Page 1 of Her Remarkable Protector

1

HONOR DEVERAUX

Big Sky, Montana

My life is a collection of boxes. They’re stacked on top of one another, precarious but deliberate. They build on each other—brick by brick of pain, resolve, and calculated schemes—but they remain separate. Compartmentalized. I retrieve, and I discard. But I never forget.

Damon Stone stands before me. “You’ll be here when I come back?” The growl in his voice is less a question and more an order as he straps on his gear—a sidearm at his hip, a concealed gun under his jacket, and a blade strapped to his ankle. He’s a box I plan to discard soon, one that’s served its purpose—to get a name.

“Of course,” I reply, resting a hand on my belly. The gesture is instinctive, protective. It isn’t for him—nothing I do is ever for him. I’m shielding my baby, silently warning Damon to stay in his lane. Not that he’d ever notice, let alone decipher, the silent threat. Men like him are good at reading fear, but they never recognize defiance until it’s too late.

He scoffs, shaking his head as if I’ve just confirmed every low expectation he has of me. “You’re not my wife. But that’s my blood in there,” he says, nodding at my stomach, his voice edged with steel. “Mess this up, and you’ll wish it was anyone else you owed. D’you understand?”

“Of course.” The words spill out again, practiced and hollow, a mantra that no longer burns on my tongue.

Behind me, his young teenage son watches. Oakley Stone is a boy caught between a desperate need to earn his father’s approval and a life he’s already beginning to resent.

At the door, Damon’s right-hand man, calls out. “Stone, let’s roll. We’re burnin’ time here.” Patch glances at me, clicking his tongue. “Be good, sweetheart.”

The sound barely leaves his mouth before Damon shoves him, clearly not in the mood for Patch’s antics.

The door slams shut.

“Hey, Honor,” Oakley calls. “Think I can head out for a bit? The crew’s hitting the park—gonna shred for a while.”

Skating is his thing, and by ‘shred,’ he means pulling off tricks and tearing up the ramps on his board. I know there’s no point in saying, ‘Ask your mother.’ Mira Stone’s probably off getting high somewhere.

“Yeah, go on,” I say.

For a moment, I let the silence settle around me. But it’s not relief filling my chest—it’s the grind of gears as I map out my next move against Damon.

He doesn’t know who I am. Not really. He thinks he does, thinks I’m another woman trapped under his thumb. He’s the top dog, the man everyone fears. But fear isn’t power, and he doesn’t collect boxes like I do. He’s just a role player in the twisted drama of my life.

The first time I saw him, I was only eleven. He was his father’s puppet. A debt collector who knew his victims only by aliases, never bothering to uncover the lives he was unraveling. Last summer I found him, came to him, and I let him believe in the illusion of control because I needed to get to another man—the man with real blood on his hands. The one name Damon finally let slip during an innocent conversation the other day. He thought I was reminiscing, stroking his ego, feeding his sense of invincibility. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

The man I’m after is elusive, his whereabouts a mystery. But I remember his eyes. I’ll always remember his eyes. And he isn’t just a box I plan to discard—he’s one I’ve vowed to destroy.

* * *

Kalispell,Montana – age 11

The fishing basket swings in my hand as we walk up the driveway, and I can’t stop grinning. Coming home with Dad feels like magic, like a wish I didn’t think would come true. After all the years apart—after Mom left him—they somehow found their way back to each other.

And now, here I am, fresh from a fishing trip to Flathead Lake, feeling like the luckiest kid alive. He’s here. For good. I don’t have to pretend anymore, imagining him beside me. He’s really here. He’s my dad again, and this time, he’s staying.

“I don’t know why you keep wearing that T-shirt!” Dad comments.

“You gave it to me.”

“Youtricked meinto giving it to you.”

“I didn’t!” I insist.

“Come on, Skip. You told me I was buying you a T-shirt. Not a custom print one,” he nods at the ‘My mom is from Canada. Deal with it!’ slogan. “You know your mom gave me a hard time.”

“But she got over it, didn’t she?”

“Yeah. Eventually.” He flattens his lips. “You should just ignore those kids, okay? You are who you are, your mother is who she is.”

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