Page 37

37

Dakota

“O h fuck no,” I said, but no one was listening to me.

Jillian was putting herself between Jax and Minori, and the other wolves were all looking at her, eyes narrowed, considering her flanks with tight, barely leashed emotions.

Why the hell was Jax agreeing to anything?

“The merger should continue as planned,” Minori said, though her jaw was clenched and while I couldn’t feel her emotions the way I could for the wolves, it wasn’t hard to guess. She felt wronged.

She felt as though she had lost something.

Me.

Because despite the fact that I was there, was alive and well, I was nothing to a mage anymore.

The notion lanced through my gut like a sword, and without thought, my eyes sought out Prudence. I’d heard her voice in the fray, I was sure I had.

There she was. Arms crossed over her chest and eyes hard and colder than I’d ever seen them, she was...

Minori. She was glaring at Minori. Thank fuck there was at least one mage in the world who realized that werewolves weren’t automatically at fault for everything. Fuck, we mages were?—

But no. Not we. They. I’d never properly become one of them, and now I never would, because Jiro had taken that from me.

Not Jax.

Never Jax.

But Jax was hanging his head like a puppy who’d just been caught going on the carpet, and I thought he was precisely as culpable as that—not at all. Puppies had no control over their bodies, and Jax hadn’t been able to control Igarashi Fucking Jiro.

This all came back to him. If someone was going to pay restitution, it sure as fuck wasn’t Jax. It was him.

“Now you listen—” Jillian was saying to Minori, being thoroughly ignored.

Prudence huffed and shook her head. “Given what the Igarashi have done, I absolutely refuse to?—”

“I’m the one who bit him,” Jax said, trying to speak over the others, as though anyone truly gave a damn about that. “If there’s a price to be paid, then I’m the one who?—”

“All of you shut the fuck up,” I shouted.

At the same time, there was an enormous crashing noise all around us.

Half the werewolves ducked down and took cover, some of them growing claws and fangs in the process. Some put themselves in strategic positions. Seth, for instance, put himself next to Jillian between Minori and Jax.

Huh. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him look angry before, but he was definitely that.

Maia, too, was standing next to the elevator bank, positioned behind Minori and oddly... ready to attack.

The room had gone silent after the crash, though, everyone looking around, trying to find the source of the threat. Everyone including Minori, because apparently, it hadn’t been her.

Prudence...

Prudence started laughing uproariously.

Everyone in the room looked at her, but she... she turned to me.

“Something to say, dear?”

“I—” I paused, looking at her, wondering why she was so damned entertained. Also, maybe why she was looking around on the floor. She seemed to spot what it was that she’d wanted and turned to round one of the desks, leaning over and coming back up with her enormous bag. Still, she wasn’t speaking up, so I was going to say my piece.

“Jax isn’t paying anyone anything. If there’s restitution to be made, it’s by your brother, the murderer. He’s the one who put us all in this situation. Jax didn’t have time to wait for a mage healer. I was dying. Right that minute. He had to decide between wolf Dakota, and dead Dakota. Mage Kosuke didn’t come into it.”

The sound Jax made at that, a high whine, hurt my heart.

Still, I had to get it all out there.

“And even if there’s any restitution to be made for anything, it’s not to you or your family, it’s to me.” It felt incredibly rude, indulgent, even selfish to say the words, but dammit, this was my life. It wasn’t about a family who’d thought I was dead twenty years ago.

“Your brother killed my parents. Your brother stole my legacy. Your brother almost killed me and forced Jax to either turn me or watch me die. What would you have wanted him to do?”

I flung out a hand toward Jax, thinking to illustrate my point, and a framed poster of a cartoon meme that said “this is fine” went flying off the wall behind his head.

I froze, staring at it, and then finally started to take in the room around me.

Everyone’s desk was empty, in the whole small bullpen on the top floor.

No computer monitors, no pencils, no keyboards. Nothing.

I turned in a perfect circle, looking at the mess around me. Had Jiro and I done this the night before? No, that had been over almost before it had started, him with decades more experience and skill than I had.

And even if it had been a mess from the fight, surely someone would have started picking up by now? I glanced out one of the huge window banks, and sure enough, it was at least nine, the sun up and skies clear outside.

The little dog comic had gone flying, though.

There was another motivational poster with a kitten, and I thought, what the hell ?

I flipped my fingers up and around, not looking at Prudence for her disapproval of my using motion as a crutch, and that frame dropped off the wall as well. One of the assistants snatched this one before it landed on the floor, but it... it had done what I told it to.

Turning once more till I was facing Prudence, I stared at her. “I thought you said becoming a werewolf meant my magic would be gone?”