“Jax,” Seth said, deadpan, entirely unimpressed. “What are you doing here?”
I hissed, glancing away to glare at the door, unable to meet his eye. “If Reeve did this?—”
I was going to kill him. I’d rip his throat out with my teeth. I’d scout the whole damn city and take out every wolf that posed a threat to my pack and my people, I’d?—
“You’ll kill him,” Seth offered, like he could read every thought on my scowling face. The fury—the self-loathing—flowing through my veins right then... no one knew it better than Seth did.
I’dfailed, and deep down, I wasn’t even sure I was more capable of doing what needed doing today than I’d been at eighteen.
“Don’t let him make you stupid, Jax,” he went on. “You know as well as I do that Cash didn’t crawl his way from Idaho to San Francisco holding his guts in with one hand. He was a hell of a lot closer when he got hurt, and maybe Reeve thought he was dead, or maybe he’s up to something, but the last thing we need is for you to go barreling into a trap and get hurt.”
I growled. No fucking way was I going to let Reeve get the drop on me.
Right then, my wolf didn’t want to talk this through like men, didn’t want to be reasoned with.
Seth just held up his hands. “Our pack’s going to need you to get through this.”
Okay, that almost got me on its own, but Seth knew me too well not to make his point inarguable.
“Jillian needs you,” he said.
My lip relaxed from its angry curl.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been like this—furious, ready to fight, fangs threatening to grow long and sharp at any provocation. It was like I was a teenager again, on edge and looking for a fight.
I sighed, pressing the heels of my palms to my closed eyelids.
“Seth, if he dies—” I croaked.
He clapped my shoulder. “It looks bad, but Dakota looked bad too, and look where he is now. If Cash’s alpha rejected him, best thing to do is give him a new one. He’ll bounce back.”
I dropped my hands. “You don’t know that.”
Seth shrugged. “He’s a survivor. Wouldn’t have made it this long in Wildwood if he weren’t.”
He was just trying to make me feel better, but right then, I needed to believe it.
“You remember how it was,” he insisted. “Everybody who made it out of Idaho’s a survivor.”
Sure, but Cash had been there for close to two decades.
I’d left him behind.
Before I could spiral too far, Seth squeezed my shoulder and gave me a little shake.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go back to Crescent. I have a better idea of how to get this figured out than stalking around alleyways waiting to get a scent.”
Seth’s plan was to head to the IT department, and with all the servers and the scent of canned air pervading the place, I felt twitchy like I was about to crawl out of my skin.
“I know this isn’t exactly your field of expertise,” he was saying to Landon Smith, one of our newer hires and the reason we’d updated our servers over the last month.
He was a smart guy—that was half of running a company, recognizing when somebody was more talented than you and giving them what they needed to thrive—but I wasn’t sure about asking him to play private investigator for a pack he’d never met out in the middle of nowhere.
But I shouldn’t have doubted him. Word had gone through the office already, and it was all hands on deck. Landon didn’t even blink before his fingers were flying across the keyboard.
“Looks like things haven’t been going well for your old pack in a while,” Landon said, frowning at his screen. “The land you talked about—it’s going up for auction. The property was seized because of unpaid back taxes. But like—okay, I don’t want tosay it’snothing, because money’s always a factor, but it’s hardly anything, taxes on that amount of land in Idaho.”
Seth shook his head. “The old pack was never much for gainful employment. Any evidence they’ve left the area?”
