Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jax
Balancing Act
I honestly don’t know who’s freaking out more now—me, or Todd.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” he whispers because I honestly think he’s afraid he’ll start screaming. “We don’t even know if—”
“Calm down.” I rub my eyes. He’s my best friend but I’m also his pack Alpha and hope I can use both to rein him in right now. “We don’t know that’s the case. You said you guys played, and—”
“Yeah, but I didn’t fuck him! I swear to the Goddess, Jax! He blew me while he was on the frame, and we snuggled in the hot tub before our run, and then again after we got back. He fell asleep in the hot tub and I tucked him into bed. His bed.”
“Did you mentally talk to him while you guys weren’t shifted?”
“No, but we were, ya know, talking.”
“Okay, take a deep breath, To—”
“Jax, what am I going to do?”
I suck in a breath. “Todd,” I snap. “Calm. Down. Let me think.”
He goes quiet. “Sorry.”
“This doesn’t automatically mean you have a mate bond with him,” I say.
“He’s an omega, and he’s young, and he just went through an intense session with you.
When we first met him the other day, the hormones radiated off him, and it’s not hard to see why.
Maybe it’s possible it was something on his end, not yours. ”
He didn’t answer at first. “I’ve never heard of that happening.”
“Neither have I, but the point is we don’t know what happened.”
I hear him take a deep breath to calm himself. “Yeah. Okay. And if it was a mate bond we would have, like, immediately tackled each other, right?”
I want to remind him that’s not necessarily true and point out his own mother and Caleb’s history, but that would run counter to trying to calm his tits.
“Yes. And it’s not like we got there with him and you felt it immediately, right?
” I have a thought. “You even said you didn’t feel one for him when we dropped him off. ”
Another deep breath from his end, and I wonder if he’s close to hyperventilating. “Yeah. Right. Okay.”
“And it’s not unusual for different species not to be able to hear each other, but it’s also not unusual for some species to be able to communicate.”
I hate lying to him because the only instances I’ve heard of that happening, where it wasn’t between closely related packmates, or at least very similar species, were because there was a mate bond.
“Okay.” I hear him breathing. “Okay.”
“Obviously, you’re very attracted to him. And he hasn’t had his first mating heat yet, either. So there could be a lot of hormones and other stuff, things he had to tightly suppress while in his old pack, that might be contributing.”
He doesn’t sound fully convinced but he sounds willing to let me bullshit him, so I’ll take that win. “Maybe you’re right.”
“You can’t freak out, okay?”
“Do I tell him all this?”
“No,” I say a little too quickly and harshly before gentling my tone.
“We don’t need to burden him with this. Tell him we have to bring vampires and others here to protect them, and his father might be involved, and that’s why he has to stay on your property.
Answer his questions, but use your best judgment and try not to freak him out. Okay?”
“Yeah. I will.”
“We might not even need to bring up any of the stuff about the mental communication to him until after all this other BS is settled. I want to hear from my friend after he activates Mal’s phone and see if anything happens. His father might have written him off already.”
Todd snorts. “That’s pure bullshit and you and I both know it. That man will not give up until he kills Mal.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’ll be too busy putting out fires of his own to even bother.”
“What fires?”
“Let’s just say I’m in the mood to commit some metaphorical arson.”
We talk a few more minutes. Once I’ve assured myself he’s calmed down, and we set a meeting time for tomorrow, I end the call.
That leaves me sitting on the couch, my head thrown back and rubbing my eyes with my cellphone next to me.
This is the last complication we needed.
If it wasn’t for the timing of the vampires and others arriving it’d be an easy problem to solve—sit and talk to Mal and Todd, see how both of them feel, and then move up the timeline for the initiation.
But I have to walk a very thin line now, a razor’s edge, between keeping the refugees safe and keeping my pack safe. I don’t know how the vampires and others would react if they picked up a hint of Mal’s home-pack scent.
And we definitely don’t have time to put him through a full initiation.
I glance at the time and it’s going on 4:00. I know I won’t get more sleep, either. Not with so much to do.
Including covert research to find out if what I said to Todd really was bullshit or not—if his ability to communicate with Mal while they’re both shifted is a fluke.
Although my situation pales in comparison to what Marchman and his people are currently enduring. He strikes me as a man who cares deeply for his people and who is willing to die if it will put an end to this bullshit once and for all to keep them safe.
A man with nothing personally left to live for except ensuring the safety of his people, even at the expense of his own life.
Frankly, people with nothing left to live for are the most dangerous, regardless of their species.
I haven’t asked Marchman who he lost because if he wants to volunteer that information I’m sure he will.
I can only pray my pack and I never have to endure what he currently is.
Pray, and prepare.
By the time Shawn wakes a little after six I’ve already worked out, started the coffee, and made him breakfast.
“Thought I smelled bacon,” he mumbles as he kisses the back of my neck on his way to the coffee maker. I’d hoped to wake him up by taking that and his breakfast to him in bed, but that can wait for another morning.
“Yeah,” I say.
He stiffens and turns, cocking his head at me. “Ooookay. What’d I miss while I was asleep?”
I fill him in about my first call—he’d already been asleep when I talked to Marchman—and his face darkens in a scowl as I update him.
He pours his coffee and fixes it. “What else happened?”
I snort as I switch off the burner and pull the pan of bacon off it to pluck the strips out with tongs. “I talked to Todd. He’ll come over and help prep the rec hall. He’ll bring clothes and shower here first, and he still has his key.”
“Shower here? Oh. Because of Mal’s scent?”
“Yeah. Annnd…” I plate his French toast, which I kept warm in the oven. “I have an ask of you.”
“Here we go,” he mutters into his coffee cup.
“I need you to swap vehicles with him and take his truck and mine to Brooksville for full details, inside and out. The works. As in first thing today.”
“Huh?”
I quickly explain why, and he nods. “Yeah, that makes sense. I can do that. He can leave his truck and keys here, and I’ll do his first since Mal probably smells stronger there. Then he can drive it home tonight.”
“Makes sense.”
He settles on a bar stool at the breakfast counter and eyes me. “What else? Spill it.”
I take a deep breath. “I don’t want you saying anything to Mal or anyone else about this.” I tell him about Todd’s mental communication with Mal and Shawn’s jaw drops.
Then a broad, beaming grin splits his face. “That’s fantastic!”
“Not really, no. Not with the current timing.”
“Oh. Yeah, true. Plus, we don’t know if he’ll even make it through initiation if someone objects because he’s Sterling’s son.”
“Exactly,” I say, spearing a piece of French toast with my fork. “So if we can help the vampires and get them out of here faster, hopefully that will have cooled the bad feelings toward Sterling and his pack so no one blackballs the pup.”
He plays with his fork, pushing a piece of French toast around in the syrup. “Buuuut… If he is Todd’s mate, there’s probably not a single person who’d openly speak out against him.”
“We can’t risk that. And we can’t risk Mal making the rounds or his scent getting anywhere else in the compound. We also can’t risk any of our pack accidentally saying something about him to the vampires or others.”
“When do you think you’ll hear back about the phone?” he asks.
“Hopefully soon. I didn’t demand instant results, obviously, but I did tell him it was pretty urgent.”
“Couldn’t you tell him what it’s really about?”
“I don’t want to drag him into anything he doesn’t need to be in. That’s not fair to him. Once we have a plan I’ll talk to him again and see if he wants to send help. Until then, I’d rather not risk OPSEC and discover any leaks in his organization the hard way.”
“True.” He chews another bite. “You cook nearly as good as you fuck, by the way. When you want to.” He smirks.
I lean in for a kiss. “Yeah, well, get ready for plenty of rides from me at your next heat.”
His smile turns playful, vulnerable. “You sure?”
“I’m not sure of much in this world, but if you have faith in me, then I guess that’s all I need to be sure about.”