The living room was surprisingly quiet, and it took me a moment to notice Mark sprawled out on the couch, with an arm thrown over his eyes.
Marcy went to the far end and plopped down, not caring that she jostled his feet, but then I thought he probably didn’t care either, because all he did was readjust, lifting them up and dropping them on her lap.
Marcy made a tragic face, looking at his feet in her lap, and then up at him. She looked as if she were going to tell him to get up, but then she shook her head, pursed her lips, and looked at me. “Tell me you’re not really going to the store.”
“Ummm …” I took a quick look over my shoulder, seeing Mom rush about the kitchen, and fought back the feeling that I’d just made a really big mistake.
There was a sound, just on the edge of my hearing, and I glanced out the window. It sounded like voices and at first I thought it was just the two other pack members that had come with us from the diner. They’d stayed outside under Mark’s orders to watch the house. But then it got louder and there were more voices than just two.
There was a light knock at the door and then it swung open. “Jade,” Erika said, with a little nod. She stepped into the house, five other women trailed in behind her. “We need to talk to you.”
CHAPTER 12
~ AIDAN ~
The phone rang, and for a moment I felt relieved that something was interrupting me from loading bodies into the bed of Jared’s (or I guess it was now Beck’s) truck, because really, who wanted to handle dead bodies? But we needed to get rid of them, and bringing them back to Jeff, just as Jade had suggested last night, seemed like a good plan. We were hoping that two more dead bodies to contend with would give us a little extra time to devise and execute a solid plan for extracting the children. According to the team’s report, the kids weren’t in any immediate danger, but I didn’t want to risk waiting. Instead of being manipulative, Jeff was becoming aggressive, and we needed to get those kids out before we retaliated with our own attack. It was safer that way. Fewer distractions. Fewer innocent that could get hurt.
My first thought when I dug my phone out of my pocket was that it was Jade. Maybe she’d finished up with her mother, and she was calling to see where I was. My second thought was that it could be Tommy or Chris. I’d left them each messages, trying to get a feel on if or when they’d be coming back. You just never knew with my dad. It wouldn’t surprise me at all that he’d decide to take them back before I was ready to let them go. He was the master of reneging on a gift.
I cradled my phone in my palm, about to thumb the screen, when I read the caller display: Unknown. I stared at it for a moment, hesitated, frowned. I usually let unknown calls go to voicemail and right now I really didn’t have time to politely dismiss a telemarketer, but then with everything going on, I didn’t want to miss something important so, curious, I answered, “Hello?”
My greeting was answered by a frustrated sounding groan, and then a familiar and anxious voice said, “Where’s Jade?”
I laughed once — stunned. After last night and this morning, I really hadn’t expected this call. I thought more along the lines of cougars coming into town trying to fight their way to her. Not an anxious phone call. “If you were looking for Jade, you probably should have called her phone.”
“That’s who I was calling.” Jeff sounded strained, and it was then that I realized that I never removed the call forwarding from Jade’s phone last night. All her calls were still being routed to me.
I moved away from the truck and the guys, and headed for the back of the building where the picnic table was. I probably shouldn’t have. It couldn’t have looked good on my part. I was sure they had picked up the unease in my scent when I heard his voice, but I guessed not trusting the team had become sort of a habit in the last little while, and before I really realized I was doing it, I was sitting on top of the table, listening to Jeff’s breathing on the other end of the line.
I waited a beat for him to tell me what the hell he wanted, but he didn’t. Just more heavy breathing. With a huff, I asked, “What do you want, Jeff?”
There was a catch in Jeff’s voice. “I-I wanted to talk to my daughter and my wife.”
For a moment I was silent. He sounded … desperate? “Well we don’t always get what we want, do we?” I kept my tone casual, which took a crazy amount of effort. “You’re getting sloppy, Jeff, and sloppiness, well, that’s a sign of desperation. Honestly, I figured you’d be more worried about what we were doing with the two cougars you sent to get her this morning.”
“I didn’t …”
“Really?” I blurted, cutting him off. “Are you really going to try to tell me you didn’t send them? And I bet you’re going to deny filling Pam’s head full of lies about me beating up Jade, too.”
“I want my daughter home.” Jeff’s voice shook, and I couldn’t tell if it was from anger or nerves. “Give her back and I’ll make sure you never see or hear from the cougars again.”
“Is that the deal you were telling Luken about?” I bit out the question sharply, and didn’t wait for him to answer before I spat, “I’m not scared to fight for what I want and I will fight for it. For her. For this pack. For this town.”
I heard a breath and then utter silence. I pulled the phone away from my ear and glanced at the screen. He hung up. I gazed at it blankly for a moment. Desperate. He was desperate. I was sure of that. But then, if I had four pack members go missing in less than twenty-four hours, I’d probably be desperate, too.
What did that leave them with? The team had come back with a count of twenty, although they hadn’t been able to get close enough to be certain of that number. Even so, if we went with that number, it meant that the cougars were down to sixteen, seventeen including Jeff, which, I realized, put his pack back at the exact number that he’d given us to start with.
I wondered if those four had always been expendable. Had he figured he’s lose them all along, or was it just a lucky chance for us?
“Who was that?” Beck asked from behind me.
I pushed my hair back, and looked over my shoulder. “Jeff.”
Beck rounded the table and hopped up beside me. I could feel his eyes on me, watching, waiting. “In the diner you said blunt and open,” he reminded me after a few beats of silence. He looked very serious, I noticed, as I glanced over at him. “You told Jade it was better that way. Don’t you think it’s time to use that logic?”
I set my phone down slowly. “Beck …”
“No,” he said, raising up his hands as if they would ward off what I was going to say. “I don’t want to hear it. I can’t take any more excuses. Ray might have been an asshole, and yeah, I’m glad he’s gone, but at least when he ran this pack everything was out in the open.”
“Not everything,” I countered. “None of you knew anything about this little deal with Jeff.”
“Right.” His nostrils flared, and his gaze hardened. “Do you trust me?”
Did I? For the most part, I thought I did, at least to a certain extent. Jade trusted him. Hell, she trusted all of them and I knew she’d follow them blindly if they asked her to. But even if we’d just sort of cleared the air between us, and even if I thought I could trust him, there was still that small niggling voice chanting in the back of my head. You killed his father and his brother.
I sighed. “Beck, I don’t think …”
“I know exactly what you think,” he growled. “You think that we’re not going to be there when you need us. You think that if you tell us too much, we’ll find your weakness and use it against you, just like Jared did. Well, newsflash, Aidan, we all know your weakness, so it’s a little too late to try and keep that card close.”
And Jade wondered why love should have nothing to do with the alpha pair. It wasn’t something I liked to think about, not since I found her and especially not since I claimed her. Besides, it wasn’t as if I’d ever want to go back and change what had happened between us. But at times, like this one,
it was a struggle to look at everything and see what was best for the pack, and not just what was best for her.
I nodded very slowly. “You’re right. Everyone knows my weakness. It’s not really a secret. But what most don’t get is that she’s also what keeps me strong. She’s what keeps me fighting. I’ve killed for her and I’ll do it again. In a heartbeat.”
“Good.” The word was clipped, but when he continued, his voice was softer. “Look, you’re our alpha. The team and I will follow you, whether you want us to or not. I know you probably won’t believe this, but we’re glad it’s you we’re following. No one wanted to follow Ray. The pack, even us, we did it because we didn’t have a choice. You and Jade … you guys have turned that around. People actually want to follow you.” He smiled, chuckled, and shook his head as if the thought was a foreign one. “That’s something, Aidan. You didn’t know them before. Before they were just scared. Scared of Ray. Scared of us. You’ve changed that. You’ve created a pack based on respect and compassion. Do you have any idea how refreshing it is to see pack members get second chances? I should be dead right now.”
I shook my head. “You’re alive because of Jade, not me.”
Beck shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, but you agreed with her.”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did.” And I was really glad I’d agreed with her.
I looked down at my phone, tapped the screen. 9:42. I considered the phone call with Jeff, mostly because I didn’t know what to say about everything Beck had just unloaded. I’d made it clear to Jeff exactly where I stood, and I figured the clock was probably now ticking on the cougars’ current location. I wondered if he’d put that piece together yet. Did he realize that we knew where they were hiding? I thought that it could explain why he was taking risks that exposed him outright for what he really was, but still, I hoped that he didn’t. We needed to get in and get those kids, fast, before we lost them again.
An idea then struck me, and I glanced up at Beck. “Change of plans. We’re not bringing the dead back to Jeff, but I’ve got an idea on what to do with them.”
Beck didn’t say anything. He was probably waiting for me to tell him more, and for a moment, I couldn’t find the words. My brain was too jumbled, weeding through the new opportunity, trying to find the flaws and the risks, mapping out the details.
When I finally got it out, I’d expected Beck to have an objection, because my idea was rocky at best. But he didn’t object. He actually seemed excited about the new plan, which was a serious relief, and when I finished, he’d gone back to fill in the rest of the team, leaving me at the picnic table with my cellphone in hand. I needed to know if I’d have Tommy and Chris for this, and there was really only one person that could tell me that.
So I made the call, even though I seriously didn’t want to.
“Aidan.” His voice was as harsh as a whip slapping against my skin. “Not a good time, son.”
“Never is with you, Dad,” I said, my phone jammed in between my shoulder and ear as I climbed off the table and started to pace. “But you’re going to make time for this call.”
He made a noncommittal kind of noise that I knew meant perhaps. It was the noise he always made when I demanded his time just before he blew me off.
I sighed. “You’ll make time, Dad, or I’ll get Mom involved. I’m sure she’d be interested to hear that you called Tommy and Chris away this morning.”
“What do you need?” he said, rushed. “Make it quick.” He sounded mildly annoyed at me, most likely for pulling the Mom card, but I didn’t really care. It worked and that was all that mattered.
“Tommy and Chris back would be nice,” I said, and I maneuvered the phone from its place on my shoulder to my other ear. “If I remember your note correctly, it said they were mine until I was ready to give them back.”
“I didn’t need them here when I wrote the note,” he said. “That changed yesterday.”
I stopped pacing, and jammed a hand into my pocket. “So you weren’t even going to tell me?”
“Obviously I didn’t need to tell you, did I?”
“I thought you actually wanted me to succeed here.”
“I do want you to succeed.”
“Why’d you pull them out then?” I asked, trying to keep the emotion from my tone. It wasn’t working. I could hear the hurt and the anger in my voice, and I was sure he could hear it, too. “You know damn well what I’m facing here and you know I need them.”
“Because,” he said, “you’re not the only one with problems. I’ve got a couple rogue wolves here that need dealing with.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I blurted. “You called them away to deal with a couple rogues?”
“Pack before blood,” he said. “It’s always been that way. Always will be. It’s not personal.”
“Pack before blood,” I echoed. I closed my eyes because I felt his words slice through me, and even a deep breath didn’t set me right. How many times had he told me that? I couldn’t even begin to count. It was pack before blood at my graduation. Pack before blood when my aunt — his sister — died. He hadn’t shown at the funeral or at my graduation because it was always pack before blood with him. Always. The thing was, the pack hadn’t needed him then, but my mom and me, we’d needed him.
It was true. Pack was important, and in the end, I’d always pick what was best for the pack, just like the team had when it came to Jared. Except with my dad, he chose pack even when they didn’t need him. And he always would. It was his escape from uncomfortable situations.
“That’s never going to change, son,” he said. There was a beat of silence and when he spoke again, his tone was even harsher. “When Tommy shows up there have him escorted back to me. My enforcers need a word with him.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, and started to pace again. “What the hell did he do?”
“He refused to come home,” Dad said coolly. “Dropped Chris off at a gas station, said he was done. He turned his back on his pack when he was needed, and defied a direct order from me.”
“So you’re saying he refused to leave me to help you deal with your stupid rogues and you want to kill him for it.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
I laughed once. He meant it, and it left me wordless and stunned. Twenty years of service and my father was going to have Tommy killed because he’d decided to help me. There was no way I’d turn my back on him. Not when he was in shit because of me.
There was really only one thing to do, and that was to lay claim before my father could carry out his asinine execution plans, even if the idea of adding Tommy to my pack wasn’t one that gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. “Good thing you’re not his alpha anymore,” I said. “He didn’t have to obey you.”
“Aidan ...”
“Like you said, pack before blood,” I said, cutting him off. “He joined my team. He’s part of my pack. If you really want to take him back for your ridiculous prosecution, my mate and I will consider sitting down and discussing it with you and Mom, but I’ll tell you now, Jade has a soft spot for Tommy. She won’t be handing him over to you.” I wasn’t entirely sure if that was true, but I knew Jade, and I knew, just knew that she wouldn’t hand Tommy over whether she liked him or not.
“If you protect him, son, I’m done with you,” Dad said, without a trace of emotion. “You sure you want that?”
“Yeah, Dad, I do,” I said. “You were done with me years ago. What I do with Tommy won’t change that.” I sighed, shaking my head. “You take care of yourself, Dad.” And with that, I hung up. It wasn’t the first time he told me he was done with me, but right then I decided it would be the last. And surprisingly enough, I was okay with that.
I fired off a quick text to Tommy: Talked to my dad. Welcome to the Dog Mountain pack, buddy. We’ll talk when you get back. Pack is meeting at my place. Moving out soon.
And as I tucked my phone into my pocket, I found myself wondering if he would make it back befo
re we made our move on the cougars.
CHAPTER 13
~ JADE ~
The backyard was mostly deserted, with only Mark lurking nearby, watching me and the women who’d come with Erika. The air was crisp and clean and leaves covered the grass in a layer of reds and oranges and greens, with only a few stragglers left clinging to the trees. Erika kicked at them, tossing the ones by her into a small pile, while I waited a little impatiently for her to get to whatever it was that she needed to tell me.
I was feeling a little on edge. After they’d barged into the house, they’d made a point about making sure Aidan wasn’t home. Erika claimed that it was a woman’s thing they needed me for, and that they’d really prefer to talk to me without the male alpha and the team listening in, but my gut (and my inner-wolf) didn’t believe her. Hence, the reason for Mark’s lurking.
The other females hung around by her — all pack members. There was Whitney, a woman about my mother’s age, with silky blond hair that hung past her shoulders and warm, inviting blue eyes. There was Kristen and Stacy, sisters, both in their late twenties, only a year apart. They kept their gazes respectfully dropped, waiting patiently, with their hands clasped behind their backs. There was also Laura, who I didn’t know well. She was a newcomer to Dog Mountain, only been here for about nine months, and I thought it was probably the pack that had drawn her to our small town. And then there was Jo — short for ... well, I honestly didn’t know what it was short for, but I thought it must be short for something — standing right beside Erika. She was the only one who constantly held my gaze. Her eyes were light green, and they were laughing, kind eyes that made me feel like she held all the secrets of the world and she was dying to tell me them.
I shuffled my weight to my right foot, as I surveyed them. I was a bit surprised that none of the women Erika brought were our age, and I didn’t know what or if that meant anything. Erika typically clung to the pack members who were still in school, and it felt ... off that she was here without any of them.
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