Page 19 of Warlander Beast Cat

“Put…put Landon Fuller in his place?”

Kru stared at her for a few seconds more, then shook his head and walked away.

“What did I say wrong?”

“Cadence, you put a dragon in his place if he crosses you, do you hear me? No one acts like that to you. I’ve seen you rip every one of the Warlanders, myself included.”

“But you guys aren’t going to hurt me!”

“And neither will he!” Kru barked, pointing at the truck. “No one will!”

Okay. Okay! Something was happening. This anger seemed to be bigger than just this moment.

“How was your day?” she asked.

The anger faltered on his face, and he looked uncertain. “What?”

“How was your day?” she repeated.

His shoulders relaxed suddenly, and he ran his hands down the short scruff on his face, looked to the woods and then back to her. “We’re friends, right?”

“Yes.”

Chest heaving, he stared at her for a five-count before he reached into his back pocket and pulled his phone out. He opened something up on the screen and offered her the phone.

Baffled, Cadence closed the gap between them and gently took the phone from his hand.

Across the screen was a text from an unknown number.

I’m ready now.

Chills rippled up her forearms. Cadence frowned and looked up at Kru. “Who is it?”

“Sasha left because she said she wasn’t ready to fall for me.”

A knife. That’s what it felt like. The realization of what this text meant cut her insides. The words were blades. But…Kru wasn’t hers. We’re friends, right? He needed a friend.

“There’s no text thread,” she whispered. “Why is the number unknown if she was yours?”

He looked around, hands on his hips, faraway gaze in his eyes. He was seeing a world she didn’t see right now. Flashbacks, perhaps. “I blocked her last number. She must’ve gotten a new phone.”

“You blocked your mate?”

“It’s complicated.”

She wanted to ask a hundred rapid-fire questions. She wanted to understand the dynamics, but he was giving her short answers, and she’d been friends with enough men to see where that would lead—the great shutdown.

So instead of asking him for personal admissions, she asked instead, “How can I help?”

His eyes cleared and darted to her. Kru shifted his weight to the other side and seemed unsure how to answer. He looked so handsome in the afternoon light, the edge of the woods a blurry green background behind him. He wore dirt-stained work pants and scuffed boots. His legs were long and thick with muscle, and his shoulders pressed against the thin material of a burgundy T-shirt as he stayed like that, hands on his hips. He wore a backwards baseball cap, and had a dirt smear that ran from his cheek to his neck. His eyes were such a bright green, they were hard to look away from.

His Adam’s apple dipped low as he swallowed. “I think you already did it.”

Cadence cocked her head, unsure. “What do you mean?”

“You asked how you can help. Just you asking about my day, and caring enough to ask how you can help is it. That’s all I needed.”

She forced a crooked, sympathetic smile. “She hurt you.”

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