Page 17 of Fastlander Fighter

“I haven’t slept with a twenty-something in years. Nice try. Wait, are you girls tracking my love life? Seriously?”

“Kind of,” Silver admitted. “It’s been boring around here.”

“Boring? Ace and Owen have been in two fights this week, and Gunner and I get into a yelling match every day. What kind of entertainment do you need?”

Silver shrugged. “Maybe we need to go camping or something.”

“We live in a fucking trailer park, Silver. We are camping.”

“So testy.”

“Hey, if you want some entertainment, I’m sure your old Pride can provide that when they try to kill us all.”

“Dramatic,” Silver said blandly, and took another sip of her drink.

Everything was stupid. Captain cracked the tab on the canned drink and chugged it.

“Does she party?” Hallie asked.

“Who?”

“Who do you think? The girl you’re trying to bone.”

“I’m not trying to bone her! She’s…” He frowned. He didn’t know what she was. “Also, I honestly don’t know if she parties. She was a good girl in high school, I remember. All A’s. Pretty sure she led prayer circles at lunch. Teacher’s pet, and all that.”

“Why was she friends with you?” Hallie asked.

“Because I was, and am, awesome. Where are your mates? I thought we were supposed to start the meeting at six.”

“Oh, they’re all running late. It’s girls’ night tonight.”

“I’m not a girl.”

“Neither is Wreck,” came a deep voice, and holy crap, Wreck was here. And he was talking in third person, which was weird. “Your fire sucks.”

Captain was just staring at the terrifying shifter that had melted out of the woods and was descending on him.

“Bro, too close. Stay over there,” Captain told him.

“If I wanted to, I could kill you from over here too,” Wreck enlightened him.

“Hey, remember that time you tried to kill all of us? And you were on television, trying to kill your own Crew?”

“I missed,” he said smoothly as he sank down into a bright-pink plastic lawn chair beside the firepit. He lifted the palm of his hand and a flame appeared there, floating just above his skin. He lifted churning gold eyes to Captain and waited. For what? Captain didn’t know.

“Cool party trick, weirdo.”

An evil smile stretched across Wreck’s face, and he tensed. The fire shot straight into the air, and a bolt of lightning flashed down from the sky. The firepit exploded.

Captain was blasted backward and landed hard on the ground. Shocked, he checked the sky, but there weren’t any storm clouds above them. Wreck could conjure lightning? Holy shit!

The firepit was completely destroyed, and all of the fine hairs on Captain’s body were lifted from the electricity of the lightning strike. There were a couple pieces of wood on fire scattered across the yard.

“Dude!” Captain yelled, standing. “We built that firepit as a Crew! Why did you destroy it?”

“Because you built it as a Crew,” Wreck said cooly, standing.

He walked back toward the tree line and Captain followed. “What does that even mean?”

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