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?”
“I am,” I said, and before he could question more, I added, “Cash was my brother.”
His eyes widened. “Oh.”
“Yep,” I told him, my voice short. “You got yourself a bona-fide werewolf virgin.”
He stared at me. Rubbed his neck again. Glanced at the pictures, then back at me. “And the baby?”
“Cash’s kid. Joanne was the mom. She ran off because she wanted to be the alpha female in a pack and I wasn’t about to budge.” My smile was tight. “So now I get to raise Eddie as part of my pack.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.” My voice was flat. “I just thought you should know. I think Roscoe’s figured it out, too. That’s why he’s after me so hard. He wants me, and he wants my girls.”
“He won’t touch them while I have breath in my body,” Jackson said, and offered me his hand. “I promise you this.”
I’d been needing to hear those words. Relief settled on me like a blanket, and that awful tension I’d felt in my shoulders loosened for the first time in two weeks. With Cash at my side, we’d been a strong pair. But on my own, I hadn’t realized how vulnerable a female alpha was. It didn’t matter how strong I was; a male wolf would automatically be more dominant, could always beat me in a physical fight, which was how most dominance battles were fought. “Thank you.”
I took his hand and clasped mine in it. I had a strong handshake, but his was stronger. I took note of his hand, too, the thick calluses, the deep tan. His was a working man’s hands. I liked that.
He didn’t let go of my hand, though. He just kept clasping it and smiling at me in that friendly way that my head wasn’t sure I liked, but my body liked all too much. “When can I meet the others?”
“They’re staying with friends,” I said. “Human friends that don’t know about…the pack. Roscoe won’t know where to find them. I’ll text them in the morning and tell them to come for breakfast.”
“Breakfast’ll be here soon,” he told me, and gave my hand a squeeze. “You should get some sleep. You look exhausted.”
“I haven’t slept well in weeks,” I admitted. Just the thought of bed was a delicious torment. I wanted to crawl into it, and yet…I looked at Jackson. “Since you’re an unmated alpha…”
I let the words hang in the air. He knew the rest. He was an unmated alpha male, and I was an unmated alpha female. It’d be expected for us to share a room.
And to share a bed.
He gave my hand another squeeze and then got up. “Don’t you worry, Alice. You just get some sleep.” He got up and crossed the room to the overstuffed chair near the door, examined it, and then swept the dirty laundry onto the floor. “I’m going to shower, then I’ll sit here and rest, if that’s okay with you.”
I blinked and stared at him. He wasn’t going to force me to share his bed? I nearly trembled with relief…but it couldn’t last. “You know we have to—“
“I know,” he told me, raising a hand to stop me before I could continue. “We’ll worry about mate markings and claimings and stuff later. Not everything has to happen tonight. You’re exhausted and I’ve got a lot on my mind. So if it’s all okay with you, I’d like to sit in this nice, comfy chair here,” he pointed at my chair, “and relax. You sleep.”
His voice was soothing and compelling. I wanted to sleep, and not only because he was telling me to. “What about you?”
“I’ll stay up. Shower. Check stuff out. Make sure everything’s all right.” His voice dropped a bit lower, his tone husky. “You can trust me, Alice. You’re safe now.”
My heart thudded hard, and I hoped desperately that was the case.
Chapter Five
I woke up sometime after dawn, feeling curiously refreshed and at ease despite only a few hours of sleep. Even three hours of sleep was more than I’d gotten in the last two days. I glanced around my room but Jackson was nowhere to be seen. That made me feel a little better, I supposed. The thought of him leering at me while I slept was unnerving.