Page 2 of Destined Predator
And if I can’t handle that, I’ll lose my little brother.
The thought of losing Jack made Rhett’s hands tremble as he tossed the wet towels into the hamper. His chest seized, making him sit on the edge of the tub to catch his breath. He’d accept anything he had to if it meant keeping Jack in his life. They’d only just started growing closer as brothers recently, when Jack had come home after years of them barely staying in touch because he’d lived and worked in New York City. Rhett wasn’t going to mess up again and let Jack get hurt—not by him, and not by anyone else.
He paused at the window before leaving the bathroom, the yard spread out below in gray morning light. Fences rebuilt, cattle calm—but still, sometimes he caught himself glancing toward the tree line, half expecting to see eyes glinting back. Quiet never lasted long on Double T land, not since that night.
I won’t fail him this time, like I did before because I didn’t want to tell him the truth about myself. Because I didn’t want to accept it, either.
Before he could continue his silent castigation, laughter rang out in the hallway, and the bright, joyful sound went a long way to drowning Rhett’s fears.
Hearing Jack so happy was worth anything. Even the scariest monsters in the world couldn’t have kept Rhett from leaving the bathroom so he could see his brother smiling, eyes crinkled at the corners, his mouth in a wide grin, arms around his boyfriend, Ben.Ben the coywolf shifter.
The words still felt strange in his head—coywolf shifter.As if saying them too loud might invite more secrets into the house. Yet Ben’s easy grin and gentle way with Jack had done something Rhett hadn’t expected. They’d made the idea of ‘different’ start to look a lot like ‘decent’.
It didn’t matter if Benwasa shifter, not when he was looking at Jack the same way Jack looked at him.Only thing I can do is plow through my fears—or bury ’em as deep as possible.Jackdeserved that, and maybe, although Rhett didn’t know him well, Ben did, too. That was what he wanted to believe, anyhow.
“Hey, Rhett.” Ben gave him a nod before pulling a face at Jack. “Oh, what’s your brother gonna think, huh? Him all neat and tidy like that and look at you, with your JBF’d hair.” He knuckled into Jack’s messy head.
Jack snorted and wiggled his butt. “I’ve got a JBF’d something all right, and it isn’t my hair.”
“Jacky-boy, behave!” Ben pretended to fan himself. “You’ll have your big brother blushing.”
“Maybe you should be the one blushing,” Rhett replied, standing his ground as he always did, even in this new situation. “If it’s done right, ya can’t walk for days, and here’s Jack looking ready to go line dancing at Bard’s Saloon, so…” He looked Ben up and down, pursing his lips in concern as fake as Ben’s shock of a moment ago. “I’d hate to think you weren’t treating Jack right.”
“Hey!” Ben’s indignation sounded more genuine now, and he pouted when Jack started chuckling, glared when Rhett sniggered too, then joined in.
Rhett didn’t know which of them laughed the loudest, but by the time he’d gotten his amusement under control, his sides ached, and he was shaking his head. “Aw, man. Y’all are something else.” He went to walk off.
“Rhett.”
Jack calling his name stopped him. “You doing okay there?” Jack asked. They might not have been close in recent years, but they’d grown up together and each was hard to fool.
“I…” Rhett chewed on his bottom lip a second. “Got some stuff spinning my gears up here.” He tapped his head.
Ben gave him a cool look from where he stood so close to Jack that Rhett couldn’t have swiped a credit card between them. “Stuff like wanting reality to go back to the way it used to be?”
As life should be for a solid, no-frills Wyoming son of the soil who didn’t believe in mumbo-jumbo.Well, that was the question he’d already answered for himself before he’d left the bathroom. Rhett hitched his thumbs through his belt loops and tipped his head back to look down at Ben, slow and easy. “I wouldn’t change anything about this world that makes my brother light up like he does around you.”
“Aww.” Jack’s eyes teared up and he hugged Rhett and, after a second, another pair of arms snaked around them—Ben joining in, too. It took a few seconds, but Rhett relaxed into the group huddle.Well now.How ’bout that.
Ben was the first to pull away. “I have to go. We got a pack run scheduled.”
“Can’t keep your alpha waiting,” Jack replied.
“Yeah, just like your big brother’s word is law too.” Ben wrapped a hand around Jack’s neck to bring him in for a smacking kiss. He slapped Jack’s ass then strolled down the short corridor to the front door, touching the first two fingers of his right hand to his forehead in salute as he went.
The lame joke barely registered with Rhett. His mind was busy thinking about Ben’s oldest brother and alpha of the Akers coywolf pack.Casey. That perma-smirking, cocky, swaggering—Taking in a deep breath, Rhett wrenched himself back to the here and now.
Casey Akers. Damn man had a way of getting under his skin without even being in the room. Every time Rhett pictured that smug tilt of a smile or the quiet confidence in Casey’s voice, something hot and unsettled twisted low in his gut—irritation, sure. But not only that.He shook his head hard. “Focus, Tucker,” he muttered. “You’re not some teenager with a crush.”Except his pulse didn’t listen.
“Hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave,” Jack called after Ben, tilting his head to take in Ben’s rear view, thenlaughing when Ben slapped his own ass and made a sizzling noise.
Ben didn’t close the door properly after him—Rhett had been meaning to plane it a little smoother, to stop it sticking—so Rhett walked over, intending to close it. Instead, he pushed the door open wider to get some air, never mind that he’d been outdoors all day. Jack joined him, leaning against the other side of the jamb like they were bookends.
“You really okay?” he asked, side-eyeing Rhett. “’S’okay not to be, after all…that.”
“That,” Rhett echoed, looking out over Double T land. “’S’funny—when I run into something new to handle on the ranch, I ask myself, ‘What would Pa do?’ and I usually find the answer, the way forward, you know? Only for ‘that’, well, I got no ideawhathe would do.”
Maybe that was the point—his old man’s playbook didn’t have pages for men who loved men, or for beasts who could walk on two legs by day. Rhett figured he’d have to start writing his own rules if he wanted a life that made sense again.
