Chapter 39 Jax
Jax
All I could do when Grant sprang at Aleks was get out of the way. If Aleks was pressing a challenge within their pack, that took precedence over anything else.
More than that, it was a relief to be able to step back, to not have to be the one to finish this horrible thing I’d started all the way back when I was eighteen.
Aleks was a more efficient fighter than I was. He was brutal, and the big gray wolf that’d stayed with him was now at my side, barking encouragement.
Almost too quickly, Aleks had Grant pinned down, bleeding, defeated. I forced myself not to look away, even if I knew what was coming. Even if—
Aleks looked at me with silvery blue eyes. He blinked slowly. With a victorious snarl, he stepped back from Grant and toward me.
No one who’d seen that fight could have thought that Aleks hadn’t won. It’d been at least as clear as when I’d beaten Reeve.
I shifted back. “Congratulations, Aleks.”
When he stepped closer, I held my hand out for him to sniff. “Good fight.”
Aleks scoffed, and in the time it took for him to make that sound, he shifted back onto two feet and shoved my hand away.
“I couldn’t watch two old men fighting and not get in on the fun,” he shot back with a grin.
Maybe I should’ve taken his attitude personally, but I couldn’t. Aleks was prickly, but it was good natured. He was young, and at least as overwhelmed as I’d been when I had beaten Reeve. It was bravado and adrenaline talking, and I could easily imagine having done the same.
In a fraction of a second, Dakota’s breath caught. Aleks’s eyes widened. And I spun, my hand instinctively finding its mark.
Dark claws had shot out from my nail beds. I caught Grant by the throat. He’d thrown himself at us, unwilling to concede, even when this whole farce was well over.
My claws sank in, and I smelled a fresh wave of blood.
I never, ever wanted to be the kind of alpha who threw violence at the people I was supposed to protect. I’d never wanted to be a man with blood on my hands.
But there we were, and this would never be over until I finished it.
I tried to ignore the way my breath jumped on my next inhale, tightened my fingers on the front of his throat, and yanked my hand back.
Grant dropped, nothing but dead, sputtering weight, to the ground.
At least it was fast. There was no opening up of his middle, waiting for him to bleed out, suffering, because I was his alpha and could do such a horrible thing.
I’d simply dealt him a wound too serious for his body to recover from. I stood there, horrified, gripping his wet trachea in my fist.
I felt sick, and I didn’t realize I was shaking until Dakota’s hand slid down my arm. Reflexively, I dropped Grant’s throat and sucked in a sharp inhale.
Aleks cursed in Russian, shoving Grant’s body away with a rough kick, but Dakota eased me back—from the body, from the nightmare of it all. He slipped his hand into mine.
It was bloody. Oh fuck, I was getting blood on him.
I tried to pull away, and he held my hand tighter. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “It was right. You did right.”
I stared into his dark, earnest eyes.
At home, among my own pack, I might have fallen apart, but we were standing there with a pack that’d just challenged us. I couldn’t afford to. I had to hold myself together.
I squeezed Dakota’s hand back and nodded. I was fine. I’d be fine.
I blinked, no doubt pale and strange looking, at Aleks. His jaw was clenched, but when he met my eye, he puffed out a slow breath. All I saw in his eyes was understanding and gratitude.
Tension ripped through the air around us, but between us? Nothing. I had nothing that he wanted to take, and he had nothing for me.
Between two other packs, this very easily could have turned into a scrap over bones, but that wouldn’t be us. My pack didn’t need bones. In fact, we had more than enough to share.
“Hey,” Aleks stepped closer to me and this time he was the one to stick out his hand.
“We will need to work together, yes? To make these shit American laws better. Make those assholes out there see us as we are, not like—” He waved his free hand rather than the one he was holding out in offering, toward Grant’s body like it was nothing more than a heap of trash.
I couldn’t say I disagreed.
“Your pack, and mine,” Aleks went on. “Together. We will change things, step by step.”
My lips twitched upward. I wasn’t sure I liked Aleks, but I could respect how he moved. He was setting up clear expectations, diffusing the tension in the wolves around us who didn’t know how we’d react to one another now that Grant was out of the way.
He was clever. He’d make a good leader for the Wildwood pack.
Fuck, I hoped he’d be a good leader for the pack, because no part of me wanted to look backward. With Dakota and my family and the Crescent pack, I only wanted to move forward.
Firmly, I placed my hand in his and shook it. “I’d like that.”
When we let go, Aleks was grinning in that way that I’d learned meant trouble.
“Yes, what will we do with all my intelligence and all . . . ” He looked me over like he wasn’t quite sure what I had to offer, and strangely, it just made me want to laugh.
“Your millions of dollars? It will be so hard to change the world with our many impressive assets.”
Seth snorted. “Billions.”
Aleks rounded on me, his eyes wide enough I could see his full, round irises. “Billions?” he demanded. “You have billions?”
I nodded, unsure whether to laugh, apologize, or stand taller about it.
Aleks rolled his eyes. “What the fuck does a werewolf need with billions?”
I didn’t know what to tell him. I wasn’t sure either.
The only thing I’d been certain of for all my life was that I needed the people I loved to be safe and to have the opportunities they deserved, and I didn’t want to make the world worse.
Maybe I needed to shoot higher.
He walked around in a slow circle, shaking his head. “Well,” he said, finally coming to a stop with his hands on his hips, “we will have plenty to work with. Clearly, you do not know what to do with it. I will tell you.”
Dakota laughed. “We can discuss it, sure, but it’ll be our decision what our pack does.”
“Yes, but you know good ideas when you hear them. I have plenty. You will see.” He turned toward his pack and spread his arms. “We will show them, yes? Remind them what wolves do.”
There was a ripple through the other wolves, but one by one, they began to nod. The gray wolf howled.
Aleks would be fine. We could all move forward.
He started back to his pack, and I stopped him with a light hand on his back. “Aleks?”
“Hm?” He looked at me over his shoulder, brow arched.
“You and your pack are welcome to visit our home. No trouble, but I’d like to put this mess behind us. We can talk. Make plans.” And he could tell Cash himself that it was safe for him to go home.
I thought he might want to.
Aleks hummed again. “Yes, you need our help right away. Clearly.” He waved his long-fingered hand through the air like he was conducting a symphony for himself. “Fine, fine. We will come, and you will spend some of your pile of money on food for us.”
I sucked in my cheeks to keep from smiling, but I was losing that fight. He couldn’t know how much I liked the sound of that. “Of course.”
Aleks marched off, toward his pack, the gray wolf at his side, muttering incredulously about billionaire werewolves.
Maybe he was right—that wasn’t a thing that should exist. Now that we had so much, it was time to fix things where we could.
And maybe we’d make things a little easier for the next set of wolves who wanted to go to school, strike out on their own, and see the world.
With a soft sigh, Dakota leaned against my arm, and I shifted to wrap it around him.
“I don’t think the luck potion wore off,” I murmured, pressing a kiss against the top of his head.
Dakota flinched back, frowning up at me with a pucker between his brows. “Kosuke promised that it would.”
I chuckled. He probably had. Though I’d never met him and likely never would, I got the impression that Dakota’s great-great-grandfather was a man willing to bend the rules when he could get away with it, and when it came down to protecting my family, I couldn’t begrudge him for it.
I shook my head, squeezing him close. “It’s just hard to imagine things working out this well without a little luck on my side. Or maybe just you?”
Dakota’s cheeks flushed, and I pulled him close, oblivious to the fact that his clothes were rough against my bare skin. When we kissed, it didn’t matter; the whole world went right.