MAX
Two monthsago
“I could’ve donethis on my own, you know.” Jake glanced across at me as he drove, brow tugged into a frown. “I can still drop you off at Midnight if you need to be there.”
“It’s fine,” I bit out, instantly regretting how sharp I’d sounded. “Fuck, sorry.” I ran a hand over my face, sighing for about the tenth time in a row. “Rys has half his pack there, and I’ve sent plenty of police reinforcements. Axel’s as safe as he can possibly be.”
“I’m sure he is,” Jake replied, turning onto Rufford Lane, the sign for the ford as familiar as the trees on either side of the road. It usually made me smile, the feel of driving onto pack territory as welcoming as coming home, but not today. Today, irritation danced up and down my spine, setting my teeth on edge and making my wolf restless.
He glanced over at me again as he drove through the water, thankfully low enough that we didn’t need to take the long way round. “But you’d rather be there yourself, right?”
As my best friend, Jake knew me better than anyone, except maybe Rys. “I would.” The words were softer this time as I managed to curb my temper. It wasn’t Jake’s fault I was here instead of helping to guard Axel, along with Mase and Dathal. No, that honour went to our alpha, Xen. Again.
I glanced at my phone again, rereading the message that Elliot, Xen’s beta, had sent a couple of hours earlier.
Elliot: Can you come over later? I need you to talk some sense into Xen, from a professional standpoint, but it needs to be off the record.
In other words, Xen was planning on doing something that probably skirted on being illegal. As alphas went, Xen wasn’t the worst—far from it—but he made questionable decisions sometimes. The best thing he’d ever done was appoint Elliot as his beta, though. He was the reason a lot of those questionable decisions never came to fruition. For him to ask for our help meant that Xen was being particularly stubborn.
The pack house came into view soon enough. Converted from the old clubhouse, which used to be here when it was a golf course, the building itself had been extended more than once to accommodate a growing pack. Surrounded by old fairways on one side and Rufford Park on the other, it made for a beautiful area to explore in both wolf and human form.
Something neither of us had done in far too long.
As Jake parked the car and turned off the engine, I grabbed his arm. The idea of shifting and losing myself to my wild side for an hour or two created an itch under my skin I desperately needed to scratch. “After we’re done here, do you want to go for a run?”
He cocked an eyebrow, gaze flitting out the window before returning to me. “You mean a four-legged one?”
“Yep.”
His full lips curved up until a full-on grin appeared. “I think that’s the best idea you’ve had in ages.”
The sparkle in those blue-grey eyes never failed to make me smile, but recently it’d begun to have a different effect on me, too. One I wasn’t sure was a good idea, or reciprocated, but I was at a loss to know how to stop it happening. I noticed him in ways now that I hadn’t before. The sharp cut of his jaw, covered as always in a layer of dark stubble that I ached to feel scrape against my skin. Hair almost as dark as mine, short where mine had started to grow out, but enough to run my fingers through.
My heart beat that little bit faster; a zip of excitement danced along my veins as Jake kept eye contact instead of looking away. “After, then,” I gritted out, my voice rougher than those two words warranted, and I had the door open before my scent had chance to give me away.
Jake’s laughter followed me as he got out, his car door shutting seconds after mine. “I’ve never seen you in such a hurry to go see Xen.”
I glared at him over the top of the car, giving a pointed look at the pack house. Fuck knew who might be listening, and the last thing we needed was Xen getting pissy with us before we’d even got inside.
Jake rolled his eyes and walked around the back of the car to bump my shoulder with his. “Relax. There’s no one outside.”
His scent hit me hard. A mixture of forest and pack, with an underlying trace of something citrusy that I’d never quite been able to identify. Instead of calming me like it used to, smelling him this close only added to the newfound awareness I had around him recently. I wanted to lean in close, bury my face in the crook of his neck, and just breathe…
I took a subtle step to the side and gestured towards the pack house. “Shall we?” The sooner we got this over with, the sooner we could shift, and I’d get to run off all this excess energy flooding my system.
And hopefully things would be simpler in wolf form. With any luck, my base instincts would take over and I wouldn’t suffer any annoying human emotions like pining for my best friend.
Or it might make it worse.
I shrugged off that thought and followed Jake towards the main entrance to the house.
Elliot met us before we reached the door, slipping outside and closing it after him. As soon as he reached us, he lowered his voice to barely more than a whisper. “Thank you for coming.” He ran a hand through his hair, tension evident in every movement. “I’ve tried talking him down, but he won’t listen. I thought maybe hearing it from you two might knock some sense into him.”
Talking about our alpha like this bordered on disrespectful, at best, and I knew without a shadow of doubt that none of Rys’s pack would ever discuss him like that. But then, Xen wasn’t Rys.
“What’s going on?” Jake asked, alert and focused, all signs of our earlier teasing absent.
Elliot sighed, hands going to his hair again, and I wondered how many times he’d made that same gesture tonight. A hundred, judging by the state of him.
