1. Arden

1

ARDEN

PRESENT DAY

I stared at the painting, frustration swelling, swirling in inky tendrils as I assessed the image and brushstrokes, the angry beat of heavy metal blaring from the speakers. It wasn’t working. Something was missing. Perhaps it was too similar to pieces I’d done in the past. Or maybe it felt just the slightest bit false.

I worked in various mediums: metal for sculpting, oils for canvases, even the occasional pastel or charcoal piece. It was my way of processing and dealing with the darkness. Letting it come and then expelling it onto some surface.

Some would think it was healthy. The foster family I’d ended up with on the opposite side of the country certainly did. But the truth was, the darkness and I had never really come to an understanding. We constantly battled, but I never won the war—even now, at age twenty-five.

Which was why my workshop, nestled in the mountains of Central Oregon, was currently ablaze with light. It was my way of casting out those shadows, the same as I did with my art. Ironically, while my fear of the dark had remained, my creativity came alive at night.

Maybe it was the darkness’s way of keeping its hooks in me, tempting me to see if I was brave enough to face it. I stared harder at the canvas. The image was haunting; I’d give it that. Dark, tunneling trees beckoned you to come closer. But something was definitely missing.

I let out a growl of frustration that had Brutus lifting his head from where he lay in the dog bed in the corner, his gray ears twitching. The massive cane corso was always checking up on me. He was another weapon in my arsenal against the darkness.

“I’m fine,” I grumbled, heading to the sink on the far wall. Pouring some solvent into a dish, I began the process of cleaning my brushes.

The routine was a meditation of sorts—one of the few I could muster. Because sitting on a pillow while soft music played wasn’t really my thing. I needed something active, punctuated by the raw anger of hard rock and various kinds of metal. I found it in art and jujitsu.

Both were gifts in their own way. Ones given to me by the family I’d found in a place I’d least expected. After months of foster care and then witness protection in Boston, they’d finally placed me far from that world and with a family who knew nothing about Boston society or judges who’d taken bribes to throw cases a certain way, ultimately costing their family everything.

As that familiar mix of anger and guilt swirled in a noxious stew inside me, I took a steadying breath and remembered where I’d landed.

With the Colsons.

A family that was a mix of blood, adoption, and foster bonds but closer than any I’d ever known. But maybe it was the element of choice that made it that way.

Nora Colson’s choice to continue to bring children into her home after losing her husband and one of her sons in a car accident. But not just any children. She took the toughest cases, the most broken ones. So, it hadn’t been a surprise that I’d landed on her doorstep, barely verbal and scared of my own shadow.

But she and her mom, whom we called Lolli, had brought me out of my shell and helped me heal the best they could. Just like they had for everyone who came across their threshold. They had Cope and Fallon, Nora’s birth children; her adopted son, Shep; and Rhodes, Trace, and Kyler, her fosters.

We were a patchwork family full of different threads and fabrics, but it created something that never would’ve been otherwise. Something more beautiful.

But that didn’t change the fact that I sometimes felt like I didn’t fit. I was just a little too odd. Not especially good with people. I was better with my paints, metals, animals, and sparring—all the things that didn’t need words.

I dropped my brushes onto the towel, spreading them out to dry. My fingers were still twitchy since I hadn’t gotten the outlet that painting provided tonight. My gaze flicked to the massive windows along my workshop’s back wall. I could just see the beginnings of the sun peeking over the ridge of the Monarch Mountains to the east and knew it would cast its rays across the golden faces of Castle Rock before long.

The view from these windows was breathtaking, and one my brother, Cope, had given me out of generosity: a home and a studio on his massive property. He liked to couch it as him needing a property manager since he spent so much time on the road with his hockey team, but I knew the truth.

He wanted to make sure I was safe. Sequestered from the world as much as possible. Behind fences and gates with cameras and alarm systems. It didn’t matter that it had been almost fourteen years since anyone had tried to harm me. My siblings would always want me safe.

Laying out the final brush, I arched my back to loosen the muscles. I’d need a good soak in some Epsom salts later—the curse of being on my feet for too many hours straight. But first, I needed to move.

I glanced at my watch. Just a few minutes past five. My gaze moved to Brutus. “Want to go to the gym?”

Brutus let out a deep woof and was on his feet instantly. He loved Kye’s mixed martial arts gym, not because of the building itself, but because of all the attention he got there.

My lips twitched. “You’re going to be bummed when you realize it’s too early for anyone else to be there.”

Brutus simply panted in response.

I grabbed my gear bag from the beat-up leather couch along the far wall and switched off the music. The sofa was storage, bed, and sometimes dining table all rolled into one since I spent more time here than in my small guesthouse next door. But it was everything I needed. And it wasn’t like sleep came easily in an actual bed.

Ducking into the small bathroom, I quickly changed into workout gear and headed for the door. Brutus was at my side in a flash, my mostly silent companion.

As I headed outside, the automatic lights flicked on, bathing the gravel parking area in light and illuminating my most prized possession: my 1979 red Ford F-150 pickup. Her exterior had seen better days, but her guts were perfect.

She was the first thing I’d bought myself with the proceeds from my art. Thanks to the hefty trust fund my parents left behind, I could’ve bought a vehicle when I turned sixteen, but I couldn’t help seeing it as blood money. The reason my parents were no longer here.

Sure, some of it had been hard-earned, coming from my father’s job as a lawyer and then a judge. But when the FBI dug into my parents’ case, it was clear that someone had been bribing him. They just didn’t know who.

The FBI commandeered those funds, but I couldn’t help but wonder if more had flown under the radar, or help but feel like the bribes had tainted the rest of it.

So, I’d left the money in the account and never touched it. I only knew how much was in there because I’d had to move it from one bank to another a few months ago. The amount had been staggering—so staggering, I’d gotten physically ill afterward.

But keeping it apart from my life now had been a gift. Because earning the cash I needed for Wanda made the purchase even sweeter. My brothers were always on me to sell or fix her up, but I thought her dents and rust spots gave her character.

Sliding the key into the lock, I opened the driver’s side door and motioned Brutus inside. He leapt in with grace and power—things that kept me safe, right along with his years of personal-protection training.

Brutus had been a gift from my eldest brother, Trace. The most safety-conscious rule follower of all of us. But given his upbringing, that wasn’t a surprise. Just like it wasn’t a shock that he had ended up as the sheriff of our entire county.

I started Wanda, and she purred to life, the rebuilt engine humming perfectly. My headlights cut into the early-morning darkness, illuminating roads I knew by heart now. And with those headlights, the dark didn’t feel so ominous, more like a blanket of quiet. I craved that just as much as turning my beloved music up to eleven.

Silence or deafening chaos, there was no in-between for me.

The benefit of heading to the gym at five a.m. was that the streets were completely clear. Even though it was August and the height of tourist season in Sparrow Falls, this was too early, even for the hikers. So, I made the drive in two-thirds of the time it usually took me.

As I pulled into the parking lot behind the building on the outskirts of town, more lights flicked on. Yet another way my siblings took care of me. Kye had put extras in the moment I started coming to Haven in the early-morning hours or late at night.

Shutting off the engine, I slid out of the cab and glanced at Brutus, who waited patiently, but his quivering muscles gave him away. My lips curved into a half smile, one that would’ve turned full had my wasted night at the easel not still hounded me. “ Komm .”

At the German command, Brutus leapt out of the vehicle and stuck right by my side. I should’ve had him on a leash. If Trace saw us now, he’d write me a ticket faster than I could blink. But what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

My gaze automatically scanned the lot as I walked, feeling the switchblade I always carried pressed into the pocket at my waist. Some might think me paranoid, but safe and wary was a hell of a lot better than dead.

As I reached the gym door, I punched in the lock’s code. My skin was already humming with the need to move, to feel the contact of my fist against the punching bag. Sparring would’ve been even better, the give and take of going up against someone else, but Kye would’ve murdered me if I’d tried to get him out of bed for a workout before the sun rose fully.

I stepped inside, flicking on the lights to illuminate the massive room. The space was a mix of black and gray, except for two walls covered in elaborate murals I knew Kye had painted himself. I could study the intricate designs in their vibrant colors for hours and not get bored. He was an artist. And while his medium and aesthetic were so different from mine, it only entranced me more. I understood why people traveled from all over the country and even the world to have him ink permanent pictures on their skin.

Pulling my phone out of my bag, I ignored the endless stream of notifications and texts and moved to my music app instead. I opted for something to drown out the noise swirling in my head. The moment the attacking riffs spilled through the gym’s speakers, some tension bled from my shoulders.

I moved through my warm-up routine of jumping rope, then pulled on fingerless MMA gloves for the portion of my workout I was dying for. The heavy bag. Its weight was exactly what I needed—something strong enough to take whatever I unleashed. Something I couldn’t hurt with all the anger and darkness still living inside me.

Rolling to the balls of my feet, I lifted my hands to a guard position in front of my face. I gave the bag a few testing jabs before giving myself over to the full force of my strikes. I lost myself in the music and movement, the meditation that was mine and mine alone. It was one of the few times I could be fully me without judgment or worry; one of the two places I could let loose everything that lived inside me.

That otherworldly state and the single-minded focus that caused my distraction meant I didn’t hear anything until Brutus let out a low warning growl. My heart skipped a single beat, but that was all I allowed it to do. One tiny moment of fear and weakness.

My fingers curled around the hilt of my knife, pushing the button to release the blade. I whirled, pressing it to the stranger’s neck, freezing him in place. When I was sure of that stillness, I looked up, up, up into the face of the most beautiful man I had ever seen. But I’d learned once before that looks could be deceiving. You never knew what lay below the surface. So, I kept my blade pressed where it was as the man’s hazel eyes widened in surprise.

“Who. The. Hell. Are. You?”