Page 77 of Knot Her Mountain Men

“I’m sorry. I’m sure local charities will appreciate your contributions.”

“You can’t be serious. You can’t give away my stuff.”

“I’m afraid we can. It’s in the agreement. Have a good day, Ms. Harris.”

She ended the call and I was left standing there frozen, fury bubbling up my throat. I almost hurled the phone onto the concrete, but Cooper snatched it before I could.

“What’s going on?” Ryder asked. “Who’s giving away what stuff?”

I gave them a quick rundown, a rage reflective of my own flowing through the alphas gathered around me.

“That’s bullshit.” Ryder growled. “There has to be some way we can get to it.”

“Let me see the address.” Kit held out his hand from my phone and plugged in the location into his maps app. “Well, conveniently it’s here in Great Falls, but it’s also closed to the public until morning.”

Bear gathered me into his arms. What the hell was I going to do? Brandon probably had my wallet, and all my other identifying documents would be with the stash my landlord had stolen because I was too busy being trapped in the woods to clean out my apartment. Last I’d heard, they didn’t even have anyone to move into my suite after I was out and they still had two other units sitting empty. They had no reason for them to pull this kind of fuckery on me. I’d planned so meticulously so I could get one last camping trip before moving away. Almost everything had been packed besides essentials, I’d had a truck lined up, and the week I’d been at the lodge had been intended for driving my things down to Missoula, unpacking, and settling.

“We’ll figure it out,” Maverick promised.

I wanted to believe him, but even an alpha’s stubbornness didn’t stand much of a chance against the capitalist wheels of bureaucracy.

Despondent didn’t even begin to cover it. Everything I owned was on the chopping block. All the little treasures I had painstakingly collected over the years, the few surviving gifts I had from Mom that my brothers hadn’t broken, all the gear I hadn’t taken out with me, medication, toiletries, and photos.

I needed a pillow to scream into.

Bear’s purr wasn’t strong enough to combat my despair.

“I forgot to call the police about the report.”

“I’ll call them for you,” Kit promised.

I nodded, bottom lip wobbling. “All my things…”

“We’ll go tomorrow, little fox,” Kit said. “If they can’t be reasoned with, we can probably find out their donation partners, and grab as much as we can from the shelves before anyone else gets it.”

That was a possibility, but I had a lot of things that wouldn’t have been suitable for donation. Thinking about strangers picking their way through everything I owned made me want to throw up. I didn’t have much of a nest in my old apartment, but it was still my safe space and now it had been violated.

I leaned harder into Bear, trying to let my fury be stronger than the urge to start sobbing. I had the distinct notion that if I started crying I wouldn’t be able to stop. Holding myself together through sheer spite was unfortunately something I had plenty of experience with. Growing up in the Harris household had been an exercise in self-control every goddamn day. Breaking, even when they were deliberately trying to make it happen, usually ended up withmegetting punished, not them.

Don’t be so emotional, Morgan. You’re such an embarrassment.

You shut up with your crying right now or I’ll give you something to cry about.

Once a baby, always a baby. Look at the little bitch cry.

I sucked in a sharp breath. Getting fucked over by the capitalist hellscape shouldn’t have come as a surprise. My whole family besides Mom and Cooper had drilled disappointment into me. Why expect good from the world when so much of it was only looking out for itself? Why expect a company who could easily handle a few days of lost rent to give a shit about a tenant who desperately needed their leniency?

By the time we got back to the lodge, I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Bear didn’t let me head inside, guiding me toward the wood pile and handing me the axe.

“Let it out,” he signed, his face so full of sympathy I couldn’t even bring myself to meet his gaze. He set a chunk of wood atop the stump they used for chopping and stepped back.

The first swing did nothing to help, but when the second sent the two halves of the log sailing outward, I saw Bear’s logic. He replaced one of the halves and let me obliterate that too, giving me one piece after another until my arms burned and my chest heaved, silent tears frozen on my cheeks. I screamed with each downswing, allowing my fury to flow out into that axe blade.

Bear’s pride as he watched me decimate each log flowed to me like a cool stream, soothing my emotions. I caught the warmth in his eyes and I soaked up his pride like a desperate sponge. I hadn’t experienced nearly enough of it growing up, and getting it in such a pure state through the bond was an even bigger high than hearing the words.

This was its own sort of therapy. A productive way to burn off grief and anger. Using my upset this way was helping the pack, taking work off their plate while letting me vent my aggression in a safe way.

I had other ideas about working some of that off.

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