Dawn was waiting near the children’s playground, rubbing her hands together anxiously. “Did you find anything?” Ryan shook his head, and she let out a sigh of relief. “We told the residents what happened. They’re understandably worried, but none of them wish to leave. In fact, many of them expressed their intentions to defend the shelter if any trouble came. Ryan, you’ll find Makenna in the basement, taking note of the supplies.”

Giving Dawn a nod, he walked inside the building and tracked his mate to the basement, where he found her checking off boxes on a clipboard.

She flashed him a smile. “Hey. Any signs of intruders?”

“No.” He closed the distance between them. “We’re alone now.”

She glanced around. “That’s true.”

“It means you can stop pretending you’re okay.”

Makenna thought about brushing off the comment, but that would only insult him. He didn’t deserve that. “I’m just pissed at myself.”

“At yourself?”

She hugged the clipboard to her chest. “I thought these people were protected, Ryan. I thought the wards would keep out any danger. But Remy still found a way to invade the place. I should have considered that, but I didn’t. Dawn is so devastated, feeling like she let the residents down, when it’s my fault.”

Ryan curled a stray lock of hair around her ear. “Are you done being irrational?” That wild glint in her eyes sparked.

“Excuse me?”

He took the clipboard and slid it onto a nearby shelf, not liking that little barrier between them. “You are not responsible for another person’s actions. There’s such a thing as cause and effect. Remy’s the cause, and these are the effects. You do not enter that equation.”

His matter-of-fact tone probably should have rubbed her the wrong way, but Makenna found it soothing. When something was on her mind, she’d find herself obsessing over it until she drove herself crazy. Ryan’s practical, no-nonsense manner had a way of calming the chaos in her head.

He cupped her face with both hands. “The blame belongs solely to him. You put everything you are into this shelter. No one here would ever blame you for what’s happening.” He slid his hand around to her nape and pulled her to him. With a sigh, she rested her forehead on his chest. He rubbed her back until she relaxed against him. “I hate the stress he’s causing you. And I hate that I can’t do anything to help.” Makenna’s happiness was most important to him, and it tormented him every second of every day that he couldn’t eliminate this threat. It was his practical nature that held him back. As Makenna said, they needed to play this smart.

“How can you think you’ve done nothing to help? Seriously, Ryan, if it wasn’t for you and your pack, we’d be on Shit Street right now.”

He kissed her. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d have found a way to protect the people here.” And he fucking adored that about her. He kissed her again, savoring the taste of his mate. Needing it. Loving it. And wondering yet again why the fuck their bond was out of his reach.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

That evening, as Ryan drove with Makenna through the gates of his territory, he asked, “What are the stories of the loners we’re hiding?” He gave Gabe, who was in the security shack, a curt nod as they passed him. “We can’t adequately protect them if we don’t know what or who might come for them.”

Makenna agreed, but she couldn’t break their confidence. “Riley shared her story with me, trusting I wouldn’t repeat it. I can’t violate her trust like that. But I can tell you about Savannah and Dexter. As you might have sensed, Savannah is a snake shifter. A viper. She was abandoned as a baby, left outside a church. Social Services mistook her for a human. When she started displaying strange behavior—hissing, biting, and climbing just about everything—her human adoptive parents took her to be tested. When it transpired that she was a shifter, they didn’t want her anymore. Social Services passed her on to Dawn.”

His wolf snarled at the idea of a child being deserted not just once but twice. “Why do you think she needs to be hidden?”

“I did some research on viper nests, trying to track her origins. Vipers are rare, so it wasn’t hard. Did you hear about the nest from Arizona that was wiped out by a cougar pride that swore it would see every last viper within the nest dead?”

“Yes. The Alpha wanted revenge when his son died after being poisoned by a female viper.”

“We think Savannah was part of that nest. The ruling pair reportedly had a baby daughter that was nowhere to be found when the nest and pride went to war. The cougars searched for her. Our best guess is that her parents abandoned her to protect her.”

“The Alpha wanted to kill their daughter as a tit for tat,” Ryan concluded.

She nodded, a grim twist to her mouth. “Hopefully Remy doesn’t make the connection between Savannah and the war. She may not be from that nest, but the cougars would still come to find out for themselves. I wasn’t going to take any chances.”

“What about Dexter?”

“He was also brought to Dawn by Social Services. We have no idea what pride he’s from. He’d been living wild on the streets. He was found by human kids who tormented and prodded him with sticks. A passing stranger recorded the incident with his cell phone . . . so I watched as Dexter’s claws sliced out and he attacked the kids to defend himself.”