He swallowed hard, but the lump in his throat didn’t shift. He could take the fact he’d screwed up. He could. He was used to it by now. But he didn’t think the hurt in Jason’s face would ever leave him. Just like the knowledge that had come too late—far too fucking late—that he loved Jason.
He swore as his phone sounded. It was Amy, again. He ignored it, again. And then he thought he should probably find out why she kept texting.
There were a series of messages from her, none of them friendly and becoming increasingly ominous in tone. He paused with his hand over the call button, working out what to say. At least he had a story ready to file, even if it wasn’t the story she wanted.
He thought again of Jason, of the misery in his eyes, and he put his phone down on the seat. Even if there was no Argent here, his story would bring attention down on Jason’s pack. And for what reason? Maybe they had an Argent, maybe they didn’t, but if Jason were to be believed, their motives were nothing like Amy had thought.
He scrubbed his hands through his hair and tried to look at the facts objectively. If it were him, if it were his pack, and he had someone like Jason in it, someone trusting and idealistic andgood, there was no way he’d be open about his plans. But that raised the question about just why such a politically canny operator would have someone like Jason in his pack in the first place. He remembered what Jason had said about Urban taking them in, one by one, as they’d turned up, in need. For the first time, he wondered if he’d gotten all of this wrong.
He turned around and pulled his laptop off the back seat. Opening it, he reread the article he’d been so pleased with last night. It was perfect forThe Daily Sentinel—slightly gossipy and speculative, letting readers believe they were drawing their own conclusions when really, they’d been led in a certain way.
With Jason’s words ringing in his ears, he saw a different, ugly side to it. He’d drawn caricatures of each of them and made them into a joke, while at the same time claiming they had a dangerous agenda. Shifters were different from the people who bought the paper. They weren’t to be trusted.
Holy fuck. He was shaking suddenly—he’d been no better than those guys in the bar. He’d simply wrapped his judgment in softer language.
He should delete the article. But if he did, there would be no mercy from Amy. He’d be out of a job, yet again, and there was nothing left out there for him to try. Nothing his father would be able to boast of to his country club friends, anyway. Nothing his father would admire.
He hadn’t disowned Riley. He’d just stopped being his dad.
And he couldn’t understand why that still hurt so damn much.
But despite everything,he couldn’t send Amy this article. Hewouldn’tbe like Lennox and Cole, seeing shifters as less than human. He’d spent time with Jason’s pack. He’d been to theirhome,seen the easy affection between them. They’d accepted him into their midst,welcomedhim, which was more than anyone elsehad ever done. And they’d done it without conditions, without needing him to be decorative or charming or useful. Just to be him.
Maybe he could rewrite the piece so that it was gossipy without being hostile. For an instant, his heart lifted as he thought he had his answer, but then he realized—the only way the paper’s readers would be interested in a fluff piece about shifters was if it was titillating, hinting at a hidden agenda or sexual deviancy.
Riley didn’t know if the pack was actually hiding something, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to make them a target for more journalists, or people who might have an even more destructive agenda. As part of the pack, Jason would be headline news, his quiet life in his quiet town blown wide open. Forever.
There was no way he could justify this anymore, not now he’d realized. He had to delete the file and pretend the article had never existed. He knew that. But his hand still hovered over the delete button for far too long.
And then Riley remembered the look on Jason’s face, the onehe’dput there. He hadn’t been brave when it mattered. He would be now. This wasn’t who he wanted to be, not anymore.
Not satisfied with pressing delete, he rummaged around in the laptop’s wastebasket to ensure the file was permanently deleted. Thank God it hadn’t gone anywhere other than his laptop. Hisownlaptop, becauseThe Daily Sentinelwas too tight to spring for anything useful, like a tablet or a laptop or cloud storage.
He let out a long, unsteady breath, and closed his laptop with a click that sounded oddly final. He’d made his decision. Now he just had to live with the consequences.
But perhaps those consequences needn’t be as dire as he suspected. He could tell Amy he’d done his job here but that there was no story in Elk Ridge. Maybe it would be okay. It would mean Jason and his pack would be left in peace, and Amy might give him a chance at another story.
He forced himself to pick up his phone and call her.
“Yeah, I’m sorry,” he said, as soon as she stopped yelling. “I was out of range—it’s the middle of nowhere up here. But I’ve met all of the pack now, seen them shift, and that guy was either tweaked out of his head or just causing trouble because there’s no Argent here.”
She was silent. That was never a good sign.
“Sorry,” he added, though he wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for.
“It took you this long to figure that out?” she said at last. “God, Clark, I have no idea whose dick you sucked to get this job. I’m paying you four days’ expenses, and that’s it, you hear?”
“Yes,” he said meekly, because that was more than he’d thought he’d get, and he hadn’t been sacked. Yet. And she couldn’treallyknow that was how he’d gotten the job. Could she?
“Get yourself back to the airport—there’s a group of shifters up in Alaska protesting about gas exploration. They’re saying they’re worried about the environment at the same time as they’re trying to claim the land, alleging it was taken from them decades ago because they were shifters. Evenyoushould be able to put together something that tells the truth about how they’re only after the money. Find out just how much trouble they’ve caused, get the teary-eyed locals who actually own the land to talk to you, that kind of crap. I want it on my desk in two days, you hear me?”
Riley’s mouth was dry and he could hardly breathe. He was about to make what was probably the biggest mistake of a life littered with them, but he knew now what was on the line.
He’d told himself all along thatThe Daily Sentineljust had a slant, that it was a little sensationalist, sure, but no worse than any other media outlet. He’d believed it—or needed to. But Elk Ridge had stripped that away. That girl in the diner, dismantling her grandfather’s talking points, had seen what he’d missed. Or had chosen to miss.
Now he could see not just what the paper did to shifters but how easily he’d let himself go along with it, to get what he needed.
And if he kept going—if he wrote this story in Alaska—he’d be choosing the lie, in full knowledge that was what he was doing. This wasn’t a one-time thing. If he took this assignment, there’d always be another. Another town, another group of shifters to vilify, more hatred to fuel. And one day, he’d stop flinching when he wrote it.
