Granted, she’d been through a lot.

  And he was a scary-looking fucker based on how other people reacted to him.

  “I… I think—I mean, I’m down a job, but I can’t say I’ll miss working there, honestly.” There was a hint of a grin on her face at the end, and Gunnar wanted to do whatever it took to see her really smile.

  He just grunted in response.

  She opened her mouth, then shut it, looking pensive for a second. Then when she looked at him, her gray eyes caught the late-afternoon sun, and Gunnar felt a jolt of something so raw and magnetic he almost kissed her right there.

  “Also, I wanted to thank you. Again…”

  “For what?”

  In response, she creased her eyebrows, looking confused. But she couldn’t hide the flush of redness creeping up her cheeks, though perhaps it was just the sun beating down on them right now.

  “You know what!” she exclaimed, standing on her feet and facing Gunnar. He folded his arms, amused by this little firecracker with no self-preservation instincts who seemed unable to speak her mind.

  Gunnar just shrugged nonchalantly.

  He wanted to make her blush everywhere.

  “Don’t think I didn’t see what you did to Bill back in the bar. Not to mention, you saved everyone’s lives by handling that whole mess a minute ago. And then… when you came back for me, I—”

  Gunnar was hanging on every word, every expression on her heart-shaped face, when behind them, a sudden ruckus trailing angry voices came toward them.

  He turned in an instant, putting himself between April and the mass of shifters that reminded him of humans wielding torches and pitchforks, minus the actual implements.

  “It’s the human’s fault!” Someone at the front jabbed an angry finger in April’s direction.

  “Never trust a human!” one of the bear shifters said.

  “She probably knows who did it,” another chimed in.

  Gunnar growled, fists clenching, ready to beat this whole mob down as the basilisk in him roared for blood.

  If they wanted someone’s head, he’d serve all of these fuckers up on a silver platter before he let them lay a single finger on April.

  “Now everyone just wait a damn minute.” A familiar face appeared at Gunnar’s side, redirecting the mob’s attention.

  Gunnar looked and saw Reno, the alpha wolf from whom he and the other basilisks had spent the summer learning about the human world. His blond hair was longer now, and he was a lot less uppity now that he was mated to his partner, Dani, but Gunnar knew the wolf shifter who could shoot lightning from his fingertips wasn’t a force to be messed with.

  As part of their deal with the double dragons, Reno was staying in town and had agreed to oversee the basilisks as they undertook missions to help keep the world from falling into chaos. With his vast knowledge of shifters and his extensive contacts within the shifter world itself, he was a powerful ally for the basilisks.

  Gunnar snarled, a little disappointed he wasn’t going to be beating these people up after all.

  The second he’d seen how they treated April or others like her in this town, he’d decided they had it coming.

  The group paused and listened as Reno started using fancy words like “thorough investigation” and “diplomatic solution.” And though they were certainly suspicious of the newcomer’s sudden appearance, as an alpha wolf of the highest pedigree, Gunnar could see them calm enough to at least pause in their warpath of accusing innocent people.

  Miraculously, after a minute, the crowd began to disperse gradually as shifters headed back for their homes. In the background, Jack spoke with the mayor while Diesel and Ajax continued to patrol for trouble before joining their little group.

  “I had it under control,” Gunnar said to Reno with a huff.

  “I know you did. But sometimes words are more powerful than fists, my friend,” Reno replied, clapping Gunnar on the shoulder.

  “Not my fists.”

  Reno laughed at that and put an arm around his mate, Dani, who’d been standing off to the side while he’d been talking. With all but a few people left now, Diesel came over to join them, smiling like a kid all alone in a candy shop.

  “This mission was fun. I want another.” Given the basilisk’s proclivity toward violence, it didn’t surprise Gunnar his friend felt that way.

  “For now, I think it’s best you all lie low while the double dragons and I have a look around. I’ll talk to the O’Dell pack’s leaders, see if there’s anything suspicious that might implicate them.”

  Diesel groaned disappointedly.

  There was a little squeak, like someone clearing their throat, and everyone looked past Gunnar toward April.

  As all three basilisks and their alpha wolf friend looked at her, she seemed about ready to faint with fear. “They don’t actually think I would do something like burn down my uncle’s bar, do they?”

  Reno sighed, scratching the back of his head. “Short answer: it’s possible. Shifters like these tend to be overly suspicious. Just know it isn’t you. It’s them.”

  “But… I would never.”

  Reno nodded. “I know. Just be patient while we look into this, okay? I can give you my number, and if you anyone bothers you or something comes up, I—”

  “No,” Gunnar said immediately, his voice causing everyone to go stock-still as they stared up at him.

  He’d be damned before he left this badass, helpless little woman all alone to fend for herself in a town full of rowdy shifters that seemed more than willing to take matters into their own hands if provoked.

  So Gunnar was going to take matters into his hands.

  There was a long pause as everyone waited for a response.

  “No what?” April was the first to speak up, to Gunnar’s surprise.

  At that moment, Jack and Troy joined them.

  “I’m not leaving her,” Gunnar said with a growl.

  There was something special about her. He knew it. His basilisk knew it.

  He would protect her with his life.

  “She’ll be fine. We can’t protect every human all the time,” Troy said.

  Gunnar bristled.

  She’s MY human, was what he wanted to say.

  “She’s in danger,” was what he actually said.

  “We don’t have the resources to watch out for everyone in this town. We have a lot of other things on our plate,” Jack added, trying to be helpful.

  To his credit, Reno didn’t seem to agree with the double dragons. “Gunnar’s right. I’ve seen shifter groups do horrible things, especially when they’re agitated like this. She’s better off with a basilisk around.”

  “Wait, what’s going on right now?” April asked. Her pretty eyes darted up to Gunnar’s, then over to Reno.

  “Gunnar here is going to watch out for you, at least until things settle down,” Reno said.

  “Whatever. You and your basilisk buds can do whatever you want, then. See if I fucking care,” Troy said as he threw his hands up, though Gunnar got the impression that he was perhaps a little stressed out as of late because he wasn’t normally this hard.

  That didn’t mean Gunnar trusted him.

  Jack just tipped his Stetson and smiled. “I like this plan. Best of luck, guys,” he said cordially before turning around and jogging to catch up with his partner.

  “What plan?” April said, her voice getting higher.

  But Reno was saying something to Diesel as the two other basilisks followed Reno and his mate in the other direction. Within moments, it was just Gunnar and April all alone on the sidewalk as she folded her arms and looked up at him, her blue eyes blazing with energy.

  He couldn’t help grinning a little at the sight of her like this.

  “So what, you’re just gonna follow me around everywhere I go now?”

  Gunnar nodded.

  “Do I even get a say in this?”

  He moved a little closer to her, making them only inches apart, and her eyes went wider as he did. He could scent the fear on her, along with her annoyance. And though she tried to guard her expression, he could sense exactly how she responded to his nearness even as she frowned stubbornly.

  “No.”

  After all, he was a basilisk. The alpha of the basilisks, the strongest protectors in the world.

  Whether she liked it or not, he was going to watch out for April.

  Even if she hated him for it.

  5

  April didn’t know how her day had gone so suddenly from bad to worse. She felt like a trout who’d jumped from the frying pan and landed in the fire, only to be rescued from the fire by a huge beast of a man that looked like he wanted to eat her every time their eyes met.

  After a staring contest that had lasted all of two minutes, April had stormed off in the direction of her home, only to be followed by the gigantic Gunnar, whose heavy steps seemed to literally shake the ground around him as he walked directly behind her. All the while, he growled at anyone and everything within a thirty-foot radius like a monstrous Rottweiler the size of a truck protecting his bone.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Gunnar. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She couldn’t help feeling a warm, hot feeling creep over her skin and course through her insides whenever she looked up at him. But the presumptuousness with which he’d decided, without her input, to suddenly be her bodyguard when she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself bothered April to no end.

  And to make matters worse, it seemed like the big, silent man had the audacity to find her whole predicament amusing.

  “I’ve had an incredibly long day. So you can go join your friends and just leave me be.”

  She heard him grunt behind her, but his steps continued to follow her closely.

  The difficult part was Gunnar was possibly right in his decision. In the past, when the Clawsons and O’Dells had gone at it, people often got hurt, though usually it was the shifters on either side of the conflict.

  She didn’t know what to think of the fact that they thought she might have been the one to do it.

  Someone had certainly set her uncle’s bar on fire, but it wasn’t her or Tiffany. They’d been inside the whole time.

  Oh crap, she thought to herself. Her uncle might not have even heard about the whole ordeal yet. And when he did, April was probably going to be on the receiving end of one of his horrible shouting fits.

  Just great…

  “Why do you keep following me around?” she asked, not even sure she’d get an answer.

  “It’s my duty to protect you,” he replied low, even the husky sound of his voice making her ears tingle.

  She spun around, raising her hands to speak. “Like I said before, I’m really grateful you saved me back there, but—”

  Unbeknownst to her, Gunnar had been walking a lot closer than she’d expected, and immediately, her hands pressed against a wall of muscle and man that rose before her like some scary Adonis who crushed boulders for a living.

  Gunnar raised an eyebrow as April fought the urge to explore him farther. Just the light brush of her fingertips and palms over such soft, steely muscle hidden beneath his work shirt made her go weak in the knees, and it took all her sizable self-control to not drool right there on the spot.

  “But what?” he asked matter-of-factly.

  In her lust to explore Gunnar’s taut, ripped body, she’d completely forgotten what she had been saying.

  And if she wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of mirth creasing the corner of his sculpted mouth.

  Suddenly, her phone began to ring loudly in her pocket, breaking the tension between them, and April stepped back a few feet and pulled her old flip phone out and opened it, surprised the old hunk of plastic was still kicking after all these years.

  The second she did, a familiar, rage-filled voice filled the air over her earpiece.

  “What the hell did you do to my bar? And why the fuck didn’t you call me earlier?” Her uncle’s voice pierced the cool early evening air, all too audible.

  “Hi, Uncle Marvin. Sorry, I—” She flushed with embarrassment, trying to cover the phone so Gunnar wouldn’t hear.

  But he wasn’t in any mood to listen. “Bill told me everything, and I have to say I have never seen such idiotic, careless, stu—”

  Suddenly, the phone disappeared from her grip. It was there one second, and the next, Gunnar had whisked it out of her hand. And with the ease of a child squashing a grape, he’d crushed her phone in his palm with a single, effortless motion.

  When he opened his hand, the old hunk of plastic she’d had since she was a teenager was a million pieces of plastic.

  “My phone!” she exclaimed. Granted, it was on its last leg, but that didn’t mean Gunnar had any right to obliterate it.

  Not that she regretted not having to listen to her uncle rant for the next three hours.

  “That man was yelling at you.”

  “That was my uncle!”

  “Why was he yelling, then?” he asked seriously.

  She huffed and ran a hand through her hair. “Probably because he’s stressed. After all, his bar just got burned down.” Though, she’d almost been burned alive, if not for Gunnar’s intervention.

  Not that anyone from her family had called or texted to check in on her.

  “Any man that yells at a woman deserves a punch in the face,” he said with a completely straight face.

  She chuckled nervously at that. It was almost too much to take, seeing how overprotective he really was of her for no reason at all.

  “Is that how you solve all your problems as a basilisk?”

  He didn’t answer.

  In her heart, she had to admit he was right. If it had been some dude yelling at Tiffany like that, April wouldn’t have let it stand.

  She was just too used to it from her own family after so many years.

  “You still broke my phone. What am I supposed to do now?” Around her, the aged trees lining the street on the outskirts of town where they were walking swayed in the wind, carrying the scent of aspen and oak with them.

  Gunnar rolled his eyes and deposited the shards of her old phone in his back pocket. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

  “What? You will?” she replied a little too excitedly. She’d been saving up for a year to get something that wasn’t from the 2000’s, but other expenses had kept taking precedence. “You won’t break that one too, will you?”

  Gunnar just folded his arms sternly. “Depends. Do all the people in your life yell at you like that?”

  “No.” When her family members in town weren’t yelling, they were either complaining or making her run errands for them.

  Her heart ached at the thought, and she stomped in the direction of her home again, finding the sound of Gunnar beside her more comforting than annoying now.

  For someone so big, he could be oddly cute at other times.

  Monsters aren’t cute, her brain warned her.

  “But let’s get this straight. You can’t just go around deciding things for me all the time,” she said over her shoulder.

  “When it comes to your safety, I can.” His stubbornness made her want to tear her hair out.

  Or jump his bones.

  Potato, potahto.

  But it was clear he wasn’t going to give an inch.

  And as with so many other things in her life where decisions had been made without her, April figured it was best to just roll with the whole thing rather than fight it at this point.

  Ironically enough, this was the first time in her life that someone was going out of their way for her rather than making her go out of her way for themselves or someone else.

  “Well, if you’re coming home with me, I guess a proper introduction couldn’t hurt.” She stopped on the uneven, cracked sidewalk, and Gunnar came to a stop next to her.

  She reached out her hand. “My name’s April. April Nelson.”

  Gunnar looked at her hand, appraising for a moment. Then in an instant, her hand disappeared in his as it became totally enveloped by his gigantic palm and fingers.

  Even the platonic contact made zings of something electric go up her arm at his touch as his calloused skin made contact with hers. Such strong hands.

  What could a man like this do with hands like that? she wondered.

  “Gunnar.”

  She giggled nervously at how stoic and serious he was. And at the absurdity of her current situation. “Do you have a last name?”

  “Gunnar Basilisk.”

  Her giggle turned into a laugh as she tried to distract herself from that warm, almost boiling sensation under her skin where he touched. And after a few shakes, he let her hand go, though there seemed to be an air of reluctance in his gaze when he finally did.

  She reminded herself that this person wasn’t human like she was.

  But as April turned around and headed once again for home, ignoring the warmth in her cheeks, she found it difficult to erase in her mind how quickly she’d responded to his touch.

  Gunnar might not be human.

  But he certainly was all man.

  6

  For the next few minutes, she and Gunnar walked in relative silence as the late afternoon turned into early evening over Clawson’s Creek, bringing a warm breeze and casting the world around her in orange and yellow hues.

  When they were almost back at her home, Gunnar grunted behind her.

  “You have a long walk from work.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, still amazed to see him following her around.

  “No car?”

  She wondered if the half-hour walk might be tiresome for someone of his size. But based on his calm expression and the easy stride of his long, powerful legs, she got the distinct impression he could do this all day and that he was asking out of curiosity, nothing more.

  “Yes.” She looked ahead and winced. “Well, no.”

  “Yes or no?” his deep voice responded.

  “I mean, I have a car, but it broke down a couple months ago.” That, and the money she’d set aside for its repair had to be spent on an getting someone to come in and fix the broken AC back at the bar a week ago.