Page 13 of Warlander Beast Cat

Jordan inhaled deeply, and he and Dante quietly passed by him as Kru stood there looking in the direction Gunner had disappeared while the saber-toothed tiger inside of him quietly chanted, Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

Gunner was right.

They weren’t friends.

And he could guess that if he asked him to help move Willa’s warehouse to help Cadence out, Gunner would enjoy telling him no.

Being in this Crew was different than he’d expected.

Chapter Four

Cadence pushed up the blinds of her front window for the tenth time. Kru’s truck still wasn’t parked in front of his trailer.

“Maybe you were wrong,” she said.

“Wrong about what?” Jenna asked as she brushed another layer of red onto her fingernails.

“Wrong about the lease falling through today.”

“Oh, nope. Kong had me call Gunner and pull them off the mountain. That was hours ago.”

Cadence dropped the blinds and meandered into the kitchen, touched some of the canisters she’d decorated the countertop with.

“Gunner doesn’t come home half the time,” Jenna murmured carefully. “He’s probably out in the woods murdering something.”

“I don’t care about Gunner,” Cadence said flippantly as she leaned her elbow on the counter and chewed on her thumbnail.

“Then why are you so concerned with when he returns?”

“Hmm? Oh! I’m not.”

Jenna was looking at her with one eyebrow arched high. She went back to painting her nails. “That was a big admission a few weeks ago. Do you want to talk about it?”

Maybe Kru was in town getting a head start on speed-dating. Oh my God, why am I such a psychopath! I don’t care. “Hmm? What admission?”

“The one where Gunner admitted he bonded to you.”

“Oh. Right.” She should care about that. Cadence cleared her throat. “I wish I had known that happened when we were young…” She frowned. There was no use hiding her true feelings from Jenna. She sat down on one of the chairs at the table, still far enough away from Jenna to bolt if the conversation got too deep. “Do you remember that time three weeks ago when I told you I was thinking about leaving the Crew?”

Jenna nodded. “I listened, but you should know that if you followed through, I would’ve chased you. I didn’t want you to leave. I don’t want to be the only female here.”

“Lucia is here.”

“Kind of. She comes as she wants and I’m pretty sure she hates me. No, you are my…well, you’re my friend. I know you might not see me as that, but to me, that’s what you are.”

The admission shocked her. She’d never heard Jenna really talk about friendship before.

Cadence wasn’t the best at deep conversations though. “You have terrible taste in friends. And men.” She grinned.

“Well then, so do you, because you are Lucas’s ex.”

Ha! Touché.

“Anyway, I asked you not to tell anyone in the Crew that I was thinking of leaving, and then I waited. I knew you would tell everyone. That’s how Damon’s Mountains work. Everyone knows everything about everyone. Someone knocked on my door that night, and I just knew it was Lucas coming to talk to me about leaving the Crew. But you know who it was?”

“Who?”

“Kru. He was leaving a plastic container of jambalaya on my porch.”

---