Page 23 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-THREE

JULIUS

The next morning when we walked into the kitchen, my asshole brothers were lying in wait with knowing smirks on their faces.

“So, Jules, you and Ethan turned in early last night. Anything you want to tell us?” Felix, the traitor, sipped from his coffee cup, his eyebrows raised behind his glasses.

“Yeah, Jules, looks like you’ve got a little something on your neck there.” Cal gestured to his saddle patch.

“I hate you all.” I rubbed a hand over my face.

“Ethan and I are mates. There. Are you happy now?” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I said the words.

I wanted the world to know Ethan Lin was mine.

Cal started humming “Another One Bites the Dust” while a twenty exchanged hands between Jack and Felix.

Quin and Dimitri just sat quietly at the kitchen table, whispering their congratulations when Ethan and I sat down with our own cups of coffee.

“I don’t mean to bring down the mood, but we need to figure out what we are going to do about the deadline Ethan was given. We need to decide if we are going to hand over Quin’s forgery or if we are going to try to call this guy’s bluff.” Nero leaned against the counter by the coffee pot and crossed his arms over his chest.

Quin shook his head.

“I have concerns about handing over the forgery. What if whoever is behind this figures out the painting isn’t real and goes after Ethan anyway? That could be worse than the fallout of doing nothing.”

“I feel like no matter what we do, I’m fucked.” Ethan tried to feign nonchalance, but now that we were bonded, I could feel his anxiety like it was my own as much as I could see the tremble in his hand as he brought his coffee cup to his lips and took a fortifying sip.

“So, we wait, then?” Cal’s distaste for that plan rang in the simple question.

Setting a hand on Ethan’s thigh under the table, I turned his way.

“It’s your call, E. We’ll do whatever you want us to.”

“We have until Thursday. Let’s wait. I don’t want to give this asshole anything before I have to.”

“Okay. We’ll wait.” Nero didn’t look happy about being on someone else’s timetable, but this wasn’t about him.

Ethan was the one who stood to lose everything, so he needed to be the one to make the decision.

By Tuesday afternoon, everyone was getting antsy.

There was a palpable current of tension flowing through the house, and it was setting everyone on edge.

Even the twins could feel it.

They’d been out of sorts for the last two days, and Athina had been taking them to the park for extra outdoor playtime so they could run off some of their energy.

Felix and Marcus had hit another set of dead ends, and Jack and Cal had had zero luck tracking down Rogan Holt, and everything was at a standstill.

For my part, I wanted to schedule a meet with this guy so we could put this whole thing to bed once and for all, but like I’d told my brothers on Sunday morning, it was Ethan’s reputation on the line, so I was trying to take my cues from him.

But as the clock ticked closer and closer to the Thursday deadline, it was getting harder and harder to do nothing.

“What the hell?” Ethan was in his makeshift office at the bar in the basement again, and I’d set up next to him, moving money around for several of my legitimate clients.

Ethan’s phone was vibrating on the bar top, but he hadn’t made a move to pick it up yet.

“Who is it?”

“Carl Jacobsen.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“Nothing good.” The phone went still but almost immediately started vibrating again.

Through our freshly minted bond, I could feel Ethan’s apprehension and annoyance, and my jaw clenched in response.

“Answer it and get the conversation over with.”

Ethan nodded and slid his phone off the bar, tapping the screen and bringing it to his ear as he rose off his barstool and paced toward the windows overlooking the sound.

“Carl. What can I do for you?”

I could only hear Ethan’s side of the conversation, but I could piece together what was happening.

Carl hadn’t been informed Ethan was working from home and was pissed when he stopped by unannounced and had been told Ethan was unavailable.

“I’m sorry you were inconvenienced, but if you had called to make an appointment, Rebecca would have told you I was out of the office this week.”

Ethan turned toward me and rolled his eyes, and I felt his rising anger through our bond.

“My choice of assistant is none of your concern. Rebecca is excellent at her job, and I will not entertain any negative discourse about her performance.”

He turned away from me again, heading back toward the windows.

“That is your prerogative. I will attend the meeting via video conference.”

Ethan’s jaw went tight as he let Carl speak.

“I’m sorry, Carl, but it is simply not possible for me to attend a meeting in person at this time.” He ran a hand over his face.

“In case you were uninformed, I am the CEO of this company, not you, and I will decide what previously unscheduled and inconvenient meetings I attend.”

Ethan went quiet, and I watched as the color drained from his face.

“What unauthorized transactions are you talking about?”

There was no way Carl could know about the transactions Ethan was being framed for approving.

Not unless he was somehow involved.

I grabbed my phone off the bar and typed out a quick text to Felix, asking him to do a deep dive into Carl Jacobsen and the rest of the board as soon as he could.

Was it possible the aging owl shifter was our big bad?

If he knew about Ethan’s false embezzlement, either he was behind it or he knew who was.

Ethan ran a hand through his hair, and his words were uttered through clenched teeth.

“I will be there, but so help me if this meeting is a waste of my time, I will have you removed from the board.” He hung up without waiting for a reply and threw his phone onto the bar.

“Fuck.”

“What did he say?” I wanted to go to Ethan and wrap him in my arms, but I knew him well enough that, like the twins, he needed to work off some of his energy, so I let him pace angrily around the pool table while he got his thoughts in order.

“He said some questionable transactions were brought to his attention, and he stopped by my office to discuss them with me privately, but since I wasn’t there, he felt the best course of action was to call a full board meeting where I could address his concerns in front of an audience. When I said I would attend via video, he claimed that would be akin to an admission of guilt.”

“Do you think he’s the one who sent that email? Do you think he’s behind all this?”

He stopped with the pool table between us, his hands braced on the green felt and his head hanging between his shoulders.

“Fuck, Jules. I don’t know what I think.”

“So, you have to go into the office tomorrow?”

“He’s not giving me a choice.”

“Okay, but we’re prepared for this. Felix and Marcus have created a detailed paper trail for every one of the transactions that siphoned money into the offshore accounts, including proof that it couldn’t have been you who authorized or conducted those transactions. If Jacobsen tries to say you’re the one stealing from the company, you have all the proof you need to show it wasn’t you.”

Ethan glanced up at me from under his eyelashes as a wave of helplessness washed through our bond.

“If he’s determined to build a case against me, I could have all the proof in the world, but it won’t matter. The board respects Carl, and I’m not sure who my allies are in that arena anymore.”

“Then we’ll figure that out tomorrow. Maybe sooner, depending on how fast Felix works.”

“I thought he already looked into the board?”

“He did, but I asked for a deep dive. If there are buried bodies to find, Felix will unearth them.”

Ethan nodded.

“Good. Maybe we’ll finally find something useful.”

“I hope so.”

Ethan straightened and circled the pool table, heading back to his laptop, but I jumped off my stool and slammed the lid shut before he could get to it.

“Let’s go for a walk before you get back to work.”

He blew out a breath but didn’t argue, diverting course and heading toward the large glass slider that opened out onto the patio.

Outside, the air was cool and crisp, and sun filtered through gaps in the clouds, reflecting off the sound in a play of shadow and light.

In the distance, the Olympic mountains were barely visible, the low-hanging cloud cover washing out the peaks until they were barely discernible against the gray-blue sky.

The pines that bordered the estate made it feel like we were tucked away from the rest of the world, even as the Seattle skyline peeked between the trees, reminding us that civilization was just a short drive up I-5.

But here, hidden away in our own private corner of the Emerald City, it was otherworldly and beautiful.

We walked hand in hand across the patio and down the small slope of grass that ran into the rocky shore of the sound.

Seabirds swooped and swirled overhead, and for a while, we let the sounds and scents of the outdoors surround us and erode away the rough edges of the day.

Ethan was the first to break the contemplative silence.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course. Always.”

“Will you shift for me?”

“Sure.” I kept walking.

Ethan laughed. “I kind of meant now.”

To be honest, I was a little self-conscious about my orca form.

My coloring was different from my brothers’, and they— especially Cal—had teased me about it since the first time I’d shifted.

I was still black and white, but my white underbelly and flank patches were wide and stretched up onto my back, almost blending into one large continuous patch of white broken up only by the dark gray of my saddle patch and my black dorsal fin.

The white patches around my eyes were also more circular in shape than my brothers’.

I still loved shifting into my orca form, but I did it less frequently than my brothers, and a lot of times I chose to swim alone rather than with them.

But I was alone now.

Only Ethan would see me, and I was pretty positive he wouldn’t make fun of me.

“What is it?” Ethan’s face was lined with concern.

I forgot he could feel my emotions through our bond, just like I could feel his.

“Nothing.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Huh. That’s an unexpected perk. You can’t lie to me anymore. I can tell. I can feel it.” He gave my hand a squeeze, and I felt like an idiot for overthinking this.

“So tell me what’s up.”

“It’s dumb, but my coloring is a little different from my brothers’, and they used to give me shit for it.”

“Let me see.”

“Ugh. Fine.” I dropped Ethan’s hand and walked over to an old tree that had fallen and been bleached by the sun and sea, stripping out of my clothes as I went.

Once they were folded into a neat pile and I was naked on the beach, I turned around to look at Ethan.

He was standing where I’d left him, closer to the water’s edge, staring at me.

“God, Jules, you are fucking beautiful.” His eyes swept over me from head to toe, lingering for a second on my dick, which really liked his thorough perusal and went half-hard.

“I love your body.”

I pulled him into my arms, his dress shirt and pants rubbing over my bare skin, as I brought my lips to his in a soft and sensual kiss.

The contrast of the cool breeze and the heat of Ethan’s mouth made my heart sing, and I wanted nothing more than to lay Ethan out on the grass beyond the beach and make love to him under the clouds.

Before I could plead my case with my words and my body, Ethan broke the kiss and stepped back.

“I want to see you shift. Then we can pick this up.”

Laughing a little, I shook my head, pressed one more quick kiss to Ethan’s lips, and walked out into the water.

Because of its depth, the water in the sound was always cold, and as the brackish water washed up over my feet, I sighed into the sensation.

For a human, the water would have been unbearable without a thick wetsuit, but for me, it felt like coming home.

The sound was always the perfect temperature for swimming in my orca form, and as I dove under the water and pulled my animal side forward, I realized I needed to do this more often.

Then, because I was nothing if not a little bit of a showoff, I used my fluke to propel my body up and out of the water, landing with a triumphant splash.

A wave of joy flowed through my bond with Ethan, his emotions detectable even while I was in my orca form, and I swam as close to the shore as possible.

Ethan was smiling wide, and for a moment, all the stress of everything we were dealing with melted away.

For a moment, there was just me, and Ethan, and the cloudy gray sky, and the waveless water of the sound.

For a moment, everything was perfect.

But sometimes, perfect moments didn’t last.