So I offered. “My great-great-grandfather thinks you’re a reliable sort of person, and I was agreeing with him.” Then I shook it off and went back to the subject at hand. “No one sneaked into the office. You know they didn’t.”
Seth grimaced, but sighed and nodded. “I keep looking through the tapes for the days before the attack, hoping for anything. A glitch, even, to say maybe magic was involved. But you’re right. None of us smelled anything off in the whole building, before or after.” He reached up and ran a hand over hissmooth-shaved head—he’d had it cut recently. It looked good, but I thought he’d done it before the fight with Grant in case things went wrong. Leaning back in his chair to stare at the ceiling, he closed his eyes, looking pained.
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“I know what you’re going to say,” he repeated. Taking a deep breath, then another, he sat up and looked at me. “Kent?”
“Kent,” I agreed, as I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. “My great-great-grandfather said that the poison is supposed to put a person to sleep for fifty days. How long was Kent asleep for?”
Seth nodded, then gave a low growl. “Well then, I guess it’s a good thing I saved everything. Maia said I was being paranoid, but I thought...” He frowned and sighed, then seemed to shake it off. “Well, I sent it to a lab to see if they could place what the poison was, but they were pretty useless. But I think, if I send them a sample of Kent’s, too, they should at least be able to tell me if it’s the same thing. Don’t you?”
I certainly did.
31
Jax
That morning, I’d banged on Cash’s door.
Aleks hadn’t left that night, and while nothing hadhappened, there were limits to what I could stand.
Aleks opened Cash’s door, shirtless and smirking. “Yes?”
“I need to go to work.”
“So?” Aleks asked.
“I’m not leavingyouin my house while I go to work. You’ve got to go.”
Cash flinched. He was still in bed, the blankets pulled up high around his shoulders. He looked like I’d said no one left on this planet was capable of making pizza anymore. Pizza was over. Done. It was too late for one last cheesy slice.
He looked so devastated that I had a flicker of doubt. Maybe it wouldn’t besobad if Aleks stayed...
But it was my job to look after our pack, not just Cash. If Aleks wanted to renounce his pack and join ours, that was a conversation we could have, but not at eight in the morning before work.
“Fine,” Aleks said, snatching his shirt off the end of the bed. He slid his feet into his shoes without bending over.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Cash asked him, his fingers twisting in the blanket nervously.
Shit, seriously? He’d go back to the pack that’d nearly killed him?
“No,” Aleks said.
“Absolutely not,” I blurted at the same time.
We glared at each other. If Aleks didn’t agree with me, I was pretty sure he’d tell me I had no fucking business telling Cash what to do.
Cash? He looked relieved.
Before he left, Aleks walked over to the side of the bed, leaned down, and kissed Cash’s temple. “I will see you soon,” he promised, his eyes full of the kind of intensity serious wolves got about serious business.
Ask me how I knew.
“Wait,” Cash said, grabbing his arm before he could step away. “Can I have your phone? I, uh, got a burner.”
Aleks passed him his phone, and Cash programmed his new number. When he handed the phone back to Aleks, he smiled up at him. “There.”
“I’ll call,” Aleks promised, squeezing his phone tight in his fist.
