The dubious look on her face remained. “You’re…sure? My sister had issues with wolf packs recently and I know a lot of them are not…” she hesitated, clearly trying to figure out the right words without offending me. “A lot of them have their own set of rules that they play by.”
Yeah, I could guess. “Jackson’s perfect,” I assured her. “You don’t have to worry.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I am.”
Relief made her shoulders sag, and she put a hand to her brow. “Oh, thank god. I thought I’d somehow hooked you up with a monster.” Panic crossed her face. “We’d better get back to the table before Beau attacks him.”
Aw, that was cute. She thought her were-kitty could beat up on my alpha mate. My lips twitched. “All right.”
We returned to the table a moment later to find the men engaged in a stare-down.
“Everything’s okay,” she blurted as we moved back to the table.
Both men turned and looked at me.
“This,” I said, waving a hand at my face and neck, “was not Jackson, but another alpha that thought he could come in and take over. I promise you that Jackson’s harmless.”
“Harmless?” Jackson cocked an eyebrow at me, a grin playing on his face. “You’re determined to ruin my street cred, aren’t you?”
I sat down, patting his knee. “You’re a plumber. You have no street cred.”
He snorted and his hand moved to the back of my chair, pulling me closer automatically.
Beau and Bathsheba exchanged another meaningful look, and Bath sat down again, still looking utterly deflated with relief. “Sorry if we had a moment of panic,” she explained. “My sister’s werewolf and, well, we recently had a not-so-great run in with another pack. You’ll forgive us if we jump to conclusions.”
“Easy enough to do,” Jackson said mildly. “Your sister’s Sara, right? She’s with the big were-bear guy? I did a job for them a few weeks ago.”
“That’s her,” Bathsheba said, brightening. “You know them?”
He nodded. “She’s a sweet little thing.”
I scowled, feeling an edge of possessiveness. My hand went to his thigh and I dug my nails in. “Is she, now?”
Jackson looked over at me and wiggled his eyebrows. “Don’t you worry none, Alice. I like my girls with a bit of attitude.”
“Good,” I snapped. “Because you’re mine.”
“Am I?” The hint of pleasure in his voice made it sound like foreplay.
I blushed, and stole a look over at Beau and Bathsheba.
“Well,” Bathsheba said, and her voice had a prim tone to it that made her husband grin. “Now that I know you’re not a monster, how about we talk about what it would take to get the Savage-Wilder pack to join the Alliance?”
Chapter Ten
Two hours and one dinner later, I wasn’t convinced. Beau preached unity and working together to make life better for all shifters, but I was a skeptic. Why did a wolf pack need an Alliance? We were our own island. We banded together because we had each other. We looked out for each other. Between Jackson and I, there was nothing that our pack would need that we couldn’t provide.
To make matters worse, Jackson was clearly enthusiastic about joining the Alliance. He listened to all of Beau’s plans with interest, and even offered suggestions of his own that would help bring in more wolves and make them feel at ease.
So now I was being the downer and the party pooper. Figured.
Jackson had deferred to me, though. He’d told Bathsheba and Beau that we wouldn’t move forward with the Alliance unless we were both firmly on board. They’d been disappointed but understanding. I got the sense that Jackson was a bit disappointed, too, but he’d said nothing of the sort.
And now we were driving back to the Savage house, an uncomfortable silence in the truck as I drove. I glanced over at him. “You think I’m making a mistake, don’t you? Saying no to the Alliance?”
He regarded me. “I would never tell you that you’re making a mistake, Alice. The pack has been yours for a lot longer than it’s been mine. But I do think it’d be good for all of us.”
“Why? We don’t need outsiders.” It was what my father - and Cash - had firmly believed. I’d grown up with the knowledge that Savages took care of their own, and that was that.
“You needed me,” Jackson said easily.
I shot him an angry look, but he was gazing out the window of the passenger side of the truck. “That so?”
“Not saying it to start a fight, Alice,” Jackson said. “Just pointing it out.”
I glared out the window, my hands clenched tight on the steering wheel. I didn’t like being reminded that I’d been forced to crawl to an outsider for protection.
“My old pack,” Jackson began softly. “They died in a fire. Did Dan tell you that?”
I swallowed hard at the pain in his voice. “No. No one told me.”
“Yeah. My father’s the alpha of a pack in the northeast, so I couldn’t stay there. Didn’t want to challenge my dad for dominance and all, you know? So eventually an alpha has to move on. I went to the Carolinas and hooked up with the St. James pack. Three men, two women, and Dan was the youngest. They were kind of poor. Actually, ‘kind of’ is being nice about it. They all lived in this big ramshackle house that would have probably been condemned if anyone would have reported them to the city. It was falling down around their ears, but it was out in the country and they were happy. Even though I was only about twenty-four or so when I joined up with them, I was the alpha. The others were all older than me except for Dan, but I was the one with the best job. My dad had taught me to be a plumber, and that was fancy to them.” His mouth twisted a bit. “They were a bit of a mess, looking back, but the nicest people. I loved being there with them. I was there for five years.”
Two females. I wanted to ask if one of them had been his alpha female. If they’d been romantic together. If she was pretty.
“I mentioned the house was a mess, right? It was. Something was always going wrong with it - a circuit would short, or the air conditioner would break down, something would overheat, you name it. We joked that I was a great plumber but a piss-poor electrician, and that the next person let into the pack would have to know how to rig wiring to keep the old place going.” He chuckled, but the sound was pained.
I said nothing, a knot in my throat at the ache in his words. It reminded me of the losses I’d gone through. Of losing my father and mother, and then Cash just a few years later. Losing Carlos, my omega. Our little pack had been hit and hit again. I knew what it was like to grieve.
“Dan liked to run off in the middle of the night and change into his wolf. Just for fun, you know? Kid sneaking out and being a kid. He had a lot more energy than the rest of them, being a lot younger. I figured it out one night and thought I’d sneak up on him in the woods. Scare some sense into him. Which, it did, I suppose. But I also didn’t realize it’d save our lives. We got back to the house in the middle of the night only to see the entire thing had gone up in flames. Everyone inside was still asleep.”
I glanced over and watched him out of the corner of my eye. “I’m sorry.”
He ran a hand down his face. “They went peacefully. Or so I’m told. Fire department said the smoke inhalation probably got them before the flames did. And it was faulty wiring in the old house, so no one was to blame. But it left Dan an orphan and me without a pack. Or a home. And after that, we couldn’t stay there, so we left. Headed across the south. Been wandering for, what, ten, twelve months now.” He shrugged. “It’s lonely when you have no one. You don’t realize how dependent you are on having the support of a pack until you have no one. Then you realize just how alone you are. That’s why I want the Alliance for your pack - for our pack. So they never have to go through what Dan and I did. So they’re never alone, despite whatever comes their way. So they always have someone to fall back on.”