Page 58 of Oakheart

Jax shook his head, his eyes widening briefly. He hadn’t even considered kicking me out. “You’re not taking anything we’re not all happy to give, Cash. I’m glad you’re here.”

Glad? For what?

I’d contributed nothing. I’d brought trouble to their door—okay, that trouble was coming anyway, and I’d warned them. Still, I didn’t deserve such easy acceptance, and I wasn’t sure what to say.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Jax took a deep breath, and it wasn’t until I saw him do it that I realized I’d never seen an alpha pull himself together like that. Grant was always thinking, always trying to manipulate a situation, but he’d never checked himself for someone else’s comfort that I knew of.

If Aleks ever took over Wildwood, I hoped he’d learn how to take those kinds of deep breaths too.

Jax offered me a very small smile, kind and inviting. “You know you can stay, right? If you want to join the Crescent pack?—”

I shook my head fast enough that it swam.

Wasn’t it a thought I’d had myself, that I could gather up everyone I loved and make this work? But it wasn’thome. It’d mean sacrifice, and it’d mean leaving people behind, tolerating that things in Wildwood were how they were and weren’t ever going to change.

I wasn’t ready to concede that yet.

“That’s very kind, but it’s—it’s not home. This city, I mean. Not that you’re not—well, everyone’s been great, but I don’t belong here. I belong?—”

Jax arched a brow at me. “With a pack that cast you out?”

I flinched, shrinking into the pillows behind me.

That stung. He wasn’t wrong, but I’d been thinking of it as Grant casting me out, not the pack as a whole. Was that because I’d been fooling myself, or simply because I’d gotten used to living at the edge of a pack that, by and large, didn’t want me?

“Cash,” he said, voice softened with kindness, “you don’t belong anywhere they’d let that happen to you.”

My jaw ached, and next thing I knew, I was sticking out my chin. “Nobody let anything happen to me. It just... happened.”

It was awful, and there was plenty of blame to go around for what’d happened to me, how Evie had been forced to hide, all ofit, but noteveryonedeserved that blame, and I wasn’t going to hear Jax condemn my whole pack with broad strokes.

He frowned at me like he was the saddest he’d ever been. “Grant attacked you. It was Grant, right?”

I swallowed hard and glanced away, but nodded.

He crossed his arms, but when I bit my lip, he shook himself and let his arms hang loose again. He—he really was trying to offer something good, not just intimidate me into doing what he wanted. It wasn’t Jax’s fault that every word of it stabbed into some tender part of me.

With another deep inhale, he leaned back and shook his head.

“It’s fine,” he said. “Whatever choice you make, it’ll be your own, and I’ll respect it. But there will always be a place for you with our pack if you want it.”

I searched his face, trying to gauge how much I could ask for, if there was safety here for everyone I loved. It was too much, and I didn’t think?—

I didn’t think it was in us for the packs to merge again. Aleks deserved the future he’d been promised, and there was no way the rest of the pack would want to come out here to the city. Not a chance.

“We could use someone like you,” he said with a smile.

I scoffed. “Oh yeah? What kind of guy is that?”

Jax was a better man than I remembered, and a better alpha than I would’ve guessed, but he didn’t know me any better than I knew him anymore.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, what do you do?”

“Build stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”