The door opened, and he met Arlo’s gaze with wariness. Were they ever going to catch a break? Just be three guys getting naked and having sexy time instead of falling into bed exhausted.
We will, I promise.
Arlo’s assurance helped the question he’d not realized he’d projected so loudly, and Taggart nodded wordlessly.
“What is it?” Arlo asked aloud with a dose of trepidation.
Soren came and tucked himself into Arlo’s side, looking between them both. Taggart pointed to the seat at the side of his. “Can you sit here? Soren sit on Daddy’s lap.”
They didn’t question him, which Taggart was grateful for when he needed a moment to sort out his thoughts. Not a simple thing for him.
When Arlo settled with Soren on his lap, he reached out a hand to Taggart, which he took. Soren placed his over theirs, andTaggart’s chest ached along with his eyes at what so many had lost because of the council.
“I think you figured it was me that someone was searching for… or more what I’d placed in the storage unit.” Arlo nodded, whereas Soren looked confused. “It was me being targeted, and I’m sure if they’d tried again before I visited, they’d have found my stash of hard drives I had there for backup.”
“Backup for what?” Arlo questioned quietly.
Taggart met his gaze, but it was a struggle with what he was going to confess. He no longer felt like a superhero. “Over the years when I’ve been commissioned to search for information, it’s led to finding other stuff. Bad stuff and I sometimes—anonymously—shared that information on the net so it would do the most damage. Stop the bad people from continuing.”
Arlo released a sigh that made Taggart’s belly hurt, and he rushed on. “It was never about money, just about making sure that those people didn’t get away with some of the things they were doing, I swear.”
Arlo squeezed his hand gently. “It’s alright, Daddy knows it wasn’t about money, but doing the right thing isdangerous,Taggart.”
He winced at the stress he placed on the word dangerous, and Taggart nodded jerkily. “I make sure there is a lot of distance between me and the information.”
“Someone knows, Taggart,” Arlo pointed out softly.
He nodded erratically, there was no way to deny that, not with what he’d found. “I found something a long while ago, and I didn’t realize what it was at the time.” He took a deep breath and rushed to confess. “I was thinking about doing something, but ‘cause I hate needles I didn’t look into it.” His eyes darted to Soren, who looked to freeze, before going back to Arlo. “It was a lab offering to do some tests… genetic tests and give you injections to increase your mating scent to attract mates.”
It took a second to run back over what he’d said with how fast the words came out. Except for the look of despair on Soren’s face and shock on Arlo’s, he shouldn’t have worried, his mates understood what he was saying. “I wasn’t sure it was what I was looking for until I came across a bunch of clinics being funded by the council in remote areas, like Cookietown, only the one they planned for here got vetoed by the townspeople. From what I remember, Gabai had questioned why we needed another clinic when we had an established one.” He was rambling, but he couldn’t help it when he felt guilty and relief at not going to a clinic that could have turned out real bad for him and his mates if they’d been attracted to him by enhanced scent created in a lab and gotten captured.
“Take a breath, it’s alright, I’m trying to follow your thought pattern,” Arlo rumbled comfortingly.
“Listening to the tiger, it all fits. They had one on your lands, didn’t they, Soren? It’s how they’ve been gathering information on shifter mates. Working to trap them and get them to do their bidding as they hold and torture their mates for compliance,” Taggart sobbed, his chest throbbing like a raw wound attacked with sandpaper.
Arlo dragged him closer, and Soren, who was weeping, wrapped his arms around Taggart’s neck and whispered, “They did. It’s what I’ve been working on. They were doing things and making out like shifters had left the lands… so they said.”
“Daddy, what are we going to do?” Taggart cried into Arlo’s neck, twisting as much as he could to get closer. “How do we stop the medical and pharmaceutical companies, because the council might have started this, but they are all involved?” Taggart eased back, tears streaming down his face as he glanced at the blurry screens. “It’s all there, that is what they were searching for. The data. Names, places, clinics, investigations, shifters rated on probability of finding mates with genetics.”
Arlo groaned and looked at Taggart and Soren. “You can’t do it, Taggart. I can sense your desire to share all this. It’ll put a target on your back, on all our backs. We need help.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “I think Zaiden might be the answer.”
“Is that fair?” Soren murmured. “Putting the danger onto someone else?”
“Zaiden… his people have more power than any other species on the planet. I’ll invite him here and talk with all the others in charge of their kind that I know.” He kissed Taggart’s wobbling lips. “We’ll work this out together.”
Taggart nodded slowly. “Okay, Daddy.”
Soren
He was still trembling in Arlington’s lap, gently squished between his mates as he held his list in shaky fingers. “Our elders allowed a clinic to be built on our lands,” Soren said softly. “It was widely celebrated due to how remote our homelands were and how difficult it was to get on or off our lands during rainy season, especially. The mobile clinic could only travel so far, meaning our people had to travel long distances to be cared for.
“The hardship was what swayed our council’s decision. As a collective, oxpeckers, warthogs, giraffes and rhino elders discussed the proposal for a permanent clinic at length before voting. Very few were against it by the time the voting took place because all of the arguments made for it were done out of concern for the most vulnerable members of our community. Everyone knew at least one person who was relying on herbal remedies and holistic practices as a means of treating an illness or ailment, to varying degrees of success.”
He licked his dry lips, recalling some of his friends who had gone to the clinic. “The hope was that a clinic utilizing modernmedical techniques would be able to enhance their quality of life and allow them to remain healthy, vibrant, active members of the community. It just seemed like such a good thing that even those who initially expressed concerns about allowing strangers onto our lands got on board with the proposal, especially since it came from the council we all trusted to care for and protect our kind.”
“A valid point,” Arlington said while Taggart nodded his head.
“A few of our elders worried that declining the council’s offer would be looked at as an act of snubbing them and leave us in a position where they would be unlikely to offer help and resources if we went to them later down the line,” Soren explained. “Some even felt like their desire to build the clinic for us was their way of reminding us they had the health and wellbeing of all shifters in mind and didn’t want us to feel like we were forgotten simply because of the remoteness of our location and our communal lifestyle. We’d never had a real cause to reach out to the council for anything over the years and had more than proven ourselves to be self-sufficient, so we decided to embrace the clinic with open arms and welcome it as a benefit to our community.”
