Dawg didn’t wait for an argument, a protest, or an explanation. He turned and moved for the doorway as he rubbed at the back of his neck with the air of a man fighting his first instinct. The instinct that demanded he protect the sister he loved.

“Dawg.” Graham stopped him just before he left the room.

“Yeah, Graham?” He turned back, but he wasn’t expecting Graham to have anything to say that would change his mind about the outcome he could see coming for his sister.

“It’s not selfishness.” Graham had to force the words from his lips.

The doubt on Dawg’s expression had fury lashing at him. A self-fury, one he knew there was no escape from.

“Okay, Graham.” Dawg sighed. “Just remember what I said . . .”

“Goddammit, Dawg,” he snarled as he slapped the liquor glass he’d never filled to the bar. “It’s not fucking selfishness. She’s like a drug I can’t kick. Since the first time I saw her. I didn’t touch her when she was younger, I swear to god I didn’t.”

Dawg looked away momentarily, proving he’d always suspected Graham had dared to touch her during those earlier years.

“She was just eighteen when I met her.” He shook his head as he paced to the wide windows at the side of the room and stared into the summer dawn. “Eighteen.” Shoving his hands into his back pockets, he could see her as she had been that day. “So fucking innocent and filled with such hopes and dreams. I would have shot myself before destroying that. But that was six years ago.” He turned back to Dawg then, knowing there was just no way to explain fully what she did to him. “Six years, Dawg, and I can’t stay away from her anymore. And that’s not selfishness, but I’ll be damned if I know what to call it. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let her face some fucking assassin without me there to make damned sure she comes away from this without being hurt.”

Uncomfortable now, resigned to the fact that Lyrica’s brother had every reason in the world to hate him, Graham waited for the legendary Mackay fury to erupt.

Dawg wasn’t known as the least temperamental of the Mackays. When he was younger he was the one who fought the fights Natches often instigated. Right after Rowdy would try to defuse them.

Graham figured he was about to get intimate with another Mackay fist any second now.

Instead, the other man shocked him more than he wanted to admit. Saddened, heavy with regret, Dawg’s gaze flickered with momentary anger before even that died away and he nodded heavily.

“When you figure out why you can’t stay away from her, Graham, maybe you’ll let her, or someone who cares for her, know,” he said softly. “Otherwise, trust me, your soul will know the minute she gives up on your heart. And once she gives up, it will be over for her. Forever. Then it will be too damned late to realize what you’ve lost.”

—

Dawg turned away from the younger man, fighting to hide the satisfaction he was feeling, the knowledge that the other man’s admission had given him.

Damn.

Sometimes it felt like that boy could have been his own son instead of that damned Garrett Brock’s. He was so damned much like a fucking Mackay that Dawg had, at one point, even had the DNA report the DHS had on Graham pulled to compare to Mackay DNA. A man could never be too careful when it came to the depravity his and Natches’s fathers had been capable of.

Graham wasn’t related to them, but it hadn’t changed the similarity Dawg often saw in him. A similarity Rowdy and Natches had laughed over a time or two themselves.

Moving into the garage, he stepped into the waiting SUV and closed the door behind him. The other vehicle had already left, and the one waiting for him was filled with Rowdy, Natches, Chaya, Timothy, and Brogan Campbell.

“What the hell took you so long?” Natches grumped from the backseat where he slouched with deliberate laziness. “Did you do Lyrie a favor and kill the son of a bitch?”

Natches was always their ace in the hole. He could play the bad cop while pulling out the best of a man, or woman, without even seeming to try. Although he could be a calculating, manipulating bastard, he always did it with dedication and all those warm, fuzzy feelings he swore he didn’t have for anyone. Well, except his wife, his daughter, his cousins, his best friends . . . Dawg almost laughed at the thought.

He grinned instead. “Why would I do that, cuz? I’d never forgive myself for having to bury the man who loves her enough he’s determined to take a bullet for her if need be.”

Natches snorted at that. “Lust ain’t love, man. I thought you figured that out when you met Christa.”

“Exactly,” Dawg stated softly as Timothy pulled from the garage. “Just like Graham began realizing the day he met Lyrica. It took me eight years to get it right, though. I think this boy might have me beat. He’s already figuring it out.”

Dawg glanced back in time to meet the triumph in the emerald depths of Natches’s gaze and, behind him, in the forest green of their cousin Rowdy’s.

“Plan’s working, then?” Timothy was all but chuckling as he drove from the Brock property.

“Plan’s working.” Dawg breathed out in satisfaction as he turned back in his seat and stared at the road ahead of them. “Ahead of schedule, due, I imagine, to this interference in Lyrica’s life. But it’s working damned good.”

Silence filled the van-size SUV for a few long moments before a voice could be heard from the back of the van.

“Guess I was left out of the plan,” Brogan muttered in resigned acceptance. “Damned good thing I’m not just smart but observant. I told Eve last year that the three of you had this in mind, and she told me I was crazy.”

Rowdy chuckled at that as Dawg felt a grin curve his lips.

“So, Brogan,” Natches drawled, “did you figure it out when we chose you for Eve?”

All of them turned to stare back at Brogan, except Timothy. No doubt he was watching through the rearview mirror.

“You’re lying.” But the suspicion, the fear was there.

“Think Jed figured it out?” Rowdy asked with quiet humor.

That was the moment Brogan knew just how effectively the Mackays had maneuvered him.

“Fuckers!” He tried to snarl, but there was no true heat there. The poor son of a bitch was just too damned happy with his little Mackay honey. Just as Jed was. “You three are fucking dangerous.”

“Three?” Timothy said. “You got that all wrong, Campbell—try seven. Me, Alex, Zeke, and John Junior, too. Every now and then, John Senior likes to put his two cents in as well.”

“All I can say is that it’s a damned shame that the seven of you are that fucking bored in your old age,” Brogan said.

“Bored?” Natches questioned the supposed rationale for the maneuvering. “Hell no—it’s not boredom, it’s exhaustion. We’re getting old, man. It’s time to start enjoying ourselves more. The future is yours, Brogan. Yours, Jed’s, Graham’s, and whoever we give Zoey and Kye to for safekeeping. We’ve kept this little piece of Kentucky clean for a lot of years. It’s time to hand it over to the next generation and just pray we chose wisely.”

“I have one question,” Brogan stated then, the sudden dangerous softness in his voice showing that he’d suddenly thought of something that perhaps didn’t please him so well. “The threat against her, by god, I hope you didn’t instigate that.”

Dawg turned back to him, along with Natches and Chaya, while Rowdy turned his head slowly to his side. Timothy made damned sure Brogan glimpsed his look in the rearview mirror.

Five of the most dangerous people Brogan was sure he had ever met, and they were staring at him with such icy, certain death in their eyes that he didn’t think before nodding.

“I was just making sure,” he drawled as though those looks hadn’t given him a moment’s worry.

“And trust me, once we find the bastard that did, he won’t live to see a jail, a trial, or a sentence,” Dawg said. “He won’t get a second chance, Brogan. All he’ll get is a very quiet, very brief burial.”