35. Cash
Cash
This time, when the Crescent wolves went to meet the Wildwood pack, I wasn’t alone in the house.
They’d left Maia behind too.
The last time they’d met, she’d nearly died, locked in the pantry in a burning building.
I still thought she would have gone, if Seth hadn’t looked at her with a pucker between his eyebrows and said in a voice so gentle it was almost heartbreaking, “Please. I need to know you’re safe.”
She’d softened for him, and now, she was stuck in the giant house with me.
We were sitting on one arm of the oversized couch, and she shouldn’t stop shaking her leg.
It was driving me crazy, but that was only because I felt the buzzing in the world around us too, the danger and the agony of not knowing what was happening to the people we loved.
They’d left twenty minutes ago.
Surely, Jax wasn’t going to draw this out.
Maia sighed and fidgeted with the fabric bunched at the bend of her knee.
I wasn’t sure what to say to her, and for once, she was quiet too, so the feeling had to be mutual.
I chewed on my lip and shoved my hands beneath my thighs. Aleks said he would take care of this, and I had to trust him and Viktor, but did that mean I had to sit there like a lump?
Surely he’d work with Jax. They were aligned, at least in wanting Grant gone, and neither one of them was anything close to unreasonable. Aleks might like making Jax squirm, but . . . well, Jax’s life was perfect. Somebody needed to give him a little trouble, right?
I sucked in a deep breath through my nose, and Maia looked at me from the corner of her eyes.
“Do you think we should go?” I asked.
She grimaced. Seth had specifically asked her to stay behind, but she clearly didn’t want to.
“We can be safe about it,” I said. “Just drive there, see what’s going on. Maybe it’s already over and the packs are just . . . hashing things out in the aftermath?”
“Okay,” she said. “If it’s not safe, we’ll just come back, but it’s not doing anyone any good for us to just sit here waiting, and Seth—I mean, I’m sure he’d text if he has thumbs and his phone’s nearby but if there was a fight, he shifted. So . . . okay, yeah, let’s do it.”
Her car was a small, silver, zippy little thing with comfortable seats. When we got in, she said I could turn on the seat warmer if I wanted.
A seat warmer.
I flicked the button she’d glanced at, and it only took a minute before warmth radiated on down my thighs and lower back. Well, that was just delightful.
Shifting till I was comfortable, I tried to calm down and convince myself that everything would be all right.
There was no reason for this to go wrong. Grant wasn’t that smart. Not against Jax and Viktor and Aleks together.
And if it came down to it, I had no doubt that Dakota would blow him up from the inside just to see the matter finished.
Still, my heart was pounding until we got to the place. I could still smell smoke clinging to the ground around where their house had burnt down, and there was blood in the air.
When I got out of the car, I realized it wasn’t just old smoke lingering in the air, but the thick meaty smell of burning bodies.
Many of them.
I wandered around the car to Maia’s side, stunned to watch as Seth and Aleks carried one out of the woods and added it to the pile.
Grant’s enforcers, gone.
Maia gasped, and Seth looked up, grimacing. Clearly, this was the last thing in the world he ever wanted her to see, but he stepped away from the burning bodies, toward her, and she ran straight into his arms.
Aleks looked at me, and while he wore a tiny frown, he wasn’t worried about me the way Seth worried about Maia.
We’d both seen worse than this, and from the looks of those bodies and the makeup of the group Grant had brought with him, this scene that should be nightmarish? Yeah, it was nothing but a relief.
I met Aleks where he was and slipped my arms around his waist. His came tight around my shoulders and he squeezed me close.
“Marcus is dead,” he muttered against my temple.
“Good.” He flinched, just a little, so I leaned back to meet his eye. “I thought for years he’d kill me. Grant was smart enough to realize he could use me, but I . . . rubbed Marcus the wrong way.”
Aleks wrinkled his nose. “Mm, do not rub Marcus at all.”
I snorted. Maybe it shouldn’t have been funny, but what was there to do about this whole mess except laugh?
“I’m not sorry he’s dead.”
“Good, because I sort of killed him. He sort of killed himself, but it was with my arm, so—”
Okay, that didn’t make a lot of sense, but I also wouldn’t have given a damn if Aleks had killed him outright. Some people deserved worse, and I hoped however he’d gone, it’d been a fraction as torturous as the pain he’d inflicted on others.
“And Grant?”
“I beat him, but Jax finished him.”
I let out a sigh and let myself sink to rest my head against his chest. This way, I was buried and half hidden in his arms.
“I’m glad.”
Glad that Grant was dead, yes, but also glad that Aleks hadn’t had to do this alone. Grant was a piece of shit, but he was still Aleks’s uncle, and that wasn’t a weight I wanted him to have to carry.
“The rest?” I asked.
“That was Viktor.”
“Damn.” I knew he was capable, but I’d forgotten how dangerous he was.
Of course, he’d never been a danger to me, but what the hell had he been through that left him capable of this much carnage?
The man in question had just heaved a body off his shoulder onto the burn pile. He froze, and I saw him frowning at us when I peeked over Aleks’s arm.
He took a few steps toward us.
“They couldn’t come home with us.” Viktor glanced between me and Aleks, but his eyes settled on me, and I lifted my head enough to meet his gaze squarely.
“I know.”
Somehow, I didn’t think that I was the one he was really talking to, though. I just didn’t know if he was explaining himself to Aleks, or to the Crescent wolves listening in.
“They would have caused us problems.”
“I know.”
“And they are the men who—” Viktor clenched his jaw.
There were some crimes so vile they were unforgivable, and some evils you could only tear out by the root.
Aleks had gone tense against me, and I thought all of us, our whole pack, would be reckoning with the trauma we’d endured for decades to come.
I only hoped it wouldn’t take generations for us to recover and do better, but now that we had a chance, I knew each one of us standing there and many we’d left behind would fight like hell to make the most of it.
“Viktor,” I said, steeling myself even when my voice broke.
It wasn’t grief for these men that tripped me up, but for the lives we could have had without them.
My family might have stayed together, people wouldn’t have been hurt, the girls would’ve been safe.
The most vulnerable in our pack could’ve grown up without fear, and now that it was finished, the ache of what we’d lived through was so profound it stole my breath.
“When the foundation is rotten, you rip out the bad wood and replace it. They were bad men and worse leaders. You did right, and you are hardly the first to see what they deserved. With them gone, it signals to the pack that what’s coming next won’t be anything like what came before. ”
If their deaths brought some peace to their victims and the people Grant had used, that mattered more than their pitiful lives.
Viktor took a deep breath through his nose, nodded once, and turned to keep working alone. Seth was talking to Maia, and the Crescent wolves as a whole looked a bit lost.
Aleks buried his nose against my shoulder, nuzzling in, and I’d need a minute or two before I was willing to let him out of my arms. Then we’d help, but first, I needed this.
“You were hurt,” I mumbled against his temple. His shirt was torn open in the middle, blood soaking the ratty edges, but he seemed to have healed already. Either it’d been someone like Marcus, or Aleks had already let go of Grant. Whatever the case, I was just glad he was in one piece.
I felt him shrug. “Not so bad. I healed. The witchwolf helped.”
Reflexively, my arms tightened around him. I looked around for Dakota to find him leaning against Jax, sitting on the ground. Jax looked a little shellshocked, but they were both fine.
I owed them more than I could repay, but given how keen I was to get home and see Evie and Pa, I didn’t know that I’d get the chance. At least not right off.
Maybe one day, I’d figure out what I could do for a billionaire and the most powerful creature I’d ever met.
I sighed, and we stood there in silence for a while, swaying and holding each other.
Then Aleks pulled back. A rare seriousness furrowed his brow. “Do you think I’m ready for this?”
I smiled. “Yeah, I do. But I also think it doesn’t matter so much if you’re not.
We’ll figure it out. Grant and Reeve thought you could only lead from above, with fear, coercion, and pain.
We can get more done together. Sure, you’ll be alpha, but you aren’t the only person responsible for shaping our pack.
We’ll all have to put in work to make it better.
And, I don’t know, you’re pretty charismatic. Inspiring, even.”
Aleks broke out in a wide grin. “Inspiring, hm?” He leaned in with a teasing growl, nipping his teeth just beneath the corner of my jaw. “What is it I inspire?”
“Not here.” I shoved his chest lightly—not hard enough to push him away, because holy fuck, I had him. I didn’t have to wonder what we meant to each other. There’d be no more holding myself apart for his good and mine.
I didn’t realize how much I wanted to hold his hand until it became a possibility, and then the idea of sitting close to him, hugging him like this, getting to smile at him without worrying what everyone else was thinking—it was all I could think about.
I wanted to get home, yes to see Evie safe and to take care of our pack, but also so we could start working toward the future where all that was possible.
Was it really? I looked up into his bright blue eyes, and it certainly felt like we could do more.
But we were safe. Grant and his goons were dead. It’d been a hard night.
Who knew how things would be back in Idaho? Our home was very different than San Francisco, and Aleks might need . . .
Well, I just shouldn’t get too ahead of myself. Holding his hand shouldn’t be the priority.
Fuck if I wasn’t going to enjoy it now though.