“But isn’t that why Grant wants the pack?” Briton asked from the love seat, where they were stretched out next to Lydia. “IfGrant wants the money, why offer it to Kent? Is it enough, to have half of it? Or less?”
The room went silent a moment, then Seth breathed deep and looked up at me. For a moment, I thought maybe it was about something we’d discussed during the afternoon, and I’d just forgotten, but then other people in the pack looked back at him, and after a moment, they were all staring at me.
“What?” I demanded.
Jax took a sharp breath and turned to me. He shoved his bowl away, Jillian expertly catching it, and grabbed me, tugging me against him. A low murmur started around the room, anger and disgust and...
Me.
Apparently they thought I was what Grant wanted to obtain with this whole mess.
The witchwolf.
Like I was a fucking thing, not a person.
And... oh. Oh shit, if that were true, it meant that this whole thing, the challenge and the house burning down and Jax being poisoned and Kent betraying us, it was all my fault.
I dropped my own food, and somehow, despite both hands being busy with her food and Jax’s, Jillian managed to catch it too. She rolled her eyes and muttered something about ridiculous alphas who should just eat their dinner, while Jax enclosed me in his arms.
“These assholes are carving up our pack for parts, like it’s a cow for slaughter,” Seth said, his voice dark and frankly, scarier than Jax had ever considered being in his entire life. “I think it’s time we show them who we are.”
A rumble of agreement went around the room, and that was when plans started being made. New security measures, new checks on every single current and future employee, and most ofall, plans for when the challenge happened, to keep Grant from trying anything else clever and evil.
It seemed that was what the guy had going for him: his mind. And frankly, I hadn’t been impressed with what I’d seen of that, so I thought we were going to wipe the floor with him.
We managed to eat that way, without letting go of each other so much as an inch, working our way through first Jax’s dinner, then mine, alternating feeding bites to each other, because... well, because we needed each other.
We all needed each other.
Maybe Kent had only wanted money, but there rest of us? We were here for the pack. Because we were a family, and that wasn’t going to change.
They didn’t even care that I was the one who had probably brought this mess down on them. Only that the family wasn’t going to be fractured any more by these selfish bastards, and we were all well rid of both Grant and Kent.
35
Jax
Dakota’s distress had knocked me out of my own. Yes, it was still terrible to think that one of my oldest, closest friends would see me going through a shit time, and rather than offer support, turn into a duplicitous piece of shit who tried to take advantage of my downfall. That was always going to suck, and I was always going to wonder why he’d done it.
Everyone ate, and watching my pack nourish themselves with food I provided helped too.
Admittedly, my inner wolf wasn’t all that concerned with the nutritional value of macaroni and cheese. We just enjoyed that everyone was eating it.
But I’d felt Dakota’s horror when he realized that Grant wantedhim. He’d felt a swell of guilt that had me squeezing him tighter, even when he was already on my lap.
We talked it through and realized that, while Kent didn’t want to lead the pack, hehadwanted more of a say in Crescent.
For a flash of a moment, I worried that I hadn’t given him enough responsibility or had held him back in some way, but no. I stood by the decisions I made. Any company I ran was going to be scrupulous, even to the detriment of profit.
This had been coming for a long time, and the idea that Kent was willing to negotiate using mymate?—
Well, it was a good thing he’d fled the house when he did, because as that washed over me, I wanted to rip his fucking throat out.
No, I wouldn’t. We weren’t beasts. But I fucking wanted to.
We stayed up late, no one keen to be the person to leave the pack first. For the first time since we’d developed enough distance from our roots not to feel the fear of those first years on our own too keenly, we reminisced on them.
Eating ramen packs in the house we were squatting in.
