Page 13 of Oakheart

“Is me,” I said, employing the same language tactic as before. “I have no learning. Cash had to teach me so I would not be useless.”

“You’ve been doing great,” Cash immediately corrected me, and I had to work hard not to smile and give myself away. His voice, when he spoke again, was stronger, with no hint of the previous stammer. “It’s just that building a house from scratch takes time or money. If we don’t want to spend money, then ittakes longer. Stripping a whole tree and prepping it takes hours, and there’s no way to get around that, unless you want to spend thousands of dollars on lumber.”

Grant scrunched his nose at the very thought, which I could understand, because thousands of dollars was so much. Better to take time and build, I thought.

Finally, he huffed and moved over to the posts and concrete, and started demanding answers about how much it had taken, and whether there was any way to reduce that in the future, because money was too tight to be spending it on bags of concrete.

I breathed a sigh of relief, because it meant the danger had passed. Grant’s temper ran quick and hot, but once he calmed, he usually stayed that way.

For a moment, I imagined what I might have done if he hadn’t calmed. He couldn’t be allowed to hurt Cash. Me? I could take care of myself. He had never taken his temper out on Mama, and hadn’t ever been able to find a reason to be angry at Leo, who was simply too good at being happy and even better at slipping away into the shadows.

But Cash?

Well. We’d have to see what happened if I ever found him taking his anger out on sweet, innocent Cash.

CHAPTER 7

Cash

Aleks had shareda picnic lunch with me.

Obviously, Leo and his mother had been in on the whole thing. So it either didn’t mean what it seemed to mean when he’d passed me a piece of bread he’d buttered himself, or his family...approved... of me.

So why did the prospect of that make me so nervous? It wasn’t just that he was only a couple of years into adulthood, though it really was unfair that werewolves aged like they did. Yes, his face was clean-shaven, his skin impeccably smooth, but the planes of his face were sharp and handsome, and he’d packed on muscle in a way that was impossible to ignore.

He wasn’t beefy and wide as a door or anything, but every line of his body was perfectly sculpted.

I’d never been perfect like that. Maybe some wolves were just built different, or maybe there was something wrong with me, but Aleks? There wasn’t a single thing wrong with him. He was beautiful.

And the very last thing I ought to be doing as an ill-favored outsider was take any notice of the alpha’s heir.

See, my father hadn’t lost his leg in any old accident. He hadn’t been wrestling mountain lions or gotten caught in a bear trap.

If he had, all he would’ve had to do was wait. He’d have gotten out himself, or someone would’ve found him, and he’d have healed like any werewolf. But he hadn’t.

I’d been sixteen when my friends had left the Wildwood pack and gone west. They’d challenged Reeve, Grant’s brother and the alpha before him, and won their freedom.

When Jax had beaten Reeve into the dirt, he’d thought I would go with them, but I hadn’t. I still wasn’t sure if that made me a coward, but Pa and Uncle Tommy weren’t going anywhere, and I hadn’t wanted to leave them behind, especially not after Ma left.

It wasn’t until Evie was born that I stopped questioning whether or not I’d made the right call, because there was nothing in this world I wouldn’t do for that girl.

But Jax had left Reeve with a heap load of rage and nowhere to put it. He found out I’d known all along that the challenge was coming, and when he’d screamed in my face that I was a traitor, it’d come with a punch so hard that he’d broken my jaw.

He’d snarled that I should come to the big house that evening, while I’d still been in the dirt in a blinding amount of pain. Shamed and broken, I’d dragged myself back to Pa’s house with tears in my eyes.

He’d gone to Reeve instead. He’d promised he would take care of everything, but he hadn’t come home that night. Not at all.

I knew, because I’d stayed up all night with my back to the far wall, watching the door, my arms wrapped around my legs, shivering while my whole face ached. It was the alpha who’d hurt me, so it hadn’t healed normally—not fast like I was used to. Years later, my jaw still clicked when I opened my mouth wide.

That night I’d spent alone and scared, I’d known in my gut that something terrible had happened, even before Uncle Tommy opened the door with Pa’s arm around his shoulders.

Pa couldn’t walk on his own, because his leg had been missing. Everything from above his knee down was just gone, and I’d stared in dumbfounded shock as he’d smiled at me when Uncle Tommy helped him into a seat at the kitchen table and asked what I wanted for breakfast.

We’d never spoken about it directly, but I knew Reeve had taken it, and he’d done it because ofme.

Would it have been worse if I’d run? Maybe he would’ve killed my pa.

Or maybe Pa wouldn’t have had to save my sorry ass.