Chapter 17 Jax
Jax
It didn’t make a lot of sense to wander out onto the field in a suit, much less one of Dakota’s nicer ones.
We’d gone shopping. I liked to provide for my mate, and he looked damn good in Italian silk, tailored just for him. The darts cut beautiful lines, emphasizing his narrow waist. Even before he bared his neck to me, I wanted to grab that waist with both hands and drag him in.
But then that word, alpha, dripped from his lips like honey. My heartbeat lurched fast. I was there to deal with Grant, but at once, all reasonable thought scattered to the winds.
Holy fuck, I wanted nothing more than to carry my mate back to our house across the lake, pin him to the wall, and fuck him to the sound of him calling me alpha.
Fuck him to the feel of that word panted against my skin right before his fangs pierced my flesh, staking his claim on me.
But this wasn’t just a play for my own satisfaction. Dakota was making a statement, not to me so much as to our old pack. Grant would be dealing with me, and Dakota was handing authority back to me to take care of him.
With Dakota at my side, his warmth radiating against the back of my arm, I turned to the aggressor who’d brought a bunch of young wolves here to threaten my pack.
Feeling like king of the goddamn castle, I slid my gaze around to him. Time to get this over with, send Grant running for the hills, and spend the night of the full moon out here in the wild, just us.
“You came here to challenge me, didn’t you?” I cocked my head, unable to keep the sharp smirk from pulling my lips back over my teeth. “Then do it.”
Grant stood there, a muscle in his jaw ticking as his eyes flicked between Dakota and me. He was trying to find a way to get to my mate, but he was going to have to go through me.
My perfect, clever mate had outplayed him. Before both our packs and the full moon herself, Dakota had submitted to me. Named me his alpha.
It didn’t mean to us what it would’ve meant in the pack we’d come from—that I was in charge of him, master of all I saw. It meant that in this moment, Dakota put his full trust in me, and nothing had ever been more heartening.
There was something heady in the knowledge that he believed in me. It made backing down in front of a worm like Grant impossible.
Perhaps I was being unreasonable. Very likely, this was the kind of toxic masculinity that made people edgy around pack alphas.
It didn’t matter. Grant had come to me, in my home, and he’d put my pack on edge. He’d forced us out here and maneuvered Dakota into a position where he had to make this choice.
I wanted to fight him. Frankly, I’d have a hard time letting him walk away without seeing him bleed.
He’d killed his brother. He’d sent Cash to us almost dead. Torn him open. As far as I could tell, he’d made the pack I’d left behind even worse than it’d been before we’d fled.
Grant had made sure that my mistakes had the worst possible outcomes. I’d hate myself for that forever, but I’d be damned if I didn’t hate this motherfucker more.
“Don’t look at him,” I said as Grant frantically weighed his chances at getting to Dakota. “You’re dealing with me.”
Grant’s glare snapped my way, and I snorted.
“Good boy.”
He growled, a ripple of unease working through the wolves gathered behind him. They might hate me too. Some postured more aggressively than others, but not every wolf in their group seemed thrilled to be standing opposite us.
To be fair, the sizes of group were evenly matched.
If it came down to an all-out brawl, I wouldn’t want Dakota anywhere near it, but between Seth and Jillian and the handful of others who’d volunteered to come with us from the house by the lake.
We’d left most of our pack behind, but they weren’t far.
For the most part, Grant seemed to have only brought fighters, and I had no idea where the rest of the pack was. Probably back in Idaho. Moving that many people was always a risk, and the Wildwood pack had always functioned best when people didn’t get a look at the outside world.
Among the strangers, there was a woman with them whose scent was similar to that of the younger man.
She alone seemed completely disinterested in fighting, staring past me at Dakota with an expression that—well, that didn’t strike me as predatory, despite the fact that each and every one of us was a predator.
“So I’m going to give you one shot at this,” I said to Grant. “You can scurry home on all fours with your tail between your legs like the dog you are, forfeiting any and all claim you think you have to my pack and people, or, I’m going to put you down and take everything you have. One chance.”
Grant snarled, exposing long white fangs. His claws grew. And while he was too much of a coward to answer me directly, by pack law that was enough. We had space in our laws for non-verbal communications, and a threat like this constituted proof of his indication to fight me.
Good.
I tore my T-shirt with a claw and burst out of my clothes. We could fight as men, but why, when we were wolves? Taking him down would be faster with fang and claw than with fists.
As I sprang off my hind legs and sailed through the air, Grant’s eyes widened. Before I hit him, he’d transformed, and we rolled across the dirt.
This was my fight and his—no one else shifted. They weren’t meant to, but it was a relief. I’d settle this fast and—
Grant snapped his jaws at me, bringing me back to the moment. I didn’t have time to think about what came next, if I was dead.
First, I needed to put him down.
I reared back, and he kicked out, leaving me no choice but to move aside. He got back on all fours, crouching with a vicious snarl.
I didn’t bend down to meet him where he was. Now that we were wolves, it was even more apparent how small he really was. He was a sparse, wicked little wolf, and he didn’t frighten me.
He seemed to realize it at once. When he flinched back, I expected him to spring at me.
Instead, he twisted around and darted off into the trees.
I let him run, throwing my head back and howling to the moon. He couldn’t hide his scent from me. I’d track his every step.
Letting him get ahead of me caused a sparking pleasure to rush up the back of my neck. My wolf longed for the hunt.
After a few seconds’ head start, I bounded after him. My gait was longer, and his sweat stank with fear.
It might’ve been a trap, but I didn’t smell anything off. I didn’t care if it was. I felt the ripple of wolves behind us—not getting close, but coming to watch how this played out, witness as we decided the fate of their pack and ours.
Seth wouldn’t let Grant pull anything.
I rushed through the trees, and by pushing my thighs to the limit, I caught him.
Leaping, I knocked him out of the air. He yelped as I snapped at his throat, but I couldn’t get a good grip.
We clawed at each other, but we were both alphas with packs behind us.
Our skin stitched together almost faster than we could wound each other.
And then I smelled it—smoke. Sharp and acrid down my throat. Burning.
I turned from Grant and the moment I was distracted, he scrambled away. His blood was on my tongue, but all bloodlust died at the orange glow beyond the enormous windows of our home, overlooking the lake we’d run parallel to.
“Fire,” Dakota shouted. “There’s a fire.”
I took off as fast as I could, leaving Grant to his own pack or to—whatever. I didn’t fucking care. Maia was in there. Kent and Lydia and Flynn. Fuck.
Grant hadn’t beaten me, but I hadn’t beaten him either. Not yet.
The challenge stood, but from the lake house, I heard a scream. Closer, and I heard coughing in the red glow of the cloudy smoke. That was Kent.
He was outside the house. Others too, crouching to catch their breaths beneath the haze. There was Lydia and Flynn and Briton and—
Oh shit, Maia.
I’d barely had time to process the spike of panic before the house groaned. Sparks flew at shifting wood above the doorframe, but a second later, the door itself crashed outward.
The blond man—the one who’d cornered Dakota in the bathroom—came out, Maia unconscious in his arms.
I was on two feet in a second, naked and rushing toward them.
“Is she breathing?” I demanded, reaching out for her.
The other wolf narrowed his eyes at me, his breathing raspy until he fell to his knees beneath the smoke line.
I went down with him. Her chest rose and fell. She—
“Is alive,” the other wolf said. “Is alive.”