Chapter 31
Jax
That morning, I’d banged on Cash’s door.
Aleks hadn’t left that night, and while nothing had happened, there were limits to what I could stand.
Aleks opened Cash’s door, shirtless and smirking. “Yes?”
“I need to go to work.”
“So?” Aleks asked.
“I’m not leaving you in my house while I go to work. You’ve got to go.”
Cash flinched. He was still in bed, the blankets pulled up high around his shoulders. He looked like I’d said no one left on this planet was capable of making pizza anymore. Pizza was over. Done. It was too late for one last cheesy slice.
He looked so devastated that I had a flicker of doubt. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Aleks stayed . . .
But it was my job to look after our pack, not just Cash. If Aleks wanted to renounce his pack and join ours, that was a conversation we could have, but not at eight in the morning before work.
“Fine,” Aleks said, snatching his shirt off the end of the bed. He slid his feet into his shoes without bending over.
“Do you want me to come with you?” Cash asked him, his fingers twisting in the blanket nervously.
Shit, seriously? He’d go back to the pack that’d nearly killed him?
“No,” Aleks said.
“Absolutely not,” I blurted at the same time.
We glared at each other. If Aleks didn’t agree with me, I was pretty sure he’d tell me I had no fucking business telling Cash what to do.
Cash? He looked relieved.
Before he left, Aleks walked over to the side of the bed, leaned down, and kissed Cash’s temple. “I will see you soon,” he promised, his eyes full of the kind of intensity serious wolves got about serious business.
Ask me how I knew.
“Wait,” Cash said, grabbing his arm before he could step away. “Can I have your phone? I, uh, got a burner.”
Aleks passed him his phone, and Cash programmed his new number. When he handed the phone back to Aleks, he smiled up at him. “There.”
“I’ll call,” Aleks promised, squeezing his phone tight in his fist.
Cash blushed. “Okay. Good. Just . . . be safe.”
Aleks left, and rather than escort him out, I stayed there with Cash. He casually dragged his wrist across the corner of his eye. When he sighed, he dropped his arms in his lap.
“You okay?”
He shrugged. “I honestly have no idea.”
“I’m sorry I made him leave.”
Cash’s lips parted slightly. Something painful twisted in my gut at the notion that he’d never heard an apology from his alpha before, but I knew he hadn’t. It wasn’t just the shock on his face, but the memory of what it’d been like under Reeve.
Clearly, Grant wasn’t any better.
Cash caught himself, shaking his head. “I get it. And he’s . . . he needs to be there. Just—”
“He’s important to you.”
Cash stared down at his lap. “Yeah.”
“You trust him?”
“Completely.”
“Can I trust him?”
Cash looked up at me, biting his lip. He took a second to consider it. “I think so. I mean, he’s not going to hurt someone he’s loyal to for your sake, or for the Crescent pack, but there’s not a lot of love lost between him and Grant. I’ve never seen any reason that you couldn’t trust him.”
That probably shouldn’t have made me feel better, but it did. After making sure he knew he had free reign of the rest of the house, I got ready for work.
I’d had to call Charles in to bring a whole fleet of town cars to get every Crescent employee who was staying at our place to work.
There were plenty of people who weren’t so close to the danger zone who could keep things running until we sorted this out, so they didn’t have to go to work. Before we’d gone in, Maia had reminded everyone of the company’s generous paid-time-off policy.
Every single one of us had decided to go in any way, and it was weird. I’d kind of expected to see people throughout the day, but everyone was staying pretty busy.
I didn’t even see Dakota at lunch. He had something he was doing at the lab? Given that his primary focus was our partnership with Igarashi, I had no idea what the hell that meant, but it made sense for him to branch into our magical sales as he got more comfortable as a mage.
Maybe he was working with Kent on that potions project.
I wouldn’t say it was the most productive workday I’d ever had. Still, I’d needed the sense of normalcy and something to lean on, and I didn’t think I was the only one.
I’d spent most of the day thinking about macaroni and cheese, maybe piled high with barbecue or pulled chicken.
And okay, we could have a side of broccoli.
Mostly, I wanted comfort food, and my wolf liked the idea of being able to provide for pack, so when we got home that evening, I pulled out the biggest pot we had in the house and got to work.
When we’d gotten home, Cash was sitting on the couch, which was a nice change from how he’d been hiding out since we’d brought him here.
Most of the pack stayed out there, but Seth was still on edge, like he’d been for days.
He stalked between the living room and the kitchen so he could put eyes on everybody every couple of minutes.
Me? I was making macaroni and cheese, and I wasn’t to be distracted from it.
Well, not until I heard a raised voice from the living room.
“You didn’t have a single drop of that poison,” Dakota shouted. I’d never heard him raise his voice like that before. It had the same firm tone he used with his family members back in Japan, but he’d never yelled at them.
Of course, if he had, they’d probably have thought he was crazy. This kind of display among werewolves wasn’t half so strange.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Kent replied, but even from the kitchen, I could tell his voice was pinched by nerves.
“The fuck you don’t,” Dakota went on. “You faked it. You fell, and you faked it, but there wasn’t a trace of anything in your mug or in the coffee filter. You poured yourself a cup, and then you put that shit in the pot before you got one for Jax.”
“You’re paranoid!” Kent snapped back.
Jillian’s voice cut in. “What are you talking about, Dakota?”
“Those—those rock things. They weren’t in the filter. Not even a trace of them. No chemical reaction as the coffee was brewing. They were added afterward, and there’s only one person who could’ve done it.”
And there I was, standing in the kitchen like an idiot while my pack fought in the living room.
It was hard to believe what Dakota was saying.
Shit, if it’d been anyone else, I wouldn’t have let myself consider it so easily.
But Dakota wasn’t a liar, and he hadn’t done a single thing that wasn’t in the interest of our pack since before he’d even joined us.
Kent had been with us since Idaho. Maybe he’d—
Maybe he’d messed up.
Maybe I was a fucking idiot.
I took a deep breath, forcing the tightness in my chest to ease before I wiped my hands on the apron I was wearing.
I’d just wanted some damned macaroni and cheese. Was it too much to hope my pack could sit around and enjoy it together?
When I got to the living room, Dakota and Kent were having a standoff.
Cash had curled up into the corner of the couch, flinching back from everyone. Seth had stopped his pacing, and his glare was locked right on Kent. He wasn’t even blinking.
And there was my sister, not quite planted between Dakota and Kent, but standing to the side. Still, the way she’d angled her body made it clear whose side she was on.
“Enough,” I snapped at them all. “Someone needs to explain what the fuck is going on. Right now.”