Page 52 of The Pack Next Door (The Wolfverse #4)

Mads

It hurt to admit, but I was beginning to understand the burden Gideon carried.

We’d found a nice enough hotel that was close to Briar’s place and crashed out for eighteen hours straight, but when I woke up, everyone looked to me.

Every time I argued with Gideon, I thought I knew better, but now that the weight of our future was on my shoulders?

I wasn’t so sure. Help Briar, that was my first instinct, and if Gideon said he trusted it, I had to do the same.

We grabbed a quick bite to eat and drank a whole lot of coffee before making our way over to the warehouse.

“Back again?” Emma walked out of the warehouse doorway, hands on her hips. She looked us up and down and then smiled. “She’s not here, so if Briar won’t see you, you’re out of luck.”

“She saw us.” I tried to keep the smug note out of my voice and failed. “But you said something about needing more staff?”

“You’re here to help?” Sebastian was a slender man with the look of someone who existed in a constant state of anxiety. “Oh gods, get in here!”

“But what if Briar—?” Emma said.

“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission if we’re going to get all this new stock checked over,” he said, hurrying back into the warehouse.

We followed hot on his heels and saw there were pallets stacked high everywhere.

“More stock keeps arriving every day and we haven’t even touched Tom’s pottery stuff.

Briar keeps asking about the insurance claim, but we have to unwrap hundreds of pieces individually, photograph them and then document each damaged one. ”

“Phone cameras OK?” Jace asked, eyeing the pallets.

“Phone camera, Polaroids, or even daguerreotypes, if that’s all you can manage.

” He gestured to an obviously damaged pallet sitting at the back of the warehouse.

“You get that job done.” His eyes went wide, the white clear around the brown iris.

“I will personally beg Briar to mate every single one of you.”

“Seb!” Emma hissed. “He doesn’t mean that.”

He poked his head up and over her shoulder.

“I do.”

“We don’t have any way to get you in with the boss.”

Emma’s flat voice, the way she crossed her arms, made clear this was not a woman to be convinced by pretty words or lies. I decided I liked her right then and there.

“That’s not your job,” I replied. “It’s ours. You deal with the rest of this stuff.” With a shake of my head I looked at all the pallets, sure I knew what we had to do next. “And we’ll get this job done.”

“Just don’t break anything. Tom?—”

Emma’s harried tone was misguided.

“Is a grumpy prick who will lose his shit if another piece breaks?” Jace nodded. “We know. We met him.”

“OK, well, there’s a big table at the back. Unpack every item and put the bubble wrap in that bin there.” She pointed to a massive hessian sack that hung from a metal frame. “We’ll reuse what we can, but Seb and I will have to check the pieces again before they go out.”

“Looks like we have a job to do,” I said, turning to my brothers.

Doing something, that’s what helped settle me.

Probably because every time I peppered the dads with questions, they sent me into the backyard to chop wood.

For a moment, I smiled, remembering the way that felt.

Shame and satisfaction made for weird companions in my heart and that had me turning to the others.

We’d worked out a system between us. I grabbed pieces and set them up on the table.

Gideon unwrapped and inspected each one and then passed the damaged ones to Jace to photograph.

“You know I’m done with them, right?” I said, coming to a stop at the end of the table.

“What, the ceramics?” Gideon looked past me to the still half-full pallet.

“No.” Setting a razor sharp axe into the hands of a seven-year-old seemed negligent at best right now. With what I now knew about our parents, I had to wonder if there was something else to it. “Our parents.”

“What made you—?” Jace started to say, but Gideon nodded slowly.

“I know.” His lips thinned, and I saw the war that was waging inside him. “Me too, if I’m honest. How the hell do you have a relationship with someone who just sees you as a means to an end?”

Jace’s hands stilled, and he put his phone down carefully. Hands smoothed across the tabletop before he looked back our way.

“Yeah.” His jaw worked and then he nodded decisively.

“I mean, they were going to let us go along with the bullshit of becoming the ruling pack, even if it meant we lost Briar.” His eyes when they met mine were full of something I knew all too well, though he showed it rarely.

“They didn’t give a single shit about us, did they? ”

What’s the worst thing about being the black sheep?

You know you’re right. That the family dynamic was fucked, that Mum would’ve rather stayed with mates that would abuse her, because the dads were a means to get what she wanted.

That the dads focussed on Gideon to the point of exclusion to the rest of us, seeing themselves in my brother’s size, strength.

That way they could ignore their own very obvious weakness.

I saw it all but was forced to accept the reality.

Either that or walk away from my entire family and become a lone wolf.

“No,” I replied, trying to soften the word, but how did I achieve that? “I don’t think they did.”

“Well, thank the gods that Briar doesn’t want kids.” Jace’s tone was hard as he turned back to the pot in front of him, snapping off another shot. “Because honestly I’d be scared to have sons, lest we turn out to be deadbeat dads as well.”

That warranted a deeper discussion, but the sound of people talking had all three of us perking up.

Click, click, click , I knew the sound of those heels on the concrete, and sure enough, Briar walked in.

Not the omega anymore. A polished business woman replaced my wanton mate, a bag hanging from her arm, her hair tied up in a neat bun.

There was no need to tell my brothers what to do.

We each pushed ourselves away from the table and moved around it, stepping closer.

“…so who’s going through Tom’s shipment?” she asked, looking up, then going pale when we appeared.

“Us,” I replied, unable to stop grinning as Briar’s cheeks flushed bright pink.

“You?” Her focus shifted back to Emma. “We need to have a chat about releasing my address to strangers.”

“With me.” Seb set the box he was carrying down on the nearby table heavily, then put his hands on his hips.

“I’m the one that told them. They said you were their mate and I know they weren’t getting into your building without you buzzing them up, so I gave them the address.

They said they’d help and you’ve been promising us more hands for a while now. ”

“You need us.” I felt my brothers come and stand on either side of me. “So we’re here.”

“In my office.” Everyone went to follow her, forcing Briar to stop. “The Whitlock pack first, and Seb, I apologise. You’re right. I should’ve hired more people before now.” She looked us up and down warily. “Still might need to.”

I glanced at my brothers, seeing their tense expressions as we followed Briar into her office. She did duck behind her desk, for some reason needing something between us and her. Didn’t they smell that sweet rose and vanilla scent? She wasn’t as pissed as she was making out.

“So you turn up to my apartment uninvited and now you’re here at my workplace.” She sat down abruptly. “Can I expect to see you at my spin class this afternoon? I have to warn against it, as it’s in a women’s only gym.”

“You don’t need us at the gym,” I said.

Jace shrugged. “I mean, if you want some help stretching.” He winked at her. “Pretty sure we’ve helped you get into some weird positions already, so…”

The way her lips pressed together, her dimples popping, I was pretty sure she was smothering a smile, but she rallied quickly. With a serious look, she scanned the lot of us.

“I’m not going to stop you from helping out here, if only because I think Seb is just about to start sending resumes out, looking for other jobs, but…” She shook her head. “You’ve been very… helpful, but if you’re doing this to try and get in my good books.”

“We have one last alpha trial.” Everyone stared at Gideon, and for the first time since we left home, he smiled just a little. “We passed one, failed the other one utterly. The last one is the decider.”

“To become the ruling pack of Moon River?”

He was doing this wrong. Briar stiffened, her scent soured, but my brother forged on.

“To become your alphas.” His arms crossed his chest, and look at that. She followed every movement, noticing the way his muscles popped. I did the same, because I wanted Briar staring at me the same way. “This is the only trial that matters.”

Jace and I stared at each one of them, trying to work out how the fuck that was going over. Briar settled back against the chair, her fingers forming a steeple, but when she nodded, I let a long breath out.

“I didn’t go to Mum’s place looking for alphas.

As far as I knew, there were no fated mates for me.

But finding out I did have mates? I didn’t know how to process that initially, then I didn’t need to.

I’m not sure what happened.” I sucked in a breath to tell her, but she continued on, silencing me.

“And in a lot of ways, it doesn’t matter.

Your first instinct wasn’t to come to the city, learn about my life.

and find a way we could be together. It was to fulfil whatever destiny your family set out for you. ”

There was a terrible finality about her voice that was like a hand wrapping around my heart and squeezing.

“It didn’t cost me anything to help you out with that.

Well…” Seeing pain in my omega’s eyes, it was ten times worse than anything else we’d gone through.

I’d let every single alpha pack run over my repeatedly, gladly accept their cleats digging into my flesh.

Anything other than this. “Apart from being forced to accept that the three men fated to be with me weren’t going to put me first.”