Living alone with nothing but a handful of lions as batshit as him and tending the needs of some cows and horses? That suited him just fine. The fuckers were always down for a brawl when he needed to drain some of the poison in his head.
Then Hailey came along and slipped a leash around Trent’s neck. Kyla did the same to Lindley. Colette trussed up Dash like the pig he was. Even Seth seemed more ready to settle than remain permanently single.
He was glad for them. Really. But he didn’t fit in. He’d had a taste of that life and watched her bleed away in his arms.
Irritation crawled along his body. He wanted to let his lion take his skin and run as far away as possible. Maybe he’d hit the water on the coast and keep paddling until he found a deserted island.
The only thing that kept him in place were green eyes glancing at him from the edge of the water.
Her eyes on him felt... good. Right. Kicked his heart into gear and made him want to cross the distance and see what her hands felt like. But there wasn’t any touching Sage, and not just because he was certain she’d bolt.
He’d had a mate. One he missed every day. One he still unsuccessfully tried to save in his dreams.
Rhys scowled at the carving in his hands. The legs were off again. One was too thick compared to the others. The back had too much sway. The eyes looked like they were taken from two different faces, but both were distant and dead, even for a hunk of wood.
Another peal of laughter brought his eyes up and he caught Sage picking her way toward the table. She froze under his focus, green eyes meeting his for a brief second, before ducking her face and carefully skirting around him.
She dumped her bottle in the box set aside for the pride’s empties, but fluttered at the edge of his vision instead of going for another. She lifted her hand, fingers hesitantly tracing over her collarbone and a slight dip down her chest before she stuffed her hands in her back pockets.
Two steps carried her forward. Rhys didn’t move. He barely breathed. He didn’t understand his lion’s reaction to her. Anyone else sneaking up on him would have been snapped at, but not Sage. His inner animal watched her with increasing interest.
A volleyball sailed through the air from the nearby game and landed right in front of him, sending his beer sideways and spilling into his lap. Cold shocked him to his feet. “Motherfucker!” he snapped.
Sage jumped into action. She tugged a towel off the stack at the end of the bench and held it out for him to take while reaching to upright the beer.
“It’s fine,” he insisted. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Assholes,” she muttered, and threw a glare in their direction before dropping her eyes again.
He didn’t miss the flash of fire.
Rhys reached for the ball and threw it back to the other group. The chorus of faint apologies did nothing to calm the irritation riding up the back of his neck and through his shoulders.
He expected Sage to move on, but she stood there with the towel dangling from her hand. Wariness edged into her scent as he reached for it, and pat himself dry. Not that it’d help. He’d need to throw himself in the water to wash off the beer smell, and then he’d be wet all over again.
She was being nice. And that deserved some reaction.
“Thank you,” he said, shooting another glare at the volleyball players.
“I closed your door for you,” she said in a rush. “I don’t think the others saw it hanging open when you last...”
When he last lost his shit and had to spend a couple days in the cave.
He canted his head. “That wasn’t necessary.”
“Just doing my neighborly duty.” She lifted her eyes for a brief moment, then slipped away again.
Rhys didn’t drop his look or sit back down until she made her way back to the edge of the water. The words were the most she’d said to him in months. Since the night he walked her home, in fact. She’d asked if he’d done it on her brother’s orders, but he’d simply been doing his neighborly duty—and satisfied the draw of his curious cat.
The last thing he’d expected was for her to stumble and let years of frustration boil over. He understood so much of the out-of-place feelings she had, and not knowing what to do about them.
He’d taken to watching her from that day forward. At first he simply wanted to figure out what was wrong with him and why his lion cared so much. He’d had a mate. He couldn’t have another. No man got that lucky, especially a killer like him. Sage had no business being with a rough monster, anyways. She was soft and fragile, while he was ready to tear the world apart just to make himself some miserable company.
Only, the more he watched, the more he couldn’t look away. The more he saw how wrong his first impressions had been. Sage wasn’t soft. She wasn’t fragile, either. Weak, sad, pathetic, whatever words she wanted to use as descriptions didn’t actually apply.
She had fire in her middle. Maybe it wasn’t raging hot or threatening to burn everything down like his own, but it was there. She just needed the spark to ignite it again.
Something had bothered him in all that time. He’d chalked it up as general irritation, but the feeling hadn’t gone away no matter how much he fought or let his lion take his skin. He kept coming back and prodding at it, like poking at a bruise to test how much it’d healed.
She rarely made her own choices.
She filled her plate according to her preferences, drank water or alcohol as she pleased, but the
