“Do you know anything about who did?” I asked.
He whipped his head around to stare at me, sharp eyes missing nothing as he sniffed the air. Could we smell magic? I’d never thought about it, but I supposed it would smell like background noise to me even if I could. “It’s insulting that you’d even ask,” he sneered. White glow again, because it was insulting, but I didn’t especially care about insulting the asshole.
“This is the second time my pack has been attacked surrounding this challenge of yours,” Jax told him, his eyes once again narrowed in anger. “If it happens again, Grant, pack law be damned, challenge be damned, I will know it’s your fault. And I will come here and end you, once and for all.” Pure white glow accompanied the words.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Grant answered, and if I’d ever been worried that the spell had failed, there was the proof of its success, because the words glowed green as he spoke.
A lie.
I snorted, and half turned, already ready to leave. “Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. Maybe someday you’ll believe it. Hopefully before you make Jax rip your throat out by attacking us again.”
29
Jax
“Hey, Jax?” Maia called from the living room. Her voice was high pitched and a little wary.
Even all the members of our pack who had their own homes or apartments had taken to staying with Dakota and me, and I preferred it that way. While there was a threat, it was nice to walk out of our bedroom and see so many of our pack were there and safe.
“Somebody’s at the door,” she called.
That meant that I was supposed to get it, which couldn’t be for any good reason. Maia or any other member of our pack was absolutely allowed to greet guests at the door if they felt safe to do so.
I’d been napping in the bedroom, and when I came out into the front of the house, Dakota came out of the kitchen. Kent was there on the couch with another young wolf, talking—shit, who knows? Fantasy football?
A few other heads popped up as I went to the door and opened it. There was Aleks on the other side, and heat and anger rushed up the back of my neck as I looked at him.
He was there on our stoop. He’d come alone. There were no other scents on the porch.
Still, I planted myself right in the middle of the doorway and demanded, “What do you want?”
He grinned at me toothily. “You have visited our territory. Now, I visit yours.”
“I had a reason for my visit. What’s yours?”
Aleks’s face screwed up. His lips pursed and his eyes narrowed my way. He was weighing how much he wanted to tell me, or what I deserved to know, and when it came to strangers—enemies—in my pack? Yeah, I was going to know everything.
I expected him to get his back up about it, but once Aleks took a deep breath, rather than brace himself, his shoulders slumped. He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and said in a tone laced with defeat. “I would speak with Cash.”
My eyebrows shot up. The fuck?
“Well, that’s not fucking happening,” I snapped.
Aleks cocked his head, a tilt to his lips that revealed a particularly sharp canine. “Oh? He is prisoner?”
“No.” I barely bit back an affronted sputter, but my hands went to my hips and my neck jutted forward. “It’s just that the last time Cash had to deal with any of your fucked up pack, he wound up gutted, his intestines spilled out over a truly putrid motel room carpet,dying.”
All of Aleks’s condescension evaporated in an instant. His eyes widened, but he wasn’t quite looking at me. He wasn’t focused on me, anyway.
He sucked in his cheeks until they hollowed, revealing annoyingly fine cheekbones.
He looked pretty fucking pissed, and I wasn’t too good to push on that.
“Yeah, he almost died. How do I know you’re not here to finish the job, hm? Some sick revenge for him preparing us for this mess.”
Aleks snarled then—really snarled, the sound feral as his lips pulled back from his teeth. “I would not do this. I would never?—”
He cut himself off with a swallowed sound that was more wolf than man, and I recognized the way his shoulders twitched as he shook himself. He was riding that edge where alphas turned nasty.
