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It had been less than twelve hours, and my entire world had shifted on its axis, my universe now circling around one person, my only job to keep him safe and happy. Which was what I tried to focus on as I made up the guest suite across the hall from mine. Did I want him to stay with me? Obviously. I was hoping we’d get to take things a little further than we had in the basement, but I felt like that was Felix’s decision to make, and I didn’t want to push him.
I’d never wanted someone as much as I wanted Felix, and I’d been fighting all day to keep my need to take him and claim him in check. When Felix kissed me, I’d let go more than I’d intended to, and I thought we were on the same page, but I also felt like maybe I’d been riding the line of taking advantage of his fragileemotional state after his shitshow of a day. In some ways, I felt I’d known Felix forever, but just because we were fated didn’t mean we really knew anything about each other.
And if realizing McMahon was the closest thing I had to a friend was a kick in the balls, finding out Felix was my fated mate was a kick to the head and the heart. But I couldn’t deny it. The proof was marked on my body—I’d noticed when I’d caught my reflection in one of the mirrored walls at the diner. When Felix and I officially claimed each other, the fact that I was mated for life would be obvious in both my human and orca forms.
As I went through the motions of making dinner—pasta with jarred sauce and a simple salad—I thought of all the things I would do to keep Felix safe from whoever was onto him, and I wasn’t surprised to find there wasn’t much that didn’t make the cut.
The back door slammed open.
“Damn it,” Cal cursed as he stood on one foot and tried to pry off his boot that was caked in mud. All of Cal was covered in mud. I could see his eyes where he’d obviously had on sunglasses or goggles, and I saw where the mud had cracked when he’d sat down, but otherwise, he was a mess.
“What the hell happened to you?”
His head swung my way, and he almost lost his balance since he was still standing on one foot, still trying to pry his shoelaces apart.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I wouldn’t want to explain why I looked like I was auditioning for the role of swamp thing either.”
Cal stopped tugging at his boot long enough to flip me off. “It’s mud, not pond scum, you ass.”
“Same difference. You’d better not be planning to come in here like that. If you get dirt on the floors, Quin will kill you. Did you drive home that way?”
“No, I walked from Walla Walla. Of course I fucking drove.”
I shook my head. Quin, Cal’s twin, would shit a brick when he saw what had to be a muddy mess in Cal’s Land Rover. Cal gave up on his boot for a second and started to step toward the threshold. I held up a hand. “It’s been a long goddamned day, and I’m not in the mood to deal with a pissed-off Quin tonight.”
“What would you suggest I do?” He lifted his foot again and continued trying to tug the laces free. His first boot popped off, chunks of dried mud falling all over the patio. His sock underneath was almost as bad.
I thought about Felix for a second, but he and Julius were distracted. “You’d better strip down out there.”
Cal was working on his other boot. “Fine. But I think Quin’s going to be more pissed to know I walked through the kitchen naked.”
A quick glance at the clock on the microwave told me our other brother would be home any minute. “Then you’d better hurry so he doesn’t find out.”
Cal grumbled but did as I’d instructed, not wanting to face his twin’s wrath.
Then he hauled ass through the kitchen to the front stairs, hunks of dried mud falling from his hair as he ran.
“You’re cleaning this up later. And you’re going to tell us what happened.”
All I got in response was a muffled “Fuck you” before Cal’s door slammed and the water in his bathroom turned on.
Seemed I wasn’t the only one who’d had a shitty day.
As soon as Cal’s door slammed, the front door opened, and the last of my brothers strolled into the kitchen, looking far moreput together than his twin in a three-piece designer suit and carrying an Hermès laptop bag.
He took one look at me and narrowed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
I scoffed. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“No. Nope. You’re lying. You”—he sniffed the air—“smell strange, and”—he paused, listening—“there’s someone else here. So what happened? Who’s here? And why is there dirt all over the floor?” He lifted a foot and brushed some of the offending dirt off his custom-made brogue—I only knew it was called that because I’d had to hear about it for months while he was designing them—before grabbing a small broom and dustpan from the pantry and sweeping up the little pile of dirt I hadn’t even noticed was there.
“You’re right. We do have a guest.”
He’d returned the broom and dustpan to the closet and was looking over my shoulder at the sauce I had warming and the pasta water that was just starting to boil. “We have a guest, and that’s what you decided to serve?” Quin was the only one of the four of us that could really cook.
“My options were limited.”
