Page 25 of Magical Midlife Rescue (Leveling Up #11)

FIFTEEN

Jessie

I ran my palm across Austin’s shoulder and then down to his hand before threading my fingers through his.

His hand tightened around mine as he stood on a curb surrounding a swatch of grass in a large parking lot.

The resort we were staying at spread out all around us, a collection of buildings separated by walkways and paths and patches of grass.

A ways behind us, jets of water arced through the air in the late afternoon sun and landed in a fountain basin.

The rear doors on the rental vans were open, and people were grabbing their things and all of our supplies. I could feel Austin’s nerves through our bonds. He stood stoically, though, not letting any of it show.

We’d have dinner with his brother later this evening, and tomorrow would be the first meeting to push forward the idea of our convocation. Tomorrow, we’d all have to show well. I knew he would, but I wasn’t sure about the Ivy House crew.

“Now, miss.” Mr. Tom held out a basket when he reached me.

“How about some refreshments? I noticed you partook of the lovely assortment of snacks and drinks I had on the plane, but as soon as it landed, the alpha whisked you away without a to-go bag. It’s as if he has no fear of your being hangry.

Not to worry, I’ve packed some snacks here, and I’ll outfit your room with all the best options.

What would you like? Chocolate truffle? Roasted peanuts? ”

He paused with raised eyebrows.

“Do you want anything?” I asked Austin, leaning into him. He was the one who needed to be pampered, not me.

He squeezed my hand. “No, I’m fine.”

“Sir, I do happen to have scotch. It’s right over there in my emergency pack, which is being rifled through by that miserable old woman who has tired of the alcoholic provisions within that eyesore of a cooler.

I can run over there and wrestle her for it.

It’s never wise to take alcohol from a puca, but if the situation calls for it, I will brave her wrath. You just say the word.”

“I’m good,” Austin said with a clenched jaw.

“Word to the wise, sir, I’d take that cooler off her as quickly as possible. You don’t want her banging that thing around when we meet the other alphas. We’ll be laughingstocks!”

Austin ignored him, but I could feel his annoyance rising.

“It’s okay, Mr. Tom.” I smiled at him. “We’re good for now. Maybe just put the snack basket and a bottle of wine in our room when it’s ready.”

“Very good, miss. I’ll just run and get that room sorted now. Broken Sue said he was handling it, but you know him. He’d probably answer a question by flaring an obscure muscle in his left thigh and giving that hard stare, and nothing will ever get done. I’ll go use my words .”

He turned and bustled away, handing off the basket to Edgar as he strode by.

Edgar looked down at it in confusion, then hugged it to his chest. He walked over to the closest shifter, stood much too closely, and whispered, “I have the snacks. You let me know if you’re hungry, and I’ll break the rules for you. ”

The shifter couldn’t stop a deep crease between his eyebrows. His body screamed wariness .

Edgar nodded, as if that had been the divine plan, and strolled over to the next person. He whispered, “I have the snacks. I hear they’re delicious. I wouldn’t know; I drink out of a vein. If you want to trade, we can. Or if you just want to reach into my basket, that’d be okay, too.”

This shifter edged away slowly, as if he were afraid to turn his back on a hungry vampire, which was probably the right way to play it.

“That vampire…” Austin murmured to himself, looking off into the distance.

I waited with him patiently, letting the shifters grab my things and prepare to move them to our room.

Austin surveyed the proceedings like he was the captain of the ship and didn’t trust them to properly swab the deck.

It was all for show. If anyone was watching—and they probably were, since all the packs attending the meeting would stay at this resort—they’d know he was alpha.

I guess they’d also know I was his mate, or maybe the co-ruler, but that wasn’t why I was by his side.

His nerves were worrying me. For the first time I could remember, it felt like he was doubting himself.

He had what it took to do this, we all knew that, but from what I understood, his reputation might be the thing to sink him.

They might not even give him a chance, all because of his actions when he was young.

Which was crap, obviously. The real problem wasn’t his reputation.

It was fear. They were afraid of trusting a new setup, or maybe of being a target of Momar.

Hell, maybe they were afraid of losing the status of “most powerful shifter in the room.” Austin, with his wild past, was a scapegoat.

In time, they’d see that. And if they didn’t? We’d force them to.

Austin bumped my shoulder with his and looked at me. “You’re confident enough for the both of us, huh?” He must’ve felt my assurance and determination through the bonds.

I smiled up at him. “It is my turn, after all. You were my rock with the gargoyles, and then in Elliot Graves’s caves. And actually, with the basajaunak, too. It’s my turn to be the tough guy.”

He leaned down to kiss me. “Too true.” Taking a deep breath, he straightened. “I didn’t, in my wildest dreams, imagine myself being this nervous.”

“Then why are you?”

Austin started forward, pulling me along with him. As we set off, Broken Sue emerged from a hallway, clutching something. He gave off a distinct aura of annoyance, and I had a feeling that was due to Mr. Tom pushing him around.

“A lot is riding on this,” Austin said. “Some of these shifters are prickly. They don’t give second chances—hell, they barely give first chances.

If we can’t get these bigger packs on board, I worry we won’t have enough might to bring it all together.

We don’t have a lot of gargoyles, we won’t have the shifters, we have zero mages who want to work with us right now…

” He sighed. “This venture is off to a rocky start, so we don’t have a strong case with these people.

We can’t fail—our safety depends upon this working—but our odds aren’t nearly as good as I’d prefer. ”

“Okay, yes, the venture is off to a rocky start, but we do have one of the bigger cairns on board, and we have interest from another. We have the basajaunak, which is huge. We have a phoenix and a thunderbird. And a warning: come together, or next time, the large pack Momar is targeting will fall, and the rest of the shifters with it.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

I knew him well enough to know that he needed a pep talk, and later, he’d need a distraction.

I was ready to provide both, and I’d be thorough.

He’d done the same for me a few times over.

“Look at it this way. The gargoyles were never in any danger. They didn’t know me or anything about me, but they still joined up.

So did the basajaunak, even though they didn’t want to leave their cozy refuge in the trees.

They didn’t have any reason or need to, but they joined our cause.

But the shifters? The shifters have a lot to lose.

They’re targets. Their families are on the line, their packs.

They need help, and we’re offering them that help.

They’d be idiots to ignore what we have to say. ”

He stopped in front of Broken Sue.

“Mr. Tom is preparing your suite, alphas,” Broken Sue said. “He wrestled your key away from me.” He held out a plastic card. “This is the ghost key, if you will. It works for every room in this building—well, for our collection of rooms. Everyone else will get their specific room key.”

Austin nodded, took the key card from Broken Sue, and waited to hear our room number before starting forward again.

“And honestly, we don’t need them,” I told Austin.

“The shifters, I mean. We were able to fight Momar off with what we have. Niamh is confident we can gather more mages, and I’m inclined to believe her.

We’ll be enough without these people—it’d be a bonus to have them, sure, but we can stand without them if they turn out to be fools. ”

He didn’t wait for the elevator, pulling me toward the staircase instead. The resort was a sprawling complex of two-story buildings.

“I stayed in O’Briens all those years ago to give people a refuge,” he said.

“To give them a safe haven. I became alpha to provide that safety for you. This convocation is to protect the vulnerable. The masses. I cannot allow them to be idiots, not when it might mean their lives. Momar will try again, I feel it. We nearly lost the last time, and he knows that. Next time, he’ll be better armed.

Without a larger force, we won’t be. We might not even know it’s coming, not if we aren’t connected with the packs.

I need to make these alphas see reason to ensure shifters as a whole aren’t taken down bit by bit. ”

And there it was. Austin wasn’t confident he could make them see reason, and while I would just shrug, he wouldn’t accept that outcome.

In his head, he was already king of the shifters, the alpha of alphas.

But he didn’t want to force them to agree.

He wanted them to come to him of their own free will, and he knew it would be an uphill battle. He knew he’d keep trying anyway.

My heart swelled.

“We’ll convince them,” I said softly. “We will, I promise. We’ll fight, barter, and plead if we have to, but we’ll do it.”

He scanned the numbers as we passed and stopped at our room. Before he opened the door, he pulled me into a hug. “Good cop, bad cop,” he murmured into my hair. “Usually, you’re the good cop. I have a feeling you won’t be this time.”

“Why is that?”

“Good cops don’t usually call people idiots, and I see that in your future.”

I laughed and pulled away, then he scanned us in.

The suite was gorgeous. In the more public area was a small kitchenette, a sitting room, and a dining table, plus a bathroom with a shower.

For Austin and me, a king-sized bed awaited in the next room, along with another little sitting area and a bigger bathroom with a lavish tub made for two.

As Mr. Tom was in the kitchenette, organizing snacks, we inspected the bedroom area.

Someone knocked at the door as Austin’s phone rang.

“Don’t you dare answer that door,” Mr. Tom scolded me as I turned in that direction. “Were you born in a barn? You’re an alpha, not to mention the Ivy House heir. You do not open doors.”

Except…how would the door get answered when he wasn’t here? Because whatever he might think, he was certainly not camping out on the couch.

“Bags,” came Broken Sue’s voice as Austin wandered toward the bedroom window to answer his phone. “Does the alpha want to get the car himself, or should I send someone to collect it?”

Mr. Tom swung the door open wide.

“Send Tristan,” I said, meeting them at the door. Mr. Tom nearly knocked me over to prevent me from reaching for my bag, and I rolled my eyes as he took it. “Tristan will want to drive it, and this is the last chance he’ll get to. Tell him not to wreck it.”

Broken Sue nodded but didn’t move away from the door. He gazed at me expectantly.

I sighed. “If you’re trying to say something, I have no idea what.”

“Of course you don’t,” Mr. Tom said as he came back to collect Austin’s bag. “You can’t speak stone .”

“Aurora has asked to visit her father before you all go to dinner,” said Broken Sue. “They should probably talk before this gets underway. They haven’t spoken in months.”

Kingsley was holding firm on the silent treatment, trying to scare Aurora into returning home. He didn’t want her in a dangerous pack, which he thought we led…and in fairness, we kinda did. We were targets, after all.

Aurora clearly wanted to clear the air. She wasn’t here in a pack capacity, but rather as family. She’d wanted to speak to her dad face to face, which I thought was mature of her.

“It’s her dad. She can go whenever she wants,” I replied.

Broken Sue nodded. “Tell Alpha Steele to call me when you’re ready.”

I agreed and closed the door as Austin appeared from the bedroom. “That was Kingsley,” he said. “We’re going to go off campus for dinner. All the other packs are here, and they have people stationed everywhere. He advised us to keep our people in their rooms.”

“No.” The firmness of my tone shocked me.

Not allowing him to call the shots, when this was his gig, shocked me more.

But sometimes, the willfulness of my gargoyle couldn’t be ignored.

That was what I blamed it on, anyway. “I will not sequester my people because they might be judged. Besides, Niamh is probably already in the bar, and Edgar is probably letting loose a hog-tied gnome or commandeering a garden or something, who knows? If you want to hide your shifters, that’s fine, but I won’t punish my people because they’re different. ”

Austin studied me. His emotions were turbulent, and I couldn’t tell what he was thinking or feeling. Finally, he said, “Fair enough. Let’s shower and get ready. I can’t wait to see Kingsley’s face when we give him that car.”