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do?”
    Garrett tossed the rock up once, twice, before catching it in his fist and squeezing—remembering the expression on Sarah Anne’s face. She really thought he’d hurt her child. “About Haven or my mate?”
    “You choose.”
    He couldn’t. That was the problem. “We could leave.”
    “Away from your mate? I don’t think so.”
    Garrett dropped the rock and pressed it into the ground with the sole of his boot. “A mate I’d have to force. You saw her face.”
    “I also saw the way she leaned into you during the rogues’ attack.”
    “That was fear.”
    He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve created success out of less.”
    Yeah, they had. They were a good team. Cur, given an edge, could manipulate any situation. And Garrett could always find an edge. He leaned back against the opposite wall. “Anyone ever tell you you’re a goddamn optimist?”
    Cur smiled, revealing his canines. “No matter what happened in there, whether you decide to stay with Haven or not, there’s no denying that you’re better off tonight than you were when we rolled out of bed this morning.”
    “How do you figure that?”
    He hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans and leaned his head back against the stone wall. “Tonight we have choices.”
    “All of them bad.”
    With a jerk of his thumb, he indicated the interior of the cave. “Only a pessimist could call that pretty little thing in there bad.”
    That pretty little thing was the scariest thing he’d ever seen. She made him hope. “That pretty little thing cherishes the same prejudices as the McGowans.”
    “That pretty little thing belongs to you, body and soul, by pack law. It doesn’t matter what she thinks. All that matters is what you want to do about it.”
    Yeah. As if it would be that easy. He’d snap his fingers and everything would fall into place. “You think the McGowans are just going to let me walk out of there with her?”
    Cur smiled, baring his canines. “I don’t imagine we’re going to give them much of a choice.”
    It was tempting. And it wasn’t as if taking what they wanted wasn’t the norm for them. Packless wolves had to scavenge the best they could, for what they could. Some thrived. Some died. Some went mad from the loneliness. He and Cur had found a way to thrive. Sarah Anne was a fighter. From every indication, she’d learn to thrive, too. “Tempting.”
    Cur pushed off the wall. “So, why are we still standing here?”
    Garrett remembered Sarah Anne’s courage as she’d fought to the bitter end, the disbelief when she’d thought she’d run out of options, the rebirth of hope as she realized her pack had come for her. The wonder when the McGowans introduced themselves. He’d been a lot of things in his life, some of them less than flattering, but he did not want to be the man who took away Sarah Anne’s dream. As much as he longed for pack, a woman with children would long harder. “Because I like to think we’re not total bastards.”
    “Fuck.”
    “Yeah, fuck.”
    “Couldn’t you wait to try out decent until after we get what we want?”
    The “we” made Garrett pause. “Apparently not.” The coldness built in his gut. “However, there’s nothing holding you here if you want to pick up that job we turned down for this one. It’s pretty doubtful anyone else has jumped on it.”
    It was pretty much a suicide mission for a human.
    “Nothing except my pack.”
    “I’m not sure Haven is going to accept us.”
    “Who the hell was talking about Haven? We’ve been pack our whole lives.” Cur dismissed the distance between them with a wave of his hand. “It’s enough for me.”
    No, it wasn’t. Though they’d been telling themselves that for years, werewolves were made to belong to a bigger whole. He and Cur might have human blood, but they were wolf to the core, Protectors, and despite the life they’d made for themselves, they were only half alive. Garrett felt the pain of it every day. He