The sound he made was like a hiccup as he shook his head again. “Things’ve been bad, Jax. Real bad. And Grant?—”
“Grant? Reeve’s little brother, Grant?” He’d been a squirrelly sort of wolf. Reeve had been big, broad, cut in the shape of an alpha.
His younger brother hadn’t stacked up. There was a reason Reeve had favored Seth and me, though I’d never known if Reeve didn’t trust Grant because he was weak, or if the mistrust had grown from something else.
In the end, it wasn’t Grant who’d betrayed him; it was me. Wasn’t a choice I’d never regretted, when things got hard and I doubted I could keep my pack safe, but I sure as fuck didn’t regret it now. Reeve deserved worse than what he’d gotten from me.
Cash nodded, but even that tiny movement took it out of him. His eyelids fluttered shut, and I noticed how purple the circles were around his eyes.
Was that blood loss or something else?
“He saw an article—some deal you were making. Or, you know, the company? Big deal. So fucking stupid, Jax?—”
Cash’s head listed to the side, and I frowned. He wasn’t making much sense. He’d have been better off resting. We could come back to this later.
“He wants—he said you took from the pack when you left. Wants to collect on the debt. I think he’s gonna—think he might... take it back.”
Cash grimaced.
“What the fuck right does Grant have?—”
“Reeve’s dead, Jax,” Cash whispered.
Maia went so still her tension drew my gaze. She knew. She knew Reeve was dead.
“How long?”
Cash shook his head.
Maia whispered. “Since just a year after we left.”
And nobody had told me.
I’d been in school, struggling to hold it all together.
But fuck, all this time, and I hadn’t known.
Grant meant to fucking challenge me for what was mine, like a boil on your ass that popped up every year to make life fucking harder for nothing.
I’d left this shit behind. Everything had fallen into place for me and mine.
And as I looked up at my mate, who started at something—the weight of my gaze?—I knew I should’ve realized that things weren’t just going to get easier now that I had everything I could’ve ever imagined wanting.
12
Dakota
What little I knew of the pack they had left, well... frankly, it wasn’t much, because none of them had ever wanted to talk about it. It made more sense in retrospect, if the guy in charge had abused Jillian, of all people.
I knew for a fact that if my pack didn’t have Jax for some reason, they would follow Jillian anywhere. Admittedly, I didn’t know that much about how most packs or werewolf politics worked, but I didn’t doubt that if something happened to Jax, Jillian could take over for him in every aspect.
The way that everyone around me suddenly looked hunted? That was just fucking weird.
Super weird.
Prudence was the first person to meet my eye, and she just gave me a little shrug, like how was she supposed to know anything about how werewolves worked. Fair enough. She knew more than I did about nearly every subject in the world, but that didn’t mean much in this case.
Finally, I turned to Jax. “So what does this mean? Some guy from Idaho is going to lay siege to the Crescent Building? This isn’tDie Hard, Jax. We have a whole pack. Even if he does too?—”
