CHAPTER 2

Piper

The past few days have been a blur of meetings and home visits and filing case reports. The faces that stand out are few and far between. The woman who spat out the word "coochie" with zero humor at all definitely stands out.

This man, with his prematurely wrinkled skin and dark, worn clothes, didn't make an impression. He was just another in a line of parents too deep in their own addiction to recognize the child in their care needed, ya know,care.

Until now. Suddenly, he's in Technicolor.

"It wasn't my decision." I hate the way my voice breaks. An unspoken plea wedged between the words. "I make the reports, but someone else—"

"You said I was 'unfit.'" He draws closer. The alcohol on his breath washes over me.

The smell takes me right back.

Back to being five, seven, ten years old. Back to being young and helpless. Back to making myself small, hoping if I stay quiet, it will all go away.

He slicks his yellowed tongue over his teeth. "You wrote in your fuckin' paperwork that I hurt my kid."

The little boy had bruises after every visit with his dad and tiptoed around adults like he was walking through a minefield. It wasn't hard to guess what was happening.

I've seen it too many times.

I've lived too many times.

My heart is racing a million beats per minute, but it isn't blood pumping through my veins. I panic. Fear. Decades-old trauma like concrete weighing me down.

Fight, I beg myself.Push him away. Fight back.

"Not so tough now, are you?" The man grins. One of his front teeth is brown and the other is broken in half. The smell of vodka is so thick I'm going to gag.

Goddammit. Fight, Piper!

The man with the broken tooth starts to squeeze. My throat closes up. The world begins to blacken at the edges like someone is holding a match to one corner of my vision.

So this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Then, as suddenly as he appeared, the pressure was gone.

A deeper snarl joins the fray. I swear I'm hearing the voice of God.

"Am I interrupting something?"

When I manage to pry my eyes open, I'm positive I'm right. This man is a god, alright—and I'm ready to convert.

The stranger angles his body to shield me from my attacker. All I can see is the thick swell of his biceps and the broad set of his shoulders.

"Who the hell are you?" My attacker sneers. "Her boyfriend?"

"I'm the man who will separate your hands from your arms if you touch her again. Do you understand?"

The guardian who attacked me suddenly doesn't look so scary. As he stands up from where the god threw him to the ground, I see him stumble. He's drunk. I probably could have tipped him over with a good shove to the chest.

But I didn't.

I didn't do anything.

Shame washes over me in a hot wave. I'm surprised the rain on my skin doesn't evaporate in the sudden heat of it.

The drunk gives me one last look. His glassy eyes narrow in distaste before he hunches against the rain and scampers away down the alley. He rounds the corner and disappears.

Relief knocks me back against the brick. I press a hand to my chest and inhale shakily. "Oh my… Holy hell."

"Are you hurt?"

I look up and realize my rescuer is facing me now. His dark hair is short but curly, plastered to his head by the rain. Black-ink tattoos slip out of the ends of his rolled-up shirt sleeves to wrap around his wrists. Sixty seconds ago, I would have been afraid to run into him in this dark alleyway alone. Now, I've never felt safer in my whole godforsaken life.

Our eyes meet, and I inhale sharply. Even in the dark, his blue eyes are luminous. Bright and clear…

And pinned on me.

I swallow down the surge of conflicting emotions rising up in me and shake my head. "No. No, I'm okay. He didn't—You got here just in time. Nothing happened." I roll my shoulders. "Maybe once the adrenaline wears off, I'll be a little sore. But otherwise, I'm perfectly—"

"Stupid," the man growls.

"Excuse me?" I blink at him, a frown working between my brows.

"You are stupid." He repeats the words slowly. "You shouldn't be wandering down dark alleys in the middle of the night if you can't defend yourself."

It takes me a few seconds to process what he's saying. And how he's saying it. Like I've personally offended him.

"It's not the middle of the night. It's just after eight. The storm is making it darker than it would be if—"

"You didn't even check to see if anyone was around," he continues, ignoring me. "Your head was down and you don't have a weapon. If you'd spent half a fucking second observing your surroundings, you would've seen that asshole waiting at the mouth of the alley. Fuck knows he wasn't being sneaky about it."

The shame I was already fighting back redoubles and charges at me again. Tears burn in my eyes.

"It was raining too hard to see anything!"

"I saw him from across the street," he scoffs.

I look into his inhumanly blue eyes again and snort. "No wonder. What are you, a werewolf or something? Normal human eyes don't look like that."

His annoyance with me is interrupted for the barest of seconds with something like amusement. Then his full mouth turns down into a grimace. "Get your bike and go."

"Good idea. There are a lot of assholes wandering around tonight, apparently."

"And I won't always be there to save you from them." He turns around and walks away.

Just like that, I'm alone again.

In the dark. Soaking wet. Shaking with a chill that goes far beyond skin deep, and burning up with a single question on my mind.

What the hell just happened?