Anybody who wanted to come with me, I’d offered a space to. I’d promised to do my best by them, but I’d?—
Well, I’d tried to be upfront. They all knew I was eighteen, untried, with nothing but a few bills in my pocket and an offer from a university that said I could get financial aid.
It’d been a rough first few years, all piling into one-room apartments. Jill and I had kept late nights in the libraries because reading in a small place with seven other wolves wasn’t feasible.
Seth had gotten work in security, and I wasn’t too proud to say he’d kept us afloat for a long time, especially when some of our new pack were too young to hold down a full-time job. Maia could’ve dropped out of school at sixteen, but Jill and I couldn’t stomach that any more than I’d been able to let Jill give up on her own dreams.
Sometimes, it’d been hard not to think Seth should’ve been alpha, but every time I brought it up, he’d shaken his head and said he was making a long-term investment in me, and he was expecting big dividends someday.
It’d terrified me, to think the bar was so high, but it’d pushed me too. His faith in me had carried us to a place where we didn’t have to worry about money or food or shelter anymore, but holy shit, I’d been wound tight those early years. Every “B” on a term paper had felt like I was letting them all down.
When he’d had the opportunity to come with us that night I’d left Reeve bleeding, Cash had hung his head and avoided my eye. On nights when my pack went hungry, I wondered if maybe he’d made the right call.
Then, after years of everybody busting their asses for each other, we’d ended up... okay. More than okay. We’d been able to afford homes for everyone. Never had to worry about where food would come from again.
Nobody ever had to feel unseen or unappreciated for exactly who they were.
At least, I hoped not. And I think Jillian would’ve kicked my ass if I’d turned into some kind of toxic alphahole.
The easiest thing to do had been to try not to think about what—and who—we’d left behind. I wasn’tmadthat Cash had made the best decision for himself at the time, but I wasn’t going to go back to Idaho, begging for more mouths to feed before we’d even figured out how to feed ourselves.
But there it was—a message flashing across my phone at the same number I’d had since we were kids. The phone was a lot nicer now, but I’d never wanted to change where people could reach me.
Hey, it’s Cash. I need to see you.
He’d put an address that I gave to Charles, more than a little relieved that we didn’t have to rely on me to find the place while my heart was pounding.
What could Cash possibly want after all this time? It was hard to imagine him popping up in California after all this time without any warning.
Charles pulled up at a seedy little motel not too far from the airport. The kind of place someone might use as a landing pad when they wanted a tour of the west coast, but didn’t have the budget to do it at the city center. It was easy enough to get around without being right in the thick of it.
Cash had put a room number in the text, but even when we had parked right outside it, I sat there and stared straight ahead, taking a long, deep breath.
“You okay?” Dakota asked, squeezing my hand.
I smiled at him, but from the way he pressed his lips together, I didn’t think he was buying it. “Just fine.”
“Would you like us to stay in the car?” Charles asked.
He wasn’t asking for himself—Charles was faster than either one of us when pressed. Zippy scamps, the fae.
What he was really asking was if I wanted Charles to look after Dakota—if I needed to keep my mate safe from whatever was waiting on the other side of that painted red door.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Like I said, old friend. There’s nothing to worry about.”
As soon as I got out of the car, I realized that’d been a stupid thing to say. The scent of blood filled the empty parking lot, and it only got stronger when I approached the door.
Behind me, I heard Dakota get out too, and he cursed under his breath.
I knocked on the door sharply. “Cash?”
There was no answer. I tried the door handle, but it was locked.
“What are you doing?” Dakota hissed when I pulled out a claw and jimmied it between the door and the latch.
“You smell it too, right?”
Dakota grimaced. He didn’t want to put a name to this scent any more than I did, but it was a lot of blood and more besides. I’d never killed a person, but I knew what Reeve had smelled like when I’d beaten him. It wasn’t this bad. This was... sickly, thick, and horrifying.
