When I turned to look at the Wildwood wolves, I knew I’d gotten it right.
The huge blond guy who’d warned me was trying—and failing—to stifle a grin. Behind him, the beautiful older woman was staring at me with an intensity that didn’t quite hide the same amusement. She was his mother, I realized in the moment. They had the same eyes, and in that moment, could have been siblings, for the similarity.
Grant, on the other hand. Grant looked like someone had just served him garbage for dinner and told him the solstice was cancelled.
Good.
17
Jax
It didn’t make a lot of sense to wander out onto the field in a suit, much less one of Dakota’s nicer ones.
We’d gone shopping. I liked to provide for my mate, and he looked damn good in Italian silk, tailored just for him. The darts cut beautiful lines, emphasizing his narrow waist. Even before he bared his neck to me, I wanted to grab that waist with both hands and drag him in.
But then that word,alpha, dripped from his lips like honey. My heartbeat lurched fast. I was there to deal with Grant, but at once, all reasonable thought scattered to the winds.
Holy fuck, I wanted nothing more than to carry my mate back to our house across the lake, pin him to the wall, and fuck him to the sound of him calling me alpha.
Fuck him to the feel of that word panted against my skin right before his fangs pierced my flesh, staking his claim on me.
But this wasn’t just a play for my own satisfaction. Dakota was making a statement, not to me so much as to our old pack. Grant would be dealing with me, and Dakota was handing authority back to me to take care of him.
With Dakota at my side, his warmth radiating against the back of my arm, I turned to the aggressor who’d brought a bunch of young wolves here to threaten my pack.
Feeling like king of the goddamn castle, I slid my gaze around to him. Time to get this over with, send Grant running for the hills, and spend the night of the full moon out here in the wild, just us.
“You came here to challenge me, didn’t you?” I cocked my head, unable to keep the sharp smirk from pulling my lips back over my teeth. “Then do it.”
Grant stood there, a muscle in his jaw ticking as his eyes flicked between Dakota and me. He was trying to find a way to get to my mate, but he was going to have to go through me.
My perfect, clever mate had outplayed him. Before both our packs and the full moon herself, Dakota had submitted to me. Named me his alpha.
It didn’t mean to us what it would’ve meant in the pack we’d come from—that I was in charge of him, master of all I saw. It meant that in this moment, Dakota put his full trust in me, and nothing had ever been more heartening.
There was something heady in the knowledge that he believed in me. It made backing down in front of a worm like Grant impossible.
Perhaps I was being unreasonable. Very likely, this was the kind of toxic masculinity that made people edgy around pack alphas.
It didn’t matter. Grant had come to me, inmyhome, and he’d put my pack on edge. He’d forced us out here and maneuvered Dakota into a position where he had to make this choice.
I wanted to fight him. Frankly, I’d have a hard time letting him walk away without seeing him bleed.
He’d killed his brother. He’d sent Cash to us almost dead. Torn him open. As far as I could tell, he’d made the pack I’d left behind even worse than it’d been before we’d fled.
Grant had made sure that my mistakes had the worst possible outcomes. I’d hate myself for that forever, but I’d be damned if I didn’t hate this motherfucker more.
“Don’t look at him,” I said as Grant frantically weighed his chances at getting to Dakota. “You’re dealing with me.”
Grant’s glare snapped my way, and I snorted.
“Good boy.”
He growled, a ripple of unease working through the wolves gathered behind him. They might hate me too. Some postured more aggressively than others, but not every wolf in their group seemed thrilled to be standing opposite us.
To be fair, the sizes of group were evenly matched. If it came down to an all-out brawl, I wouldn’t want Dakota anywhere near it, but between Seth and Jillian and the handful of others who’d volunteered to come with us from the house by the lake. We’d left most of our pack behind, but they weren’t far.
For the most part, Grant seemed to have only brought fighters, and I had no idea where the rest of the pack was. Probably back in Idaho. Moving that many people was always a risk, and the Wildwood pack had always functioned best when people didn’t get a look at the outside world.
