17. Chapter 17
Maren woke on Jace's chest somewhere on a county road north of Cedar Junction with the SUV going at a pace that wasn't hurrying anymore. The adrenaline came through her and gone. She had slept maybe twenty minutes. Her hands weren't shaking now.
His arm was still around her.
“How long,” she said.
“Half an hour.”
“The pack?”
“Declan's home. Tyler's stable. Rachel says he'll keep.”
“Good.”
Maren stayed where she was. She didn't close her eyes again. She watched the gray daylight come through the window on his far side and move across the dashboard in the shape of pine shadow.
“I didn't hesitate.”
Jace didn't ask what.
“When I hit him. With the pipe. I didn't hesitate?”
“Good.”
“I felt it, though. His head moving under the metal. I felt his skull give a little. I didn't stop.”
“No. You didn't.”
“Should I have?”
He took the question seriously. He didn't answer too fast. That was another thing about him.
“No. Not once you'd picked it up. The pipe picked up, you commit. You don't get to half-commit to a weapon.”
“Jace.”
“That's survival. That's strength. You kept three men from putting you into a truck. You gave me the two minutes I needed to be the one through the door.”
She pressed her forehead into his collarbone.
“Okay.”
“Maren.”
“Mm.”
“What did the truck make you think of?”
She took a second.
“Something I saw once. When I was seventeen.”
“Yeah.”
Can we get to that later? I don't want to hand it to you in the back seat of a car.
“Later. When you want.”
“Okay.”
Jace didn't push. He didn't follow up. The refrigerated truck sat in her chest next to the other thing in her chest that it had pulled up when she'd seen it back up to the loading dock, and she would take the pair of them out of her chest together one day and give them to him, and he would look at them and not look away. She understood that without being told.
Outside, pine. Pine. Pine. More pine. The gate ahead of them was her gate now.
The pack was on the compound porch when the SUV pulled through the gate.
Not all of them. Some of them. More than should have been.
Theo in front of the lodge door with his hands in his coat pockets.
Elena one step back on the porch with her arms crossed over her chest. A small cluster of wolves by the training yard whose faces she'd memorized over the time she'd been here.
None of them cheered. None of them called. None of them ran up.
They made space.
The SUV came across the clearing and stopped in front of the medical cabin and Jace got out first and opened her door for her. When she stepped down onto the packed snow of her new pack's compound the pack's reception of her arrived on her body like heat off a woodstove without a sound.
Elena came off the porch in three steps. She put both her hands over her own heart and pressed, eyes on Maren. Didn't hug her. Didn't speak. The gesture was older than language and Maren felt it in her sternum before she knew what it was.
A young wolf, pup-sized, came under Elena's elbow and crossed to Maren and nudged Maren's hand with his nose. Cold nose. Warm breath on her palm.
“Hey,” Maren said, very quiet.
The pup leaned into her a second and then walked back to a girl in a coat two sizes too big for her at the edge of the clearing.
Jace wasn't looking at her. He was looking at his pack the way an alpha looked at his pack after the pack had been on its feet for twelve hours waiting to find out if the woman in the SUV was coming back.
“Medical first,” he said.
“Okay.”
Rachel wrapped her wrists with the slow efficiency of a woman with years of experience.
She checked Maren's ribs. The right-side hip bruise from the ice was a color Maren was going to watch bloom across her skin for a week.
Two of her ribs on the left side were tender enough that Rachel said we'll watch it and tell me if it gets worse.
The wrists were the worst. The zip tie had taken skin.
“Can I work?”
“Depends on what you mean by work. You can walk. You can sit. You can eat. You can sleep. You can also do all of that tomorrow, which is what I'd recommend. If you see double, come back. If the ribs make breathing hurt more tomorrow than today, come back.”
“So I can be furniture.”
“Your alpha is on the step.”
“I know. I spotted him from the window.”
“Go have your serious discussion, then sleep.”
Maren took a second with that. Rachel didn't smile. Rachel's kind of woman didn't smile at things like this. She gave Maren a warm mug and opened the door.
Jace was at the bottom of the medical-cabin steps. He hadn't moved. His eyes were still doing what they'd been doing at the gate this morning.
She came down the two steps.
He still had that look in his eyes, the same one since he burst into the warehouse.
“You okay?”
“Wrapped wrists. Bruised ribs. Rachel cleared me.”
“Okay.”
She held the warm mug between them.
“I need to say a thing.”
“Okay.”
“You came through a steel door.”
“Of course I came for you. You're my mate. You're everything.”
Maren took a breath. She'd had the breath ready since somewhere on the road.
“I love you.”
His face reacted the same way it had the night at her porch door when she'd asked what's a mate, and he'd answered her without hedging. The color in his eyes warmed and stayed warmed. His hand came up to the side of her face.
He kissed her.
It wasn't a claiming kiss. It wasn't the kiss the man who'd come through a bay door in wolf form that morning could have had.
It was a present kiss, slow and warm, with his hand at her jaw and his thumb against her cheekbone and his forehead coming down to her forehead after, so she was looking at him up close and not thinking about any of the three years she'd run.
“You said it first,” he said.
“Somebody had to.”
“I was going to.”
“Mm.”
“I wanted you to get there on your own.”
“I know.”
She let her eyes fall closed against him. She stayed with her forehead against his a long moment.
“Come inside with me.”
“Yeah.”
Rhys was in the clearing when they came out of the medical cabin. He had his hands behind his back and a solemn face.
“Alpha.”
“Rhys.”
Rhys took one step closer and put a folded piece of paper into Jace's hand without unfolding it and without looking at Maren.
Jace didn't ask who it was from.
He looked at the folded paper. He looked at Maren.
“Give me twenty minutes.”
“Yeah.”
She touched the back of his hand. He brought her knuckles up to his mouth briefly, dropped them, and went.
She watched him cross the clearing toward the lodge.
Jace closed the office door behind him. He didn't sit. He opened the paper on his desk under the lamp.
Alpha.
Her name is Sera. I have been trying to get Garrett to release her for two years. He kept stalling. Kept adding conditions I couldn't meet. This month he finally agreed to her release if I gave him one thing.
I told myself no one would get hurt. I was wrong.
By the time you read this, I will have told him where Maren will be.
I was on the gate rota when the run was set.
I heard the route and the timing come across the link at four in the morning, the way every wolf on shift heard it, and I carried it south before your convoy rolled.
I know that's wrong too. I'm doing it anyway.
You would have fought for Sera. I understand that now. I should have come to you and let you try. I'm sorry for what it cost the pack. I'm not sorry for why.
As soon as Sera is released we are leaving and won't be coming back.
Roman.
Jace read it once. Read it twice.
The wolf inside him was on his feet and wanted fury. It wanted a hunt. It wanted the satisfaction of taking a betrayer's throat across the county road Roman was currently driving with his mate, paid for in Maren’s blood and Blackridge’s trust.
He thought about Maren in the back seat of a van headed east. He thought about Maren's hand going numb in a zip tie in a warehouse.
He thought about Kira with her broken ribs and Brennan with his broken face and Tyler whose medicine had landed three hours later than an eighteen-year-old on a fever clock could afford.
He thought about what he would have done for Maren, for her release, given the same set of conditions and the same two years of getting stalled.
He remembered Roman at the long table three nights ago. The half-step at his shoulder, the polite dip of the head, the quiet question. You would do anything for her, wouldn't you? And his own answer without a pause. Anything. He understood now that Roman had not been asking about Maren.
Roman had not come to him because Roman thought he knew what Jace would do.
He had watched Jace make pack-first calls for years. Trade routes Jace walked away from. Outside packs he'd refused to ally with. Every wolf in the pack knew Jace's math by now. The pack came first. Always.
Roman had taken that history into a cabin one night and sat with it and decided that if he asked Jace for help with Sera and Jace said no, he would have lost his last move. So Roman had decided to make the trade himself. Quietly. Without giving Jace the chance to say it.
The mole question he had set Declan onto after the warehouse burning was now answered. It was Roman. Helpful, hardworking, quiet Roman.
He would have done it.
He would have done it and he wouldn't have been sorry for why.
Kira, whom Declan had spent two days quietly turning over on Freya's order, had come back clean on every line he could pull. He'd gone to her himself and told her so. A woman they'd asked to put Maren on the snow and teach her to get back up was owed that much.
He didn't love Roman for doing it. He wasn't going to protect him. But he wasn't going to hunt him either, because hunting him meant taking Sera, and taking Sera meant taking from a man exactly what the man had traded everything to get. Jace's wolf knew the exact shape of that.
He folded the letter. Put it in the desk drawer. Closed it.
Went out to the yard to find Rhys.
“Not pursued. Not welcomed back. He's Thornwood's problem now.”
Rhys took a moment.
“Understood.”
Rhys dipped his head and went.
Theo found Jace on the lodge porch after dark.
“Garrett's reached out, alpha to alpha. He wants to bring Bastian to the southern marker. Says he'll close the retainer his pack has with him after the meet. He's good with setting it any time in the next three days.”
“Accepted?”
“Not yet. Waiting on you.”
Jace nodded.
Jace looked at the dark beyond the porch light. The clearing was quiet. Maren was in his cabin. He could feel her in his chest the way he was going to feel her in his chest for the rest of his life now.
“Accept. Soonest he can. Full core group. Maren at the meet this time.”
“Alpha.”
“He came for her. He's going to see her across a stone pillar.”
“Garrett's bringing Cliff to the close. Has to be.”
“I know. Garrett doesn't carry his own liabilities into closing meets.”
“Understood.”
Theo went.
Jace stood on the porch a while longer. His wolf was quieter than it had been in two days. Not done. Not going to be done until Bastian was a man behind him, not ahead of him. But it wasn't clawing anymore.
Tomorrow Brock.
Maren was already asleep when Jace came into his cabin.
She was on his bed in his t-shirt and her own sleep pants. Her hair was still damp from the shower she'd taken in his bathroom. Her wrapped wrists were on top of the blanket where she'd put them so she wouldn't roll onto them in the night.
He didn't get in beside her.
He pulled the chair from the corner to the window. Sat in it. Watched the tree line.
Somewhere on a road going south, Roman was driving with Sera in the passenger seat or waiting for Sera at a handoff she'd been held for across the Thornwood border for two years. Jace didn't know which. He didn't need to know.
On the other side of the clearing, Tyler was asleep with the Argentex drip in his arm and the color coming back to the skin under his bandages.
On the far side of a county marker Jace had been meeting alphas at for fifteen years, Brock Bastian was planning a conversation he thought he was going to walk away from.
Jace kept his eyes on the tree line.
Maren's breathing was slow and matched his.