Lennon:Me too, why are we all getting tarred with the same brush?
Bowie:What tarred brush? Is there a shared one? I haven’t seen it. Why is everyone talking in riddles tonight?
Wilder:It’s all about someone thinking everything is the same, Bowie.
Bowie:Oh.
Lennon:Can someone bring more eggs, I’m gonna need them for you guys.
Isley:I got an extra dozen, I’ll bring them. See you guys soon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rue
Arriving on the ranch, Rue was riding the high of the last week spent withhis guys. He wasn’t giving too much thought to the emphasis he placed on that. Okay, he was, when it slid so effortlessly over his concerns about how living with Kendrick would work. Living with one man was hard enough—he’d never done that, but he suspected it was—so living with two should be very difficult. Yet somehow, it wasn’t.
Kendrick was easy to be around, much the same as Monty. Rue found himself eager to get home—something else he’d noticed was how, after seven days, he thought of the house as home—at the end of the day. Whatever he’d anticipated, none of it matched his expectations. Rue worked hard not to think too hard on that. He wasn’t always the easiest person to be around, finding peopling all day to be fucking hard work. Usually, he preferred to take himself off and be alone in the evening but he was realizing he didn’t want to do that: shocker.
As he watched the two men striding towards him, filthy, exhausted and if he wasn’t wrong, mightily pissed—Rue got the sense that his balloon was about to burst.
“What happened,” he asked without preamble, nose wrinkling at the distinct smell of horseshit scenting the room.
Ethan took off his ball cap and slapped it against his palm. “The omegas. The cabins aren’t gonna work for them. It seems they’re too close to the other ranch hands. Last night, things came to a head.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Explain that to me when things seemed to go okay, cause I was there when the omegas picked which cabins they wanted. How is that now an issue?” Rue glanced at the stoic Oakland. “You scouted out the area, did we miss something important?”
Ethan’s ball cap slapped rhythmically against his thigh. “It’s not the cabins themselves, but the alphas in the other cabins in the vicinity.In the daylight, it wasn’t so much of an issue. One of the alphas brought home a playmate last night, and things got a little loud. The omegas freaked out big time. The quiet here makes any noise travel easily. They got spooked and thought—shit, who knows what they thought? What I do know is I spent half the night trying to find them and the other half reassuring them that none of my men would attack them. Which they don’t really believe ‘cause they don’t fuckin’ know the men well enough,” Ethan grumbled in frustration.
“I didn’t consider how much they’ve come to rely on my men to feel safe.”
The weight of Oakland’s confession pained Rue. “Then how do we fix it?”
On hearing the approach of someone else, Rue glanced and did a double take at the dirt covered man entering the room. There wasn’t a part of Brier that wasn’t covered in filth. His facebore streaks of something that looked like the shit stinking up Oakland and Ethan.
“What the hell happened to you?” Rue found himself amused, despite the situation. He’d never seen Brier looking so… out of sorts, and he wore his dejection like a jacket.
“Cace, he…” Brier blew out a breath, his nose wrinkling as he looked at his filthy hands. “Ventured in with horses, let’s leave it at that.”
“Is he okay now?” Cace was the jumpiest of the four that they’d brought to the ranch.
“Yep. He’s sleeping upstairs next to Ivo. The four of them are all in the master bedroom. It was the only one with a bed big enough for them to share.”
Rue nodded, his attention going back to Ethan. “Weren’t you using the master suite? Is this going to be an issue, their staying in the house?”
Ethan shrugged nonchalantly, although the hat slapping never stopped. “Nah, I was already considering the main house as the best bet now, for everyone’s sanity. The terrified crying frightened the fuck out of some of the ranch hands.”
“Christ, what a clusterfuck!” Rue had only gotten Oakland’s report on what happened during the chaos of the heat incident at the hotel. Ever since, things had been difficult for the four omegas.
“That about sums it up.” Ethan put the ball cap back on, shielding his eyes. “Doesn’t matter where I sleep. I have a suite of rooms up on the top floor, which is probably far enough away from the omegas, but close enough if we have a repeat of last night. As there is only me living in the house and it has a dozen bedrooms, Oakland and Brier can move from the cabins, too.” Ethan turned to Oakland. “Will that work for you?”
“Yes. It contains them in a smaller space, something they’re used to. I underestimated how something so normal for theranch hands would impact the omegas, despite reassurances. The smooth transfer here, and the ease with which they appeared to like it here, should have had me on guard.” Oakland’s expression was grim.
“No one can understand fully what damage those fucking alphas did, so you can’t shoulder this blame, Oakland. Dad still hasn’t confirmed from what we’ve found in Amatus’s records how long Cace, Ivo, Eric, and Otis remained imprisoned for. They aren’t sayin’ and pushin’ isn’t the answer. They’ve been through so much, it’s only to be expected there’d be relapses. Maybe we should count ourselves lucky they had a week without issue.”
“We knew it wasn’t gonna be easy,” Ethan muttered, staring at the doorway leading to the hallway. “They taught us a valuable lesson: don’t make any fucking assumptions when things look to be going smoothly!”
“You got that right,” Brier said wearily. “I need a shower and a hot meal.”
