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PROLOGUE

HOUND

ONE YEAR AGO

I don’t normally come here. No need to when we have our own bar and plenty of pussy to go with it at the clubhouse, but I’m not feeling it tonight. I don’t want to be around anyone else. I’d like to pretend that I don’t know why, because admitting why I don’t want to be there makes me sound like a goddamn pussy.

But it’s my birthday.

Forty-one years old.

Fuck.

Officially over forty, and I’m not quite sure why it’s bothering me so much, but it is. I’ve never given a shit about getting older, and forty was a goddamn blast. I partied so hard I didn’t even remember half the night when I woke up two days later.

But this one hits hard.

Over forty—fucking hell. Not just forty, but over. I’m not standing at the top of the hill any longer. I’m rolling down the goddamn thing.

“Please don’t touch me,” a woman’s voice calls out.

I can hear the panic in her voice, but I don’t look over. It’s not my fucking business. This is a bar. A fairly rough bar at that. Unfortunately, shit like this happens. If it were the clubhouse, I’d pay more attention, because I would take whoever the fuck was bothering a woman straight to fisticuffs.

She says it again, begging him to stop, a little louder this time, a little more panic-stricken.

And then I hear a bit of a physical struggle.

The bartender calls out for them to stop, or maybe for him to stop. I don’t know because I’m trying not to notice their existence and wallow in my own self-pity, but it seems like that won’t be happening tonight.

The physical struggle noises sound a second time, and I realize that I’m not getting out of this without interjecting myself because nobody else seems to be doing shit, and I’m not going to let a woman be hurt in my presence, not again anyway.

Turning my head slightly, I look over to see a man with his hands curled around both of a woman’s wrists. He’s bigger than her, by a hell of a lot. I can’t even see her face, but her head shakes back and forth, her blond hair flying around her shoulders.

He’s looming over her, at least eight inches taller than her, but I’ve got at least three inches on him, along with a minimum of twenty pounds of muscle, so I decide this isn’t going to continue. He’s pinned her in place, and she’s whimpering.

Not fucking cool.

Sliding off my stool, I walk over to the couple. The man clearly doesn’t give a shit what the bartender has yelled. He doesn’t seem to give a shit about much, probably because he’s been getting away with whatever the fuck he’s doing for far too goddamn long.

That shit stops tonight.

Standing a few feet behind him, I cross my arms over my chest and place my feet wide, making sure I’m ready for whatever the fuck is about to come my way. If he’s got this aggression toward her, he might attempt it with me, but it won’t be much, because he ain’t fucking much.

“You ’bout finished?” I ask.

I watch as he releases the woman, turning around slowly, and then he tilts his head to the side, his eyes narrowing on me. His lip curls in what I can assume is a mixture of annoyance and disgust. I can’t be fucking bothered with what he thinks of me, so I simply arch a brow and wait for him to go away.

“What the fuck do you want?” he barks.

“She doesn’t want you touching her. She made that loud and goddamn clear, and yet, you were still touching her,” I state.

He growls, taking one step toward me, but then his gaze flicks down to the patch on my cut, and I take in the moment the realization of who and what I am washes through him.

He realizes who the fuck I am.

I almost laugh, because his face turns white before he lifts his fear-filled gaze to meet mine. His expressions of disgust and cocky attitude turn to straight-up fucking fear, and it’s hilarious. I smirk as I watch him, waiting for him to speak.

“I, uh⁠—”