Page 74 of Oakheart

But we were safe. Grant and his goons were dead. It’d been a hard night.

Who knew how things would be back in Idaho? Our home was very different than San Francisco, and Aleks might need...

Well, I just shouldn’t get too ahead of myself. Holding his hand shouldn’t be the priority.

Fuck if I wasn’t going to enjoy it now though.

CHAPTER 36

Aleks

Bodies,as it turned out, burned... grossly. There was a smell pervading the whole clearing that was all charred meat and bone, and frankly, I was glad I didn’t own the land, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to walk into the area again without smelling human offal.

Frankly, I wanted to get Cash and Viktor away from it as quickly as possible.

It was a little surprising. Of course I was going to take care of Cash. He was sweet and sensitive and not cut out for violence or its results—but he dealt with it well.

Better, in fact, than Viktor, who had apparently crept up on each of Grant’s goons hiding in the woods and slit their throats. He wasn’t heartbroken to have done it, or sad about the deaths or sorry to have taken lives—as he shouldn’t have been. They’d been monsters, to a man.

But he was clearly affected.

He was worried that we—or more specifically that I—would think of him differently for what he’d done. To some degree, he was right. I’d always known that the five years in government custody had changed him. Taught him things that I could neverunderstand, and chipped away at parts of him that should never be damaged in any person. I had known that he was capable of things I didn’t truly fathom, after what he’d been through. I’d just never seen it before.

I didn’t think of him differently, it was simply that I knew I’d been right and had the proof burning to a cinder in front of me, so there could no longer be doubt. Viktor had been through hell. But I’d proven to myself that I was willing to do whatever it took, too.

I hadn’t spared Grant because I’d loved him or not wanted to kill him. Killing simply wasn’t my immediate instinct. I had killed Marcus, or the nearest thing, and I was still glad he was dead. I would never be Jax Fyse, sitting on the ground staring into space with shock and horror that he’d killed someone who had forced him to kill or be killed. Heck, just watching the guy made me wish I’d gone through with it and torn Grant’s throat out, to spare him the stress of it. Not that I thought we would ever be best friends, but he seemed like a decent guy, and my asshole uncle had traumatized him.

Viktor, it turned out, had an instinct to kill people now. And in doing so, he’d protected the pack, and me, and even Fyse, in a way I hadn’t. Part of me wondered if he would make a better alpha than me.

For the first time, when he saw me looking at him, he didn’t seem to read my mind and assure me that no, he wasn’t alpha material and I was. He ducked his head, not meeting my eye, and his voice was barely audible when he asked, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I agreed. “I was just trying to decide which truck we should take home. I don’t want to split up and drive separate.”

His head snapped up and he looked at me, confusion in his eyes, but I could see the moment his mind snagged on the issue. “Grant’s. It’s from last year, and the other is practically made of rust, it’s so old.”

I nodded. “I can report him missing before we leave. Tell them we were on vacation in the city and he went for a walk one night and never came back to the house.”

Viktor glanced back at the fire before looking at me again, and there, that was the moment I could give him what he really needed. I waved a dismissive hand at the fire. “No need to report the lot of them gone. They don’t matter. They didn’t own any part of the pack, and if anyone ever asks, which they won’t, we can just say they moved on when my uncle went missing, because they were only there for him. It’s practically the truth. We’d have never let them be a part of the pack we need to build now.”

He nodded at that, breathing deep and taking that strange military stance he took sometimes, back straight as a board and hands pulled behind him. Like he was waiting for me to inspect him and tell him what he was doing right and wrong.

I wondered if he actually wanted that, or if the pose was just instinct. What he’d do if someone told him to stand straighter or polish his shoes better. Considering he was wearing the world’s oldest combat boots and none of us gave a single damn about polishing shoes, I hoped he would laugh.

Instead of any of that, though, I left one arm around Cash, tugging him along with me as I went to put my free arm around my brother and squeeze them both tight against me. “The future starts now. We go home, and we build the pack again. Better than before. Stronger. Smarter. No more rotted foundation.”

We waited till the next morning to report Grant missing.

First, we went back for one last night in the house Grant had borrowed, and instead of splitting up and going to threedifferent rooms there, we all went into the one Viktor and I’d been using, all sitting with our backs to the headboard and watching TV until we fell asleep just like that, all together, with the lights still on.

It was some show about some people hunting down supernatural creatures, and we all laughed about the inaccuracies together, almost... almost hysterical, at times. So many other emotions were going into those moments, it almost didn’t have anything to do with how no, silver bullets weren’t the only way to kill a wolf.

We all knew that from ugly firsthand experience that very night.

I froze when one of the wolves on the show was almost gutted by someone, and looked over at Cash, who didn’t seem even remotely affected by the gory scene, rolling his eyes at the lack of realism. He didn’t turn serious until he realized I was looking at him.

“Are you okay?” We both asked the question at the same time.

A moment later, his eyes widened. “Aleks. I’m fine. I promise. The others took good care of me. It’s only a”—he pulled up his shirt to show me the scar I’d already seen, and we both froze—“scar,” he finished, but now he sounded confused.