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tears rimmed her eyes, and he had to turn away before he gave into the urge to comfort her. That would only make this harder. Was he heartless to the woman’s plight? No, but Bron had given him an order and disclosed that she was important to the pride. There weren’t many bears left and there were even less lions. Neither shifter race could afford a war over something that could so easily be avoided.
    “Okay, I’ll go,” she said in a trembling voice.
    She turned and climbed up into the passenger side of his jacked up, mud-flinging, boulder-squashing, fat-tired truck. The bed rattled with tools, buckets, ladders and the like, but inside, it was clean as a whistle, just how he liked it. She didn’t have to shove over old hamburger wrappers like he had to do in Reese’s truck.
    Breshia looked so sad and frail sitting there, waiting for him to take her away.
    The gas can sloshed as he picked it up from beside the cabin porch and loaded it in the back. And when he sat behind the wheel and pulled the door closed, he could all but smell her sadness. Dillon threw the truck into drive and hauled out of the clearing toward the road that would lead to the main, where she’d said her car was sitting.
    She smelled good. Beyond the smell of blood and sorrow, she smelled like some frilly fruit shampoo members of the more delicate gender tended to use on their hair. But it was more than that. It was this tang, right on the edge of his senses that made his sleeping bear stir, and his cock along with him. What the hell? He’d been with women before, but none of them had his pants tight this quickly. He was usually attracted to the take-no-prisoners types—strong women who could hold their own in a fight and didn’t need him to defend them. The kind who scared him a little in the bedroom and ignored him in public. Safe women who didn’t dig too deeply into what made him tick. Those were the women he took to bed. Not a mousey woman who couldn’t even hold his gaze for more than two seconds.
    Maybe his dick was just as crazy as Breshia was.
    The silence was too thick for comfort, so he turned the radio on a nineties rock station and drummed nervously on the steering wheel. Breshia dragged her attention away from the passing fauna to frown at his tapping fingers. Snuggling closer to the door, she sighed and leaned her face against the glass.
    He wanted to ask her why she was here, and where she got her marks. He wanted to know about her life and what the pride was like. If he was honest, he wanted to know everything about her, but didn’t dare ask. A few more minutes and he could go back to his simple life. Back to tiling the bathroom in the ranger tower, and then home to pop the top on a cold beer and relax into his favorite recliner to watch highlights from Sunday’s game.
    “Jesus,” he muttered, leaning forward as her car came into view.
    A pastel blue Volkswagen beetle sat at an angle on the road, door still open and bumper completely shredded. He dragged a horrified gaze to Breshia, but she was staring at something past her car.
    A black SUV sat partially hidden behind her car, and a dark-headed man stood leaning against the driver’s side, arms crossed like he hadn’t a care in the world.
    As Dillon came to a stop, the man called out, “Shira sent me to escort her safely back to Portland.”
    A thin sheen of sweat had broken out on Breshia’s brow, despite the late winter chill in the air. Instincts were peppering Dillon like gunfire as he studied the man’s empty smile. Damn, he didn’t want to do this. Right here, right now—this was one of those moments that would haunt him. He would always wonder what happened to the girl with the freckles who had spent a day confusing him once.
    But Bron had given him an order.
    “Come on,” he murmured, hating himself.
    Breshia slipped from the vehicle at the same time as him, and when he pulled the gas can from the bed of the truck, he froze as Breshia’s arms went around