Page 20 of Crew

“I’m going to talk to Zara,” Crew said. “I’ll come back when I’m finished.”

Avi walked with him to the farmhouse.

“Do you really think he’ll just leave with his people?” Avi asked.

“I think so, but we’ll be prepared if he doesn’t. We’ve got security measures around our territory, and if they try to come back, we’ll know.”

Zara ran out of the house and jumped into his arms. “What happened? Is everything okay?”

Crew told her what had transpired, giving her a kiss and lowering her to the ground.

“I think Avi’s right,” she said. “I think he might cause problems. He doesn’t like to be told no.”

“I’ll keep you safe, sweetheart,” he said.

“I trust you,” she said.

That meant the world to him.

They talked for a bit longer, and then he left Avi at the house and returned to the barn to wait for the herd to leave. He texted Khyle and Dexter, promising to keep them updated if there were issues, and then he settled in near the barn to wait.

* * *

Colton ignored the herd as he and his people got into their vehicles and left. He was angry but also not surprised.

He’d known the moment that Zara and Crew met that they were soulmates and she’d mate him sooner rather than later. It wasn’t that he cared who she fucked; he cared that his only female herd member wanted to jump ship. That was simply not acceptable.

“Where are we going?” Silas asked.

Colton plugged his phone in and opened the GPS program. He located an outdoor equipment big-box store half an hour away and set the GPS for directions. “First here, and then we’ll set up outside their territory.”

“In the woods?”

“Yep.”

“Like…what? I’m lost.”

“We’re going to get supplies from the camping store and set up in the woods. Close enough to keep an eye on the other herd but out of their territory so they won’t know we’re there. Then we can plan our next move.”

“I don’t know why you didn’t just take out Crew right then and there. There were only four of them and five of us. Well, four since Weston isn’t much of a fighter. We could have easily taken them.”

Colton wasn’t so sure. He could definitely take Crew, but that one male—Ford—had a hard look that told Colton he was a fighter. Males like that were unpredictable. Maybe Colton and his herd would have been victorious, but what if they weren’t? They had hardly any males right now, and losing even one wouldn’t be worth the risk an on-the-spot fight could garner them. “A fight like that can have an uncertain outcome. We need to take them by surprise. But first, we’re going to cause some problems for them.”

“Problems? Like what?”

“Sabotage.” At Silas’s confused look, Colton continued, “I want Crew and his herd to be unsettled. To know that while it seemed like we left without a problem, we aren’t going far. They’ll know we’re going to come after them and they won’t know how or when it’ll happen, or what we’ll do.”

That alpha stole Zara from Colton and his herd. She was his to use how he saw fit. His herd had given her the training to be a forager and caretaker, and she wasn’t free to be part of any other herd, mating or not.

Herd laws or not.

Colton was above the laws.

And he would show Crew that he’d made a grave error when he took Zara as his mate.

No one fucked with Colton’s plans, period.

The following morning, Crew ran an errand into town while Zara, Avi, Tris, and Dexter discussed a tea garden location and adding fall vegetables to the current garden. When he returned, he found his mate pulling off gardening gloves with an adorable streak of dirt on her cheek.

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