“I should’ve been here.”
Dakota shoved my hand out of the way, his dark eyes narrowed down at me. “You weren’t doing nothing, Jax. You were doing what you could, right?”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I hadn’t accomplished much.
Certainly hadn’t saved Cash or anybody else we’d left behind.
“You were doing what you could,” Dakota insisted. “And we didn’t need you here. Don’t get me wrong—I like when you’re here. I love knowing I have your support like this... like this physical thing I can hold onto. It’s an incredible feeling. But I don’t need you here every second of every day just to be okay. I was doing what I needed to do, and you were doing what you needed to do, and we’re both okay. The whole pack is.”
But Cash wasn’t, and that was my fault.
Rather than admonish me for the swell of doubt, Dakota sighed and snuggled into me. His cheek pressed against my chest, and I must’ve fallen asleep, because?—
Because next thing I knew, sunlight was streaming in the window, and I heard Jillian’s harsh, angry snap?—
“Try it, motherfucker! We’ll see what happens.”
Dakota blinked up at me, scowling and annoyed, struggling to catch up even as I threw myself out of bed and shrugged into my robe. I took the stairs down at a quick hop, and Jillian was there in the living room, red in the face, looking a bit like she wanted to scream.
“What’s going on?”
Jillian’s jaw clenched, but she wasn’t alone. Seth was leaning back on the couch, one ankle draped over his knee, looking far more at ease than his darting eyes betrayed he was.
“Grant called.” Before I could even ask how, Seth’s lips twisted. “Cash’s phone.”
“He thinks he’s going to come here and what? Fucking throw down on the tarmac like we’re a bunch of brawlers,” Jillian started, incredulous.
But she was precisely right. That was exactly what was going to happen. That was how werewolves handled their issues, and the best I could hope for was to move the whole spectacle away from any humans.
Dakota had caught up with me in an oversized robe of his own, making the cozy kind of picture that had me wanting to crawl back into bed with him and never get out. He leaned into my side, slipping his hand in mine.
I looked at Seth. “I haven’t fought another wolf in?—”
Since Reeve. It’d been since Reeve.
Sure, I’d put some people in line when they stepped out of it. There were other wolves around that didn’t belong to pack that sometimes thought it was a good idea to sniff around and cause trouble.
But there’d been nothing like Reeve.
Nothing like the kind of scrap that was coming my way from his younger brother.
Seth shook his head. “We’ll work on it. The full moon’s three weeks away. It’s instinct—your wolf against his. That little asshole isn’t going to take you out, Jax.” Seth flashed a white-toothed grin at me. “I’d like to see him try.”
14
Dakota
There were ten of them when they arrived, which wasn’t what I was expecting. The rest? Well, that was exactly what I’d expected, after the stories from my pack.
Their clothes were rough, well-worn and suited to a colder climate than San Francisco. Their countenances, too, were worn and tired. There were two women in the group, and while one was a stunningly beautiful blonde in her thirties or forties, she looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
Jax opened the door to face them, half a dozen members of the pack lodged firmly behind him, having refused to let him even answer the door to foreign wolves without backup.
Maia in a Chanel suit. Jillian in the sharpest custom-tailored Armani pantsuit I’d ever seen in my life. Even Seth was wearing a suit, even if the tailoring had barely managed to make it contain his broad shoulders.
Grant, the leader of the Idaho pack—or at least, the man I assumed was him—was... well, he looked like the guy who’d driven the snowplow near my childhood home. Sort of unkempt and messy, in faded jeans, a puffy vest that had been worn so long that while maybe it had been blue once, it was more gray-yellow now. Also, that mustache that only adorable gay men, seventies porn stars, and absolute monsters ever had.
It was not the seventies, and I was guessing that Grant was not an adorable gay man.
