by Jessica Sims
He shook his head, the amazing smile (and dimples) disappearing. “Left for new ground a few years ago and met with the St. James pack.”
An alpha joining an established pack? That couldn’t have gone smoothly. I replaced the card and snapped the wallet shut, then held it out to him. “So why’d you leave them?”
“A fire,” he said, boyish face serious once more. “All died but myself and Dan.”
I swallowed. “Dan?”
Oh no. Was my new, pretty alpha…gay?
And why was that disappointing? If he was gay, I’d be safe from his attentions, after all.
Another car door shut, and my eyes flicked to the handyman truck even as I reached for the shovel once more. A boy slid away from the passenger side, lanky and uncertain. He was tall, but that was all he had going for him. A bit too thin, with haunted eyes and pale hair. He gave me a faint smile as he moved to stand behind Jackson.
Ah. Not gay. Just had a kid with him in his pack and hadn’t left him behind. I understood that.
“Dan,” Jackson pronounced. “I brought him with me. He’s the only living member of the St. James pack.”
“Other than you,” I corrected.
“Other than me,” he repeated.
I waited for the smile to return, but it didn’t, and I felt a little disappointment. I liked that smile. It had put me at ease. Oh well. At least he wasn’t gay. For some reason that made me happy, even as it filled me with anxiety. I stared at them both, wondering what my pack would think of two more males to be added to it? Trina would be thrilled, but Holly was shy. She’d be nervous.
“So…what are you doing?” Jackson gestured at the fire behind me.
“Burning my underwear,” I replied.
Dan flushed and looked at the ground. Jackson just grinned. “Couldn’t wait for tomorrow?”
“Not when it was sopping wet with some other guy’s leavings, no.”
His eyebrows raised and he shifted on his feet, the tension returning to his body. I recognized the tension. Possessiveness. Strange to see it in someone I’d just met a few minutes ago, but I guessed that meant he was staying. And that I should explain exactly what had happened.
I handed the shovel to Dan. “Can you handle this? I’ll show Jackson what the other guy did to my kitchen.”
Dan nodded and took it immediately. He was clearly not an alpha. With my shovel in hand, he began poking at the fire and sending up a shower of sparks.
I glanced over at Jackson, then headed for the back door of the house. “Come with me.” I kept my face impassive as he followed behind me, and I held the door open. “Oh, and welcome to the Savage pack.”
“Nice place,” Jackson murmured as he entered the house.
I flushed in embarrassment at his words, seeing nothing but dirty laundry and even dirtier dishes piled everywhere. Dead flowers on every inch of table-top. God, I was a wreck. “We’ve been grieving,” I said sharply, more sharply than I’d anticipated. “I haven’t had time to keep house.”
He nodded, and placed his hand on one of the wooden beams scattered through the large, messy living room and I flushed uncomfortably. Perhaps he hadn’t been talking about the state of the house after all. As Jackson’s gaze moved over the furniture, I snatched up a dirty sock laying over the arm of a chair.
“Is it just you that lives here?” Jackson said in that mild voice, glancing around the house.
I knew what he was doing – mentally sizing up how many wolves were in the pack. My house was large, and my family had lived here for three generations. We had plenty of bedrooms, but not all of them were filled. “Just me right now,” I said lightly, keeping the control in my voice. “I sent the others away while I…recovered. Our alpha died recently, and it’s left us all in a turmoil.”
Me especially.
Jackson moved forward, his fingers brushing against a dried rose, hanging over the edge of a crystal vase. “I remember.” He glanced back at me and his face was so serious that it made me wonder if the boyish smile had just been my imagination. “You said someone had left you a message?”
I nodded, swallowing hard. The visual was still fresh in my mind and still creepy. I pushed ahead of him. “In here.”
He followed behind me as I headed into the kitchen, and stopped as I skirted the large drying puddle. “He’d been through my house, grabbed all my lingerie, and, well, made sweet love to it.” If I squinted hard, I could still see the heart drawn in the mess. “I think he was trying to tell me something.”
“Either that or he’s real lonely,” Jackson drawled.
My mouth twitched at that. “I think he wants my pack more than me.” I crossed my arms over my chest, so I wouldn’t rub my arms. “He doesn’t like that I told him no.”
Jackson nodded, then motioned for me. “I’ll get started on changing the locks, Ms. Savage.”
Ms. Savage. I wondered briefly if he thought I was the widow of the old alpha. That would be the natural thought. Sisters sometimes took the alpha female’s place, but that was a rarity. He must have imagined that I was grieving for more than just my alpha. I chose to let him think that for a while longer, but offered, “You can call me Alice, if you’ll be joining us.”
The smile returned, and with it, the dimples that fascinated me. “We’ll be staying,” he agreed. “Thank you, Alice.”
“As long as you won’t disrupt my pack, that is,” I stressed, trying to put my foot down. It was hard to judge a new alpha. I knew where to step with Cash, but this man was a stranger.
The smile disappeared again, and he nodded. “Of course.”
I nodded and exited, all too glad to get out of the room.
Chapter Four
Two hours later, I cleaned out Joanne’s old room, my thoughts astir, while Jackson worked on adding deadbolts to my front and back door and Dan put out the fire. Since we lived out in the country, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to burn trash. Maybe a little weird at three in the morning, but the neighbors thought we were weird anyhow.
And so I readied a room for the newest member of the pack. Partially because it kept me busy, and partially because it allowed me to hide from Jackson’s too-knowing gaze. Dan was a sweet, quiet boy from what I could tell. He dropped his gaze every time I looked at him – appropriate around a new alpha. But I didn’t know how to act around Jackson.
As if my thoughts had summoned him, Jackson strolled down the hall and into the room a moment later. A tool belt was slung low around his waist, and I found myself staring at it. It emphasized the lean lines of his hips and his ass in the jeans, and I flushed bright red when he caught me looking.
He didn’t say anything, though. Just glanced past me, at the sheets I’d tossed down onto the twin bed. “Dan will need to shower before he heads to bed,” Jackson said, with a nod at the window, where I could clearly see the wilting teenager dumping the ashes out of the barrel outside.
Poor kid did look dead-on-his-feet tired, but wasn’t complaining. I liked that about Dan. “He can sleep here. It’s not Joanne’s room any longer. She left us about six months ago.”
He nodded at me. “I’ll change the last set of locks while you get him comfortable.”
“Thank you,” I murmured, then glanced out the window one last time to see Dan trudging up the steps. “I’ll show him where the towels are.”
As Dan showered, I cleaned out Joanne’s old room for him, and I heard Jackson working on the doorknobs. He hummed to himself as he worked, a faint sound that I barely caught over the drum of the water in the shower.
“Thanks for taking us in, Ms. Savage,” Dan said a few minutes later, as I piled blankets into his pajama-clad arms. “It’s been a while since we ran with a pack. Been just myself and Jackson for about a year now.”
“Alice,” I corrected, but didn’t add anything to that. The kid was a goldmine of information, as long as I could keep him talking. “And I’m glad you’re here too.”
I wasn’t lying, either. So far I liked Dan a lot
. He had a honest, open face and a polite demeanor. Nothing like my rowdy boys, Spence and Len, who were constantly into mischief.
“Jackson likes you too,” Dan offered as he made the bed.
“Of course he does,” I retorted, heading for the door of the room. “He’s the alpha. He likes what I come with.”
“No, I mean he likes you.”
“Oh?” I lingered in the doorway a minute longer. “What makes you say that?”
He gave me a sweet, tired smile. “Because we’re still here.”
Interesting. Did that mean Jackson was choosy or was Dan just seeing things through rose-colored glasses? Who knew. I shut the door behind me so the kid could sleep. Jackson still worked on the front door, testing and jiggling the door handle. I moved behind him, arms crossed, and watched him work for a few minutes.
Jackson stopped working as I stood behind him. “It’s late,” he said, glancing up at me. “If you want to go to sleep, I’ll finish up here.”
Sleep? With a stranger changing the locks on my door? With another stranger asleep in the hall? With Roscoe still out there? Knowing he could break into my house again? With my pack scattered to the four winds? Sleep seemed the furthest thing from my mind. “It’s not that late.”
“It’s three in the morning.”
Okay, so it was a little late. I gave a small shrug. Now that it was just the two of us, my body was locking up into all kinds of tension.
What if Jackson wanted to assert his place in the pack…tonight? With me? Make his alpha-ness known? Claim the alpha female?
Uh oh.
I yawned really loudly. “Wow, it is pretty late,” I said, doing an about face.
He gave me a skeptical look. “I’ll shower after this if you leave me a towel. And then I’ll come to bed.”
Uh oh again. Of course he expected us to share a bed. If nothing else, we had to be united in front of the pack. That meant one bedroom, one couple, one set of leaders…an icy chill went down my spine. I couldn’t back down, though. Like it or not, this was what I had bought into.
So I said, “I’ll leave out a towel. Just come to bed when you’re ready.”
He turned back to the door, his humming now silent. That didn’t make me feel any better. I ran a hand through my messy hair and headed up the stairs, to my bedroom.
And found the biggest, thickest, most concealing pair of pajamas I owned and dressed in them. I even tucked a pair of mismatched slipper socks over my toes. If I’d had curlers and a clay facial, I’d have armed myself with those too.
If Jackson had come here expecting a sexy alpha female just begging for a shagging, he was in for a rude, rude awakening.
I bundled myself up and sat on the foot of the bed, waiting. Nerves jittered and cranked through my body, and I twitched in place, unable to relax. Eventually, Jackson was going to follow my scent and come up to bed…
And then what? I’d have to lay under him and submit to the will of the pack? How was that any different than being with Roscoe? Anger set my mouth hard, and I bit down on the long sleeve of my pajama top to keep from screaming my frustration. Why was it that humans were living in an enlightened age and werewolves were stuck in some sort of dark age pack mentality?
You were fine with that pack mentality as long as it made you the boss, my brain reminded me. It’s just now that you have to show throat to someone else, it’s a problem.
And that was the whole of it, really. Being an alpha was fine. But being the sister of an alpha had put me in a special situation and hadn’t prepared me for life with a regular alpha. It hadn’t prepared me to submit to being someone’s mate. That was the part I kept getting hung up on. I was a virgin. I didn’t know what to do in any sort of relationship, much less one as crucial as an alpha-to-alpha one.
Worst of all, I had a horrible thought. What if I took on Mr. Easygoing as an alpha and he was weak? What if Roscoe challenged us anyhow and then I ended up as his mate despite everything? I chewed on the cuff of my sleeve, anxious.
What was I going to do?
I smelled Jackson before he came up the stairs. Dan had an almost boyish scent, teased with sweat. Jackson’s scent was…different. It was musky, enticing, and altogether unfamiliar to me. It frightened the crap out of me, too. I mean, did he smell good because he was an alpha and it was messing with my head? I’d never noticed Cash smelling particularly amazing, but he was also my brother.
Jackson came up the stairs and paused at the door to my room. I’d left it open a crack because I knew he’d come up. But he waited there, and knocked.
“Come on in,” I said, my voice so low it was almost inaudible. Why did I care if Dan heard or not? He was all the way down and across the hall. But for some reason, the thought of him hearing me invite Jackson in made me feel…weird.
This was harder than I thought.
Jackson opened the door and slipped inside halfway. He hung out there, as if the doorway was just the place he wanted to be. “You sure you want me in?”
“You’re going to have to come in at some point,” I muttered, and gestured to my surroundings. “Take a seat. This is all yours now.”
His mouth twitched at my obvious displeasure, and he shut the door behind him, taking a few steps into the room and eyeing my things. Once again, laundry was piled everywhere (that’s what happens when you chase everyone away and fall into a two-week-long-bout of grief and depression) and my scent was appallingly strong. An antique dresser in the corner of the room was covered in photos and Jackson headed there, picking up one and glancing at it. It was a picture of me and Cash, arms around each other, laughing. It was from a few years ago, a vacation on the lake. We’d taken all the kids out for fishing and boating. They’d loved it. Cash had stayed out on the water until he’d caught the biggest fish, because that’s just how Cash was.
I felt a surge of grief so strong it nearly knocked me over. Instead, I put my pajama cuff back into my mouth and began to chew on it again.
Jackson looked at the picture, and then at me. “The old alpha?”
I nodded, unable to speak around the knot in my throat.
“He was young,” Jackson said, his voice soft. “Shame when they go so young.” There was a wealth of sadness in his voice, too. “I’m sorry.”
I said nothing.
He glanced around my room a bit more, and when his back was to me, I studied him. Jeans that were so worn that the fabric had gone soft, and holes were at the corners of the pockets, showing a flash of dark underwear underneath. T-shirt was clean, but clearly worn. I’d noticed the same with Dan - clean, but completely worn-out clothing. No one had been taking care of either of them for a while.
Jackson studied the pictures on the dresser for a moment longer, ignoring the bras hanging off of one of the wooden corners. “This your pack?” He gestured at one of the photos.
“Some of them,” I said. Joanne was in the picture, and she was long gone. So was Carlos. And Cash.
He looked back at me. “Mind if I ask where everyone is?”
I curled up tighter on the end of the bed. “I sent them away for a bit.” It was stupid of me, too. Scattering them and kicking them out of the house made them vulnerable to outsiders, like Roscoe. But I hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly for the past two weeks. I’d been wrapped up in burial arrangements for both Carlos and Cash, and trying to hold myself together…and failing. I waited for him to chastise me.
No words of admonishment came, though. Instead, he turned back to me and gave me that golden, too-knowing gaze. I felt the energy of his will in the air like an electric charge…but he wasn’t trying to dominate. More like he understood where I was coming from. “How about you tell me a bit about them?” He sat on the cedar trunk at the end of my bed, a little closer to me than I preferred, but everything else was covered with laundry.
I swallowed hard. It wasn’t easy for him to come in and try to make a niche for him and Dan. I knew it wasn’t, and I knew that my being a wreck was making everyt
hing harder. He was trying. I needed to try, too. So I sucked in a breath and steadied myself. “There’s five other than me. Len’s my beta. He’s twenty-two and full of himself. Currently spending the night in jail, I believe.” I studied the wet cuff of my pajama top as if it were the most fascinating thing ever. “He’s going to challenge you. He wants to be alpha.”
“And…you don’t want him to be alpha?”
I gave him a look. “You either have it or you don’t. Len doesn’t have it.”
“True enough,” he said with a chuckle. “I was just wondering if maybe he wasn’t to your liking.”
I snorted. “You think if Len had even half a shot of being alpha, I’d have put out a classified ad on my ass saying ‘Free to a good home’?”
Again, his mouth twitched at my sour humor. “Guess not. So watch out for Len. Got it.”
“There’s also Spence,” I told him. “Len’s brother and twenty years old. He won’t give you much trouble. He’s lazy. Good kid and smart, but lazy. He’d rather play video games all day than help out around the house.”
He nodded, not saying anything.
“Then there’s baby Eddie,” I said. “Holly has him right now. He’s going to be an alpha someday, but right now he’s only eight months old.”
He stilled. “A baby alpha? Was his…father an alpha?”
Delicate way of phrasing it. Most alphas tended to be bred from other alphas, so I could see him trying to put two and two together. “Yep.”
“Ah.” He looked troubled. “Is that everyone?”
“No,” I said with a sigh. “Then we have the girls.”
“Girls?” He looked surprised. “More than just you?”
“Yeah. There’s Holly, who is sixteen. Very shy and sweet. She’s taking over as the pack omega now that Carlos is gone.” The omega was the heart of the pack, the nurturer, the lover, the one everyone protected and looked after. Carlos had been our omega before because he’d been the dad. Now, Holly had slid into that omega place perfectly. “And there’s Trina, who’s thirteen. Carlos was her dad. She’s…taking it hard.”
