Chapter 19 Jax
Jax
Another fucking month of this shit.
I didn’t know if I could take it.
The moon would be full for two more days, and every petty, impatient thought in my wolfish hindbrain wanted me to demand we handle this the next night, or the night after.
I had no doubts as to precisely how the fire had started. It’d burned too fast and too big to be anything but intentional. Grant or his pack were responsible, and I wanted vengeance for the threat they’d posed—not to me, but to my pack and the people I loved.
But someone had died. No, I was never going to mourn Giselle’s absence from this planet, but there were probably people who cared.
Probably.
Maybe Grant?
In any case, it would look terrible for me to press the issue before Grant and his pack had a chance to recover.
Still, it was torture to go home and do nothing and wait. I felt worse, knowing that I’d have to keep waiting.
There was nothing I could do, and these dangerous dipshits would hang around my city in the meanwhile.
If I was lucky, Grant would second-guess himself and go home, but then what? Could I just let them retreat? That seemed impossible, knowing what I knew now—the lengths Grant was willing to go and how he’d hurt his own people and—
I didn’t know what to do, and I had to do something. My skin itched with the need to see this settled.
All night, I didn’t sleep. Once we got home, Dakota and I showered, though I didn’t think he’d have bothered if I hadn’t dragged him in by the hand and held him up while I ran the loofah over his skin.
The next morning, he slept in. He’d spent so much energy trying to curb and control the flames until we could figure out what to do. In the end, we’d called the fire department.
It was an accident. We were there on a company retreat.
I was just lucky that my clothes were on the ground where I’d left them, so I could talk to the mortals without having to explain why me and a bunch of my nearest and dearest were hanging out naked in the woods, setting bonfires to our own home.
After a whole night staring at the ceiling, I slipped out from beneath the covers. Dakota needed sleep, and I didn’t want to wake him with my restlessness.
Most of the house was quiet. The pack members who’d stayed over—Jillian and Maia and Seth, but also others, wanting to stay close with the present threat looming outside—were either keeping to themselves or just as exhausted as Dakota was.
Since the house was quiet, I knocked on the door of the guest bedroom where Cash had been staying.
He, at least, was awake, and responded promptly. “Come in.”
When we’d gotten home the night before, he’d peeked his head out of his room and frowned at the scent of smoke. He’d asked in a tiny voice what had happened, but no one had the energy to give him specifics. We’d told him there was a fire, and that everyone was safe except Giselle.
Cash had bitten his lip, and if I weren’t mistaken, he wasn’t too bothered by the idea, though he’d been quite keen to get assurance that no one else had been hurt.
That morning, if he wanted more answers, I’d give them. If he didn’t, well, he was a guest in my home and I meant to see him comfortable while he was with us, particularly given how hesitant he’d been to hide away in the guest room and not come out or impose in any way.
“How are you feeling this morning?” I asked as I slipped inside, speaking under my breath so we didn’t disturb the others.
Cash shrugged, sitting up against the pillows piled behind him.
When he’d come to us, he’d had stubble on his cheeks, but it’d grown now and turned into a scraggly beard.
He hadn’t asked for a razor—hadn’t asked for anything.
At this point, I probably needed to just start getting him things.
It wasn’t that he looked bad in a beard, but I’d never seen him with one before, and this one looked more neglectful than intentional.
“Fine,” he said. I was pretty sure no matter what I asked him, he was going to insist that he was fine and didn’t need a damn thing. “I’m—ah, I’m feeling better. Mostly. I think? I know I’m taking up a bed—”
I shook my head. “You’re not taking anything we’re not all happy to give, Cash. I’m glad you’re here.”
He shrank into his neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“You know you can stay, right? If you want to join the Crescent pack—”
Too fast, Cash shook his head. “That’s very kind, but it’s—it’s not home. This city, I mean. Not that you’re not—well, everyone’s been great, but I don’t belong here. I belong—”
“With a pack that cast you out?”
Cash flinched, and guilt swelled up to choke me. I’d been too sharp. But he hadn’t seen himself, opened up like a present, guts spilling all over a motel room floor.
“Cash,” I said more gently, “you don’t belong anywhere they’d let that happen to you.”
He stuck out his chin, something flashing in his eyes that looked closer to anger than I’d seen before.
“Nobody let anything happen to me. It just . . . happened.”
“Grant attacked you. It was Grant, right?”
Cash swallowed hard and glanced away from me, but he nodded. The way his expression twisted up wrecked something in me.
No wolf should feel that way in his own pack.
I scowled across the bed at him, crossing my arms to hide how I clenched my fists. The last thing I wanted to do was make Cash think I was mad at him.
Nope, I was pissed at Grant.
And Reeve.
And myself, most of all, because I’d left him behind and now, I couldn’t even convince him to turn his back on a pack that’d treated him like shit and left him for dead.
He had nothing left to lose, and still, he wouldn’t join us. It felt like a failing, as if I had nothing to offer when that was plainly untrue. We were sitting in a large, nice house paid for with a company our pack had started and grown and maintained.
Every single one of us was happy and safe and provided for. None of us wondered where our next meals would come from anymore. We’d built this.
And Cash wanted no part in it.
The way he chewed his lip and shrank against the pillows curled in my gut. I must’ve smelled mad. He caught it on my scent.
And with a stab of guilt and horror, I realized—Cash thought I might hurt him. Me.
With a deep-belly inhale, I leaned back, away from Cash, and shook my head. “It’s fine,” I promised. “Whatever choice you make, it’ll be your own, and I’ll respect it. But there will always be a place for you with our pack if you want it.”
Cash’s gaze flitted over my face, searching every inch of it for a lie. I didn’t remember him having this much doubt, but truthfully, it wasn’t like I knew the guy anymore.
“We could use someone like you,” I said with a smile, hoping to assure him.
He scoffed through his nose. “Oh yeah? What kind of guy is that?”
Fair point. I rubbed the back of my neck. “Well, what do you do?”
His cheeks turned pink, and the flush looked healthy on him. It was a relief.
“Build stuff,” he muttered.
“What kind of stuff?”
He shrugged, glancing at his knees. “Houses. Whatever.”
“So you’re a carpenter?”
Another shrug. “I apprenticed with one.”
Okay, to me, it sounded like he was a carpenter, but for some reason, he wasn’t giving himself credit for it. “That’s great! Of course we could find something for you to do here. I mean—”
It was different here in the city than it’d been back home. Here, we purchased homes. Hired people. But there were pack members or wolves from other nearby packs who did all kinds of things. Not every one of us worked at Crescent.
“There’s always something to do around here, and to start, our place by the lake—”
“That burnt last night,” Cash confirmed with a deep frown.
“Yes, that. We’ll need to rebuild it. It’d be a place to start, when you’re feeling up to it. If you want to stay.”
Cash wrapped his arms around himself, brought his knees to his chest, and shrank. “I’ll . . . I’ll think about it,” he mumbled into the space between his legs.
All I could really think was that I was making him uncomfortable, so I left shortly after that and slipped out onto the landing just as Dakota was trudging out of our bedroom.
He came down the stairs, looking rumpled and sleepy. He was wearing sweatpants and one of my shirts that damn near swallowed him. He smelled like him and me and the tangled-up sweetness of spending a night wrapped up in each other’s arms.
And yes, he smelled a little like smoke, but Maia was all right, and I wasn’t going to think about how much I fucking hated the scent of smoke on my mate—how I’d nearly lost him to fire.
We’d survived that one, and we’d survived this one.
Before he even hit the bottom step, I wrapped my arms around his hips and buried my nose in the curve of his neck. His silky hair tickled my cheek and I smiled as I pressed kisses against his skin just to remind myself that he was there.
With a soft hum, he pushed onto his toes and wrapped his arms around my neck.
“Good morning.” The greeting came out on a yawn and ended with a quiet laugh as I nuzzled into him. “You okay?”
Was I?
I’d very nearly kicked Grant’s ass, and everyone in our pack was all right, and—sure, Cash wouldn’t join us, but that wasn’t any different than it’d been before I knew how bad the old pack had gotten. I was just aware of it now, and it grated like sandpaper.
Still, something was missing, and I hadn’t realized what it was until I put words to it, trapped against the smooth curve of Dakota’s neck.
“Do you want to get married?”
Dakota laughed. “We’re mated. Isn’t that, like . . . just as serious.”
I nodded. It was.
“But we haven’t gotten to celebrate,” I whined into his shoulder. “Let’s plan our wedding.”
It was fast. He had so much to figure out and adjust to, and there was no rush for us to make our relationship legal on paper for a bunch of human courts.
I just wanted to. I wanted every part of him and I didn’t want to wait.
Whatever he needed to figure out, I’d make space for him to do that. If he wanted to go to Japan again, I’d be there as long as he wanted me. For magic—well, he had time and space and if he wanted to fling spells at me for practice, I’d let him. Whatever he needed. Whatever he wanted.
If he was there and safe and happy and mine, that was all that mattered to me.
All right, I didn’t expect him to be happy all the time, but I hoped to make him happy most of it.
And if Dakota could love and accept me, even when I failed, the rest wouldn’t matter so much.
He pulled back, a little pinch between his brows that wasn’t quite the elation I’d been looking for.
Of course, we hadn’t had coffee and it’d been a long day yesterday and he didn’t look displeased or anything.
“You’re not . . . worried anymore?”
“About?”
Dakota arched a brow at me.
“Oh! Grant?” I grinned, and my teeth felt especially sharp when I did.
Dakota was afraid that this was another way for me to stack the odds in case something terrible happened. It wasn’t the worst idea, to get married and give him some legal claim to my estate in the event that anything happened to me, but—
“No.” I shook my head. “No. That asshole was so afraid to face me that he resorted to tricks to get out of a real fight. There’s no fucking way I’m letting him take our pack, our home.”
A smile spread on Dakota’s face, broad and slow. I felt the thrill that sparked in his chest at my confidence, and it bolstered me.
Swooping in, I kissed him, firm and quick and just a little wet. I couldn’t resist swiping my tongue across his beautiful smile.
“I just want to marry you,” I said, staring down into his dark brown eyes. “I want to show my mate off to the whole world. Spend the rest of my life making you smile like that. I want our pack to have something to celebrate when all this is over.”
Already, Dakota was nodding. His fingers carded through my hair at the nape of my neck, and it felt so damn good.
“I don’t want an ounce of doubt in anyone’s mind that you’re mine and I’m yours.
No wolf, no human, no mage. Nobody. I want to marry you, and serve our guests so many canapés, and toast our futures.
Soon. Not tomorrow, but let’s start planning it.
I’ll hire someone. We’ll make it perfect.
That’s what I want. Is it what you want? ”
He could say no, that it was too fast. We were mated now. There wasn’t a stronger bond among werewolves, but despite knowing Dakota felt that bond too, a wedding was a different thing.
It was a public declaration of something shared between us, and yes, acknowledged by our pack. But this would be for us and for everyone.
Even the press would want a piece of it, and I wanted the whole goddamn world to know Dakota was mine. Fuck, I’d give them access just so I could get a picture of him grinning spread across the centerfold of Vanity Fair.
I’d never cared much about that kind of thing before. Sure, I’d given interviews, tried to present myself well, but it had been work. I was growing a company and protecting my pack. There was a reason for it beyond vanity.
There was a reason beyond vanity for this too.
Yes, I wanted Dakota surrounded by flowers and grinning like he was the happiest person on Earth, but I also wanted to honor the bond we had in every facet of my life—not just with the pack, but in front of the humans we kept secrets from, and witches on the other side of the world.
Fuck me, we’d have to invite every single member of the Igarashi family, wouldn’t we?
Even that sent a giddy little shiver up the back of my neck.
I’d won. No, that didn’t mean, and would never mean, keeping Dakota from any part of his family or himself.
But when it came down to it, he could’ve taken a place at the Igarashi Corporation like they’d pressed him.
He could have moved back to Japan to learn more about the people he’d lost.
Instead, he’d chosen to stay with us. With me.
I was going to make every ounce of faith he put in me worth it tenfold. And I was going to get him an incredible tux.
Those long seconds, standing on the stairs and looking into Dakota’s eyes, I never felt enough doubt from him to worry. There was just a slow, swelling warmth that crept up on me, until it was all I could feel.
“Yeah,” Dakota whispered, leaning in to press his forehead against mine. “I do. Promise you’ll hire somebody though?”
I laughed. “Yes, definitely. Neither one of us has the capacity or experience to plan an event on this scale. I’ll find the best wedding planner on the west coast, and we’ll tell them what we want, and they’ll take care of everything, and you and me?
We’re just gonna have to show up and do the kissing thing and—”
Dakota tipped forward, and his lips caught mine, and, well, we already had the kissing thing down pat, didn’t we?