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But he still has the most infuriating timing.
Damn it, Tris.
I’m busy. I have forty-two hours of data to review before my grad students can plot it. Not to mention the four stacks of papers sitting on my desk at the university. Eventually, those will need grading.
The painful pinch in my chest is familiar. Jonah would tell me to breathe. Avery would roll his eyes. And Tristan would be the only one in the whole world to understand what I’m feeling with just one look.
Damn it… it’s Tris.
So I answer.
“Every time one of you interrupts me,” I start, pressing the cell between my ear and my shoulder so I can re-roll the sleeves on my white button-down. “I have to start whatever I was doing from the very beginning. You know that.”
“Spencer—”
“And, unlike your work, mine isn’t as simple as reading emails and shaking hands with old bastards. Each time I have to go back to the beginning, it costs me hours, Tristan?—”
“Spencer.”
Anxiety swells while I think about my commitments. “This research is due Monday,” I snap, shoving a hand through my silvery-blond hair—the one major difference in appearance between my brother and me. All the other dissimilarities are below the surface.
“That’s another thing you don’t have—deadlines.”
“SPENCER.”
His tone finally sinks through the tension stretched taut in my middle. All of my indignation leaves on a deflating exhale. “What?”
Low and urgent, he replies, “I need you to get the others and come to the police station on the corner of Mills and Robinson. It’s ten minutes from the townhouse. Bring one of Avery’s hoodies. Once you’re in the car, I need you to call Myles and have him come back to the pack house. Tell him to await instructions.”
I blink at the wall my desk faces, absorbing the list of tasks. Why does he want our butler to come back? Myles always leaves at five. He barely has enough work around here to keep him occupied for the eight hours a day we employ him.
“It’s an emergency,” Tristan adds.
Unnecessarily. Of course it’s an emergency. It has to be, or he wouldn’t be issuing cryptic, rapid-fire instructions.
It takes monumental effort for my mind to shift gears, but I force it. Abandoning the data laid out in front of me, I think back to dinner. Tris was running off for one of his silly vigilante adventures.
“Did something go wrong?” I ask, already on my feet.
Our pack townhome is dark. We designed it that way. All matte black—the walls, the floors. It’s stark and clean, with square edges and modern tinted glass.
During the day, light comes in through the skylight strips cleverly concealed along the edges of each room’s ceiling. But at night, solar-powered LEDs come on. It was overcast today, so the lights along the walls glow a low orange.
Tristan is too quiet for too long. By the time he speaks, I’m stepping out of the eastern wing into the huge living room at the center of the house. Avery and Jonah are sprawled on our charcoal leather sofas. They both look up at me as I snap out our pack alpha’s name, barking.
“Tristan. Speak.”
Under ordinary circumstances, Tris’s dominance would put any of us on our backs. He usually doesn’t even flinch when someone else barks. But, this time, I hear his breath catch.
“I bit her, Spence,” he groans, shoving out the impossible words. “I accidentally bonded our pack to an omega.”
chapter
seven
You know what?
I’m not surprised.
