Page 27 of Fourth Base with the Alpha

“This is incredible.” I grin at Hunter. “It’s been my dream since I was a teenage girl, saving photos of all the stars with my sister. We used to create our own best- and worst-dressed charts.”

As well as our ratings of who was the hottest. But I’m not telling him that. Especially as he and his bandmates featured regularly in those charts.

“Are you hating this?” I ask him, deciding it best to move on before he starts probing.

“Not hating this, but–”

“You had to have loved Simia’s performance. It was awesome!”

He grimaces like he just bit into a sour grape.

“What?”

“She was off-key.”

“No way! Was she?”

Layla leans towards me. “Hunter has perfect pitch. He can hear an out-of-tune note a mile off.”

“Oh,Dios, then I’d better never sing in front of you. My sister says I sound like a cat slowly dying a painful and gruesome death. Although her voice, sheesh!”

“Hunter can’t sing for shit either,” Ash says over Layla’s shoulder.

“He plays like a god, though,” I interject before the giant tiger sitting next to me starts to growl.

“Can you play?” Hunter asks me, ignoring my compliment.

I shake my head. “But I used to dance all the time with my sister. My grandma, she loves music. She’s always playing something.” I smile. “She has a pretty eclectic taste. She played her music while she was cooking and me and Maria would dance around the kitchen. I guess that’s how I fell in love with music, why I wanted to work in this industry, even if it is full of divas with massive egos.” I grin at him.

There’s that twinkle in his eyes. Almost like he’s flirting.

“Yeah, Ash is a massive diva.”

I laugh and as the lights dim again, I snuggle back into his arms.

This is it now. The serious awards.The Packalways has nominations in all the big categories. This year they have a serious chance of winning best album, particularly as it went platinum in all the major markets across the globe.

“Are you nervous?” I whisper as the presenter announces the nominations for best album and reels off the names of the nominees.

He shakes his head looking as cool as a cucumber when my heart jumps around in my chest like a toddler on a trampoline.

A film star strides out onto the stage waving to the crowd and brandishing a golden envelope Her red dress is so short I can see the color of her panties from my position in the front row. She air kisses the host, then stops in front of the microphone.

“Hello everyone. I’m here to announce the winner of best album for 2022!” she says and I can’t help squealing and closing my eyes.

Hunter chuckles beside me.

“Tell me when it’s over,” I whisper to him.

“And the winner is …” the actress pauses, dragging out the silence for as long as she can.

Someone in the audience whistles and I think I stop breathing.

“The Pack!” she cries.

My eyes ping open and I fling my arms around Hunter’s neck, squeezing him tight and squealing even louder in his ears.

For a moment, he’s like a rigid statue in my arms, all tense, and I’m about to scurry away, wondering if I burst his eardrum or something. But then those solid arms are wrapping around me and he holds me tight against his body, planting his warm mouth on the nape of my neck.