Page 2 of Oakheart

Evie bit her lip and nodded. Good. I didn’t think it was good for Uncle Tommy to stay holed up in his cabin, or for the only people he heard from to be Grant and his gang, who had an awful lot to say about the kind of woman Evie’s mother was.

Pa understood it better than them, anyway. He sure as fuck understood better than me. He said I ought not be mad at Mama for leaving back when—they’d talked it through and he had too many roots, and she’d wanted to burn those roots and salt the earth they grew in.

She’d asked me to come with her, but all I saw was her leaving. Her breaking us up. I’d been a little older than Evie when it happened, but I hadn’t understood it then either, and I still struggled to.

But Uncle Tommy didn’t need to go getting all bitter and talking shit on Evie’s ma. She didn’t need to hear that.

It was different anyway. My mama had walked away on her own two legs—a conscious choice. Evie’s ma had gone on a pack run one night, and she’d been stuck on four. Something in her had broken, and the wolf was easier than facing it.

That wasn’t a choice; it was a tragedy.

“I’ll tell Dad,” she promised, bouncing away on the balls of her feet.

I got back to Pa’s cabin, where I still lived and would continue to until I took a mate—which I was pretty damn sure wasn’tgoing to happen in a pack like this, where everyone looked at me sidelong and I was far from the alpha’s favorite person.

Even before I’d lived with humans, Reeve had seen me as a traitor. It was my friends who’d left the Wildwood pack, who’d embarrassed him in front of the rest of us. I’d known it was coming, and I hadn’t done a damn thing to stop it.

Pa was in the kitchen, his bad leg stretched out. The cooking pot was over the fire in the hearth, and it smelled damn good in there, so I didn’t know what he was looking at me so seriously for.

His frown drew me up short. I pushed the door shut with my heel, but only half managed to shrug out of my jacket. “Something the matter?”

“Alpha Grant wants to see you,” Pa said, his jaw set firm.

He didn’t like attention from the alpha any more than I did. It never led to anything good. It was Reeve that’d taken his leg, and I’d never been sad to see that fucker dead.

But the current alpha, Reeve’s brother, wasn’t any better.

I swallowed my nerves and met my father’s eye. The last thing I wanted was for him to see I was scared. He didn’t need to worry about me.

“He say what it was about?”

Pa shook his head. “Just wants you at the big house.”

I nodded. “All right. I’ll go now. I told Evie she could come for dinner with Uncle Tommy. That okay?”

Pa cracked a smile at that, and it made me hope this might not be so bad. I’d only been home a little while, and there were plenty of reasons Grant might want to talk to me that didn’t necessarily involve me getting my ass kicked.

Not that I’d ever been so lucky before.

“Good,” Pa said. “I’d have had you bring some over for them anyway. It’ll be nicer to have company.”

All I could do was nod again, because my heart was jumping right up into my throat. It pinched my words when I told him I’d be back, and I slipped out the door rather than linger and give myself away.

The big house was... all right, it was slightly bigger than the rest of our cabins. It had a couple more rooms, and a long kitchen table. A pack alpha had to make plans, after all. He kept some of the men close by to enforce his rules and make sure nobody got out of line.

It still wasn’t anything that impressive, and I was half expecting for him to ask me to build him something new, something better. Of course, asking me to make something for himself would mean Grant respected my craft, which wasn’t possible.

I walked up the rough wood porch and took a deep breath before I knocked on the door. Uncle Tommy opened it for me, smiling.

“There you are, Cash.” He clapped me on the shoulder and gave it a little shake. “Come in, come in.”

But when I stepped deeper into the room, Grant had a beady glint to his eyes that I didn’t like one bit. “Took you long enough.”

I dropped my gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry, alpha. I just got back and came right over.”

He narrowed his eyes. I could just say I’d gone for a run; there was no reason for me to explain to him or anybody else why I wanted Evie to know how to run and get damn good at it.

In the end, I didn’t need an excuse. Grant didn’t really give a damn.