Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1)(37)

Jaxson slowly lifted his hand from the mouse and leaned back. If Olivia’s mother was a witch, then Olivia was at least half witch. But her mother died when Olivia was only twelve… maybe she was never introduced to the dark arts. Either way, the agitation made him rise up from his chair and pace the room.

Did she know? Was she one of them? His mind was a hurricane of confusion and torment. He couldn’t square the Olivia he knew—smart and kind, gentle with nervous job applicants, steady head in a crisis—with what he knew to be true about witches. They toyed with shifters like cats with mice. If one of them had gotten inside Riverwise… Olivia now knew all the members of his pack. Could identify them in public. And he’d given her detailed information about three other packs as well. If she was infiltrating them, secretly working for her mother’s coven…

Jaxson stopped dead in his frenetic pacing. An icy dread trickled into his stomach.

What if he was all wrong about Olivia from the start?

He stared out his window at the Seattle skyline and just shook his head slowly. Olivia as an undercover witch invading his pack? That just didn’t fit with the tremulous girl he’d made love to last night. Witches were nothing if not sexually experienced—and that’s not something a person can easily hide. Either Olivia was an academy award-winning actress or last night was the first time someone had properly made love to her. Besides, witches used the dark arts to gain advantages in all spheres of their lives, including the marketplace. None of them worried about the rent.

Jaxson’s shoulders relaxed.

The most likely explanation was the simplest. Olivia was exactly what her digital life portrayed—an orphan who scrabbled her way out of foster care and through a series of deadbeat jobs, looking for some kind of meaning in her life. What had she said, that first time, in the library? My work is important to me. At the time, he didn’t really understand, given she’d just left her job at the paper. But now he could see it—she’d been trying to make something of herself, doing something that mattered. That’s why she tried to rescue him in the alleyway. And how he’d enticed her to Riverwise in the first place—another chance to help him out of a sticky situation. She’d leapt into that with both feet and stolen his heart in the process.

That was the person Jaxson knew. And loved.

Whatever Olivia’s parents had been, they were long dead. She had been surviving on her own ever since, and she deserved better than this mysterious asshole boyfriend who obviously didn’t treat her right.

And Jaxson very much wanted to be that better man.

He glanced at his phone—a quarter past one. He’d give her one more call, but if she didn’t pick up, he was going to her apartment and banging on the door until she let him in. This time, the phone didn’t even ring… it just went straight to message. Which meant she had turned it off.

Dammit.

That’s it—he was going over there to talk to her. He grabbed his keys and headed toward the door of his office, only to see Jace dashing around the common room and peering into the offices.

“Jace?” Jaxson stopped at the threshold of his office. He hadn’t seen his brother since he had cleared out the Wilding pack, hopefully taking them to the safehouse outside the city. “What’s up?”

“Hey,” Jace said, a little breathless as he jogged up to Jaxson. “Have you seen Jared?”

“Nope. Just me in the office this morning.”

Jace gave him a cockeyed look. “Why are you even here, bro? I thought you’d be spending the weekend in bed with a certain hot office assistant.”

“That’s… got some complications.” Jaxson grimaced. “I’m on my way to see her now, actually.”

Jace shook his head. “Man, why are you even messing around with her? I mean, I did what you said and stashed Terra at the safehouse, but she is so ready for a mate. It was all I could do to keep her from climbing into my bed last night.”

“At the safehouse?” Jaxson’s eyebrows hiked up. The safehouse was their family estate in the mountains outside Seattle, and their mother was the caretaker.

“I know, right?” Jace looked disgusted. “Mom would’ve stirred up a shitstorm if she knew. Now, if it was you bedding Terra, I think Mom would have made you two breakfast and started planning the wedding.” He smirked.

Jaxson rolled his eyes. Their mother wasn’t just on the bandwagon to find him a mate—she was driving the wagon train. The estate had been a halfway house for all kinds of shifters ever since Dad died, so she was probably used to a few bed-shakings in the middle of the night. It wasn’t like his mother didn’t know the passionate nature of wolves and other shifters. But only a Wilding would try to seduce one of her sons while under her roof.