But his effort earned a smile from Jessica, although it didn’t reach her dark, shadowed eyes. “Jonathan thinks she looks like one.” I glanced down at the baby, a vaguely ovoid lump in a tiny blanket. He had a point. “It’s good to meet you, Matthew. Thank you for taking us in. I guess I would’ve died if not for Arik’s magic. And they could have, too, if Nate and…”
“Calder,” Nate said. “Arik’s big brother.”
“Calder. Right. If they hadn’t found us before the babies froze.” Jonathan huddled closer, and she petted his hair. She really didn’t seem like someone in the grips of the kind of mania that led to hurting her children…or any kind of mania, for that matter. Even if she had been, she’d have needed a psychiatrist and a cheerful nanny to help with the kids, not some goons and a complaint-happy lawyer. “I hope I can meet him and thank him too, later on? If I have the chance.”
Yeah. They’d definitely told her. Thank Christ, because otherwise I’d have had to.
“We were glad to be able to help, and Arik’s amazing.” Nate shot me a look of death. “Nate’s amazing too,” I added quickly.
Arik tossed his head, ponytail bobbing, and sniffed at me. “I’m glad you noticed. By the way, as your mate, I’ve assured Jessica that she’s safe here.” His pointed glare spoke volumes as he said, “For as long as she needs.”
Oh, for…he had to be fucking kidding me. He couldn’t promise that.Icouldn’t promise that. “Arik,” I started, and then stopped before I said something I couldn’t take back, especially in front of an audience.
“If you’re going to give her to Diaz, then you should’ve handed me over to—to Taft.” The slight tremor in Arik’s voice churned my stomach. “And you know it.”
I had to use every ounce of my self-control not to flinch, and by the elegant raise of one eyebrow, he fucking knew it. But he was white around the lips, and he’d clenched his hands in his lap. What had it cost him to say that name? The man who’d mated him by force, chained and beaten him, and pursued him all the way to the Armitage pack territory when he escaped? I’d killed Parker Taft—in fact, I’d killed him twice. And it had barely been enough.
The bond between us quivered with his distress and his anger and…his trust in me. His perfect, unbreakable trust.
“Mrs. Diaz.” I turned to her, because he didn’t need me to reassure him. He needed me to be the man he believed in. Damn it, he was right. If I didn’t protect anyone in similar circumstances to his, even when I didn’t want to drag that person off to bed and bite their necks the way I’d wanted to do to him, what was the value of my protection in the first place?
She looked at me levelly, but her pupils had expanded to almost cover her irises. Jonathan bared his little teeth at me in a werewolf’s snarl and wrapped his chubby arm around his mother’s waist.
“Jessica, please,” she whispered. Yeah, she might not be eager to use her married name right now. I didn’t blame her.
I couldn’t ask exactly what I wanted to ask, not in front of her son. He might not be old enough to talk a lot, but he was damn sure old enough to understand a conversation about his father.
But I could ask enough to be sure.
“Jessica. Those bruises Arik healed. They weren’t from the car accident?”
“No,” she said. “I told them the details. While—” She tipped her head at Jonathan. “He was sleeping. I had to leave. He was going to. Next time. There might not have been more than one next time, you understand what I’m saying?”
My fingertips itched, my claws casting their vote for mindless violence, and the more the better.
“Yes. I do. So why did you—”
Her laugh cut me off, and it was the first thing about her that didn’t sound completely sane. Those dark eyes burned. If I hadn’t known she was fully human, that look could’ve been magic-fueled rage.
“I always used to wonder that too, about other women. Why’d it take them so long? And then I figured out that everything changes when you have kids. You can’t just go through the court the legal way. Then the person you’re most afraid of is going to be around them nearly as much, only you won’t be there.”
I opened my mouth to say something stupid about how she’d get full custody if he beat her, but common sense kicked in. Rationally, I knew that this kind of violence could be incredibly difficult to prove. Human courts sucked for this.
But she’d married a werewolf, not a human. There should’ve been someone who’d step up and deal with the problem our way, as in, a near-death ass-kicking and expulsion from the pack. The pack leader. An alpha relative. Fuckingsomeone.
Except that if Diaz had the support of a shaman and a team of lawyers, and he’d married but not mated the mother of his children, then maybe it wasn’t the kind of pack where she’d be protected.
Right.
And the shifter council would follow pack law, which wasn’t, as far as we’d been able to determine in our truncated reading last night, on her side. Probably best not to bring that up right this second.
“I want to help you,” I said. I could feel Arik and Nate and Marla all staring holes in the sides of my face. Not only did I want to help her, I might not survive not helping her. But I didn’t have a great hand of cards to play. “Is there anything you can tell me, or anything you’ve already told Arik and Nate that they can pass on to me discreetly, that’ll help me when he gets here? Because we’re not a huge pack. We could deal with this group. We could deal with more. But we can’t hold off the FBI if the shifter council gets them involved, and the shifter council’s already been contacted.”
“Not much. He’s convinced both of them are going to be alphas, and that it’s a big deal for the family, so I mean, maybe if you could prove that wrong. But I don’t know how.” She shook her head, sighed, and adjusted Josephine, pulling her shirt down to cover the breast the baby had let slip out of her slack, sleepy mouth. “But I can’t—” Her voice broke, and Marla moved in, patting her arm and making comforting sounds and glaring at me as if to say,Figure it the fuck out, Matthew.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said, for lack of anything better. “Nate, stay up here? I want Arik with me. They have a shaman.” Ian and Calder might be the glaringly obvious threats in our pack, but Arik could be delightfully vicious in ways that made me love him even more than usual. Plus I wanted my mate at my side, full stop.
“They what?” Jessica asked sharply. “The pack shaman’s the one who helped us with the spell bags in the car. Why would he come after us? He hates Roger.”
