“He was looking for Dad. He joined up with the Omegas to try to get here. Nothing more. He didn’t hurt anyone.”
Ox nodded slowly. “Gavin, I’m not trying to scare you. If I thought you were dangerous, you wouldn’t be here. Please remember that.”
Gavin muttered something behind me, and I had to fight the urge to pull him away from all of this. Even though the office was bigger than the cabin had been, it felt like the walls were closing in.
“What did you say?” Ox asked lightly.
Gavin tightened his grip on my shirt. It pulled against my chest and stomach. He said, “Didn’t want to. Hurt. I was… lost. Wolf. Omega. I remembered Thomas. Said if I needed help to find him. Didn’t know he was dead.” He pressed his forehead against my back. “Wouldn’t hurt Jessie. Wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not if I didn’t have to. Just trying to survive.”
“We know,” Mom said, and I was grateful when she glared at Ox. “No one here thinks you would.”
“Of course not,” Ox said, and I could see he was fighting a smile. “But it’s a circle just like Mark said. We’re connected, all of us, and it goes back longer than we even thought. We can’t keep making the same mistakes. We need to be better than we were before.” He looked at me pointedly. “We have to trust each other. After Robbie was taken from us, we forgot how to do that. We were divided. We found our way back, yes, but we can’t let that happen again. All the cards on the table. No secrets, not anymore. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”
“Good,” Ox said. “I’m happy to hear that. Which is why I want you to listen to what I have to say next. Listen, okay? And know that I’m not speaking to you as your Alpha. I’m speaking to you as your brother.”
“Okay.”
He squared his shoulders. “You’re a fucking moron.”
“Hey!”
He shook his head. “Of all the stupid things you could have done, you chose the worst. Taking it upon yourself to go after them, to leave your pack behind like we didn’t matter. How the hell could you think that was okay?”
And oh, there it was. His anger. His rage. It tasted like ash. He was furious, and even though he was doing his damndest to keep it from his face, his eyes grew darker, his brow furrowing. “I didn’t—”
“That’s right,” he said flatly. “You didn’t. Didn’t think. Didn’t ask. Didn’t look to me or Joe or anyone else in your pack. You left a fucking video, as if you thought that was enough. How dare you. Three years. One month. Twenty-six days. I lived through that. I lived through the thirteen months it took for us to get Robbie back. I saw firsthand what happened with Mark and Gordo. And then you decided to… what? Be wholly original and leave too?”
“Whoa,” Kelly breathed. “That was a bitchy thing to say. Go Ox.”
“I expected more from you, Carter,” Ox said, and he was a fucking liar. He didn’t sound like my brother. He sounded like my father. “And I need to know if I can trust you again. Because with everything we face ahead of us, we can’t be continuing to look behind us to see if someone we trust still has our back.”
“I’m here,” I said stiffly, trying to keep my own anger in check. “I came back. I was always going to.”
“You could have been killed.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were shot,” Gavin muttered, and now he decided to say something? “Back broke.”
“Fine,” I allowed. “I was almost killed. But I did what I thought was right, and I get you’re pissed off. You have every right to be. I would do it again if I had to.”
“For him?”
“Yes,” I said defiantly.
“Because of what he is to you.”
Jesus Christ. This wasn’t going like I thought it would. And yet…. “Yes.”
Gavin sucked in a sharp breath.
“Good,” Ox said, and suddenly he was smiling. It was dazzling, and I was breathless at the sight of it. “Because you need to take Gavin as your mate.”
I almost swallowed my own tongue. I started coughing roughly, bending over, trying not to die.
“You did that on purpose,” Joe said, shaking his head fondly. “Jesus, Ox. We talked about this.”