29. Cash
Cash
The scent of smoke when the pack had gotten home from their meeting with Grant had been overwhelming. Worry had twisted me up and had me crawling out of bed to peek my head out the door.
Everyone looked haggard and stunned, but they’d said that everyone was all right except Giselle.
She’d died.
There were some deaths worth celebrating. It was shocking, how much lighter I felt knowing that she was gone.
There were some assholes like Marcus who could chase atrocities on their own, but plenty more of Grant’s goons had relied on Giselle, a woman, to tell them their behavior was fine, to encourage wickedness.
The world was a better place when she wasn’t in it, so I slipped back into bed with a smile, sure that Evie was a little safer with Giselle dead.
I stayed in that room all the time.
Jax had surrendered this one space to me, and I didn’t mean to impose by leaving it.
Not only did I not fully trust another pack—I didn’t even trust my own—but I was afraid that .
. . that old feelings would resurface, and I’d feel safer and more at home with them than I did with my own pack, in my own home.
I didn’t want to give up that easily, no matter how kind they’d been.
But if Grant hadn’t found Evie, I would. And maybe Aleks could stay here. He could bring his family and my father and—and it was hard to imagine living in a city like this, but Aleks was charismatic enough to make it work.
I didn’t know if he’d want to come with me, when he could be alpha of the Wildwood pack, but clearly, I couldn’t go back. Grant wouldn’t allow it, and even if he would—
No, I wasn’t taking Evie back there.
So I was just as stuck as I’d ever been when there was a knock on my door early in the morning.
“Come in,” I called, already knowing it was Jax. It wasn’t his scent, but the way he knocked—soft and firm at once. He wasn’t hesitant, but he wasn’t shrinking either.
He opened the door and slipped inside. “How are you feeling this morning?”
His voice was soft, probably to keep from disturbing the others in a house full of wolves with supernatural hearing.
For me, speaking softly was just the norm.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m—ah, I’m feeling better. Mostly. I think? I know I’m taking up a bed—”
Jax shook his head, his eyes widening briefly. He hadn’t even considered kicking me out. “You’re not taking anything we’re not all happy to give, Cash. I’m glad you’re here.”
Glad? For what?
I’d contributed nothing. I’d brought trouble to their door—okay, that trouble was coming anyway, and I’d warned them. Still, I didn’t deserve such easy acceptance, and I wasn’t sure what to say.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Jax took a deep breath, and it wasn’t until I saw him do it that I realized I’d never seen an alpha pull himself together like that. Grant was always thinking, always trying to manipulate a situation, but he’d never checked himself for someone else’s comfort that I knew of.
If Aleks ever took over Wildwood, I hoped he’d learn how to take those kinds of deep breaths too.
Jax offered me a very small smile, kind and inviting. “You know you can stay, right? If you want to join the Crescent pack—”
I shook my head fast enough that it swam.
Wasn’t it a thought I’d had myself, that I could gather up everyone I loved and make this work? But it wasn’t home. It’d mean sacrifice, and it’d mean leaving people behind, tolerating that things in Wildwood were how they were and weren’t ever going to change.
I wasn’t ready to concede that yet.
“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—”
Jax arched a brow at me. “With a pack that cast you out?”
I flinched, shrinking into the pillows behind me.
That stung. He wasn’t wrong, but I’d been thinking of it as Grant casting me out, not the pack as a whole. Was that because I’d been fooling myself, or simply because I’d gotten used to living at the edge of a pack that, by and large, didn’t want me?
“Cash,” he said, voice softened with kindness, “you don’t belong anywhere they’d let that happen to you.”
My jaw ached, and next thing I knew, I was sticking out my chin. “Nobody let anything happen to me. It just . . . happened.”
It was awful, and there was plenty of blame to go around for what’d happened to me, how Evie had been forced to hide, all of it, but not everyone deserved that blame, and I wasn’t going to hear Jax condemn my whole pack with broad strokes.
He frowned at me like he was the saddest he’d ever been. “Grant attacked you. It was Grant, right?”
I swallowed hard and glanced away, but nodded.
He crossed his arms, but when I bit my lip, he shook himself and let his arms hang loose again. He—he really was trying to offer something good, not just intimidate me into doing what he wanted. It wasn’t Jax’s fault that every word of it stabbed into some tender part of me.
With another deep inhale, he leaned back and shook his head.
“It’s fine,” he said. “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.”
I searched his face, trying to gauge how much I could ask for, if there was safety here for everyone I loved. It was too much, and I didn’t think—
I didn’t think it was in us for the packs to merge again. Aleks deserved the future he’d been promised, and there was no way the rest of the pack would want to come out here to the city. Not a chance.
“We could use someone like you,” he said with a smile.
I scoffed. “Oh yeah? What kind of guy is that?”
Jax was a better man than I remembered, and a better alpha than I would’ve guessed, but he didn’t know me any better than I knew him anymore.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, what do you do?”
“Build stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
I shrugged, glancing at my knees. “Houses. Whatever.”
“So you’re a carpenter?”
“I apprenticed with one.”
His face lit up. “That’s great! Of course we could find something for you to do here. I mean—there’s always something to do around here, and to start, our place by the lake—”
I frowned. “That burnt last night.”
“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.”
I wrapped my arms around myself and brought my knees to my chest. I wasn’t anybody to be making choices for anyone else, and I wasn’t like my mother. I couldn’t just leave. I wouldn’t.
“I’ll . . . I’ll think about it.”
The weight of his gaze was too much then, and I wanted him to go but I didn’t have the heart to say it.
Jax, of course, didn’t need me to. He was a good alpha. He paid attention, and excused himself moments later.
I just hoped one day Wildwood would be lucky enough to have an alpha like that, and that I’d get to see it.