Page 2 of The Hyena’s Guardian

Reynolds did not answer immediately, his gaze drifting beyond the lanterns toward the dark line of trees surrounding the preserve. The night smelled of grass, pine, food, wolf, panther, and something older woven subtly beneath it all as Mac’s land became more than property or pack territory. Reynolds could feel the beginning of something taking root there that Mac himself had probably not fully named out loud yet. Home.

Reynolds swallowed. “Feels like it might.”

Marcus followed his gaze. “Because you’re used to orders meaning distance.”

Reynolds gave a faint laugh. “You always this cheerful at weddings?”

“Only when someone is brooding near the tree line like a haunted gargoyle.”

“I’m not brooding.”

“You are absolutely brooding.”

“I’m observing.”

“That is what brooding people call it.”

Reynolds almost smiled before the expression faded again, and across the meadow Mac looked over as though he had sensed the shift in mood before Reynolds had fully hidden it away. Reynolds was still getting used to that. Mac never pried and rarely pushed, but his attention carried a steady kind of weight whenever it landed on someone, calm and exact in a way that made pretense feel pointless. Reynolds gave him a small nod, and Mac returned it after holding his gaze for a quiet second longer than necessary. It should not have meant much. Somehow it still did.

A year ago, Reynolds would have called him sir without thinking twice and meant it completely, but now the word caught behind his teeth every time it tried to surface. Mac had corrected him enough times that it had become a running joke, even if the truth underneath it was far harder for Reynolds to untangle. Sir was easy because it kept things professional and distant. Mac was personal in ways Reynolds was still learning how to handle, while Alpha carried an entirely different kind of gravity altogether. The hyena had understood the distinction long before he had. Hyenas did not bow automatically to power just because something stronger walked into the room. But Mac had never once tried to force obedience from him, and somehow that made Reynolds want to follow him anyway.

Marcus tilted his head slightly. “He worries.”

“Mac worries about everybody.”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “But you are leaving his immediate reach. That will bother him.”

Reynolds looked down at the grass. “I’m not a kid.”

“No one said you were.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?”

The question was asked innocently, but Reynolds felt the weight behind it anyway, and his jaw tightened before he answered. “I know what Valker is.”

“Do you?” Marcus repeated carefully, and when Reynolds finally looked at him, the teasing amusement that had been there moments earlier was completely gone from the witch’s expression.

“They are not just a team with better funding and fewer human rules,” Marcus said. “They are enforcement. Containment. Judgment when the Council wants its hands clean. Sometimes rescue. Sometimes not.”

“I know.”

“You know the words.”

Reynolds glanced back toward the dark tree line as the hyena shifted restlessly beneath his skin, alert and listening. For a moment he found himself remembering the first time claws had surfaced without pain tearing through him, the first time fangs had slid into place without panic following, and the slow, terrifying realization that the thing inside him was no longer just damage left behind by violence and fear. Somewhere along the way it had become his, and accepting that truth had changed everything about the way he moved through the world.

“I was made into this,” Reynolds admitted. “Bitten. Dragged into a world I didn’t even know existed. For a while, all I did was react to it.”

Marcus said nothing as Reynolds flexed his hand inside his pocket, feeling the faint ghost of claws beneath his skin before finally admitting, “Valker gives me somewhere to put it.”

Marcus studied him. “The danger is letting them tell you that usefulness is the same thing as belonging.”

The comment hit harder than Reynolds wanted it to, and he buried the feeling beneath a shrug and sarcasm. “Damn. You do weddings, therapy, and ominous warnings?”

“Package deal.”

“Expensive?”