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If it had been anything less ridiculous, Julio might have questioned it. Instead, he ran with it.

“Right. You never throw the first punch, huh?”

“I’m an angel, man.” Wesley extended a hand. “Now, since I got on a plane to deliver your warning in person, you owe me. Get McNeely off my back. Jackson may not bail me out next time.”

“He’ll always bail your ass out.” Julio pulled Wesley into a hug and clapped him on the back.

“I owe you one.”

“Yeah you do.” Wesley released Julio and sized up Sera. “I’m trying to decide if being the last one to steal a kiss from you is worth having Julio dent my head.”

Sera laughed, though her cheeks turned pink. “My dad’s right. You like to push your luck.”

“Yes, he does.” Julio nodded toward the door. “Blackjack table’s waiting.”

When he’d gone, Sera dropped to the bed with a self-conscious laugh. “He was laying that all on a little thick. What is his obsession with getting people to punch him?”

“Control.” It made a twisted sort of sense, he supposed. “Wesley can’t see his own future, but he can make it. Hit on some guy’s girl, get punched. Pretty simple equation that means he does know what’s coming, after all.”

“Some guy’s girl, huh?” Sera braced her hands behind her and stared up at him, her smile so teasing it was trying too hard. “Am I your girl?”

She was waiting for him to turn it into a joke, so he stroked his thumb over her jaw and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck. “You’re my girl.”

Her smile slipped away, replaced by tension and heat. “I always did suck at taking things slow.”

“That’s okay,” he murmured. “So do I.”

She hooked her fingers under the waistband of his jeans, dragged him forward and nuzzled his bare abdomen. “We haven’t shifted in a few days. I’m getting antsy.”

After he’d talked to Patrick and located an arms dealer, he’d find a good spot to run. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’ve got a lot to take care of.” She sighed and wrapped her arms around his hips. “I heard everything he said, you know. Even over the shower. I don’t want the fate of the world resting on my shoulders. They’re not that strong.”

“Hey. They’re as strong as they need to be, and that’s the part that matters.” He gathered her hair back and watched her lashes fall and rise through several slow blinks. “And you can’t change the fact that people care about you.”

“I guess not.” She closed her eyes and nuzzled against him again, the touch seeming more innocent than sensual. “It still scares the hell out of me. You’ve scared me since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”

He’d never shared that fear, only a strange, heavy sense of destiny. “My mother thought I was doing the psychic thing wrong, you know.”

“Why?”

“She believed in Fate, I guess, only she called it God’s will.” Whenever his mother had had a prophetic dream, she’d filed it away as an inevitable occurrence, something willed into existence by her maker. Good or bad, she’d never acted to change anything.

Sera pulled back to study his face. “God’s will was for us to have free will. If precognition fits into that, it should be to give you choices. Or did she think it was a test?”

“Not a test, exactly. More like…a burden. Her cross to bear.”

“And Joan of Arc thought they were a promise, and that didn’t end well for her.” Sera tugged at him until he knelt in front of her, then cupped his face. “The middle ground may not seem as noble, but it’s a lot less likely to get you martyred. And I would be really sad if you got martyred.”

“That’s the argument, isn’t it?” Julio shook his head. “Wesley came here because he had a vision, and he acted on it. What if that’s the shit that gets you dead?”

“Self-fulfilling prophecy?” She stroked her thumbs over his cheeks. “It’s not just for precogs.

My dad spent his life terrified that I was going to get kidnapped by some coyote looking for a mate. I ran wild as a teenager, and he let me because he was afraid of what I was. Afraid that if he didn’t let me be rebellious, I’d roll over and show my belly to the first coyote who came along. And I did. But if I’d been less rebellious, I wouldn’t have run away with him.”

All Franklin had ever wanted was to protect her, but he’d been so scared of driving her away that he hadn’t given her what she really needed. “The best of intentions, I guess, but it only proves Mom’s point. If anything you do, no matter how well-meaning, can fuck everyone up… why do anything?”

“Because that’s what life is about. Fucking up enough to maybe not be an idiot by the time you have grandkids, so you can shake your head about how your kids are raising them all wrong.” She pressed her forehead to his. “You’re alpha, baby. Your mom and even Wesley Dade could never get that. You can’t do nothing, because it’d break you.”

“Maybe,” he allowed with a grin. “And maybe I’m a self-important dick who thinks he can change the world.”

“It looks good on you.” Sera kissed his nose, then his cheek. “Unless being self-important means you’re going to drag me out of the hotel in search of a magic weapon right this second.

Because you’re half-dressed, and I’m your girl. And that’s hot.”

“No, I’ve got to make a call or two first. And find a shirt.”

“Shirts are overrated.” Her next kiss landed on his ear, soft and warm, before she pulled back with a sigh. “Wesley Dade is a mood killer. And don’t even tell me he couldn’t have picked up the phone and called. He wanted an excuse to hit a casino he hasn’t been banned from.”

He was a mood killer, but not because of his sudden arrival. “Sera, it’s serious. If he thinks you need to be armed like that, it’s nothing to joke about.”

Some of the light in her expression faded. Her shoulders slumped, and her gaze dropped to his chin. “I know.”

He had to lift her chin to meet her eyes again. “It doesn’t mean what you think it does.” That he’d lock down, go into super-alpha mode and choke her with good intentions. “You have to fight. Whatever he saw, whatever’s coming, you have to fight it.”

“That’s what everyone says,” she whispered, her eyes too bright. “They all say they want me to fight, right up until it matters. If you told Alec what Wesley said, he’d lock me in a steel room for the next decade. And who would blame him, if it’s the end of the damn world?”

“Because it’s the answer,” he told her firmly. “If anything any of us do can fuck it all up, then we all need to be prepared. Not just the alphas protecting the subordinates. Everyone, including you.”

“Okay.” She closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. “Okay, I believe you.”

No, she didn’t, but that was okay too. “Who knows better where to get enchanted guns, Anna or Patrick? Want to make it a contest between them?”

That got him the ghost of a smile. “If we were on the west coast, I’d say Anna,” Sera mused.

“But the Southeast is Patrick’s area.”

“We could let ’em fight it out. They get off on it, you know.”

“Everyone has their own brand of foreplay.” She twisted away and leaned across the bed to retrieve her phone. “Let’s set them on the trail and go find some place serving breakfast.”

Breakfast. Such a normal start to what couldn’t possibly be a normal day.

The couple selling the guns looked like they needed their own cable television reality show.

Couple—or siblings. Patrick hadn’t been entirely sure and had warned Julio not to ask.