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 everything 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.”
“Shit. Three girls and everyone in the pack so young.” He rubbed his neck. “No wonder you wanted protection.”
I nodded. There was something in shifter genes that made females - especially female werewolves - a rarity. Maybe the pack dynamic contributed to things, but most times you’d find one female in a pack - the alpha. We’d had four, up until Joanne had packed up her things and left. Both Holly and Trina were young and extremely vulnerable, and I didn’t want Roscoe getting his paws on them.
It was one reason why I’d separated myself from my pack — to make sure that if anyone got pounced by Roscoe, it was me.
“And now we have you and Dan,” I said.
“Dan’s a good kid,” he told me. “His family all perished in the fire and it left him with me. We’re a team, now. I won’t go anywhere he’s not welcome.”
I understood that thinking. “He beta?”
“For my pack of two? Yeah.”
“That’s the only thing I could think would be a problem,” I answered honestly. “Len might not want to give up his position as second. Everyone else is close to his age and not dominant in the slightest.”
He nodded, as if considering things, and his gaze went back to the pictures on my dresser. “I’m very sorry about your mate. I know this must be hard for you.”
I blinked. Mate? Then I sucked in a breath as I looked at him. He really didn’t know what he was getting into, did he? He thought he was coming in to comfort the grieving widow and didn’t know how to proceed. Pack law dictated that if we merged our packs, he’d rise to the top and I’d basically be his property, of a sort. He probably even thought baby Eddie was mine.
“Um.” I said, feeling heat steal up my cheeks. “You should know a few things.”
“Uh oh.” He gave me a friendly grin, his attitude so smooth and easy I almost smiled back at him. “Nothing good ever comes out of that saying.”
I hugged my legs closer to my chest, watching his face. “Cash wasn’t my mate.”
A wrinkle formed between his brown brows. If anything, it made him look even more gorgeous. Totally unfair. “You’re not the alpha?”
