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He kisses Luca’s forehead and clasps Rowan’s shoulder. “You got this, alpha?”

Rowan lifts his head in surprise and straightens his back, throwing his well-built shoulders back with a nod.

“Good.”

“Jamie. We’ll be fine. Go.”

An hour later, and after Jay has told the story in triplicate, Nix has thoroughly charmed the front desk staff, including human Officer Ted. The tall, lanky police officer can’t keep his eyes off their omega, and who could blame him.

He approaches the chest-high desk, where Nix is leaning attentively, and he overhears Officer Ted saying, “I’d be glad to drop you at the Residence Inn until you can get a new vehicle settled, Nix.

It’s not fancy, but you and your brothers should be fine there for a night or two.

It’s even close to the station, should you need me… er…the police. ”

Brothers? Yikes.

It makes Luca laugh, too, given what he’d done to his “brother” last night. Both of them.

“Thank you, Officer Ted. My brothers are exhausted from our flight. They need a bed as soon as possible.”

Nix smiles that sunshine smile and makes his eyes impossibly big.

Poor guy’s mouth drops open—there might even be drool.

Ted finally drops them off with a sad smile and a business card pressed into Nix’s hand, at a motel three streets over. They’d left the SUV in the police impound for safekeeping in case they located the white van, but Jay is certain it’s been dumped already.

The lobby of the motel is silent, but the human front desk attendant’s eyes go wide when he sees Jay and then Luca. He glances at Rowan and then double-takes when he sees Nix.

“Uh…whoa. You’re…”

“Hello…Alex. We need a room for two nights,” Jay says, reading the young man’s name tag.

“Here?” Alex asks.

Nix laughs. “Of course, silly.”

“But…you’re… LRH and… friends,” he leans in to whisper.

It’s always nice to see fans in the wild, but that could make this harder or easier, depending on how this next bit goes.

“Nice to meet you, Alex. We need your help,” Luca says with his sweetest fan-style smile. “We were visiting some family here, and some really enthusiastic fans saw us at our rental and, well, we had to escape and hide out here. You won’t let on that we’re here, will you? I was so scared.”

Visiting family? Oh, Luca.

Nix pops his hand under his chin, watching as Luca dons his “outside world” persona like armor dipped in glitter—irresistible and calculated.

Alex is riveted, too, which is convenient. “Of-f-f course. Sure. Uh…a suite then? There are four of you?” he stammers, cheeks a bright pink.

No need to mention they’re eight—why invite questions?

Rowan grabs Nix’s hand and pulls him toward the small seating area, and Jay is impressed by his restraint in not simply picking him up and carrying him around, caveman-style.

“That would be so nice, Alex. Is there anything you’d like us to sign for you? I can’t offer a photo right now as…I am hardly presentable.”

Luca is so fucking cute in his hoodie and knee-length skirt, Jay worries about his impact if he were any more presentable .

“No, you look so good. Like for real. So, so good.”

The desk clerk sighs without taking his admiring gaze off Jay’s beta. Shaking himself out of it, he winces. “But…I don’t have any albums here. I am working tomorrow afternoon, too. You know, if you wanted to come back down?”

Nix pops up beside the desk, having escaped Rowan to frown at the clerk for admiring his mate, and again, Alex blinks.

“Oh, uh, hi. Whoa,” Alex says, but goes on to mutter, “So pretty…” under his breath.

Jay knows exactly what he’s thinking, and Rowan does too, which is why Jay can hear him growling from across the lobby.

“Could we get a key to our room? My husband is feeling under the weather. I’m worried someone might die.”

Yeah, Alex-the-ogler in a death-by-Rowan accident.

“And thanks for not telling anyone about us being here, Alex,” Nix says, and Jay can feel the vibration of his omega voice tingle down his spine as Alex nods vacantly.

“Of course. Here. Room 208.”

Alex swipes four keys. “Could you sign here?”

Nix signs Nix Foster and scampers off to drag Rowan toward the elevator, their bags in hand.

“What do we owe you? We’ll pay cash if that’s okay. We are trying to keep under the radar, just in case,” Jay offers with his best dimpled smile, just to see Alex swallow.

“Thanks, buddy. We’ll sign those albums for you before we go, for sure. Leo will be by sometime, too.”

“Awesome.”

Jay has more than enough cash for two nights in a family suite with two king-size beds and a pull-out couch.

It has a small kitchenette and a large bathroom with decent water pressure.

Ever since they’d met Antonio in his office with only a single, lipstick-stained dollar bill to their name, Jay has taken to carrying far too much cash.

The room smells stale, and Rowan starts looking in every closet and every drawer as if he expects an intruder.

“You okay, big alpha?” Jay asks with a small smile in place. “I’m going to get the others at that mall back on Gulf to Bay Boulevard. I’ll knock. Trust no one but pack.”

It sounds ridiculous, but Jay means it.

The younger enigma nods and takes up a place right behind Jay as he exits the room, and Jay waits to hear the door lock and the chain slide in place before he heads for the stairs.

He avoids the lobby by exiting the building at the parking lot entrance and walking out to the street so he can hail a taxi for the short drive to the mall.

He finds the others hunkered down in the corner of the food court, with Finn and Leo eating ice cream and fries while Grayson paces back and forth nearby, looking pale and irritable.

“Hey, pretty. Where’d you dump the car?” Jay asks, rubbing his hand over Grayson’s head.

“In the dealer’s lot next door. Leo’s idea. They won’t notice it for ages. Gid wanted to run it into the water somewhere, but I told him real people don’t just dump brand-new cars in the bay in broad daylight. He’s been like that since we got here.”

That means absolutely stone-faced and 100% livid.

As expected, Gideon is standing guard, and the ten-foot section of empty seats means he’s been scaring people off either with scent or subsonic growls.

Maybe it’s the combination of both, lending to his terrifying aura.

Even Death herself would run the other way.

Still, when Finn says they should bring food back for the others, Gideon hands over his wallet.

“Cash only,” he growls. “Hurry. The others are alone.”

There’s no need to point out that Nix is as dangerous as the rest of them combined. Especially since he doesn’t want to bring it to Gideon’s immediate attention that it was Nix’s SUV the white van was after. Or how they knew where they were, or where they were going, or…fuck, what a mess.

Once they have food in hand, Jay breaks it to Gideon that the best way back to the motel is a taxi, rather than stealing a car from the dealer’s lot.

It takes some time, and only the reminder that his “babies” are unattended and alone calms Gideon enough for Jay to finally wave down a passing taxi.

It’s small, so Jay charms the driver with an extra-large tip to let Leo lie folded awkwardly across the others in the backseat so they’d have room for the bags.

“It’s like a fucking clown car,” Grayson growls, as Leo’s elbow catches him in the chest. “Be still.”

Gideon doesn’t relax a single iota on the drive after that, muttering about all the ways he’ll disembowel the driver if he doesn’t hurry the fuck up.

It doesn’t matter that the driver can’t hear him over the radio and Jay’s chatter, as Gideon’s intent is clear.

No amount of jovial small talk eases the tense situation, and he wastes no time in peeling out of the Residence Inn parking lot after he’s dropped them off.

“Don’t start,” Gideon snaps, and stalks toward the side door of the lot without even being told where his babies are, dragging a suitcase behind him.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

When they get to the room, which Jay is relieved faces the parking lot rather than the open field in the rear, he uses his knuckles to tap out the Sentinel security code that Logan insisted they learn.

Rowan opens the door as if he’d been waiting on the other side the entire time. Falling on the bags of food as soon as Finn places them on the table, he digs through the bags of hamburgers and french fries from the food court, searching for just the right thing.

“Sugar!” Luca throws himself into Gideon’s waiting arms.

The alpha wastes no time in covering his soulmate in an excess amount of thunder and lightning, setting the beta into a scent-drunk swoon.

Nix is next, and Gideon visibly relaxes when they smell more like him than the stale motel, despite them being fresh from the shower.

Even the resistant Rowan gets scented, and the youngest returns the favor by adding his wrist to the side of Gideon’s neck.

When Grayson is finally allowed to hold his soulmate, he adds his basil-vanilla to the familiar shower-fresh scent of body wash and Gideon’s petrichor.

Color comes back into his cheeks almost immediately as he crisscrosses his legs and puts Nix’s butt in the cradle of his thighs, drinking his ginger ale and eating the occasional french fry from a bag on the nightstand. No doubt Grayson had been away from his soulmate for far too long.

Next time, Jay will risk Rowan riding with Gideon instead, and may they both survive. Broken Bond Syndrome is no joke.

“When are we going to talk about how Carnell was trying to fucking abduct Nix in a creepy white van?” Rowan asks, offering the food he’d taken from the bags to Nix like he’d hunted in the wilds of the Florida swamp for it himself.

Whatever the criteria had been during Rowan’s search was lost on Jay, as they all smell and look the same to him.

“Thank you, Rowan,” Nix whispers with a smile and eye contact, and opens his burger himself. He accepts the fries Rowan feeds him like a baby bird, while Rowan just watches him chew, taking none of the fries for himself until Nix is done.

When their omega is finished, he offers the last half of his second burger to Rowan in return. It’s a weird food thing that no one has asked about, and therefore no one has explained, but it makes Jay’s wolf proud of his baby enigma for some unknown reason.

“I don’t know what to tell you. I’m glad we’re safe right now, though. Leo, avoid the lobby; our desk clerk is an LRH fan. Nice guy, but…”

Alex had been nothing but accommodating, but they want to reduce the chance he’ll post about it on socials.

Not for the first time, Jay wishes he could text their PR manager, Margot, and give her the heads up.

Jay eats three burgers and a handful of Gideon’s fries, sitting on the floor between Gideon’s knees. He’s enjoying his mate’s hand on his neck, and even though the hand is just resting there and not moving, Jay can feel the heat of Gideon’s simmering anger through his palm.

“We should think about where we’re going after this, with no phone, no car, and nowhere to stay. We are sitting ducks like this. That door isn’t keeping anyone out,” Finn mutters from his supine position on the bed, eyes closed, and a tiny frown between his eyes.

He isn’t wrong.

The no phone thing was the biggest hurdle right now, with no way to contact anyone at Sentinel or even Lauren.

His cash would only go so far, and even if he had to use ID to get one, he should try to replace his phone.

It would be worth the risk to call in reinforcements, he’d just have to separate himself from the pack for safety. Maybe he could do that in the morning.

Jay winces at his hubris in thinking Carnell wouldn’t have known they were coming, and that Jay hadn’t given one iota of thought to a Plan B.

“Don’t sweat it,” Nix says like he can read Jay’s mind.

“I called Lauren from the police station. Officer Ted was so nice to let me use his phone, don’t you think?

” Nix says, with his perfect mouth puckered up around his chocolate milk straw, as Rowan growls at the mention of the enamored human.

“Good thing she made me memorize her number before we left. I mean, who knows anyone’s number anymore?

I don’t even know my own. Luc, do you know your number? ”

Wait. Seven sets of eyes turn to Nix.

He rolls his eyes. “What? She said she’ll send a car tomorrow.

New digs, too. We need to ‘lie low, stay off-grid.’” Nix mimics Lauren’s clipped tones perfectly.

“Leo, your moms are the coolest. I mean, Frankie knit those really cute baby sweaters, and Lauren worked for the CIA before you were born. So cool. Do you think I could be a spy?” He asks, making “guns” with his fingers.

He leans all the way forward to get the last French fry Rowan had been offering, but has slipped out of range with his surprise.

Leo attempts to sit heavily on the edge of the couch but misses and slides directly onto the floor. “She what?” he asks faintly.

Yes, that…she what ?

“I didn’t tell you? Last week, already. Two sweaters with pretty pearl buttons. In two shades of pink .”