Logan asked.

“Of course I do, I’m not a pup. He’s mad. He’ll get over it and probably not burn us. He’s got Rowan to steady him, or however bonds work. Find your balls and hurry the fuck up.”

Logan growled, and a vision of him slitting Dustin from throat to belly button flashed across his mind.
Kill him.

Feeling helpless for the first time in his life, he looked at Winter in the rearview.

“It’s okay,” she murmured, shoving the door open.

“What are you doing?” he asked as she got out.

The door shut hard, rocking the truck, and then Winter was in his window with the prettiest smile that existed on earth. Her smoky-gray eyes were all done up with dark eye-shit girls liked to slather on. Looked sexy on her. The lip sparkles on her smile did, too.

“You can’t take me farther.” She leaned her cheek against his elbow, which was resting on the open window frame. She nuzzled it like an affectionate cat and murmured, “I’ll walk from here.”

Well, that would solve the ache in his chest if she took herself to Kane, and it double-helped when Beast jumped out of the back of the truck and muttered, “I’ll walk, too. Want to get there before my ninetieth birthday.” Beast lurched at the window, but nothing scared Logan anymore, so he sat there watching him with dead eyes.

Beast lumbered away to leave Winter to trail after him, but she turned and bolted back to the truck, pecked Logan on the lips, grinned, stunned him completely, then strode off behind Beast, her sexy curves swinging like she knew he was watching.

Dustin licked his fingers loudly, dragging Logan from being damn-near hypnotized by her sexy ass. Winter waved as she walked away, and Beast flipped them all off. God, they really were the D-Team. All but Winter. She was the best person he’d ever met. He hoped her goodness rubbed off on his soul and smudged out some of the darkness. Selfish, but meh. He was a selfish monster and had accepted that long ago. The proof was in how little effort he’d made to stay away from her. There was a one-hundred-percent chance he was going to ruin her life, yet here he was, digging in deeper with his mate every chance he got.

His mate? Shit, that was an unexpected gem. He wasn’t supposed to have one. Oh, he’d seen his destiny bright and clear from age seventeen. Winter wasn’t supposed to be a part of it, but here she was, dragging him kicking and screaming into the light.
Day by day
. Logan shook his head and hit the gas on the bridge over the river.

That woman saw the good in everything, and everyone. Made no sense after all she’d been through, but thank God she was stronger than he was.

His stomach soured with every inch he drove toward Kane’s cabin. This felt like more than just anger over a fight at the stables. It was too disproportionate. Shifters fought. So what?

He parked in the yard, and they piled out. Dustin dry-heaved in the side yard, which meant he was feeling the darkness as bad as Logan was. Emma even looked worried and was rubbing the gooseflesh on her arms.

Logan wanted to wait for Winter because he didn’t like her out of his sight when the danger was level-red like this. But Kane yanked open the door and barked out, “Get in here.”

Dustin muttered a curse and flashed Logan a worried look before the wolf led the way into the lair of the dark dragon.

Kane locked his arms on the kitchen table and glared at the cell phone he had resting on the polished surface.

“Are you even listening to us?” a deep voice asked over the speaker phone.

A threatening rumble emanated from Kane and rattled the house. “Careful,” he warned.

“You’re too loud, too out there. You aren’t the only shifters in the Smokies, dragon. And I’m not just talking about the Bloodrunners. There are families there who have kept their lives small and out of the limelight for years, and then you drag all the fucked-up monsters of our species to you? The media is making our home into a circus. Get rid of them.”

The line went dead, and Kane chucked the phone at the wall in a blur. Emma winced as the phone exploded against the wall.

“Who was that?” Dustin asked, the humor drained from his voice for once.

“That would be Seth and Kyle of some Fuller Crew I didn’t even know about, who apparently have family too damn close to my territory for comfort.”

Winter and Beast walked in, stepping carefully and silently to stand beside Logan. Big cat shifters could do that, slink around without moving a single dust mote.

Kane rested his hands on his hips and glared at the floor, chest heaving. “Just so everyone knows, I didn’t want this. I didn’t want the attention. For fuck’s sake, I was hidden for most of my life, and now I’m under a magnifying glass. Now I have to manage the media, other shifters in the territory, and pick the right damn crew. I can barely manage my dragon! And now I’m supposed to be a good alpha?”

Yep, Kane was freaking out.

Looking exhausted, Rowan stood in the kitchen, her back resting against the counter, arms crossed over her chest. “You will be a good alpha,” she murmured low.

“I second that?” Logan said, lifting two fingers in the air. “You seem to care about being a good alpha a helluva lot more than my last alpha did. Victory.”

Kane narrowed his eyes to furious little slits. “Winter Donovan, can I see you in my office?”

When Dustin dry-heaved again, Logan almost felt bad for him. He was the most submissive one here, and a pissed-off alpha did a number on low-ranked animals. Rowan brought him a small wastebasket and told him to, “Put your head between your legs. It’ll get better when he settles down.”

“You better not puke in here,” Emma said. “Cowboy up, werewolf.”

“Shut up,” Dustin muttered, looking green around the edges.

Winter followed Kane down a hallway, but turned at the door to the office and cast Logan a worried look.

“You want me to go with you?” he asked immediately, his protective instincts blaring.

“I wouldn’t,” Rowan murmured softly.

She wasn’t all smiley and supportive today. In fact, she looked about as green as Dustin right now.

“What’s wrong?” Logan asked.

“I’m disappointed.”

“About the fight at the corral?” Emma asked. “They didn’t mean to. It’s just their natures. The horses weren’t cooperating, Dustin got hurt, and then Beast wanted to kill him, but it was like…soft murder, and we fixed it. I mean, Logan and Beast beat the everlovin’ shit out of each other, but nobody died.” Emma shrugged. “So that’s good.”

“I don’t care about the fight,” Rowan said. “I care about Kane.” Her eyes had gone hard on Logan, as if he’d done something wrong. But when he opened his mouth to ask, Winter came back out of the office looking completely dazed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. And why did he feel like Changing? She didn’t seem to be in danger, but his bear wanted to protect her from what? Dust bunnies and Dustin’s dry-heave germs?
Get a grip.

Winter lifted a small stack of papers and dragged those pretty gray eyes to his. They were full of some emotion he didn’t understand. “I was invited to register with the Blackwing Crew.”

“Great!” Dustin said, hugging his trashcan to his chest. “Blackwing invites. I’ll go next.”

“No, you won’t,” Kane ground out from where he leaned on the wall at the lip of the hallway. “No more invites are being offered.”

Rowan wouldn’t meet their eyes, and neither would Winter.

“I don’t understand.” Dustin stood. “Are you inviting the A-Team then?”

“No, I’m good with one crew member at this time,” Kane said, as his eyes flashed with some deep anger at Dustin. “I know who you are.” He arced his inhumanly bright gaze to Beast. “And you.” He did the same to Emma and then to Logan. “And now I know who you are.”

“From one grainy video of a fight?” Dustin asked.

Kane’s eyes hadn’t left Logan yet, and now he had the urge to back to the door or fight. His bear was having trouble settling on one.

“Kannon Dayton,” Kane clipped out. The last name tapered into a snarl, but Logan had understood him well enough. The name felt like a fist to the stomach.

He shook his head, backed up a few steps. He didn’t understand what was happening, but he sure as fuck understood Kane was angry. With him.

Kane stalked him slowly. “Kannon Dayton, Logan. Tell me how you knew him.
Fucking tell me!
” he roared.

Logan flashed a look at Winter who was moving to stand between Logan and Kane. He shook his head in warning. God, he didn’t want to do this. Not in front of her. Not in front of anyone. Kannon Dayton was the reason he broke.

“My alpha gave me a job. A quiet one. There wasn’t much money involved, but he told me it was important.”

“Who hired you?” Kane gritted out.

Logan ignored the question because he hadn’t said enough to make him understand yet. “When I got out there, to this rundown cabin in the middle of nowhere, I was confused. It wasn’t how I usually did things. Kannon was alone, unregistered, and he felt like a wolf, but said he couldn’t shift.”

“Who hired you?”

“Kane, stop!” Logan held out his hand to keep the approaching dragon back. His bear was clawing at his insides now, chanting
kill him, kill him, kill him
.

“It’s not the kind of job I did, but Kannon was bad off. Kept talking to himself, crying, smelled sick, told me he wanted to kill anyone in his territory and had almost taken a hiker’s life. Told me he’d lost his animal, and he pleaded with me… Fuck… Kane, I don’t want to do this.”

“Who hired you?” he bellowed in Logan’s face.

Kill him, kill him. Kill him for challenging you.

Logan closed his eyes against the pain of his bear trying to force a Change. “He did.”

“What?” Kane shook his head, stumbled back a step.

“He hired me. Kannon did, but I didn’t take the money. I couldn’t. He hired me to take his life because he’d tried twice and failed, and he wanted it over with. He couldn’t Change, didn’t have the wolf, so I couldn’t kill him the way I wanted. I took his life because he fell to his knees in the dirt and clung to my jeans and begged me to.” Logan slammed his head back against the door three times to rattle the bear out of control. He didn’t even recognize his voice right now.
Kill him.
“And then I wasn’t okay to keep going because I took a fucking human’s life. He was basically a human, right? He smelled like a wolf, but his eyes were stuck glowing like a demon’s, and he couldn’t Change. He was empty. A shell without his animal, and I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t just leave him there like that, alone, dead inside but not on the outside.” His eyes blurred and burned. Fuck! Everything hurt. His head, his heart, every muscle as he strained not to let the monster loose in a house full of people he actually gave a shit about.

“Was it Kannon’s death that broke your bear?” Kane said, eyes narrowed with hatred.

“Yes,” Logan gritted out, clenching his fists against the urge to Change and kill everyone.

“Good. He was my friend. He was in Apex. They cut his wolf from his body like he was some fucking science experiment. He had a chance—”

“He didn’t,” Logan said. “You didn’t see him, Kane. Didn’t feel what he was like at the end. There was no recovery for him.”

“You killed my friend!” Kane barked out. “And then you had the balls to come to my territory and ask the same goddamned favor he asked of you? You want to end it, Logan? You want that quick death? You want it over with? You’ve got it.”

“No, no, no,” Winter said, pulling at Kane’s arm.

“Tomorrow night, six sharp, be here for your end, or I’ll hunt you down like the animal you are. Everyone get out.” Kane jerked out of Winter’s grasp and strode for the back door.

It slammed so hard the house rattled.

Rowan murmured low, “He really loved the people he was in Apex with. Really loved them. They’re experience bonded them in a way you or I or anyone can’t understand.” She dragged dragon-gold eyes to Logan and shook her head as twin tears spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t want this, and I wish you hadn’t asked for it. I wish you wouldn’t have come to us. I wanted you in the crew, not to be a black mark on Kane’s heart.” She dashed her hand under her cheeks quickly and made her way into the hallway, shoulders shaking in silent sobs.

A prehistoric roar shook the house so hard a trio of decorative plates fell off their wall stands and shattered on the floor.

Feeling completely numb, Logan followed the others out of the house. Kane had said yes. He was going to give Logan his wish, but now something inside of Logan wanted to flee. A pathetic part of him clung to the idea that he could change eventually, improve, and be worthy of Winter.