“That was Gage, so it’s probably more like climbing her alpha like Mount Everest. Hey, I just made it to my client’s office. Update me on your sexcapades later?”
We hung up after that, and I was sitting all by myself in the nest that had quickly become mine. It was full of blankets which I’d piled high, I still had no idea on how to go about rearranging them into what looked like a nest, and I was almost afraid to try. So I just piled them up and languished in their softness, a treat that I’d never allowed myself before.
Sliding out of my nest, I stood in front of it, tapping my foot. “Now, if I wanted to seduce two alphas... how would I go about it?”
After a minute it came to me, and I could feel a smile curling across my face. I knew exactly what I was going to do.
CHAPTER 19
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It was another longday at the SF Prosecutor’s office. Darian Bellis was a quick study, soaking up everything that Marcus and I told him like a sponge. Shit, the kid was probably a better lawyer than I was at his age. The issue was that this case was harder than anything I ever encountered as a junior associate. The pressure was on and, thankfully, Darian hadn’t cracked yet.
I stood at the doorway of the conference room as Marcus flipped through a slide show of all of the facts of the original Hezekiah Jordan case, taking him through things that the original prosecution did, and what they could have done better. We needed to figure out a plea deal to take with us to USP Atwater tomorrow, though I already knew that no matter what deal we brought it would be rejected.
It felt like I had spent nearly every waking moment for the past week in these drafty offices. Link was covering everything back at Whitlock & Simmons, along with our other associates, but I already knew that there would be a pile of work waiting for Marcus and me when we finally returned.
The thing that bothered me the most was not the long hours—I was used to those by now—the worst thing was coming home after everyone else had already gone to bed. Before Tibby had come to stay at our house, Matteo, Theo, and I were always busy. We were lucky if we got an evening meal together once a week.
However, now that Tibby was living at the apartment, she brought a new life with her. Something was always cooking or baking, and every night when I finally managed to make it home, there had been a plate of food waiting for me in the microwave. She was thoughtful and always made sure that we all ate. Tibby had also brought Cobb with her, the stubborn beta who’d very nearly been the cause of the demise of our pack. Suddenly, it wasn’t just three wayward alphas who were usually too busy to spend any quality time together. We all seemed to gravitate around Tibby—which I supposed was what omegas were meant to do—but I think any good relationship needs something to tie people together and smooth out all of the cracks and broken bits, not just an alpha pack.
I just wished that I could see more of Tibby during the day. I usually came home after ten or eleven and showered in my room before crawling into the nest with her and Matteo, inhaling her strawberries and cream scent deeply before falling into an exhausted sleep. I didn’t even wake up anymore when she stirred with a nightmare, leaving it solely to Matteo to settle her with his purrs.
I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to properly court an omega when I spent the majority of my time in this office with a lawyer who wasn’t anywhere near ready to take on a case like this.
Ugh, I was getting a headache just thinking about it. Rubbing my temples, I psyched myself up with a couple of sharp breaths, and joined Marcus and Darian at the table that they were posted up at.
“How’s everything going?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer to my question.
Darian greeted me with a smile that was reminiscent of a golden retriever, “great! I think I’ve got the hang of everything Ms. Simmons.”
Marcus, from behind him, just shook his head and looked grim. Which, for the British man, was actually not that bad. Marcus was a glass-half-empty kind of guy, so he’d been swinging between ‘we’re so fucked’ and ‘everything is going to be okay’ for the past week. This was a good day, considering everything, but I’d definitely gotten multiple texts from his pack asking why I’d broken their fellow packmate, along with pictures of Marcus passed out on the couch after a long day.
No matter how we felt about the situation, however, the trial was going to happen, and Darian was going to be the prosecutor on record. We needed to give him the best chance possible to win.
“I want you to head home early tonight, eat a ton of good food and take a relaxing bath,” I instructed, “We will meet here tomorrow morning and drive out to Atwater together.”
