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“She’s what?” Sam blurted out. I automatically grabbed his shoulder out of habit. Yet despite Sam’s surprise, his dominance remained calm.
“She didn’t tell you?” Leif asked. He looked perplexed.
I was really fucking confused right now. “We thought Damon owned the farm. Didn’t he inherit it from his grandfather?”
Leif looked at Damon, who had a small smile on his face that he was trying to hide as he rubbed his jaw. I figured he wanted us to know Lexie was financially independent. A holdover from a time pre-Crash, when money still mattered.
“Damon divided up the farm when he inherited it,” Leif explained. “Even the original workers hold shares now, but the five of us together form a majority stake.”
Wow. Color me impressed. It was a rare man who took a windfall inheritance and divided it up amongst his friends and workers.
Damon looked embarrassed now that we were all looking at him in awe and was eyeing the table as if there was something fascinating written on it.
Even Cary looked astonished, and was studying Damon as if he was a strange creature he’d never come across before.
Max sighed heavily. “Enough of the family drama. We need Lexie, Maia and Ava. This concerns all of them.”
His words sent an icy chill skittering along my skin that seemed to settle around my heart. The thought of Lexie in danger terrified me. I remembered the sharp looks on the faces of Damon and Ronan’s fathers as they watched us disappear. Knowing they wanted my omega had a growl forming in my throat.
“I’ll get them.” Cary jumped up as he volunteered. He’d barely taken a step before the door opened and Lexie sauntered through. “No need, we’re here.” Maia and Ava were hot on her heels.
Maia patted Dave on the shoulder as she passed, eyeing his neck. “You’re off my shit list, just so you know.”
I winked at him in solidarity and he tried not to grin.
“Why is everyone suddenly freaking out in here?” Maia added, “I can feel you all in the bond. What did we miss?”
“Nothing, sunshine.” Leif grabbed Maia as she rounded the table and pulled her into his giant lap. She didn’t look as if she objected, leaning into him and running her nose along his neck, scenting him gently. All her guys relaxed as soon as one of them had her in their arms. I knew the feeling.
Sam beat me to it as he pulled Lexie into his lap. She kissed him lightly.
“Did you meet my two new pack mates, Leif?” Leif grumbled at her affectionately and she turned her face into Sam’s shoulder as she smiled.
I noticed Ava’s gaze flick to Lexie with a wistful expression on her face.
“Max, the girls are here now. What did you find?” I could hear the frustration and impatience in Damon’s voice, which surprised me. I’d figured Max would have at least told Damon what he’d found.
I took a closer look at Max and realized his eyes were faintly red and slightly glassy, probably from staring at computer screens for too long, and he had dark circles under them. He looked exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all.
“The Crash wasn’t an accident. It was deliberate.”
He let the words hang in the air for a moment.
“How?” Sam ground out like he was promising death to whoever was involved.
Max sighed, like he didn’t want to be the one to utter the words out loud. He was playing with an empty water cup, rolling it under his fingers.
I could feel my whole body tensing. I reached out to Sam to grab his shoulder. Not to comfort him this time. The motion comforted me, born of years of habit. I figured this wouldn’t be a quick story.
“The deposits of coal and gas we mine and burn to create electricity have been losing their combustibility for a while. The deeper they dug and siphoned, the more concentrated and compacted the resources have been getting, changing their chemical make-up. They’ve already mined all the burnable top level coal and gas. They’ve increased their mining outputs for years, with consistently less flammable fuel.
“The government is so embedded with the mining companies they wouldn’t or couldn’t turn against them. They argued that overhauling the entire electricity grid to use solely renewable energy was too costly to even consider.
“I’ve gone back a long way in their communications. At first, it appeared the mining companies were arrogant, assuming they could find more shallow deposits. They found a few, but nowhere near enough. They finally figured out that at some point the deposits would become so compacted, they would stop working all together, no matter how much they burned.”
Max shook his head, and a disgusted look crossed his face. He’d been staring at his hands as he talked, but he looked up now. I was directly across from him, and I could see the haunted look in his eyes.
“That’s when they involved the military, so they could prepare for a worst-case scenario. The military recommended the government keep it quiet so as not to panic people unnecessarily.
