Not that he’d met either remaining sibling. He’d avoided them like the plague. And until Sawyer moved to the area a few weeks ago, he’d managed fine. Now, the clock was ticking. He could only avoid Sawyer for so long living in a small town in the middle of basically nowhere.
Sharon rolled her eyes. “You know who.” She paused a moment and then continued. “You coming with me?”
“Fuck no.” He hated speaking to his sister like that. It was crude. But his hands shook just thinking about facing this godforsaken destiny of his. He couldn’t keep her from hunting Sawyer down, but he also knew she would race right back to let him know that either she was indeed Sawyer’s mate or not.
If the answer was no, that would mean with almost certainty Logan was destined to share a woman with Sawyer. All three of Logan’s older brothers were mated in threes with another man. Hell, all of his male cousins in Oregon were also mated in threes with another man and a woman.
Logan was the last of eight boys on his father’s side of the family.
Why on Earth his family had merged with the Hamilton-Bartel family was anyone’s guess, but Fate had her reasons.
“You’re only putting off the inevitable. Doesn’t it drive you crazy?”
Logan met his sister’s gaze head on. “What makes me crazy is having no choice in the matter. What makes me insane is knowing I’m going to spend my life with one of two men from another family. I don’t even know who the fucking woman is. That’s fucked up.” His voice rose as he spoke.
Finally, he turned around and busied himself straightening up bags of tents that were already in perfect lines waiting to be rented.
Sharon blew out an exasperated breath behind him and then fled the lodge.
Logan stopped what he was doing and sauntered into the backroom. He plopped down on a loveseat behind the scenes, leaned his head back, and crossed his arms behind his neck. “Shit.”
Whether he liked it or not, all hell was about to break loose, and there wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it. A dam was going to break today. The instigator was Sharon, but the water had been inching toward the top of the levy for months.
It was time.
He couldn’t put off the inevitable forever. If he was honest with himself, he would have to admit he hadn’t slept in weeks. He’d been restless for about a month, even before he heard that Sawyer was in town.
His intuition told him he was next whether he liked it or not. Sharon would not find Sawyer to be her mate. He knew it in his blood.
Because Sawyer was Logan’s mate. He didn’t need to meet the man to swallow that pill. The pounding in his head, the nausea in his stomach, the shaking of his limbs—all symptoms he’d chosen to ignore and keep to himself for the entire month of October.
Yeah. It was super obvious to anyone who chose to pay attention. Fate didn’t like Her subordinates to dally. She meant business. And it was time for Logan to get down to it.
There were no customers in the lodge at this time of day, so when his father wandered in a few minutes later, he took his opportunity to escape, leaving the boring job in his dad’s capable hands.
Ten minutes later, he was in the woods, clothes safely stowed under a fake rock they all used when the need arose, and shifted into his natural form. He stretched out languidly for several minutes, enjoying the feel of his paws beneath him and the breeze blowing through his fur.
And then he ran. He took off at a breakneck pace that would hopefully alleviate the majority of the stress he felt. He ran hard and far, distancing himself literally from his problems.
He didn’t even pay attention to where he was going until he suddenly heard voices and came to a skidded halt. He heaved for breath, glancing around him, and his ears lifted into the air to assimilate the information.
Not just people, but machinery. He glanced up higher, realizing precisely where he was, miles from the lodge, close to the edge of the reservation.
Loggers.
There were always loggers in the area somewhere, but he wasn’t usually careless enough to stumble upon them like this. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, visualizing in his mind precisely where the latest logging company was working.
To the south, where the national forest overlapped the reservation. But that had been a month ago. They were scheduled to be finished before now.
He inched forward, cautiously moving so as not to cause anyone to glance his direction. He doubted anyone would care about a wolf roaming the edge of the cleared land. It wasn’t even strange since the humans were encroaching on the natural territory of the wolves anyway.
Still, he wouldn’t take chances. When he reached the last few trees, he crouched down on his belly and peered at the scene before him. The cleared land was vast. Perhaps too big. This section was secluded from civilization, far enough away from humans that loggers could easily get away with over-logging. It happened. It wasn’t legal, and if they got caught, the fines would be more than any one small company could endure, but the payoff was always salivating to the greedy owner.