Chapter 30

“Where the hell were you last night?” 

“Watch your mouth. I don’t answer to  you.”

Liam blistles. Kira thinks he’ll explode if he doesn’t unleash the anger inside him as soon as possible. 

A reddish tinge stains his skin and his hands are balled up into fists at his side.

“I took out Sam last night, and we ran into two wolves just east of the border. We’re lucky they ran off, because do you think I could’ve taken them both on with a schoolkid for backup? You should’ve been there. The Alpha should’ve been there.”

Kira slides a hand down under the table to hold Jayden’s leg, but there’s no way she can calm him in the face of such an onslaught.

“If I were you, Liam, I’d back off,” Jayden says, and Kira can hear the vibration in his voice.

“Because no one wants a scene, but right now my wolf wants to give them one.” He stands.

Kira lets her hand slide back to her lap and she tries to concentrate on a chip in the table because this doesn’t seem like a conversation she should be part of. 

She doesn’t have to look up to know that Liam doesn’t back down.

“You should’ve been there,” he repeated.

“And you should’ve known better than to take a kid out in the woods outside the full moon. I appreciate that you’ve alienated yourself from every adult in the pack, but that doesn’t mean you get to waltz around putting teenagers in danger. Sam should’ve been in his bedroom finishing up his homework, not prowling our boundaries at God knows what hour, because one of his older brothers is too much of a coward to run by himself or ask for a grown-up buddy.”

Liam shoves Jayden in the chest. Jayden shoves back harder until Liam trips, almost falling on the flagstone floor. 

A scrape of benches pushed back rings around the room as a few people stood, ready to protect their Alpha if necessary, but Jayden held up a hand.

“You and I are going to have a long fucking talk, later,” Jayden snaps, stepping aggressively close to Liam.

Liam is smaller than Jayden by an inch or two, and nowhere near as bulked up, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t do any damage.

Kira steps up behind Jayden in an automatic motion, prepared to back him up in a fight if it happens, even though she has no clue how to fight, but Liam doesn’t look like he’s going to lunge. 

He glares up at Jayden with open contempt. His jealousy is so loud that the entire room must be able to hear it. 

Kira had never seen someone look at another man with such unrestrained, unabashed envy. It’s almost humiliating. 

Kira would be embarrassed to look at someone so shamelessly.

“I don’t like you, and you don’t like me,” Liam says through gritted teeth, “but this is about the town. This is about protecting our people and our territory.”

“I know,” Jayden says, and Kira is surprised by the lightness that returns to his voice. 

He has an incredible ability to compose himself. 

“And I’ll run with you tonight.”

Horrified, Kira looks from one to the other, but Liam seems to take this as a fair answer. 

He straightens his jacket and walks out of the dining hall with half of the room watching him and the other half dragging their eyes towards Jayden. 

As if he can’t even see them, Jayden takes his seat back at the bench and drags another bowl of thin soup towards her, picking seaweed out to soften on the surface. 

Kira is lost for words as she sits back down beside him.

Not for long. “He didn’t submit to you,” she says, remembering the last time that the two of them argued.

“No, he didn’t.”

“Couldn’t you make him?” Kira asks anxiously.

Jayden sighs and pushes the food away. It’s obvious that he’s lost his appetite. 

“I’m not going to be one of those Alphas who bullies their pack into submission. Everyone has the right to air their opinions, even their displeasure. Liam’s problem is that he doesn’t know how to raise his concerns with any degree of respect. I need to show him how to behave, but if I put him down every time, he’s only going to hate me more. The two of us need to talk and resolve our differences. Running together helps wolves remember what we’re part of, as a pack.”

“Right. A good leader knows how to employ diplomacy, when authority doesn’t pay its dividends,” Kira mutters. 

She appreciates his maturity, but she can’t help but think that this kind of approach isn’t going to work with Liam.

“But do you know what he called me, back when I hardly knew who I was or what I was doing? He called me your bitch.”

A muscle works in Jayden’s jaw. “You should’ve told me that five minutes ago. I’d have ripped his throat out.”

Kira gulps. “No throat tearing! Please! What I mean is that he’s bitter. He’s jealous of you. How can you think you’re going to get through to a guy like that?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Jayden mutters, but Kira’s words seem to have soured his mood even further.

Changing tack, Kira voices a different worry. 

“What if he’s lying?”

“Lying?”

“What if all this stuff about other wolves crossing our border is a load of crap? You know I was training as a lawyer. I know better than anyone that people lie. They lie all the time to get what they want and to get out of what they’ve done.”

“Others in the pack have noted his same concerns.”

“Who? Liam’s fanclub? Ava and the kids?”

“Why would he lie?”

“To undermine you? To make you look like you don’t have control of the pack or like you aren’t keeping the town safe? I don’t trust this guy. I don’t like the thought of you being out in the woods with him during the night.”

To her ire, Kira only laughs gently. “I can take care of myself, sweetheart.”

Between the conflict with Liam and the altercation with Will yesterday, Kira is reaching her limit. 

She rubs her eyes, more stressed than she’s felt since she came to town, and tries to take a slow, steadying breath.

Will taught her all sorts of breathing exercises, but they’re difficult to apply when the thought of Liam makes her blood boil and her lungs constrict.

“Take someone with you. Take Noel with you, please. Or me. Just someone so that I know Liam isn’t going to have his little pack jump you in the woods.”

Jayden sighs. “It’s sweet that you’re worried. But Liam is the son of the former Alpha. That means I owe him a degree of respect, whether either of us think he deserves it or not. Arriving with an entourage would be a bad look for me, and if anything’s going to make me look weak, then it’s needing a bodyguard. Liam isn’t stupid,  he knows what happens to wolves that try to challenge the Alpha and lose.”

“What happens to wolves that try to challenge the Alpha and lose?”

“They’re banished,” Jayden says, as if such a word isn’t unusual in a modern town in the twenty first century. 

“They aren’t welcome here anymore.”

“So the Alpha can’t be replaced?”

“Not unless the challenger wins,” Jayden laughs,  “and Liam isn’t idiotic enough to challenge me in a fight. I’d crush him with one paw.”

Kira looks down miserably. She appreciates Jayden’s confidence and  has always found it attractive, but she doesn’t share his confidence.

Liam might not be able to beat him in a fight, but that doesn’t mean he can’t pursue one, and Kira has watched those teeth and claws tear into forest prey, ripping skin from flesh and flesh from bone. 

Jayden is strong and sturdy, but he’s also made of the same stuff as anyone else.

Nausea swills in her stomach at the thought.

Jayden must sense her distress.

“Please don’t worry about me. I can handle Liam.” 

“Fine,” she mutters, but she doesn’t think it’s fine at all.