Page 40 of Bonds and Beasts

There's silence behind me and I won't look. I can't look at their faces.

"Why?" The question comes in Bello's deep timbre. No doubt both alphas looked to their lead alpha to handle this turn of events. But it's not a whimsical thought. I've been agonizing about this all morning and even before our failed shopping trip.

If I'm being completely honest, I likely couldn't handle the Nest Store because of this very thought. The impossible juxtaposition of our situation.

"Despite having been locked in here, I—" I turn back to face them fully, arms crossed over my chest. They're all looking at me like I've dropped a grenade on the hardwood floors. "I love this place. Being a prisoner in my own home was terrible, but it's not the house's fault. The good memories here far outweigh the bad. This is where my parents lived. I spent Christmases and summers here. I grew up here. I have friends and a community here. It's been in my family for five generations. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else."

I fight back the burning behind my eyes.

"What about you loving this place means we should go back to LA without you?" Bello presses. He's patient. No demands, no high emotions. Just steady questions.

"Because that's where you have to be. You're famous movie stars. That's your whole life. But I can’t live like that. Especially not after the isolation of the last year. Everything feels doubly difficult now. But even before that, I was never a person who liked big, bright, and bold. I like my small town. A city that large with a career in the spotlight. It might actually kill me."

Bello pushes off the wall and walks toward me, calm and careful, like he's afraid I might bolt. He puts out one hand, palm up, and I hesitate only a moment before taking it. He pulls me in close, holding my hand against his chest and wrapping his other arm around my waist.

Dean and Easton stand up too. Easton takes up the space behind me, pressing his chest to my back, and Dean is at my side, nuzzling into my neck and scent-marking me.

Bello looks down at me and I feel like I could drown in his dark eyes. "Adison, I want you to know that we would give everything up for you. You're our mate, and that will always trump everything. But more than that, we're discovering the kind, resilient, and protective person you are, and it makes me more proud every day that we found you. Out of every omega out there, you really are perfect for us.

"You don't want to live in LA? We won't go back to LA. You want to live here in this stunning manor? Then this is where we'll live."

I stare at him like he's lost his mind. "But you're actors."

"Mmhmm," Easton affirms.

"I don't know if you know this, but besides the odd show or movie filming on a beach or in town, there aren’t a lot of acting gigs in Michigan," I remind them.

Bello gives me a rare smile and it's like sunlight through a storm. "It doesn't really matter if we're not acting anymore."

My heart stops and it takes a good thirty seconds for words to come out of my mouth. "But…but you can't give up acting for me. That would be crazy. You'd hate me for it." I try to untangle myself from the bodies and limbs.

The guys pull me closer, clearly unwilling to let me go, and in truth I hardly put up a fight. I like being here, between their warm bodies, surrounded by their scents. It makes me melt a little.

Bello takes my jaw in his hand lightly to make sure I'm looking at him when he speaks. "I'd love to be able to tell you that we'd happily give it all up for you and we're quitting so that we can stay in the house you adore." He grins. "It would make us quite the romantic heroes. But the truth is, Beauty, that we've been gearing up to retire from acting for the last year."

My breath stutters. I feel like time has frozen. The very storm outside seems to pause for this moment. "You have?"

"I can't imagine a more fitting ending, to come here on our last job, find our mate, and never ever leave," Easton murmurs as his lips and teeth graze my throat.

"But didn't you have plans? What did you want to do before you met me?" I ask, trying to find any hint of irritation or upset in Bello's face. But his expression is open and, for once, full of happiness.

"You know," he says, leaning down and capturing my lips in the softest of kisses before pulling back, "I don't remember."

I nuzzle into him but when I glance over to Dean, his face is drawn, and my heart plummets. Before I can ask him what's wrong, he turns and moves toward the double doors. Easton and Bello don't notice, but I do. What happened?

Easton

The storm has moved in and Bello and Dean have gone to discuss security with Tom and Larry. Bello also said he was hiring a PI from Detroit that he knows through a friend. He wants to find who wrote the note right now.

Adison is left with me, and she's looking like she’s making a decision.

"I want to show you something," she says, holding out her hand. I don't hesitate. I'd follow my mate anywhere. Her skin is warm and soft as a rose petal. She pulls me along through the living room and down a corridor, then around another set of doors and through an archway, then up a metal spiral staircase.

Adison steps to the side of the railing so that when I join her, I observe the entire space.

This is every bibliophile's wet dream. It's lit by a chandelier at the very center of the high ceiling. It's clear that this room was once two rooms stacked on top of each other, but someone decided to remove the floor of the upper room and replace it with a walkway. The lower half is floor-to-ceiling bookshelves completely filled with expensive-looking tomes. A marble fireplace takes up the middle of the wall across from the spiral stair, flanked by two leather wingback chairs. I can already picture myself in one of them with a stack of books and a steaming cup of tea while the storm rages outside.

Speaking of the storm, it's easy enough to see through the massive, two-story arched window that takes up one wall. Raindrops splash against the panes in shockingly hard pours. Occasionally lightning flashes, illuminating everything in the library for a split second before plunging it back into warm amber light. The spiral staircase doesn't only stop on this floor. It continues up to the second level where every wall is bookshelves. There are rolling book ladders and enough space on the walkway to feel safe.