6. Chapter Six

Ispent the week constantly checking my phone. Hasan was true to his word for the first few days, but Friday came and went without a call or text from him. It was already late Saturday and still no word.

Really? Did he forget about me already?

"So, Jacky—"

"Not tonight, Joey," I snapped, putting my phone down, cranky there was still no contact. I'm going to call him tonight, and he better pick up. He promised to keep me in the loop. If anything happened to Jabari, I deserve to know.

"Whoa. Okay…" I heard him back away from the bar. Before he got too far away, I slammed his fresh drink on the countertop and stepped away so he could get it without being snapped at by me. I continued to pour drinks and line them up, ready for my regulars to come get them. Without Joey bothering me, there was no one speaking to me at all. The news was playing softly on the TV in the back corner, and country music was a bit louder, but I naturally tuned it out. I could feel Heath's approach, like every Saturday. Again, he was coming without Landon.

I hadn't talked to anyone from the small werewolf family since Monday. I was plagued by the idea I was doing something wrong or would get them into trouble—improbable, fear-driven thoughts, but once I had started to think them, I couldn't stop.

So, I tended my bar and avoided them all week—two missed calls from Carey, three texts from her, and one call from Heath.

Now, the wolf was coming to the bar.

I shined a glass impatiently as I felt him draw close and enter the parking lot. I got annoyed as it felt like an eternity for him to get out of his car and walk into Kick Shot. I made his drink and set it in his favorite spot as he came inside. Grabbing it, he moved further down the bar toward the back, near the emergency exit and the back staircase. He didn't say a word to me, but the hardness of his eyes told me I was in trouble.

I followed him, and he bared his teeth.

"We're talking after you close," he said with a snap.

"Fine," I snapped back, continuing with my job, turning my back to him.

For most of the night, I flat out ignored him, checking my phone when I had time. Nothing happened until nearly midnight when Joey, drunk as he normally was on a Saturday night, walked up and looked between us.

"Aww, trouble in paradise between the Alpha and the bartender? What happened, J—"

"Shut the fuck up, Joey," I growled, unable to hold back the very real animal sound that came with it. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Heath stand up quickly. If the stool wasn't bolted into the floor, it would have fallen over. "He's not my Alpha, and my personal business isn't yours. Go fucking play pool or go home. If you want a drink, let me know. Other than that, get away from me."

It was the harshest I had ever been with any of my customers. People looked over at me with wide eyes, staring until they realized I knew they were.

All was quiet for the rest of the night. The people who normally told me goodbye, didn't, instead scurrying away like misbehaving children, hoping not to catch their teacher's eye. I held the door open for them, locking it once the last of them was gone, glad to be done with another week. It wasn't completely over, not yet, but it was close. I just had to deal with the wolf behind me.

"Heath," I greeted, turning on him. "What do you want to know?"

"Where have you been all week? Carey said something was wrong on Monday, then you avoided her all week. I promised to find out tonight."

It sounded simple, but it wasn't. He was eyeing me as if he was sizing up a possible threat, something he hadn't done in a long time. He couldn't beat me and knowing that kept the more predatory behavior at bay between us.

"I…" With a sigh, I realized I needed to tell him. For Carey's sake, he deserved to know what was going on. "Two werecats were killed up in the Pacific Northwest. It's made me edgy."

"I didn't hear about that. Do you have any idea who killed them or why?" His temper deflated, but only a little.

"No. Someone is checking it out, but I haven't heard an update in a few days. It's just had me distracted. That's all." I tried to wave it off, not wanting to realize just how badly it distracted me.

"You're not allowed to be distracted around Carey," he growled softly. "You're a dangerous predator, a monster, even stronger than Landon and me. You have to be ready for anything when you're with her, including your own urges. If you're spacing out, I don't trust her near you."

"That's ridiculous, and you know it. I'm never going to be a danger to Carey." I growled back, the rumble building in my chest as his accusation I was somehow a threat settled between us like a thrown gauntlet.

"Then why, even distracted, have you avoided her all week? And I've heard—‘Dad, Jacky didn't respond to my text yesterday,' or ‘Dad, Jacky hasn't been answering my calls, and I really want to talk to her about something,' and ‘Dad, did we do something to Jacky?'" He slid off the bar stool and crossed his arms. "So, did we do something? Or are you finally tired of dealing with a pre-teen?"

"Carey is the only person in this damn state that I like right now," I snarled viciously. I shook my head, biting my bottom lip hard as I considered what to say to him. "I'm in trouble with other werecats. I've lived on the outside of werecat and supernatural society for so long, I naturally avoid it and don't engage. I should have died, guilty as charged at the Tribunal—"

"Don't ever say those words again," Heath roared, kicking the barstool next to him hard enough that he ripped it out of the floor. "My family and my pack worked our damn hardest to get you out of that. You deserved to be a fucking hero for stepping up and helping us protect and save Carey."

"Thank you for that, but every werecat in the world would have rather I died instead of shaken up the status quo!" I flung my hand toward the outside world. "All except…" I wasn't ready to tell him that. "Hasan is the leader of our community, and if it weren't for him, I would have died, and there wouldn't be any werecats grieving over me. You know what they're doing, though? They're getting pissed werewolves are bothering them. We love our privacy. We don't want to be tossed into problems and used as a meat shield for people we don't know. It's all we have, but that doesn't mean we want it. Four werecats have been called to Duty in the last six months, Heath. Four! And it's my fault!" I was yelling by the end. "They're furious I let you live here with Landon just so I could see Carey. And it probably hasn't escaped them that I swore an oath to protect Carey while you're here! That's un-fucking-heard of!"

"Who told you they all wanted you to die?" he asked softly, my words obviously making an impact.

"Lani," I said, my voice breaking for a second. "My only friend for six years thought she was going to defend me like a good friend should, but I was going to die…and that would be that. Weird werecat without a family would be out of the equation, everything would be normal, and werecats would keep their private, nearly-forgotten lives." I'd tried not to think about it all week, but telling someone else, my vision blurred as I blinked back tears. "Then I got thinking if they were all so damn mad at me…what if they came here? What if an older werecat challenged me for my territory, and I lost? You would be at their whim unless you ran, and Carey doesn't deserve to be running for her life again…"

"What does this have to do with the two dead werecats?" He kept his voice just as soft as it was before my rambling spiel.

"They might be my fault," I answered, swallowing the lump of guilt in my throat. "What if those two werecats weren't considered possible allies by their neighbors? What if they only thought they were threats? Heath…I could have started another war, and I don't know yet if I have or not."

"We could have started a war," he whispered.

"No—"

"Yes." He nodded slowly, enforcing his idea that somehow it was both of us. "You would have never been involved with Carey or my pack if I had been a better Alpha. Even then, I should have sent you away from Dallas, but I didn't. I let you make the decision, knowing full well where it could get you. If I had been considering the politics and not just my daughter's life or my own pack, I maybe could have seen how this could go wrong."

I shook my head. "They aren't going to care about that. I'm the failure to my species, apparently," I mumbled, walking back toward my bar. "My own brother…"

"Brother?" He perked up quickly, and I mentally began a string of cusses that weren't appropriate for the public.

"Nothing."

"You said brother," he pressed. "You have family?"

"Drop it."

"No."

I growled, looking up from my bar to stare into his grey-blue eyes. He and Carey both had this stubbornness to them, and it was in their eyes.

"Yes, I have a…werecat family. I don't talk to them that often, and there are reasons I live out here alone. Drop it."

"How do they feel about everything?" He leaned on the bar, all his heat gone. I sighed, watching him. It wasn't over yet. I had made the foolish decision to open up, and he was going to find whatever scraps of information he could about me.

"It doesn't matter. They can't protect me from myself, and I have to take full responsibility for the can of worms I've opened. I just need to figure out what I'm going to do about all of this, which meant I wanted some space away from everyone. I need time to think." I touched my phone, where I left it on the counter. Still no word from Hasan or anyone else from the family. "Lani says I should throw you out," I said softly, feeling guilty even if they weren't my words.

"That…I would have to move Carey into another new school. Landon and I—"

"I told her that wasn't an option," I cut in before he started going off about how bad that would be for him. I tried not to think of him as selfish, jumping straight to how bad that would be for him. Well, not straight to him specifically. His first worry had been Carey and school. "I'll figure out something else. Some way for me to calm the werecats down about this. A lot of them, roughly half, are survivors of the war, so it's a tough battle, but I'm not going to toss you all out. I made a promise, and I plan on keeping it."

"So many?" Heath frowned. "Really?"

"Werecats grow older far easier than werewolves, mostly because we don't have as much infighting. Rogue werecats roam, looking for a territory of their own, answer to other werecats, or just don't want to settle down yet. I've fought a few of those when they got curious about someone's territory and needed to be chased out. Those were never fatal, though. Territory fights are nearly never fatal. It's frowned upon." I was rambling again now.

"Have you gotten into any fights since we've been here?"

"No. I would have told you there was trouble just so you wouldn't go near the border."

"So, to recap, you've been avoiding my daughter, which hurts her, because you are…busy considering how to stop any possible wars that may have started thanks to our actions."

"And how to keep out of trouble with other werecats. Or, I don't know, make them see I don't mean anyone harm, and neither do you. You better not mean my kind harm. If you do, you won't make it out of my territory alive."

"Understandable. No, I don't mean any of your kind harm. Most of the time, I'm curious. Vampires, fae, werewolves, and werecats. Nagas, kitsunes, and more. I like to meet others from different species and get their perspective. You give me a close eye into the world of werecats. I don't plan on using it against you, and I'm not spying under false pretenses."

"You say that now, but if I threw you out or a werecat attacked, you would use everything you could to protect yourself and Carey," I pointed out. "I'm not stupid."

"Like you don't know more than you let on about werewolves," he reminded me with a small smile. "Some were very surprised by how much you knew about us, me included."

"Touché." And I was willing to use it all to survive, even if the urge to survive surprised me because before I met Carey, I didn't have all that much to live for.

"Can I admit something since we're doing this sharing thing tonight?" he asked, looking down at his hands, considering them. My thoughts wandered to the memory of how warm and calloused they were when he helped clean and re-bandage my injuries in that warehouse in Dallas. They were nice hands.

"You can say whatever you want."

"I was mad at Carey for being so upset by you."

I raised my eyebrows in surprise until he looked up. He chuckled sadly.

"Not to her face. Just privately annoyed by it. I thought…I thought she would be over you by now. I figured the first few months, her attachment would be understandable. You protected her, she was having nightmares, and being able to talk to you…helped her. She refuses to talk to me about Richard. So does Landon…" He groaned. "Yet she's more in love with you now than she was six months ago. I wasn't expecting that."

"Are you uncomfortable with it?" I asked in a small voice, knowing it was strange. A thirty-six-year-old shouldn't be the best friend of an eleven-year-old, not to humans, and maybe not to werewolves. Werecats were different.

"Jealous," he said, leaning down to put his forehead on the counter. "I'm jealous. Does she talk to you about him? My son, her brother tried to kill her. Wanted to kill me and Landon…and I don't know how she feels. Part of me knows if she ever told anyone, it would be you, and that irks me. She used to tell me everything."

"No, she doesn't talk to me about Richard. None of you have since that night," I answered, swallowing my guilt over killing his son. Richard refused to stop fighting, and I had to protect Carey, but it still didn't wash all the guilt away. A man had to bury his child. His asshole child but a child, nonetheless.

"You understand her. Every female in my pack…either I didn't trust them as much as I should or had reasons to keep them away. Every human woman who ever tried to get close to the family was looking to turn her into a princess, and she's not that girl, will never be that girl, no matter how much I tried. You understand being a tough woman in a world of monsters and…I'm jealous it makes you special to her."

"There's no reason to be. She's your daughter." I shrugged, trying to play off how uncomfortable this conversation had turned.

"Just promise me one thing. Even if you do need to have us leave, keep talking to her. I don't care what else you do, Jacky, but if you hurt my daughter, I'll hunt you down and give her your hide."

"I would give it to you," I murmured. "I don't agree with hurting kids, and I'll do everything in my power to keep werecat drama far away from her. I can't promise to keep it away from you, but then, you're an adult werewolf. There's not much I can do for you or Landon. She's human, though. No one should try to hurt her." I frowned. "You never answered my question."

"No, it doesn't make me uncomfortable," he replied, looking up again. "I've seen it in wolves, too. An adult will take someone under their wing, mentor and guide them to adulthood. Protect them. Not as…privately as you, not for the same reasons, but I don't think anything weird is going on. I'm just jealous."

"She's a great kid," I said, smiling. "I'll keep you updated on this. You can't share what I told you tonight, though. It could seriously harm me and other werecats. Please."

"It's safe with me. There's no reason to tell anyone about what the werecats are dealing with on their own." He checked the time. "Thank you for talking to me. Don't ignore her anymore, please. If there's something on your mind, tell me, then talk to her about whatever. She's been a mess since Tuesday."

"I'll text her tomorrow and apologize." Carey was probably already in bed, so there was no way I was texting her tonight and waking her up for Heath to deal with when he got home. "Do you want one more drink?"

"No, I'm fine. Landon is probably prowling around the house, wondering if he should come get me, or if I'm alive. He doesn't trust you very much, which is typical for Landon. He'll warm up, eventually."

"Is that why he used to come in with you but not often? Because he's worried I'm going to attack you?"

"Yes and no," Heath answered with a small smile. Pushing off the bar, he adjusted his light jacket, making sure the zipper was exactly halfway up. The longer I looked at it, the more I began to think he must have ironed it. Did he iron his casual clothes?

Weird ass wolf.

He started walking toward the door, and I took the last chance I had to say something.

"Look, I am sorry for the cold shoulder all week. It was nothing personal, really."

"Just remember to tell her that," he replied, pulling open the door. "I like you, but if you disappeared tomorrow, I wouldn't be hurt. I would just be angry that my daughter would lose you and not understand why."

I tried not to take that personally. No love lost between us, he walked out. After he was gone, I did take it personally.

He wouldn't care at all? Really? After everything in Dallas and the last six months living in the same area, seeing each other every damn weekend? Then why is he at my bar all the fucking time?