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“It’s not her fault,” he murmurs, snapping his intense eyes up to mine. “Tris and Jonah are always giving me space, so I can’t ask them this—but if I start to have an issue during her heat and I need my ass kicked…”
A smile cracks the half-healed cut in my lower lip. “I’ll trade you. You fix my eye, and I’ll kick your ass.”
Spencer actually smirks. “Deal. Here, hold her while I fetch the first aid kit.”
We get Serena settled into my lap and he strides off. Watching her curl up against my bare, inked-up chest brings my own purr out. The rusty roar isn’t nearly as smooth as Spence’s, though, and our girl stirs, nuzzling into the white claw marks branded over my heart.
Bleary green eyes blink up at me, big and beautiful and mine. Especially when they flare with that sharp, teasing warmth. “Mm. Should have known. You steal me from my professor, Menace?”
I smile, bending to kiss her forehead. “Little bit.”
She gives another sleepy hum, hunkering down against my pecs. “Did your training run late?”
The truth is, it started late. “I had to fill out all sorts of bullshit paperwork. They wanted my title and my entrance song and all that stupid shit.”
“Hmm.” She scent-marks my skin. “If you had a trainer, I bet they’d do all that for you.”
She’s not wrong. I grumble quietly, remembering what I marked on my papers. “The Ghost works alone.”
Her pout is especially adorable, with her nose wrinkled and her eyes shut. “I don’t want you to be a ghost,” she complains, half out of it. Talking nonsense.
Only.
Maybe not.
I look down at her soft features, the long sweep of her gorgeous hair. All snuggled in Jonah’s T-shirt, soaked in Spencer’s scent. Cuddled up with me like I’m not the monster I know I am.
Fuck.
Maybe I don’t want me to be a ghost, either.
Is that name even true anymore? I hear those two pussies from the gym, whispering behind my back. “They call him the Ghost.”
Because I fought like I didn’t have anything to lose—like I was already dead.
I look down at Serena’s face and know, down to the bottom of my shitty, ripped-up soul. “I’m not, kitten. Not anymore.”
Mollified, she makes a content sound and huddles even closer. By the time Spence walks in, she’s back to sleep.
He opens the first aid kit and examines my eye, wincing at the cut. “Was this strictly necessary? You could have lost your eye.”
I snort. “Then you’d have one less thing to worry about.”
He glares. “I’m serious, Avery. This is the reason I’ve never been able to stomach coming to your matches. What if you’re seriously injured one day and?—”
He keeps talking, but I can’t focus. My brain skips over what he’s said, replaying it.
“Wait, wait,” I huff, scowling as he presses an alcohol swab to my split skin. “That’s why you’ve never come to a fight? You’re, like…”
Worried about me?
Spencer pauses long enough to parse out the words I don’t say. His answering nod is brusque. “Of course. You think I want to watch my packmate get hurt? My Alpha practically climbs the walls every time I even consider it.”
Fuck. And here I thought he’d been avoiding the matches because he couldn’t stand being linked to something so crude and repulsive.
Who knew the guy actually cared about keeping me in one piece?
Using a butterfly bandage and some sterile skin glue, he meticulously seals the cut while I stare at the side of his face, my jaw ticking.
