Page 4 of Oakheart

I still had those two, tucked under my pillow in the bedroom I inhabited in Grant’s home.

Well, home, if it could be called a home.

It was just as much a ramshackle old hut as every other building in the pack town, just slightly bigger. Sometimes I worried that if I stepped wrong, my foot would go through a floorboard.

So this Cash? He was everything I’d ever hoped for and more. Not only was he going to build Mama the home she deserved, but it was going to allow her, me, and Leo to get a little distance from Grant and his goons. Let me sleep in a place where perhaps I could put my books on a shelf.

I wondered, if I asked very nicely, if he might build a shelf to put in my room.

His eyes were as bright as new spring leaves, and they seemed kind, if unfocused on the world around him.

In fact, they seemed all the kinder for that distance and lack of immediate focus.

Still, nothing was ever going to be accomplished with Grant breathing down everyone’s neck, so I stepped forward. “Come then. We should choose place for Mama’s home.”

“Aplace,” Grant said, in that grating way he had of constantly correcting my English. “You should chooseaplace.”

I waved him off because I didn’t care to have my language corrected by a man whose most impressive skill was crushing a beer can against his forehead without cutting himself. Usually. “Yes, yes. Mama will choose.”

A moment later, as though he could read my mind, Leo was helping me usher Mama and Cash out the door. Perhaps Leo did read my mind. Or more likely, we both wanted to be away from Grant and his hawk eyes, constantly searching for weakness.

We were brothers in every way that mattered, after all.

Mama simply smiled at him as he offered her an arm, and I ushered Cash along, despite the confusion in his clear green eyes. He was beautiful like that as well. Beautiful in all ways, truly.

Perhaps the most beautiful man I had ever seen, with his dark hair and sharp-cut jaw.

And the fact I spent more time noticing that than I had spent paying attention to the young women Grant had been shovingme at was yet another reason it was good we had left Russia, even if Grant wasn’t much kinder about people who didn’t conform to his beliefs.

He didn’t make me nearly as nervous as all of Russia.

“Behind the tree line is fine,” Mama said, giving me a look like I was being terribly silly, making a production out of this.

I just shook my head, stalking deliberately north and west, all the way out of the circle of houses that made up most of the pack village.

“Where are you going, zaychik?” Mama asked as I continued walking, past the edge of the place where the pack homes stopped, continuing into the woods.

“The clearing near the ridge,” Leo said, and there was approval in his voice. He knew where I was going, and what I meant by it.

Mama was frowning a little. “It’s not with the pack.”

“It is inside pack land,” I assured her. “And the government does not attack here. We do not need to all be together. You will be safe apart.”

“The ridge...” Cash murmured, then—well, that was the moment my breath left my body. He smiled, and his whole face transformed. He wasn’t just beautiful like that. He was ethereal. Perfect. The most gorgeous creature I had seen in all my years. He didn’t notice my astonishment and just continued on. “I always thought that little clearing there would be a great place for a house or three. It’s got such a stunning view, and it’s... quiet.”

Apart from the others, he meant, and he wasn’t wrong.

It wasn’t that I especially wanted to be apart from the others. Only Grant and his gang. And almost as much, away from the village itself, which seemed to me, a monument to ignorance and failure. The houses were on the verge of collapse, dingy and ugly and older than any living pack member. They weren’t suitablefor habitation at all. We should knock them down and use them for firewood next winter, as they were suited to nothing better.

Cash was off on another tangent already, though, and suddenly I wasn’t what was pressing him forward. No, he was surging ahead with surprising speed of his own. “I know just the spot. I’ll need... well, it’ll need to be leveled a bit. And I’ll need a lot of materials. Concrete and wood. I don’t think Grant is—” He cut off and turned to me with wide eyes, clearly worried that I would be offended at any small insult to the alpha, so I snorted and nodded.

“Grant is... what is English word? Cheap ass?” I knew the words quite well, but it always seemed to charm Americans when I said things like that, and sometimes they smiled and ignored things they would otherwise find offensive if I pretended there was more of a language barrier than there was.

There was no language barrier at all. I was largely fluent in English. It simply wasn’t my first language, so sometimes I’d get intricate twists of grammar wrong or words would escape me, particularly when I was angry or excited. And no matter how I’d tried as a teenager, I couldn’t seem to excise the accent I had. So I leaned into it and used it to my advantage instead.

Manipulative, probably, but also, it worked. I’d learned young that when a thing worked, you used it all you possibly could.

Cash gave a little snicker at my insulting Grant, and Leo muttered under his breath that “cheap ass” was an understatement. Mama just smiled. She, of all people, saw me. She knew what I was doing.