Page 97 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Whatever thread he'd caught drowns under mine, and his own storm-scent surges to cover his confusion.

"No," he says, rough. "Nothing."

Close. Too close.

I keep my face lazy and my pulse to myself.

"And what's it to you, anyway?" Cade throws it like a man grabbing the nearest weapon in a dark kitchen. "You met her Tuesday. You've got no stake here. Why are you parked on a black road at night playing bodyguard for a woman who isn't even yours?"

It's a fair question. I decline to give it a fair answer.

"Because somebody has to. The three men whose actual job that was are currently interviewing the stranger they were hoping would beat them to it. A shame because clearly, your woman isn’t here and this conversation isn’t helping find her, now is it?"

Beckett's eyes narrow — not jealous now, just weighing.

"You keep saying it cost you everything," he says slowly. "A pack doesn't just evaporate. What did you do?"

The question walks straight up to the door I keep bolted and raps on it.

I don't open it.

"Ask me again when she's safe," I say, "and I might tell you. Right now she's on a road in the dark, and the only useful thing you own is time, which you are spending on me."

Then August breaks.

"Okay." He says it quietly first, from the back. Then it isn't quiet at all. ‘We're screwing this up. We keep screwing this up!"

Cade actually flinches.

"Are— are you yelling?"

"Yes, I'm yelling!" August's voice fills the other cab and cracks the whole night open, and I watch two Alphas who have plainly never once heard this man raise his voice go rigid where they sit. "I'm yelling because I am sick to death of the three of us making the exact same mistake and calling it a plan. She walked out, Cade. Again. Because of us. Again."

"August—" Cade tries.

"No. For once in your life, shut up and just drive the truck when we finally leave. Instead of turning every hard minute into a fight where your feelings are the only ones allowed in the room." August doesn't give him the half-second to recover. His sea-glass eyes are blazing, and the pear-and-sage coming off him has gone sharp enough to sting from here. "You've been the loudest man in every room since we were nineteen. It has always been the sound you make when you're scared."

Cade shuts his mouth.

I did not believe that was physically possible.

When he speaks again, the swagger has drained clean out of it.

"I know what I sound like," he says, low, to the windshield. "You think I can't hear it? I've listened to myself do it for five years." His hands flex on the wheel. "I made the whole car laugh, driving out of that parking lot. Anybody ever tell you that? I cracked jokes the entire way to the highway, so not one of us had to sit in what we'd just done to her." A rough breath. "So. Loud when I'm scared. Believe me, I'm the world expert."

Beckett shifts, reaching for the only role he's ever known.

"We shouldn't be turning on each other. This is what the man wants. Us, cracking down the?—"

"There it is." August rounds on him. "You want to lead the second there's a disagreement to settle. Give you a wall to brace or a beam to run the numbers on, you're the finest man on this coast. But leading us back toward the woman we adored and loved and bedded and abandoned, twice, Beckett. We are one bad sunrise from twice, and you've got nothing printed on the page. You're a beautiful quiet manual with no instructions in it. You can hold up any house here. You cannot lead us to her."

Beckett's mouth opens.

Nothing comes out.

August looks between the two of them. His voice comes back down, and the quiet of it is somehow worse than the shout.

"If we cannot figure this out and fix it…properly, all the way, no more careful little half-measures, then I'm out. I mean that. I'm finished being a coward in good company."