27. Feeling Small

Layla was a bag of nerves when Jax stopped the car in front of the packhouse. It had been so easy for the Circle to separate them, and it would have been just as easy for them to kill her. She would never have been able to defend herself the way Jax had done.

She would have been the cause of Jackson's death.

She was his weakness.

Useless.

Even the wolf that had come to her aid and given her confidence that they could rescue Faith had abandoned her without telling her what the hell she was supposed to do.

She got out of the car without a word to him and rushed up the front steps. Dylan was already waiting there with Gavin, and they didn't look like they'd slept since she'd last seen them. She could cut through their anxiety with a knife.

"Have you learned anything else?" she asked them.

Both men didn't answer her directly. Instead, they looked behind her at the man coming up the steps. Jax was an emotional void, but she could never completely escape knowing how he felt. His a