by Joyee Flynn
“Deal.” I headed over to the bar, seeing Sampson still wasn’t back. I hoped that worked out okay. “Hey, Kelvin. Can I get a few rum and Cokes?”
“Sure, Carson,” he answered with a nod and started pulling out stuff. Nice that he had jumped in to help. “Hey, um, so, can we just go talk to the Omegas we’re not guarding or do we need permission?”
“You can talk to anyone you want,” I chuckled, seeing how nervous the man was. “Who are you asking about?”
“Baptista,” he muttered. “But then I heard him say he wanted to stay here and not go back to Chicago. He said he’d rather be ungrounded and potentially volatile than go back with another inner circle.”
“Well, he can stay, that’s up to him, but he needs to find wolves that can claim him and keep his powers stable. I think he’s just nervous, like we all were, about getting screwed again.”
“Can I just ask him out and not be his Beta? If we’re staying here then it doesn’t matter, right?”
“I don’t know who’s staying or what the plans are yet. There are a lot of variables in that, Kelvin. I know that shouldn’t stop you from talking to Baptista if you like him.”
“He’s so sweet. I mean, he’s been helping the band with anything they need, making sure they all have water between songs and whatnot,” Kelvin said with a soft smile as he kept pouring. “To have gone through so much crap like he has and to be that nice, still that full of life, is just amazing to me.”
“Then stop talking to me and to talk to him,” I chuckled. Kelvin nodded as he finished up our drinks and went to turn away. “Bring him something fun and fruity to drink and ask him if he doesn’t mind tasting it for you. That would be a great icebreaker.”
“Yeah, I can do that. Thanks, Carson.” I nodded as I grabbed my four plastic cups and headed back to the table Ian and I had started at. It was almost full now but we managed to fit.
“You guys good now?” I asked Vencentio quietly.
“Yeah. I still feel shaky and we’re going to have to be extra cautious of each other’s feelings for a while but I think we’ll pull through this just fine. You guys?”
“Same. Still more to discuss but I know we’re all willing to work on it so that makes all the difference,” I answered. Then I bit into my burger and moaned. “Fuck. Asher is a good cook. Did he do all of this himself and plan the party tonight and plot to get us all back together?”
“Yes, yes, I did,” Asher chuckled. “I had help but we’re going to have to come up with some type of help rotation. I’m feeding an army here and there’s too much prep and cleanup.”
“I’ll help with clean-up duty,” Kiefer offered. “I like doing dishes and cleaning. Just don’t ask Baptista. It still makes him cry when people talk about chores with him.”
“He can’t go the rest of his life and not ever have to pick up a mop or wash his own clothes,” Asher said hesitantly as he glanced at me. “Or am I missing something?”
“Since Baptista wasn’t being physically abused or like what was happening to Gideon was a security risk to wolves being found out, he was rescued last,” I answered quietly so the man didn’t overhear me. “It’s been harder for him to open up or let go because he was last, like to him that says his pain wasn’t really valid. It was, but we had to prioritize. So it’s not just about being their slave, it’s that he feels everyone’s laughing at him for bitching about it. He went through something traumatic and if not doing chores for a while helps, then so be it.”
“Yeah, I get it. That’s rough. Poor guy. He seems really nice.”
“He’ll offer to help and I know he can cook, but asking or telling him to do something and he freezes up like he’s back with his old inner circle. It probably seems silly to some that cleaning is so traumatic to him but we don’t really know what he suffered through. George has been doing sessions with him on the phone but it’s only been a few months.”
“No, I gotcha. I’ll make sure not to ask him for help,” Asher agreed.
“We’ll help clean up when everyone’s done eating too,” Declan offered. That was fine by me. We all needed to pitch in to make this island vacation work. I was still going to get my dance with each of my men tonight though. Even if the music was done playing.
* * * *
Dewey
Now that I knew Taggart didn’t want to stay in Wichita and Percy and Azyle were open to the discussion of moving to the island, I was all about checking the place out. The next morning I was up with the sun and heading down to the kitchen with my laptop. I wanted to see as much as I could about the perks of the place and what worked well. I started making coffee and realized we would probably need a lot of it.
I found a few of those huge coffeemakers for parties that serve like fifty-five cups and plugged them in. It took me a bit but I found the filters, beans to grind, and got it all going. Then I found where someone had pulled tray after tray of morning pastries from the freezer and started pulling off the covering. I wasn’t as good of a cook as Asher, but I could hold my own for breakfast. I started scrambling eggs and cutting up fruit when Tristan stumbled into the kitchen.
“Coffee just finished brewing,” I told him as I pointed to the first pot.
“What are you doing up so early, pint size?” he muttered as he grabbed a mug and got to work on his coffee. “We need a fucking espresso machine.”
“That’s an easy enough fix, Tristan,” I chuckled, shaking my head. “Don’t go getting all cranky because the house didn’t know you’d want espresso.”
“There’s one on the boat.”
“Then your second cup of coffee can come from the yacht,” I snickered. God I had forgotten how much of a grump he was before his coffee. “And I wanted to check the place out and then I just started making breakfast. Asher did an awesome job last night but I can help this morning. I had my laptop going too. Did you know there’s Wi-Fi? I have like the best signal on my phone, we get Wi-Fi. Is there cable?”
“Do you have a mute button?” he bitched as he sat down at the counter. “Yes, there’s cable. There’s actually a cell tower on the island so we have everything tricked out here. Wesley told me that.”
“Oh, thanks, Dewey,” Asher said as he walked into the kitchen. “I was hoping I wouldn’t be cooking all by myself this morning.” He saw the pastries and smiled. “You defrosted these nicely.”
“I thought you did,” I hedged. “They were sitting out when I got down here.”
“I forgot to put them out,” he replied, his eyebrows scrunching together in thought. “I saw them in the freezer last night and I meant to but I forgot.”
“Someone else must have after you were in here last,” I offered.
“Maybe,” Asher agreed, not looking too convinced though.
“Or there’s just a ghost in this house,” Tristan muttered from the counter. He lifted his head enough to have some more coffee and set it right back down. “I forgot to pack soap. We realized it yesterday before the party because we had soap on the yacht. I told my guys I was going to hunt down some soap and they went to get the party set up. I couldn’t find anyone and forgot.
“Went back to our room later and there was two bars of soap on our counter. And it wasn’t Jared, Cameron, or Rhyce. It just magically appeared and none of us told anyone we needed it.”
“We don’t believe in ghosts, do we?” I hedged, glancing between the two of them.
“You’re asking?” Asher chuckled. “I’m not sure I believe in ghosts who bring soap to wayward, in-need guests.”
“But I’m just asking, like, in general do we believe in them. I mean, Tristan and Edric have had a lot more contact with witches than I have and I would think they would know if ghosts exist.”
“They do. I’ve seen some,” Wesley grumbled as he walked into the kitchen. “Not here but that might explain what’s been going on. I’ve been noticing gaps in the energy as if someone’s blocking me. I bet a powerful ghost could do that.”
“Well at
least it’s a nice ghost,” Tristan chuckled, shaking his head. “He put out pastries to defrost and brought me soap. Wow, do we live in a crazy bubble or what? None of us are freaking over a ghost.”
“As you said, it’s a nice ghost. Maybe the previous owner is happy that someone is in the house now so they’re not alone.”
“Probably, but ghosts don’t just happen when everyone dies. They have to die violently or have unfinished business,” Wesley muttered and then his eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “And then I really might know the answer. The previous owner left us a file, well two actually. One was normal stuff, warranties on appliances, map of house, fuse box, cell tower info, and on and on.
“The other is a file about his son who was kidnapped. I say we set up a task force and start going through it all while we’re here. Brody’s got some leads on journals, and that library seems to be full of them and old books. Maybe we can piece together who are the other bloodlines and where are they.”
“So the mansion is really ours, right?” I asked as I kept cooking the scrambled eggs with cheese I’d put together. Then I walked over and threw bacon in the other pan. Asher smiled and took over that for me while popping bread in the toaster. “I mean, we could really move in here today.”
“Yeah, and you’re not the only ones thinking of staying,” Wesley answered as he snacked on a pastry. “A lot of us are actually. We just don’t know how to do it best or whether we will all come.”
“I’m worried if some of us come how much trouble the ones who don’t will be in after they’re gone,” Tristan said quietly. “I think we need a group meeting at or after breakfast to discuss all this. Then we can set up your mystery squad for the file, and the rest of us split up into teams to check everything out. We’d need to see what kind of supplies the house needs before we could even consider running to here. Also we’d need a plan B. Brody was talking about a mansion in Russia.
“And we’d need to make friends in Puerto Rico because if we move here that’s where we’ll have to go to get most of our supplies. Also ship out whatever we sell. I know Taggart made swords and was badass with herbs. He wants to check out what the island has and maybe set up a company for that stuff.”
“But technically Puerto Rico is the US, right?” I asked nervously.
“Yeah, but we’ve got Beta candidates who want to stay here and they won’t be outlaws from the Council. They just moved. So we’d have to be careful they don’t draw attention but they could blend in I’m sure.”
“Okay, so, we need to make a plan,” Wesley said as he glanced around the kitchen. “I’ll be right back. I need paper, lots of it.”
I chuckled as he hopped off his stool and raced out of the kitchen. That man really did love his plans and plottings.
“I’m going to start waking everyone up and let them know we’ve got a breakfast meeting going on,” Tristan mumbled as he stood. “Or I’m really going to bang on doors and shout for people to get their asses downstairs.”
“We have Marines for that. One of them has to be up. Make them use the booming voice,” I snickered, thinking about how Lief and Slate had bossed us around a few times since the trip started.
“I heard you need a Marine?” Slate chuckled as he walked into the kitchen. Tristan filled him in. “I’m on it, boss.”
“Good, then I can sit here and drink my coffee.” Tristan sat back on the stool and did just that.
“Not much sleep last night?” I joked as I finished the eggs and set them in a warming tray. Damn, that was a lot of eggs.
“And that won’t feed even half of what we have coming down,” Asher chuckled. “Can you make pancakes?”
“Yeah, but I suck at flipping them.”
“Make the batter and I’ll help with that.”
“Good deal.” I quickly got to work but glanced at Tristan when he cleared his throat.
“No, to answer your question,” he drawled as he waggled his eyebrows. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. Apparently I have great moves on the dance floor and my men liked it very, very much. And after feeling good about getting couples back together, a drunken Cameron said he wanted to make a baby.”
“And expected you to grow a uterus?” Asher joked as he finished up with the massive poundage of bacon. Now he was working on sausage. Damn.
“Nope. It’s his joke of asking for sex without saying he wants to fuck,” Tristan drawled. “But part of me thinks he does really want a baby. Or at least one day.”
“I’d like to have one someday,” I admitted with a shrug. “But it might not be in the cards for us especially if we run but who knows. I’d think Wesley and Brody would definitely want to carry on their bloodline.”
“Already in the process of finding a surrogate. Lord Ellys was incredibly helpful with that,” Wesley said as he walked into the kitchen again, writing furiously. “He loved my grandfather and doesn’t want my family tree to stop with me either. He’s looking for Brody as well though I’m not sure either of us are ready. Knowing that man, he could find one for all of us if we wanted.”
“That gives me hope for one day,” I said with a smile. Just then there was noise outside and the back door was flung open. At the same time Slate was upstairs shouting for everyone to get their asses up.
“Baby, we went for a run and caught a wild boar,” Taggart said excitedly as he carried it inside. “They’re all over the island. You can totally tell this is owned by wolves. I bet someone brought them here when they moved here. There’s a huge population of them. And you should have seen us. We took this bad boy down!”
“It was awesome,” Percy agreed. “I can’t say I’ve ever had that much fun on a hunt. We have to limit though so we don’t kill the population. I wonder what they eat. Should we start leaving them food?”
I left the pancakes for Asher and darted over to my laptop, a little shocked how excited my naked, covered-in-blood mates were. I quickly looked up boars and read out loud what I found. “Not indigenous to the region. They’re scavengers so they eat just about anything and no we don’t have to worry about them.”
“Sweet. We’re having wild pig for dinner tonight,” Azyle chuckled. “Where do I put it?”
“Is there a garage? Don’t bring it in here with breakfast,” Asher growled. “You have to drain that sucker, chop it up, and on and on. Or take off its skin and we can do a pig roast tonight.”
“Yeah, let’s do that. I’m skinning it!” Percy said as he opened the back door up. “Baby, you want to see this?”
“No, not even a little,” I groaned, the idea grossing me out. In wolf form, fine, I could eat raw meat and not be bothered, but yeah, that didn’t mean I wanted to skin the massive fucking pig. “Find a place to set it down and clean up. We’re having a group meeting over breakfast, which is almost done.”
“Yes, Dewey!” they called out and raced out the door.
“Apparently they’re excited to be here and probably stay,” Wesley chuckled. “We’ll have to work on getting the kids down here too then.”
“How are we going to get everyone out if they want to? I mean it’s not like we can drive a moving truck down here,” I asked with annoyance. There was going to be a lot more hoops to moving here than I had originally thought and for whatever reason that really made me want to pout.
Chapter 8
Lennox
“No but we can rent shipping containers and pay a freight boat to bring them all down,” Brody mumbled as we walked into the kitchen with our men. After the ruckus Slate had made I was pretty sure the dead would be awake and in about as good of a mood as we were. “I looked it up yesterday when people were talking about possibly staying. We’d have to decide if we wanted to sell our cars though because I don’t think there are any roads here really.”
“We’ll have to investigate that,” Wesley agreed, adding it to the list. “Okay, so I figure today we’re going to split up and figure some shit out. We need to make friends or get the lay of the land on islands f
or shipping goods out and receiving stuff.”
“We can do that,” Lief offered. “The yacht needs fuel and we can start checking things out. I have some contacts in the area. Well, closer to Cuba really.” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Stationed at Guantanamo for a bit, our hot Marine?” Jaxon chuckled.
“We can’t say,” Carter answered as he and everyone else started trickling in. “Coffee?” Wesley pointed to the huge pots that were done. “Awesome. We seriously can’t say but we can tell you that we know the area of the Caribbean and Virgin Islands, just never this far out east instead of more south.”
“Cool. So do the Marines want to handle that part?” Wesley asked, still taking notes.
“No, I want to take Brody with. He’s never been out of the country before. We’ll hook it up and make all kinds of friends and I’ll check what contacts I still have here,” Lief answered. “Anyone else who wants to come is more than welcome to. But I think it will take more than one trip.”
“Yeah, I’ll head out the trip tomorrow,” Slate said as he moved closer to Sampson.
“Get away from me,” the Omega growled and pushed the man. “You threatened to dump a bucket of water on my bed if I didn’t wake up.”
“It was a blanket threat, Sampson, not meant just for you.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not going to see my bed now, buster,” he grumbled. “Tell me there’s some juice around here.”
“I’ll get you some, you poor thing,” Gareth cooed before sticking his tongue out at Slate.
“Thank you,” Sampson whispered as his face heated up. “That would be nice. I know most people need coffee to wake up, but I’m like a bouncy squirrel if I get caffeine. I just like citrus to perk me up.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Gareth leaned down and snuck a kiss from Sampson, who turned even brighter until the tips of his ears were even red. Then he shot Wesley a look.
“I saw nothing, I know nothing,” Wesley mumbled. “You’ve already been activated and what happens on the island, stays on the island. And I don’t ever want to hear about it unless you plan on staying at which time our role of guardians to unclaimed Omegas is over.”
