Salt smirks, then slips on his shoes and stands up.
"Okay, I’m on board. But how exactly do you plan to get close to him? I seriously doubt he takes meetings with regular participants." He makes a gasp and adds, "And I especially doubt he’d want to talk to the nephew of the man who tried to kill him!" He looks mildly amused.
I stand there for a moment, rubbing my chin, realizing that this might indeed be a slight obstacle. Still, not everyone here knows my last name, especially since it’s classified in the paperwork.
Letting out a sharp breath, I mutter, "Either way, I want to ask him to support us joining the BA Follow-up program. If anyone can make that happen, it’s him. With a snap of his fingers," I say, determined.
"Fair enough. So what now?"
"Come on."
I take his hand, and we move toward the door. I crack it open and peek out.
"Okay, here’s the plan. We walk out like nothing’s wrong. That beta I was talking to is still standing in that section of the hallway. Fine. But just around the corner, a few dozen feet down, there’s a small storage closet where the cleaning crew keeps their stuff. Let’s try to slip in there and hide."
Salt smiles under his breath. "I like the way you think. Secret mission, very sneaky."
Still holding hands, we step out into the corridor, pass the beta with casual, unbothered expressions, and head down the hall. He watches us, but the moment we disappear around the corner, I speed up and veer toward the storage closet.
It is locked, but I shoulder into it and the lock gives way almost immediately.
Salt watches me with narrowed eyes.
"Sometimes I envy alphas. If something won’t open the normal way, you just force it. Betas and omegas would need a crowbar for a door like that."
I let out a low sound in AO, meant to signal my mild satisfaction at the compliment.
Salt blinks, then says, "I still can’t wrap my head around that I can understand AO language now. Never before have I gotten anything out of your AO growling."
I close the door, or at least brace it as well as I can with the busted lock, and press my eye to the narrow crack.
Salt crouches behind me, and I mutter under my breath, "I think your transformation into a beta with omega traits is already pretty advanced, Salt. You managed to produce an Omega Stun Sound. That’s not a small thing."
I turn and give him a meaningful look, then wink.
Salt lifts his fingers to his mouth and chews lightly on his nails for a moment.
"Yeah. That was weird, but kind of instinctive. It just slipped out of me."
I grow serious, gently pulling his finger out of his mouth and away from his face. "Hey. That’s how it works with True Mates. And you… you saved us, Salt." I lift his hand, and kiss the back of it. "If it hadn’t been for that sound, Drax would have shot us."
Our eyes lock in an intense stare. I brush a few small kisses over his palm, then along the sensitive skin of his wrist gland.
Salt just stares at me.
And then I say even more quietly, "It was insane, Salt, that you took bullets meant for me." As I speak, I hear my own voice grow more emotional than I intended. "If I’d taken them, I wouldn’t have been able to enter the Joining. We would have died. You did the hard part for both of us."
Salt looks away, his cheeks flushed a deep, hot red.
"You are incredibly brave, Salt."
Suddenly he seems fed up with his own embarrassment. He rolls his eyes and says, a little rebelliously, "I told you once, Eliano, when I’m in, then I’m all in!"
He smiles mutinously, but then a hint of shyness creeps back in. His lips tremble slightly.
"And I’m all in. All in on you."
I lean my back against the storage room door and look at him for a long moment. I let his words linger, spread through the air around us, wrap around both of us.
