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I wished there was something I could fight now, but it was Dakota, there in front of me, who had to fight.

My breath hitched.

Jillian’s thumb swiped across my knuckles.

“I can take care of everything for now,” she whispered.

It wasn’t a demand. She wasn’t doubting me. She was?—

She was carving space for me the way I’d tried to do for her. She might not be my alpha, but she was my sister, my pack, my family. I had to rely on her as much as she did me.

With a jaw clenched to keep my mouth from trembling, I nodded.

Finally, I reached out and placed my free hand right where I’d bitten Dakota, like it’d heal the spot. Heal all of him.

I prayed it would.

35

Dakota

“What do you mean with this,the negotiations are over?” were the first words my mind processed. They were high and almost shrill, too loud in the quiet room. I thought it might be Igarashi Minori, but it was too loud, the reverberations of it distorting inside my ears. “We aren’t half finished, and the lawyers—what the hell happened in here?”

“What the hell happened in here,” came a voice that was definitely Jillian, softer, dry as dust and deeply unimpressed, “was your brother.”

“My... Jiro?”

“Jiro,” Jillian agreed. “He came here and attacked our CEO and my assistant, tried to murder them. You remember my assistant, Dakota? The adorable kid who figured out how to get us to work together? Your brother burned him down. He burned half this office.”

“Burned... I don’t understand.” This time, I was sure the voice was Minori, since her volume had lowered enough that it wasn’t ringing through my whole head. “Why would Jiro do this?”

“You said it yourself, didn’t you? The other night at karaoke? Dakota looks just like your dead uncle? Well apparently that’s because he’s your long lost cousin, and your brother wanted him dead.” There was a sudden breeze on my cheek, and it made me think someone had turned a fan on me. Perhaps more importantly, it didn’t hurt.

In fact... nothing hurt.

When last I’d been awake, every touch, every movement, even the air against my face, had been excruciating. Now, I felt like I was floating on a cushioned cloud. There was warmth around me, but I knew instinctively that it wasn’t anything like the fire that had burned me. It wasn’t even a blanket wrapped around a man they’d thought was dying.

It was Jax, his arms tight around me, holding me as close as he could get me, but at the same time, somehow soft in his grip. Not putting pressure on anything Jiro had burned to a crisp.

More than the simple awareness of his presence, I couldfeelhim. Yes, yes, his arms around me, but more than that, his gentle presence inside my head. His quiet misery at the events of the night. His ongoing fear for my life.

It had worked.

That should have been obvious from the mere fact that I was still alive and even more, free of pain, but this entirely new sense of Jax was something else. Something completely fucking wonderful, if it hadn’t been so sad in the moment.

On the other side of me, I realized, I could feel Jillian as well. Irritated and worried and just a little territorial because Crescent was theirs, and Minori was allied with someone who had attacked the pack.

Mage.

Monster.

My cousin.

Come to think of it, Minori was my cousin as well.

“You’re... you have to be wrong... that cannot...” Minori tried, but couldn’t seem to complete a thought.

It was up to me, I realized. Jillian was protecting the pack, and would not—could not—give an inch. Jax was wallowing in the pain of—well, even being able to feel it, I wasn’t entirely sure. They had to know by now that the bite had taken. That I had survived.