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“Have a drink with me,” I suggested gruffly.
Dagger nodded, and I grabbed the bottle, pouring him a glass of bourbon, too. He picked it up and took a sip, savoring the taste while he studied the amber liquid.
“I talked to Uma,” Dagger said.
I glanced at him.
“She feels like shit about the attack.”
“Why?”
Dagger shrugged. “Because she couldn’t help. Because they got through her barrier.”
I shook my head. “She was under attack, too. She said they got in through the help of a dark fae, didn’t she?”
Dagger dipped his head. When the teams had been here to fix everything up, Uma had brought in another one of her fae friends she knew from Vegas—Circe, who used to live here—and they’d gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb. They’d discussed magic and spells and all kinds of shit I knew nothing about and concluded that the only way they’d gotten in was because the spell had been countered by one of their own. Even the fae were in danger if half of them were willing to turn to dark magic. It had become a bigger problem over the past while, and it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, I was pretty damn sure. Fuck everyone who was willing to turn to darkness to get what they wanted rather than to earn it fair and square.
“She has nothing to feel bad about,” I said and threw back the rest of my drink before I poured more into my glass.
“You don’t have anything to feel like shit about, either, you know,” Dagger said, giving me a pointed look.
I snorted. “I’m the one person whoshouldfeel like shit about what happened. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would ever have happened.”
Dagger shook his head. “I know this is a thing, Brax, but you can’t beat yourself up for your father’s mistakes forever.”
“That piece of shit was never my dad,” I growled. “A real dad doesn’t do that to his family. Hauser was my father.”
Dagger nodded, and we lifted our glasses and clinked them together in silent tribute to the former alpha.
I wished he was still here so that I could ask him for advice. I needed to talk to him about how to handle everything, how to be a good alpha in the face of the adversity I’d brought to the pack.
How to deal with Kinley.
Then again, if he’d still been here, none of this would have happened. It was why I’d never been able to talk to him about it before. There hadn’t been anything to talk about until he’d died, and I’d become alpha.
Thank fuck he’d died of old age, and not because of all this bullshit. If my darkness and the promise of my torture and death had taken out Hauser, too, I would never have forgiven myself.
The front door opened, and Dagger and I froze. In the aftermath of the attack, we were still in fight mode.
“I thought I smelled a party,” Cal said, walking into the room.
Dagger and I both relaxed, and I groaned. Dagger rolled his eyes.
“Where the fuck have you been?” I asked.
Cal shrugged. “What do you care?” He sat down on the barstool and ran his hand through his long hair. It was slick and oily, like he hadn’t showered in days, and the stench of old alcohol clung to him.
“You smell like shit,” I said. He’d been out on a bender. A long one.
“Yeah, well, deal with it,” Cal said. “I’ll shower when I’m ready. Pour me a drink, why don’t you? Welcome a brother home.”
I clenched my jaw, but I poured him a drink. I wasn’t in the mood for his shit, but Cal was the kind of guy who only got worse if he knew that he was a pain. He went out of his way to make everyone’s life miserable, and that included mine. He would pick a fight with me just because he knew it wasn’t what I wanted.
“So, magic around this place is all fucked up,” Cal said, rocking back on my barstool, sipping his drink. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” I said flatly.
“An attack, huh?” Cal asked and laughed.
