Page 6

6

Jax

W ell, the day wasn’t going how I’d envisioned it.

When I’d woken up that morning, I’d have been pretty damn eager to meet up with Dakota again. It wasn’t possible , given how unlikely a mage was to walk into Howl twice, and how I hadn’t asked for his phone number. I half suspected that if our paths ever did cross, he’d shrink and make a hasty escape. It was one thing for a mage to use a wolf; an entirely different thing to become friends. Rare was the mage who cared so little for their people’s conventions that they were willing to get close to us.

There was only one mage I’d consider a friend, and the idea of crossing her scared the hell out of me.

So there I was, in a room full of mages, entirely out of my depth, and rendered even less competent by Dakota—though I wasn’t entirely sure if he’d left me unbalanced by putting me in my place, or simply by showing up in the conference room that morning.

In either case, I managed to hold my shit together long enough to get through the meeting, and I didn’t think it was a complete disaster. It’d been awkward, but what else had I expected?

Then, Dakota told us what we missed.

I should’ve tried to learn more Japanese.

My university had required us to take four semesters of a foreign language, but I’d never been good . In some of the more rural packs, like the one Jill and I grew up in, you were lucky if everybody spoke decent English, much less another language. As often as not, we’d gotten the point across with a snarl.

My brain didn’t work with languages, but... on second thought, maybe that was a good thing. Now, I could decide how to deal with the information logically, instead of losing myself to instinct in the heat of the moment.

Already, Jillian was pursing her lips. While I might burn hot when insulted, she burned much, much longer.

“We don’t need this,” she said, meeting my eyes steadily. “Crescent’s doing fine. We’re doing fine.”

But fine wasn’t enough. I’d dragged our pack away from our home in Idaho, been unable to provide the life they deserved for so long, and damn it all, it wasn’t happening again. I knew how fast the field could change, how quickly we could get swallowed up by some other tech firm. The second the American mage families figured out how to program, they’d try and overtake us. The only thing that’d kept us afloat this long was that the supernatural denizens of the world didn’t usually innovate in tech fields. Who knew how long that’d hold?

We had to innovate. Continue to grow. Protect the pack.

Kent scoffed, rounding on me. “What’d you expect from this? You didn’t bring in Igarashi with the assumption that they’d put aside eons of bullshit for a business deal. Who cares what they think of us, if we get their money?”

“Their infrastructure,” I corrected.

“You could make your own,” Dakota suggested.

But that’d take longer than we had, and working worldwide would be smoother if we showed we could collaborate globally. We weren’t just animals hiding out in the woods. We had manners.

We were respectable, damn it.

I sighed. “Kent’s right.”

Jillian’s eyebrows shot up. Maia chewed her lip. Even Dakota was looking at me like I’d lost my damn mind.

I folded my hands on the table in front of me and leaned against it until the top edge bit into my forearms. “They may not respect us , but Igarashi wouldn’t be here if they didn’t respect our business. We don’t need them to like us; we need them to help us tap a new marketplace. It won’t be the first time we’ve had to prove our value to move another step up the ladder. We can and have done it before.”

Still, no one seemed swayed by the case I made. Maia shrank, Jillian and Dakota looked incredulous, and Kent looked smugger than he had before. I hadn’t changed any minds.

But I had the final say.

“We move ahead with this deal in good faith, and hope they’ll meet us there. That’s all.”

“Fine,” Jillian snipped. She shoved out of her chair, and Dakota scrambled out behind her.

When Kent got up, he came over to clap me on the shoulder. “You’re making the right call, boss.”

I hoped so, but at the end of the day, I didn’t give a single damn what the Igarashi mages thought of us if working with them made my pack more secure.

When I left the conference room, there was one more matter I needed to settle for the day. Sure, I was exhausted, but... well, clearly, Dakota wouldn’t tell us the truth of what Igarashi had been saying if he were working for them. All he’d had to do to take advantage of us was keep his mouth shut.

Instead, he hadn’t hesitated to throw them under the bus to make sure we knew the truth. He’d even suggested rethinking whether we wanted to work with them. No ally of the Igarashi Corporation would have done that.

Tail between my legs, I walked past Jillian’s office to find Dakota’s door wide open.

I knocked anyway, and Dakota’s head popped up from behind his desk, littered with boxes of tech and supplies he hadn’t had a chance to sort out yet.

I hated how he looked at me then, his face paling, his eyes wide. Was he afraid of me? Now? The night before, he hadn’t been too scared to go home with me, to spend hours stretched out in my bed.

It couldn’t be now that he got scared. Ashamed of letting a werewolf so close? Sure, I’d buy that, but not fearful.

“Listen,” he started, edging toward the front of his office chair, “I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn or?—”

When I held up a hand, Dakota’s mouth snapped shut.

“Do you mind if I go first?”

He shook his head. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and he looked like a guy who thought he was about to get fired.

Of course he did. I was his superior—okay, only on paper and only at Crescent, but still. What CEO wouldn’t at least consider getting rid of the guy he’d inadvertently banged, if only to avoid drama and distraction?

The answer was... this kind of CEO. A werewolf one. Blurred lines were kind of a thing when animal instinct warred with modern ethics for supremacy in the same brain.

With a sigh, I scratched the back of my neck. This was... not my favorite thing in the world to do, but who liked apologizing? Maybe alphas least of all, but we were the ones who most needed to take accountability when we fucked up. I’d seen firsthand what happened when we weren’t able to, and I’d sworn to myself that I was never going to be like that, even before we left Idaho.

“I’m genuinely sorry for the way I acted toward you this morning. I haven’t been at my best—honestly? In a while. Last night, Jillian suggested I go out and blow off some steam, because I’ve been twisted up about this meeting with Igarashi. And I guess I just had a hard time believing you’d shown up at Howl on your own, that you’d go home with me, trust me with—” I looked significantly at him. I didn’t want to say it was wrong for him to have an Awakening with a werewolf; he’d get enough of that from his own people, and really, I’d been honored. And sure, confused.

At least Dakota was no longer looking at me like I was about to toss him out on his ass. Instead, his brow was furrowed, his lips were twisted up in a frown. Were his lips always so luscious, or were they slightly bruised?

This was not the moment to think about kissing him, but my eyes dropped to his mouth and my thoughts drifted.

I shook myself out of it when color returned to his cheeks.

“Sorry—you’re surprised I went home with you?” Dakota gave me an incredulous once-over that practically had me wagging my tail.

“A little,” I admitted with a grimace.

“Uh huh .”

“Yeah, so point is, I’d already been anxious about this meeting for a while, and seeing you this morning, in this context, triggered a lot of my own insecurities that have nothing whatsoever to do with you. It wasn’t fair for me to heap them on you like that. I was wrong. I hope that we can move past it, and I’d love for you to?—”

Stay? In the office?

Strangely enough, yes. Just being able to keep an eye on him satisfied the wolfish part of my brain that already said he was mine. Didn’t matter that he couldn’t be; I’d take what I could get.

“If you stay, I won’t?—”

Dakota pushed out of his chair and walked around the far side of his desk. I stared as he went for his door, and I half expected him to tell me to get the fuck out, so I had only seconds to make my case.

“I won’t make the same mistake twice,” I promised, just as he pushed the door. It shut with a click.

When he turned toward me, he was biting his lip. He took a halting step my way.

“I really am sorry.” Now that he was closer, I was practically whispering.

He looked up at me for a second, and I couldn’t tell if it was frustration or amusement that sparkled in his brown eyes until he?—

He pushed himself up on the balls of his feet, dragged me down by my collar, and kissed me.