Page 27 of Rocky Top

Then came the injury.

No draft. No NFL.

Just painkillers, fist fights, and a patch handed to me by a man with a growl in his throat like mine.

Knox saved me like he was some sort of shifter preacher, lookin’ for lost souls. Or maybe he just gave me a new kind of cage to pace in. But he didn’t bring me into this club of wolves. That was our old Prez, Apollo, before he went onto to better things.

Old timer wasn’t dead and gone. Shifter, he’d live forever if he was unlucky enough to win every fight. Our old Prez retired, was in Alaska with his family. Knox’s grandad, Reynard who brought Knox into the fold had been Apollo’s second before he perished.

Knox was the one who gave me purpose. Made me his VP.

I turned the radio on. Not even sure why. Chris Stapleton crooned about drinkin’ away bad decisions.

I cracked a beer and stood there, shirtless and bruised, thinkin’ about the way Birdie had looked, sittin’ by that fire with a flashlight in her mouth and not a damn clue what kinda world she’d wandered into.

She wasn’t like the club girls. She was fire and lipstick and somethin’ delicate under the glitter.

And now she was in it. Whether she knew or not.

I drank half the beer, then set it down.

Sleep wouldn’t come easy. It never did when the wolf was restless.

But I still crawled into bed, pulled the blanket up, and closed my eyes to the sound of crickets and silence.

And the last thing I saw in my mind?

Was her.

At work the next day, I went through the motions. But my day really started when I walked into the club. The Wild Dog was louder than usual. Thursday nights weren’t what they used to be, but ever since word started spreading about rogues sniffin’ around Knox County, everybody’d been a little more restless. More booze. More blood. More of everything.

I stalked into the clubhouse, noddin’ to Smokey at the bar. He lifted a beer without a word and slid it down the counter toward me. I caught it clean, cracked it open, and didn’t bother thankin’ him. He knew how I liked it.

The music was old-school outlaw country, perhaps Waylon, rough as the bark on a whiskey barrel. The scent of grilled meat and leather hung stuck in my nose, undercut by the hint of perfume.

That’s when I saw her. My nose crinkled.

Tara.

In skin tight leather and her hair slicked back like a cobra ready to strike, she leaned against the pool table, eyes locked on me like a predator who’d spotted the wounded gazelle in the herd.

I sighed.Here we fuckin’ go.

Tara wasn’t just any she-wolf. She was Bearcat’s sister and came from the Whitlock family out of North Georgia, a lineage known for producing alphas and assholes in equal measure. Her uncle once challenged Apollo back in the day and Old Prez lost an eye for his trouble. Tara carried a glass eye in her pocket as a reminder. Liked to pull it out to prove points. She’d had a thing for Knox once until he met Eliza and stopped takin’ Tara’s calls.

Now she had her sights on me.

I took a long swig of my beer, hopin’ she’d take the hint.

She didn’t.

“Rocky,” she purred, stridin’ toward me with the kind of hips that knew what they were doin’. “Heard you were out prowlin’ the woods lately. Somethin’ got your attention out there?”

Yeah. A sunshine girl with big green eyes and a stubborn streak that made my wolf howl.

“Just club business,” I muttered.

She stepped closer. Too close. Fingertips grazin’ the front of my cut like she had any right. “Maybe you oughta let off some steam with someone who knows how to handle you. It’s been too long.”

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