“Did he say something to you?” I asked softly.
There was no evidence that Dakota had been harmed, but he was one of us now. There wouldn’t be.
He shook his head, pressing off the counter to lean back against me, crossing his arms around his middle so he could touch mine.
“Nothing bad,” he clarified. “He said—” Dakota dropped his head back against my chest and closed his eyes. “He said Grant’s not going to challenge you. He’s going to challenge me, because we’re equals.”
The growl that rumbled in my chest was loud and immediate. Dakota slid his hands up my forearms and squeezed, pulling my wrists in to hug him tightly around the middle.
Like fuck I was going to let that bastard?—
“It’s fine,” Dakota insisted before I could finish my thought. “Shit, it’sgood. There’s no way that asshole knows what I am.He could never even guess. I read Prue’s book—the witchwolf is lore. A fairytale. He can’t know about how it works. So I’ll take him unaware, and if I have to, I’ll put him down.”
“No,” I snarled.
Dakota didn’t even flinch. He turned around in my arms and slipped his hands up my chest, around the back of my neck, drawing me down until my forehead settled against his.
“I’ll be fine, Jax. Seriously.”
I squeezed my eyes shut tight and shook my head.
No.
I’d stood over Reeve’s broken, bleeding body, knowing that I could kill him. Maybe even thinking I should. And I hadn’t been able to do it.
I wasn’t about to let Dakota’s hands get bloody because I’d failed.
If I’d torn Reeve’s goddamn head from his shoulders, I could’ve taken over the pack instead of fled it. Grant wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on now.
We’d have had a very different life. I never would have met Dakota.
I—
I couldn’t regret the path I’d taken to get here, because my life now was everything I could’ve ever hoped for. But I’d be damned before I let my mate kill a man because I’d not been strong enough to.
“The language in the code is vague, if I remember right. We cannot seek assistance from outside the pack in a challenge, and—your magic. It’s yours. You earned it. But our old pack may not see it that way. They could look for a loophole because your power didn’t come through you through your wolf, or through pack.”
Dakota sniffed. “They won’t even know if I use magic. Or they don’thaveto. I’ll be subtle.”
“It’s not worth the risk. I won’t let him challenge you.” I tightened my arms around him, like I could crush Dakota into the shape of my body and keep him safe there.
Dakota’s warm hand cupped my cheek. He tilted back on his heels, not pulling away, but just creating enough distance to look up at me clearly and prompt me to open my eyes.
“We’re equals, right?”
I nodded. He’d marked me just as I’d marked him.
I loved him.
I would never imagine trying to hold him beneath me.
Well . . . not likethat.
“So,” he said, “you don’t always get to makeeverydecision.”
Dakota was biting his lip against a smile, and a funny little flip turned my heart over. “No,” I agreed, biting back a grin of my own. “Not every one. But this one, I do.”
Dakota sighed, pursing his lips, but he didn’t interrupt or tell me I was being a dick.
