Page 39 of Oakheart

But Pa would. He’d want to know if Aleks was my mate, or if that was the direction we were headed, and I didn’t know. He’d be happy for me, and I wasn’t sure there was any cause to be.

Still, he knew I got on with Katya’s family, and that Aleks was at Grant’s side.

“Maybe, but for you and Evie, it doesn’t matter,” Pa said. “At some point or another, things are going to turn violent, and the only way to keep you safe and clear of it is for you to go. You and Jax were friends, once. Warn him, and he’ll take the two of you in. Grant doesn’t have the means to go after a man like Jax if they’re prepared.”

“We can’t just leave everybody. I mean, if Grant’s attention is turned west?—”

We had a chance to figure things out here. I wouldn’t have to leave Aleks.

I didn’t want to leave any of his family, but he was . . . I just . . .

I got a swell of guilt in my chest, same as I’d felt when Jax and the others had left, but this was worse. If we ran away, Aleks and Viktor would think I didn’t believe in them, and that wasn’t true, I just didn’t want them to get hurt, and fighting? That didn’t come naturally to me. I could run and hide and bury myself in work, but I wasn’t a fighter.

I glanced at Evie across the table, and took in the firm set of her lips. She wasn’t scared; she was determined. And the idea that she wanted to leave?

Well, I wasn’t sending her out into the world on her own.

I sucked in a sharp breath, turning to Pa. Did he really mean this? He’d send us away to keep us safe, because the pack wasn’t anymore.

It’d never been. Not for us and not for him either.

“If things get better, you come back,” Pa said gently, the way he spoke when my world started spinning too fast. “If they don’t, you’re safe. It’s a good trade, and neither one of you are built for a fight the likes of which Grant’s looking for.”

Knowing Grant, he’d make Evie a prize for the most brutal fighter out there. I shivered.

Maybe Pa was right. Even if I’d been too scared to go before, hadn’t wanted to break from the pack when I’d apprenticed with the humans, to keep Evie safe, I’d do anything.

Pa scrubbed his hand over his stubble. “They’re having a planning session tonight—working out routes and who’s going to go. They’ll be busy for hours. I doubt they’ll even notice you’re gone till morning at the earliest.” He slid something across the table and when he pulled his hand back, I recognized the keys. I arched a brow at him.

“I lifted them off Tommy,” he said.

“You stole them?”

“So he doesn’t know we’re leaving?” Evie asked at the same time. Her voice was sharp, her brow furrowed. She was pissed at her father, and it was beyond justified.

Pa shrugged. “It’s what he’d want.”

“Then he could say so,” she snapped. “He could dosomethinginstead of stick his thumbs up his ass.”

Okay, she wasn’t wrong, but there was no way Evie learned language like that except by hanging around adults all the time. Even when she was hiding, how often had it been while she was listening to the rest of us run our mouths?

My pa smiled sadly. “Tommy’s a bit of a coward, but not you, clever girl.”

“Not me,” she agreed.

He tucked his finger under her chin and smiled proudly down at her.

My heart twisted. “Not to cut Tommy too much slack here, but he—he knows the stakes of standing up to the alpha. He saw what happened to you.”

Pa met my eye, and I could tell he wanted to say that it wasn’t my fault, but this wasn’t the time for that. I looked at Evie across the table.

“It’s not something you want to live with—if something happened to your dad. I know you’re mad at him, and I’m mad at him too. He should do the right thing, no matter what, but... I don’t want you to have to live with that either.”

Pa swallowed, but he didn’t say anything right then.

In the end, all this just meant he was right. If Tommy couldn’t change anything, and staying meant risking everything and everyone I cared about, we had to go and hope it really was the safest option.

I turned back to him. “So where’s your bag?”