Chapter 7
Jax
The last person I expected to hear from when we got out of the airport was Cash Roberts. Fuck, he was almost the last person I expected to hear from for the rest of my life.
Back when Jill and I had left our pack in Idaho, Cash had been one of the people I’d expected to stand at my back. Sure, I’d had Seth there too, but it would’ve been a tough choice on who I’d ask to be my second if Cash hadn’t made it an easy one.
When the stakes got real, I’d seen the doubt flicker to life in his eyes before he’d even uttered the words, “I can’t.”
After a lifetime of snarling under the oppressive claw of our alpha, Reeve, I’d thought we were really going to do something.
Together.
Instead, Cash had buckled so fast it made me doubt whether I was even up to challenging Reeve. Back then, I could tell just from the way that Jillian looked at me that she wouldn’t hold it against me if I backed down, but she was why I couldn’t.
Our pack had been—
Well, Reeve had enforced a strict hierarchy in the pack.
For the most part, I’d benefitted from it. Even years later, acknowledging that twisted my stomach.
But I’d been a young male wolf—strong enough to do what needed doing, but enough of a kid that I didn’t dare step a toe out of line.
When I was sixteen and crossed six-foot-five, that started to change. Reeve didn’t seem so big and intimidating anymore, and we butted heads more often, because there was one person who’d been at my side through every step, my twin sister, and Jill—
Well, she didn’t reap the benefits of Reeve’s favor at all.
I hated how he’d always called her “little bitch,” instead of using her name, like she was a dog and not a person. He said, over and over to the chortles of his inner circle that “his bitches” were only good for one thing—breeding.
He’d never bothered looking at the whole of our pack, seeing the strengths each member possessed.
Jillian was whip smart. Resourceful. Even when we were kids, she was capable of so much that it brought me up short, not because I’d ever doubted her, but because she’d learned to maneuver in a world that was working against her in ways I’d never even had to think about.
We talked about leaving every night, and I was determined to do it. Take her away from the middle of fuck-all and give her the life and opportunities she deserved.
By the time I’d gotten into college, things had gotten tense enough that Reeve had been relieved. He thought he was getting me out of the way without it having to come to a confrontation.
When wolves like me came of age, they either fell in line—which wasn’t going to happen—they got out of the way, or the pack got a new alpha.
Seth could’ve challenged him too, but when I’d asked him, thinking he might lead the whole pack and Jill and me would just slip away, he’d laughed. He didn’t want the responsibility. That wasn’t his strong suit, but he’d back me.
Cash had nodded along. That night, I hadn’t realized how uncomfortable he looked, but he’d come to me later, head down, and said he couldn’t get involved. Even after, when I’d won, I’d expected that to change for him, but it didn’t.
Reeve would’ve been well glad to get rid of me, but Jillian? Not a chance he was letting her go.
Thing was, she got into school too. We’d approached his rustic log cabin together and told him at the same time.
Me? I could fuck right off, but he was keeping her. He said a girl like that didn’t have no business with that much schooling.
For me, going without her wasn’t an option.
Staying with Reeve sure as fuck wasn’t.
Even when Cash bailed on me, I hadn’t had a choice. I’d kill the motherfucker who meant to hurt my sister before I ever let that happen.
But my fight was to leave, and I’d won it.
I didn’t kill Reeve while he was panting and bleeding face down in the dirt.
I wasn’t staying in Idaho for anything, so the pack would need to figure out what they were going to do moving forward.
That was the excuse I gave myself for leaving him alive, but if I dug right down to the center of it, I hadn’t had the stomach to kill somebody.
That wasn’t the kind of thing a wolf admitted when he wanted to lead a pack.
Anybody who wanted to come with me, I’d offered a space to. I’d promised to do my best by them, but I’d—
Well, I’d tried to be upfront. They all knew I was eighteen, untried, with nothing but a few bills in my pocket and an offer from a university that said I could get financial aid.
It’d been a rough first few years, all piling into one-room apartments. Jill and I had kept late nights in the libraries because reading in a small place with seven other wolves wasn’t feasible.
Seth had gotten work in security, and I wasn’t too proud to say he’d kept us afloat for a long time, especially when some of our new pack were too young to hold down a full-time job.
Maia could’ve dropped out of school at sixteen, but Jill and I couldn’t stomach that any more than I’d been able to let Jill give up on her own dreams.
Sometimes, it’d been hard not to think Seth should’ve been alpha, but every time I brought it up, he’d shaken his head and said he was making a long-term investment in me, and he was expecting big dividends someday.
It’d terrified me, to think the bar was so high, but it’d pushed me too.
His faith in me had carried us to a place where we didn’t have to worry about money or food or shelter anymore, but holy shit, I’d been wound tight those early years.
Every “B” on a term paper had felt like I was letting them all down.
When he’d had the opportunity to come with us that night I’d left Reeve bleeding, Cash had hung his head and avoided my eye. On nights when my pack went hungry, I wondered if maybe he’d made the right call.
Then, after years of everybody busting their asses for each other, we’d ended up . . . okay. More than okay. We’d been able to afford homes for everyone. Never had to worry about where food would come from again.
Nobody ever had to feel unseen or unappreciated for exactly who they were.
At least, I hoped not. And I think Jillian would’ve kicked my ass if I’d turned into some kind of toxic alphahole.
The easiest thing to do had been to try not to think about what—and who—we’d left behind. I wasn’t mad that Cash had made the best decision for himself at the time, but I wasn’t going to go back to Idaho, begging for more mouths to feed before we’d even figured out how to feed ourselves.
But there it was—a message flashing across my phone at the same number I’d had since we were kids. The phone was a lot nicer now, but I’d never wanted to change where people could reach me.
Hey, it’s Cash. I need to see you.
He’d put an address that I gave to Charles, more than a little relieved that we didn’t have to rely on me to find the place while my heart was pounding.
What could Cash possibly want after all this time? It was hard to imagine him popping up in California after all this time without any warning.
Charles pulled up at a seedy little motel not too far from the airport. The kind of place someone might use as a landing pad when they wanted a tour of the west coast, but didn’t have the budget to do it at the city center. It was easy enough to get around without being right in the thick of it.
Cash had put a room number in the text, but even when we had parked right outside it, I sat there and stared straight ahead, taking a long, deep breath.
“You okay?” Dakota asked, squeezing my hand.
I smiled at him, but from the way he pressed his lips together, I didn’t think he was buying it. “Just fine.”
“Would you like us to stay in the car?” Charles asked.
He wasn’t asking for himself—Charles was faster than either one of us when pressed. Zippy scamps, the fae.
What he was really asking was if I wanted Charles to look after Dakota—if I needed to keep my mate safe from whatever was waiting on the other side of that painted red door.
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. Like I said, old friend. There’s nothing to worry about.”
As soon as I got out of the car, I realized that’d been a stupid thing to say. The scent of blood filled the empty parking lot, and it only got stronger when I approached the door.
Behind me, I heard Dakota get out too, and he cursed under his breath.
I knocked on the door sharply. “Cash?”
There was no answer. I tried the door handle, but it was locked.
“What are you doing?” Dakota hissed when I pulled out a claw and jimmied it between the door and the latch.
“You smell it too, right?”
Dakota grimaced. He didn’t want to put a name to this scent any more than I did, but it was a lot of blood and more besides. I’d never killed a person, but I knew what Reeve had smelled like when I’d beaten him. It wasn’t this bad. This was . . . sickly, thick, and horrifying.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. “If I fuck up the door, I’ll pay for it.”
My claw caught on metal. There was a clink, and I could turn the knob.
The scene in the room was—
It was something out of a nightmare.
Cash was on the floor. He’d ripped the sheets from the bed to try and stem the flow of a gory wound in his side, but all he’d managed to do was soak them a dark red.
He was leaning back against the bed, but his head had rolled onto his shoulder at such an acute angle that it looked inhuman.
He wasn’t conscious. His eyelids didn’t even flinch when I pushed the door open.
“Holy shit,” Dakota breathed as he stepped in behind me.
I was a fucking dumbass. I should’ve told him to stay in the car with Charles.
He breathed in.
“He’s a wolf,” Dakota said, his voice coming out with a broken hitch as his throat squeezed hard. “Why isn’t he healing?”
“He’s dead,” I muttered, feeling half out of my body, like I was floating away from all this.
Cash had wanted to see me, and now he was—
He was fucking dead.
While I stood there, dumbstruck, unsure what the fuck to do—if this was a pack matter or . . . shit, I couldn’t alert human authorities. With a scene like this, they’d do an autopsy, and I had no fucking clue how we were different from humans but we definitely were.
Dakota shoved past me and knelt beside Cash. He reached out to touch his neck, then shook his head.
“He isn’t,” Dakota insisted. “He’s not dead, Jax. He has a pulse.”