Chapter 23 Jax
Jax
Ihadn’t realized how familiar Grant’s sneer was until I saw it in my dreams.
Not on his face, but on Reeve’s. Sharp and toothy and arrogant.
But there was some unease, some fear in Grant that wasn’t present in his brother.
Reeve had been larger. That was part of it, surely.
But I thought it had more to do with the way Reeve carried himself. He was the son of the last alpha, and when his father had gotten too old to defend his claim to leadership, he’d had the good sense to slip into the background of pack management.
Jill and I couldn’t have been more than five when Reeve took over, but I didn’t remember any official announcement or declaration that Reeve would be alpha in his father’s stead.
Perhaps, if his father hadn’t made way, there would have been conflict. There were laws for it, ways to challenge failing pack leadership or edicts that we disagreed with.
The stakes had to be pretty high for a wolf to risk it, but for Jillian’s future? I’d risk anything. It didn’t matter how many people were standing behind Reeve, empowering him as our alpha. I’d always had her, and she was more than enough for me to see this through.
Reeve wasn’t going to let her go without a fight, and if those were the conditions I had to meet, so be it. I wasn’t leaving without her.
“It’s fine,” Jillian whispered, even once we were back in the safety of the cabin we shared. It’d been our parents’, before they died, but it was down to us to keep it up now. “You should go. I’ll be fine here, and you’ll get to—” Her forced smile wavered.
My stomach clenched. I’d get to do everything that she’d dreamed about, everything she’d been working toward, everything she’d inspired me to reach for, because I knew for damn sure I wouldn’t have done it on my own.
I’d have slid right up Reeve’s backside like a good wolf and, sure, maybe I would’ve done my best to keep the people I loved safe, but I wouldn’t have changed anything.
I definitely wouldn’t have fought for this if Jillian didn’t want it too.
If she hadn’t been there to show me the value in all this work and education and effort—
“Absolutely fucking not,” I growled, reaching over to clutch her hands in mine so hard her knuckles pressed together. “I am not going anywhere without you, and you are not missing out on college. You worked too fucking hard for too fucking long.”
Jill grimaced. “Jax—”
I shook my head hard. “I’m going to take care of it, okay? You just make sure your bag is packed. I’ll—I’ll take care of it.”
I did try to talk to Reeve first.
It hadn’t gone well. All the good that I said Jill could do for the pack once she got her education, Reeve was convinced that I could offer on my own. It didn’t matter to him that my drive only came from keeping up with her, that she was the better of the pair of us.
A bitch, he said, was good for one purpose, and the last thing he was going to do was let my sister walk her tight little ass out of our pack for good.
It’d been hard not to kill him then—or at least try—but that wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want Reeve dead. I wanted us to go and make the life Jill imagined. If that meant never seeing another wolf again, so be it. I’d have her, and that’d be enough for me.
But I had friends, and I owed them some explanation before I threw it all to the wind and hoped for the best.
“I’m going to challenge him,” I told Seth.
His dark brown face had gone a sickly shade of gray. “What?”
“Reeve. I’m going to challenge him.”
Seth’s mouth snapped shut. His lips pressed into a narrow line, but his eyes were lit with intense curiosity and—and something else I didn’t let myself hope for, at eighteen.
“I need a second.”
“I’m in,” he replied. He hadn’t missed a beat. Hadn’t let a second pass between us as he considered it.
“If I win, and Jill and me leave, you won’t be able to stay here. I’m not fighting him for the pack. I don’t want the pack.” Not right then, when I was a messed-up teenager who had no idea that I was doing.
I wasn’t so arrogant as to think I had any right leading anyone before I’d figured out what direction I meant to walk. But, well, that direction was vaguely away from here. It was where Jill could go and live out her dreams, and we could build something.
“You should think about it,” I pressed. “You don’t need to decide right now.”
Seth scoffed. “I don’t need to think about it, Jax.” His hand closed over my shoulder and he squeezed, and it was the exact opposite of the way that Reeve had touched my sister. This wasn’t dominance, but support, and when Seth offered it to me, I was humbled by the weight of it.
“I don’t want any part of this shithole without you in it,” Seth went on. “I’m with you and Jill, whatever’s next. And I’ll be your second.”
That meant Seth, at least, was coming with us, and whether I wanted it or not, I was going to have to figure out how to be an alpha.
I couldn’t take one down until I did.
Reeve was sitting on his porch in the heat of summer when we found him—Seth and Jill and me, and the people who’d heard whispers about what we intended and followed behind us, distant enough not to promise they were picking sides of any kind.
“We’re leaving,” I said when I was close enough to see the unimpressed arch of Reeve’s eyebrow.
He had a dozen beer cans lined up beside his rocker. It was hard to get drunk as a wolf, but not impossible. Still, I thought he drank more for show. He sent the rest of us out to the convenience store to get a case of beer, then he drank every can alone.
Well, he did for the most part. Every once in a while, if he was particularly pleased with something one of us had done, he’d pass over a can and click his against the edge of ours. I still remembered the thrill the first time he’d given me one, like I was a real wolf, an alpha, a leader.
I knew now I hadn’t been shit. Leadership wasn’t measured in drinks and demands. Maybe I didn’t know what it was measured in yet, but at least I knew that much.
“I know,” Reeve sneered. “You’re going to school, Jax. But who’s we here? ’Cause I’m pretty damn sure I said pretty little miss over there’s staying home.”
“We’re leaving,” I said again. “Jill and Seth and me. We’re going to school, and we’re not coming back here.”
Reeve’s nose flared. That was the only sign he was angry. When he rose with a deep sigh and knocked over an empty can with a careless flick of his foot, he only seemed exasperated. He put his hands on his hips. The sun glinted off his belt buckle.
“That so?” Each of his steps thumped loud as he made his way off the porch down the stairs. He came right up to me.
He was shorter than me by a couple inches. I hadn’t noticed that before.
I’d never stared him down like this.
“And how the fuck do you think that’s gonna happen, boy? You think I’m just gonna let you do whatever you damn well please? Fuck me. Fuck our pack. That what you think?”
I clenched my teeth and swallowed hard. “I challenge you for the right to leave. To break our bonds with this pack. We’re going, and it’s got nothing to do with insulting you or the Wildwood pack, but we’re going.”
Reeve turned away, a smile on his face. I caught the glint of his tongue darting across his lips.
He turned back, lashing out quick like a viper. His fist crashed into my jaw with teeth-clattering force, sending my head to the side.
“You better be damn sure this is what you want, boy, ’cause you’re ’bout to make your sister watch the last of her family die like a dog.”
“It is.”
I’d worn a T-shirt and sweatpants—nothing I couldn’t get out of in a flash. I leapt from my clothes on four legs, furry and clawed and furious.
Reeve shifted just as fast. He was a big red wolf, snarling and used to scrapping. At least, I’d assumed he was.
Seth and I had been sparring though. We’d trained. He might be a better fighter than me, but fighting him? That’d prepped me for Reeve.
We stood on hind legs, growling and scratching, snapping our jaws to try and get the upper hand.
But it was like I’d told Seth—I didn’t want Reeve dead. I just wanted us free of him. Of all this shit.
I hesitated to throw myself at him, but he had no such compunction. He shoved into my space and his mouth clamped above my arm, digging into bone.
Maybe I didn’t intend to kill Reeve, but I knew damn well that if I didn’t take him down, he wouldn’t offer me the same mercy. He’d tear out my throat and leave me there in the yard, an example that proved none of us should dare to fuck with him.
If I lost, things would be worse for Jill afterward. Worse for Seth. Worse for everybody who’d believed in me.
I kicked out with my back feet, hard as I could. It didn’t dislodge his fangs from my shoulder, but it sent his back half sailing into the air. I shoved all my weight off the ground. We tumbled over each other. His fangs tore out of my flesh, dragging deep, bloody rivulets beneath my fur.
I ignored the pain, throwing myself at him. I got my mouth around the nape of his neck and bit hard, until I felt the crunch of cracking bone.
Reeve yelped beneath me, and with fang and claw I tore and tore until he’d gone slack, whimpering in the dirt.
It was over. I could kill him, and the wolf—
Fuck, my wolf wanted to. But if I did, we were stuck here. Or at least I was. And after everything, there was no way in hell I was sending Jillian out into the world without me.
Whatever came next, we were going to figure it out together, and that wasn’t going to happen if I was stuck trying to put a broken pack back on track.
When I stepped away, fangs dripping with blood, and Reeve stayed down, I shifted back to two legs. Maybe they’d get the point if we just left, but I didn’t want to leave anyone with any doubts as to what would happen next.
“We’re leaving,” I announced, as Jillian brought me a blanket from our cabin and I wrapped it around my shoulders. “Jill and me, and whoever wants to come with us. We’re both going to school, and we’re making a new pack, so—”
I glanced around at the wan, wary faces. I didn’t know what to say next. I should’ve thought of this. Prepared something.
Fuck, even if I had, standing in front of everyone in this moment, I didn’t think I’d be able to justify myself.
“If you come with us, I will do my best to look after us all, see us safe. We have—we’ll take out loans. We’ll figure it out. But I can’t promise it’ll be easy.”
Seth was the first to step forward. “I’m with you,” he promised.
And there was Maia, not even sixteen yet, biting her lip as she looked between her life-weary father and our small group. “Me too!”
Kent flashed a cocky grin. “San Francisco, right? Sounds like a good time.”
And there was Cash, lingering at the edge of the crowd. He shook his head and croaked, “I can’t.”
It was his doubt that stuck with me decades later.
But it was the faith of those that’d come with us that’d forced me to figure out how to lead.