Paloma knewthat Artem probably wouldn’t approve of her risking her safety to warn a doomed town, just as she knew he probably expected her to do it anyway. It was the most harrowing drive of her life. Even with her special tires, and even with her lifetime of experience driving the road, she nearly crashed several times before she careened into town.
Jack Jr. and his father were already hustling people to the small storm shelter by the fairgrounds, which was a small relief. The shelter was built back before the war, with reinforced concrete layered with warding sigils. It would be tough to knock down, but with an event the size of the one brewing over their heads, she doubted even it could survive.
Not that she told them that, of course.
People were already panicking, trying to get a hold of neighbors who lived in the farthest flung corners of town, hidden away behind pines at the end of spindly dirt roads. Not everyone would listen to the sirens, but for all that they were a far-flung bunch, Pineridge’s residents tried to look out for one another. They would do their best to get everyone to safety.
As soon as she climbed out of the truck, the nervous sweat coating her body chilling instantly, she was swarmed by people. Hands grasped her arms and a sea of worried and annoyed faces pressed in close, all of them talking at once.
“Polly, what’s happening?”
“Did you see something on the radar?”
“What are those clouds, Polly? Do we really need to evacuate?”
“This is ridiculous! You can’t just turn on alarms like that for any bad weather. I’m going to file a complaint with the Placer County Council to have you—”
“You shut your fucking mouth, Todd.” Jack Jr. elbowed his way through the crowd, pushing out an overzealous were, a veteran of the the Great War, who couldn’t seem to stop asking about her radar and whether it had picked up something more nefarious than a storm. The were took one look at the shifter bearing down on him and hopped backward, moving into the relative safety of the shelter and her small pack.
Jack Jr. rounded on Todd, a middle aged arrant who never particularly liked anything, but liked women telling him what do the least. He snarled in Todd’s fleshy face, “Get in the damn shelter. If I hear you say one more thing to Polly, I’m going to make sure your wife finds out about exactly why you spend so much time chatting with Jeanine at the restaurant, got it?”
Todd paled. The old, healed marriage sigil between his brows stood out starkly against the pallor of his skin at the threat of his wife finding out about the affair nearly half the town was unfortunately privy to. “I just don’t think that this is anything we needed to be dragged out of our homes for,” he protested. “How do we know she isn’t just panicking?”
“Because I’m actually good at my job,” she answered tartly. “Unlike some people, who got caught watching explicit entertainment feeds instead of running the school they’re in charge of.”
Before a red-faced Todd could reply, Jack Jr. shook his head sharply. Grabbing Todd by the scruff of his neck, he gave him a shove in the direction of the shelter. “Get inside, idiot.”
After hitching up his sagging slacks, Todd cast one last mutinous look over his shoulder before hurrying away. Jack Jr. clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention and bellowed, “Everyone else, too! Inside now!”
Paloma was as surprised to see everyone jump to follow his orders as she was to see Jack Jr. giving them — and not in his usual arrogant way, either. He held himself with the air of a man who knew what he was doing, and people took comfort from that grim confidence.
It was like she was finally seeing him in his element, protecting people, and she wondered if that solid core of steadiness she saw was new, or she’d been blinded by his fruitless quest to win her.
It was probably a bit of both. Jack Jr. was an alpha, after all, and until his father gave up the ghost or otherwise handed him power over their small pack, he really didn’t have much room to breathe, let alone do what his instincts probably pressed him to. She briefly wondered if he’d be calmer, less of a dick, if he actually had room to stretch himself.
He needs his own pack, she realized with a little stab of guilt.
The sight of him guiding families into the shelter lit a spark of hope in her belly. No, they would never be compatible, but she had hope for Jack Jr.’s development yet. Maybe if he actually got a little of the responsibility he craved, he wouldn’t be such an asshole.
After helping a little girl and her mother, a new addition to the town Paloma hadn’t met yet, into the shelter, Jack Jr. stormed back to her. Clamping a hand around the back of her neck in a purely alpha move, he commanded, “Now tell me what’s going on, Polly.”
If she wasn’t so terrified, she would have rolled her eyes. Nope, he’ll probably still be an asshole.
Wiggling out from under his hold, Paloma checked to make sure there were no listening ears around before she explained the situation. When she finished, she could see the hard lines of stress in Jack Jr.’s handsome face. She’d struggled for years to not see him as the same petulant, bratty boy he was for so long, but just then, with real fear for others burning in his blue eyes, he finally looked his age.
“You couldn’t send out an emergency signal to the Spot Unit?” he asked, eyes flickering back and forth between blue and lion gold.
“No, but I sent someone out to deliver the message.” She swallowed convulsively. Her fear for Artem was a jagged shard of glass in her throat. What if his wings failed? What if the cluster caught up with him? What if something happened to her? What would that do to him?
Jack Jr.’s gaze sharpened on her face. “Who?”
Lifting her chin, Paloma told him, “My mate.”
His boot slid backward through snow turned muddy with countless footsteps, before he lurched forward again to lean against the side of her truck. His expression was shell shocked, but not angry like she feared he might be. Probably because he never actually wanted me as a mate, she thought, wishing she could give him a good punch to the gut without breaking her fool hand. Damn stupid mountain lion.
“What?” he barked out. “Who? When did this happen?”
A crack of lightning lit the sky over his head. Fear was a cold drip in her veins, pushing out any discomfort she might have felt. “It doesn’t matter! He’s flying to alert the unit right now. If he gets there in time—”