Smack. Smack. Smack.
“Last one!” Arlo declared with relief, delivering the hardest one yet as his boy sobbed and his heart ached.
Every inch of his bottom was red and would be for days to come, and he knew Taggart would think about what had led to this moment every time he went to sit down. So would Arlo, but that was his to bear for causing his mate to cry.
“Never make Daddy spank you like that again, understood?” Arlo choked out, struggling to hold on to his own emotions.
“Y-yes, Daddy,” Taggart sobbed, hiccupping and sniffling as he choked out the words.
“Good, now let Daddy help you stand, I’ll get some soothing cream, but first Daddy needs to cuddle his boy.”
Chapter Sixteen
Taggart
Taggart squirmed on the seat next to Arlo as he listened to the conversation going on around the room. For nearly a week, his bottom remained achy when he sat down. Even perching on the edge didn’t work all the time. Arlo had made sure to spank the whole of his bottom. It was fear that held Taggart on Arlo’s lap. How, no matter what effort Arlo put into shielding Taggart from his terror at losing him, some of it had slipped through.
Then there was the pain Soren had gone through experiencing all of Taggart’s stinging blows because he couldn’t keep his thoughts to himself. Soren had cried hard when they’d finally left the bedroom. Arlo was silent as he’d eaten breakfast. His gaze firmly fixed on his plate, a telling sign of how upset he was that they’d left Soren vulnerable while Arlo had been terrified he wouldn’t get to Taggart before anything bad happened. He realized too late how dangerous the situation was.Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
So he had spent all his time working around the clock to make up for being stupid enough to frighten the two people who loved him most in the world. When he felt he’d mined all the information, Arlo had called all the alphas together, so they only had to explain the once.
“Taggart, can you explain the timeline?”
Evander, the crash's alpha, booming voice broke through his thoughts, and Taggart’s head shot up to stare at him. “Explain?”
The shifter’s expression never changed as he clarified, “The digital film you’ve pieced together to give us a full overview of the process the council went through in creating the… creatures. How long did it take? With the way the film is spliced, it’s hard to determine what we’re looking at time wise.”
Blushing, Taggart shifted on the seat under the weight of everyone’s stare, then regretted it when it made him wince. “It took them three years to create the owls. They were the first. The older film at the beginning, and why the start looks a little grainy, is because they started the genetic engineering twenty years ago,” he stated nervously, hearing the tremor in his own voice. The alpha heads from the different groups were all there, along with shifters Taggart had never seen before outside of the TV. It was hard not to be overwhelmed, being the center of attention, a place he was never normally.
There were some gasps, others went pale, but no one interrupted him when he went on, “There were a lot of failures, things that didn’t look right.” Taggart shuddered at what was etched into his brain after hours of screening the film.
Arlo laid a hand on his thigh squeezing gently.I’m right here.
Thank you, Daddy.
He breathed in Arlo’s scent. “They killed the ones in the beginning, the failures, then they saw them as progress, so they kept them alive, using them to spy. There was Raul, the one that Da—Arlo,” he corrected quickly not looking at Arlo, “fought in the caves to protect Romy, he was part of some of the experiments. The mutant owl pair are dead too.” Although Taggart was aware everyone in the room knew this because Bash killed one and Harley killed the other, he just wanted to be clear he was talking about the species next. “They did a lot with owls, the same ones Cosmo and his mates killed.”
Cosmo hissed loudly, and Nomad plucked him off the seat and placed him in his lap, whispering something in his ear. Whatever he said made him blush and snuggle into Nomad’s chest.
“How far have you gotten in reviewing the footage?” This came from Bree, the pack alpha, who tapped a riding crop against her boot rhythmically while she spoke.
“Nearly all of it now.” He nodded towards the three other computer disks, he’d them created old school knowing few folks had that type of computer these days, lying next to the laptop he’d hooked up to the projector to play the disc onto the white sheet he was using as a screen. He felt they were as safe as anything to transport the data to the location they were in.
Way outside Cookietown, they used an abandoned warehouse. “Each disc focuses on one type of shifter they genetically played with. As we know, they appear to be fated pairs. How is still a mystery.” He shrugged off his unease under the weight of Evander’s gaze. “There’s also another disc I am working onpertaining to Raul as he might have more in common with the smoky one, but I didn’t waste time on that as he’s dead and not so much a threat right now.”
Evander stood, towering over those around him as he walked to where the discs lay, pointing at them. “I thought you mentioned the thing that was killed said there were a pair of owls, him and someone the same as him, and a polar bear couple?”
Arlo nodded. “It did.”
Bash backed up Arlo. “It said three types and two of each.”
Evander picked up the three discs. “Then why do we have an extra disc?” he aimed this at Taggart, who wasn’t actually sure what they were talking about because he’d not been part of any conversation regarding what they’d discovered from the smokey thing.
“I’m not sure what you mean?” He frowned looking between Arlo and Bash. “Two each makes little sense to me when they used lots of different shifters to make the creatures. There were way more than two of everything they… made.” He met Evander’s terrifying stare. “It’s all on these discs. The owls were first. Then came the polar bears. The smokey thing you’ll see came from a serpent’s egg.” Where they’d gotten them from, Taggart hadn’t discovered yet, and he said so. “And the last disc is what they did to the rhinos.” The latter was more of a whisper when he had not had any time to talk to Arlo about what he’d found out about Romy and what they’d done to him and many others. He just hoped they wouldn’t show that one while Bash and Romy were in the room.
“Are you saying you discovered mutant rhinos too?”
He met Arlo’s gaze.I don’t know if they are fated mates, but yes, Daddy. Please don’t let them show the disc to Bash and Romy.
