Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,67

means everyone is safe, and we’re all exactly who we ought to be. This is fate. It had to be us. No one is wrong, because we’re all vital.”

Elias appreciated the sentiment, but he couldn’t believe it as strongly as Saul did. Jack Henry was the omega, Jasper the uber-alpha, Saul the conduit that bound them together. And that left Elias exactly nowhere.

JASPER

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jasper didn’t like hearing that Saul’s father might’ve been in Galvetta, but he downplayed his reaction. Ever since their trip to Ferris, Saul had been rattled, making Jasper wish he’d never taken him there, especially if the trip had prompted Otis into mischief.

As much as possible, Jasper had been staying away from Galvetta, trying to make it clear he didn’t intend to interfere with its affairs. But after hearing about Otis, he decided he couldn’t continue to deal with hostility by ignoring it. If it came to a fight, he would rather be on the offensive, which meant understanding what he was up against. So the morning after Saul’s encounter with Miller, Jasper put Jack Henry on the back of his bike and drove into town with Saul and Elias following in the car. They would drop by town hall to officially change the name of their pack, and then Jasper would make a call on Miller.

The clerk who’d registered them was on duty again today. “I thought you-all were building a real house out there,” she joked as she changed McKinley Pack to Treehouse Pack in the register.

“A treehouse was where it all started,” Jasper told her with a wink. She fanned herself like she was imagining it happening, and Jasper nearly needed to fan himself at the reminder of what’d gone down that night.

“You should ask her about your mom,” Elias suggested to Saul.

“Why would she know about my mom?”

“She probably has access to a lot of information we don’t. We’re trying to locate someone,” Elias told her.

“Well, if she got married or divorced or died or was arrested—not that she would’ve been arrested, I’m sure,” the clerk added hurriedly. “But if anything major happened to her, there’d be a record of it. I could send an inquiry around to neighboring towns.”

“Could you really?” Saul asked. He gave the clerk all the information he had, which was sadly not much.

“We have a weekly bulletin that goes out to all the town clerks in the province,” the clerk said as she finished up her notes. “If she’s anywhere in the area, we’ll find her.”

Jasper smiled almost as broadly as Saul. Things were starting to come together. The house would be livable soon, Elias was integrating better into the pack, and maybe Saul would get some closure. Jasper just needed to take care of the threats lurking outside their inner circle—Saul’s father, the discontented townspeople, and Lon, who hadn’t shown up in Galvetta yet but who continued to make noisy threats from Ferris.

Jasper could deal with Otis and Lon if they came around, but an angry mob of villagers with pitchforks might be too much for even him to handle, so after giving Jack Henry a kiss and Elias a hug, he drove Saul over to Miller’s Electronics.

He hadn’t been in the dusty store since he was a teenager lusting after a new stereo system. Even then, Miller had been cool to him, though at the time Jasper hadn’t understood why. Now he got it. Alphas wanted to reign supreme, and there Jasper had been—a runty teenager with all the awkwardness and insecurity typical of teens and yet presumably better than anyone else. If you believed that hybrids ruled over humans and alphas ruled over omegas, then fate had decreed that Jasper’s skinny, pimply ass sat at the top of the pyramid.

With a more grown-up understanding of why his status rankled people, Jasper approached Miller politely. Otis was an irredeemable ass, but it wasn’t unreasonable for the citizens of Galvetta to be concerned by the sudden appearance of a new pack in their midst, especially when Galvetta’s head elected official was so clearly biased in Jasper’s direction.

“Good morning, Mr. Miller,” Jasper said, giving him the respect of a title. But Miller didn’t return the respect. His mouth curled into a sneer.

“Ran crying to your alpha, did you?” he said to Saul. “Boo hoo, I was mean to you.” He rubbed his fists into his eyes in mock sorrow.

Saul hadn’t said anything about Miller being mean to him, but Jasper could guess what kind of mean Miller had been.