“I’m shaky. It’s probably better if I don’t risk it,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
I nod as she steps out of the way, moving to grab the things they’ll need for tonight.
Well, feck.
Now I actually have to do the thing and pick the kid up. Not to mention, I need to do it gently enough that I don’t wake him.
Charlotte is exhausted.
She needs rest, not to spend several hours chasing her son around a house that isn’t childproofed.
I’m a big bastard.
I had to move the seat all the way back to fit into Charlotte’s compact SUV, and leaning into the back seat isn’t any easier. The kid, whose name I really need to ask, grunts in his sleep, stretching his arms as I heft him to my shoulder.
He grumbles something without fully waking as I reach back into the vehicle to grab his blanket.
He’s a solid kid.
He has to be forty or forty-five pounds, and he’s tall.
Hell, I’m closer to seven feet than I am six, and the boy goes from my shoulder to a few inches down my thigh. He has to be a future alpha, and not solely based on his size.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t pick out exactly what he smells like, but it’s close to cedar with something nutty. Either way, his scent is too strong to be a beta, and it doesn’t havethe sweet tinges that would signal the possibility that he might present as an omega one day.
The main question is, where the fuck is his father?
Chapter Ten
Malachy
O’Riordan holds the door open for Charlotte, eyeing her from head to toe. A low growl rattles out of my chest, and he has the audacity to chuckle.
I don’t know what he thinks is funny, but I don’t like it.
“Patrick is in the living room getting patched up by Seamus,” he says before he closes the door.
“Shit, I almost managed to forget about that,” Charlotte whispers, freezing in her tracks. “Did I even apologize?”
The distraction of Patrick’s injury is probably the only thing that saves me from getting yelled at by the omega for growling.
“Come on,” I say softly as I step around her to lead the way to the downstairs living room. This house is a fucking maze. We also have a family room and a formal sitting room down here. “We can check on Pat. That way, you’ll be able to see with your own eyes that he’s okay.”
It’ll also give me some idea of which room he had cleaned up for her, but I keep that part to myself.
My pace stays smooth and measured to keep from waking the kid as I take the corner into the main living room. I stop dead in my tracks when I spot Pat sitting on the coffee table. It’s barely a damn scratch, but he lost his shirt and jacket, and his jeans hangopen in the front. Perhaps he planned to strip out of his pants to have Seamus dispose of the bloody evidence.
It would be overkill, considering it’shisblood and not someone we need to pretend like we didn’t kill. If it was the latter, hiding the evidence would make sense, but he could pass that scratch off as anything.
Patrick is covered in tattoos from his clavicles, down his sides, and disappearing into the waistband of his jeans. The dragons that start on each side and meet in the middle of his pecs are an intricate design that took months of sessions. Apparently, at some point, they not only finished it, but also added to it.
I don’t let myself focus on why I don’t want Charlotte to have to see him shirtless.
The only logical explanation is that I don’t want her to be uncomfortable.
She’s a guest in our home.
She shouldn’t have to worry about seeing my bare-chested brother.
