Page 170 of Cursed Bonds: An Alpha's Destiny

After breaking the embrace, I held her shoulders and looked into her red-rimmed eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

Nodding, she wiped the back of her hand over her eyes.

Jace cleared his throat. He had a serious look on his face, and I wondered what he was going to say.

“Steph, I realize you obviously can’t go back to your place in Scottsdale. The council and I talked.” He looked over at Langston, Reese, Abigail, and Waylan. “Your house here is still open. Until this thing with Eren is solved, you can stay there if you want.” He held up a hand, stopping Steph before she could speak. “We will need to post a guard there if you do decide to stay there. We all appreciate what you did for the children of Scottsdale, but you did betray your pack. I can’t trust you completely. Not yet, anyway.”

I wanted to argue. Stephanie nearly got herself killed for us. Had I been a few seconds later, we’d be burying her. But I bit my tongue. This was Jace’s pack, and he was the alpha. I couldn’t undermine him in this, not in front of everyone.

Stephanie nodded shakily. “I’ll take you up on that. Thank you.”

Jace nodded and waved Tank over. “Tank will take you back to your house. I’ll send a guy over soon to watch over you. I won’t involve you in any more of the plans we make, but I will keep you in the loop if I think you might be in danger in some way.”

“I understand,” she said. “I truly am sorry, Jace.”

He nodded and sent her on her way. When she was gone, a bit of tension faded, almost as though everyone had been holding their breath, waiting to see the interaction between the two.

As though to punctuate the moment, Jace’s phone rang. He slid it from his pocket.

“It’s Dustin and Shayna,” he said, turning the speaker on. “Hey.”

“Hey, big brother,” Shayna said.

“Anything wrong?” Jace asked. I could see the worry on his face.

“Calm your ass down, we’re fine,” Shayna replied. “I’m just calling to update. We’ve got all the moms and kids settled away. Still finding better solutions for housing, though. As of now, we have them set up in a sort of encampment in the school gymnasium. They seem really happy there, so it must be better than what they came from.”

“Good. Do you need anything from us?”

“That’s more what I wanted to call about,” Shayna said, a sarcastic lilt to her voice. “Dustin was going to call, but he volunteered to cook dinner for the families, so he entrusted me, his gracious and beautiful mate, to do the job.”

Jace snorted and rolled his eyes. “I don’t like where this is going. I feel like you’re about to ask me for money like back when you were a kid.”

“It’s not like that. It’s about Eren.”

“What about him?” Jace asked, the muscles in his jaw jumping.

“We don’t think he’ll honor pack law.”

Jace let out a bark of a laugh. “What clued you in?”

“Don’t be an ass. I think he’s going to try something before the challenge. It’s exactly something he’d do. We want to send our strongest betas to you in Crestwood to train with your guys. It would build a little camaraderie between packs, and our pack has never really had to deal with stuff like this. The guys aren’t as skilled as your people. Langston was in the military, Waylan is a good fighter. Even Abigail has a lot of martial arts training. And that’s just what they can do in their human form. What do you say?”

Jace and Waylan had some sort of weird, silent guy discussion. Raised eyebrows, crooked smiles, nods, sidelong glances, and shrugs. I’d have had a better chance deciphering ancient Greek than figuring out whatever passed between the two of them.

Finally, Jace turned back to the phone. “That sounds doable. We’ll do whatever we need to make sure Eren doesn’t come out of this with a single win. Let me know when your guys want to come down.”

“Great. One other thing, Jace?”

“That would be?”

“Call Ivy. She’s got some pretty big news.”

Jace caught my eye and frowned. I shrugged, having no clue what Shayna was talking about.

“Why couldn’t she just call me directly?” Jace asked.

“She wanted to be sure you were available. Didn’t want to play phone tag.”

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