“I’m going to challenge him,” I told Seth.
His dark brown face had gone a sickly shade of gray. “What?”
“Reeve. I’m going to challenge him.”
Seth’s mouth snapped shut. His lips pressed into a narrow line, but his eyes were lit with intense curiosity and—and something else I didn’t let myself hope for, at eighteen.
“I need a second.”
“I’m in,” he replied. He hadn’t missed a beat. Hadn’t let a second pass between us as he considered it.
“If I win, and Jill and me leave, you won’t be able to stay here. I’m not fighting him for the pack. I don’twantthe pack.” Not right then, when I was a messed-up teenager who had no idea that I was doing.
I wasn’t so arrogant as to think I had any right leading anyone before I’d figured out what direction I meant to walk. But, well, that direction was vaguely away from here. It was where Jill could go and live out her dreams, and we could build something.
“You should think about it,” I pressed. “You don’t need to decide right now.”
Seth scoffed. “I don’t need to think about it, Jax.” His hand closed over my shoulder and he squeezed, and it was the exact opposite of the way that Reeve had touched my sister. This wasn’t dominance, but support, and when Seth offered it to me, I was humbled by the weight of it.
“I don’t want any part of this shithole without you in it,” Seth went on. “I’m with you and Jill, whatever’s next. And I’ll be your second.”
That meant Seth, at least, was coming with us, and whether I wanted it or not, I was going to have to figure out how to be an alpha.
I couldn’t take one down until I did.
Reeve was sitting on his porch in the heat of summer when we found him—Seth and Jill and me, and the people who’d heard whispers about what we intended and followed behind us, distant enough not to promise they were picking sides of any kind.
“We’re leaving,” I said when I was close enough to see the unimpressed arch of Reeve’s eyebrow.
He had a dozen beer cans lined up beside his rocker. It was hard to get drunk as a wolf, but not impossible. Still, I thought he drank more for show. He sent the rest of us out to the convenience store to get a case of beer, then he drank every can alone.
Well, he did for the most part. Every once in a while, if he was particularly pleased with something one of us had done, he’d pass over a can and click his against the edge of ours. I stillremembered the thrill the first time he’d given me one, like I was a real wolf, an alpha, a leader.
I knew now I hadn’t been shit. Leadership wasn’t measured in drinks and demands. Maybe I didn’t know what it was measured in yet, but at least I knew that much.
“I know,” Reeve sneered. “You’re going to school, Jax. But who’swehere? ’Cause I’m pretty damn sure I said pretty little miss over there’s staying home.”
“We’re leaving,” I said again. “Jill and Seth and me. We’re going to school, and we’re not coming back here.”
Reeve’s nose flared. That was the only sign he was angry. When he rose with a deep sigh and knocked over an empty can with a careless flick of his foot, he only seemed exasperated. He put his hands on his hips. The sun glinted off his belt buckle.
“That so?” Each of his steps thumped loud as he made his way off the porch down the stairs. He came right up to me.
He was shorter than me by a couple inches. I hadn’t noticed that before.
I’d never stared him down like this.
“And how the fuck do you think that’s gonna happen, boy? You think I’m just gonna let you do whatever you damn well please? Fuck me. Fuck our pack. That what you think?”
I clenched my teeth and swallowed hard. “I challenge you for the right to leave. To break our bonds with this pack. We’re going, and it’s got nothing to do with insulting you or the Wildwood pack, but we’re going.”
Reeve turned away, a smile on his face. I caught the glint of his tongue darting across his lips.
He turned back, lashing out quick like a viper. His fist crashed into my jaw with teeth-clattering force, sending my head to the side.
“You better be damn sure this is what you want, boy, ’cause you’re ’bout to make your sister watch the last of her family die like a dog.”
“It is.”
