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“Or something.”
He was still tense, but he rolled his eyes, showing many teeth when he smiled. Robbie sighed between us, hand on his Alpha’s arm.
The houses came into view. The blue one where Ox had once lived with his mother. The much larger Bennett house, set farther back in the trees. The pack SUVs were parked in front next to Jessie’s little Honda.
“I thought she was staying at the school?” Robbie asked.
Ox growled low in his throat. “She was supposed to. She never listens.”
She was waiting on the porch with the others. Her long hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, a grim look on her face. She was harder than that little girl Chris had brought into the shop all those years ago after their mother died, and stronger. In fact, out of all the humans in the group, she was probably the deadliest. She carried only a staff inlaid with silver, but she had knocked almost everyone in the pack on their back at one point or another.
Elizabeth stood next to her. She was as graceful as always, looking as regal as the queen she was. She didn’t move as much as she seemed to float. She was older now, the lines on her face more pronounced. She had survived the loss of her pack before building another one, only to lose her mate and Alpha to the claws of the beast and her sons to the road. She had scars, but they were buried underneath her skin. Her grief had lessened over the years, and she no longer looked as haunted as she once was. Ox had told me that she had started painting again, and though it was blue, he thought the green relief would come soon.
Carter and Kelly stood on either side of their mother. Their time on the road had changed them, and in the year since they’d returned, they still sometimes struggled to reconcile who they were now with who they once had been. Carter was still big, a muscular wolf who was quicker to anger than he’d been before. His head was still shaved as if he was a soldier.
Kelly had lost some of his mass since he’d come back. He was the softer of the two, and though he still looked like his brothers—all that blond hair and those sky-blue eyes—he’d let himself settle better back home than Carter had. Carter sometimes still looked as if he wasn’t sure he’d finally made it home. Kelly had found his place again, and it was almost as if he’d never left.
But they all bore the past few years of monsters and separations like badges of pride. They weren’t the kids they once had been. They had witnessed things most would never see. They had fought for their lives and their packs against a beast who had taken much from them. They’d won, but we were not without our losses.
Joe stood a little ways away from them. His arms were folded behind his back, head tilted slightly up. His eyes were closed, and I knew he was breathing in his territory and whatever had breached the wards I’d placed. I had a good idea of what it was, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Ox was out the door even before I’d turned off the truck. He pointed at Jessie as he walked by them, saying, “I told you to stay at the school.”
“Remember last week when I knocked you against the tree?” she asked sweetly, tapping her staff against her shoulder.
He snapped his teeth at her, but she just laughed. He made his way to Joe, put his hand to the back of his neck, and squeezed. They stood side by side without speaking. Watching, waiting.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Robbie asked, and I flinched. I’d forgotten he was sitting right next to me.
“Get out. And take off those damn glasses.”
He winked at me, sliding over the bench seat and through the door Ox had left open. Kelly stiffened slightly at the sight of him as Robbie walked toward the house. I didn’t know what the hell was going on between the two of them, and I didn’t want to. I had other things to worry about.
The guys had pulled up behind me and were chattering nervously as I opened the driver’s door. Rico was popping the clip out of one of his .40 S&W semiautomatics. Tanner was doing the same. Chris looked as if he were about to stab hi
mself in the eye with one of his knives. They worried me greatly.
I tried not to notice who wasn’t there.
It didn’t work out too well.
“Elizabeth,” I said, nodding as I approached the porch.
She smiled softly at me. “Gordo. Never a dull moment.”
“No, ma’am.”
“He’s on his way.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it.”
Jessie coughed, but it sounded like she was covering up a laugh.
“It doesn’t matter.”
