Well, that cleared everything up, right?
“How long will you be staying?” Millie cheerfully posed, trying not to shiver in the cold night air.
I don’t know what I was more aggravated about. Logan’s sudden, unannounced arrival, or the fact that he’d interrupted Millie’s change. She’d been only seconds from it before he’d honked his fucking horn and caused her to break her concentration. As her mate, I could feel it just about to bloom to the surface, and I know how hard she’d worked for that shift after suppressing it for so long.Unfortunately for my girl, Logan had fucked that all to hell. Not surprising though. The man wasn’t known for his timing or his tact.
“Not sure how long I can stay,” Logan answered cryptically as he reached into his pocket and drew out a packet of cigarettes.
As a shifter of any kind, I don’t know how the hell he smoked those disgusting things. Wares had incredibly sensitive noses, and the acrid stink of burning cigarettes always irritated my delicate olfactory system. I could only imagine how bad it was if you were inhaling the chemically ladened things.
“Well, however long it is, we’re glad to have you here,” Millie responded, saying all the things I knew I should, but couldn’t force out of my angry mouth.
I don’t know why I was behaving like this. I’d asked him to come. Called him three times even. While I hadn’t expected him to follow through with the request, even before the silence after my reaching out, he was here now. That should make me happy. But it didn’t. Like a petulant child, I was angrier than ever.
Logan cupped his Marlboro with one hand, sheltering it against the breeze as he simultaneously lit it with the other.
After taking a quick puff, he said, “When you didn’t answer your phone or the front door, I thought I’d missed you or something.”
“We were just coming from the woods,” Millie provided conversationally.
“Figured as much. That’s why I laid on the horn,” Logan replied through a mouthful of smoke. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything important.”
Before Millie could kindly excuse the selfish man’s actions, I said, “Millie was in the middle of her first change.”
To his credit, my brother’s grey-blue eyes widened a bit. “I’m sorry about that, Millie. I didn’t realize.”
Millie gave me a censuring glare before smiling back at my brother with a pretty pink tinge in her cheeks. “It’s fine. I don’t think it was going to happen anyway. I think I’m broken,” she teased, though I could hear the ghost of disappointment and shame in her self-deprecating tone.
Giving my mate a thorough once over that brought both color and heat to my cheeks, my brother cashed his cigarette onto the heel of his boot before tossing it carelessly to the ground. Pollutingmyground with his poison. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you, omega. Nothing at all.”
Before I could tell him to shut his fucking mouth and keep his comments about my mate to himself, my brothers emerged from the woods. They were only wearing their boxers, which was for Millie’s sake, not mine, but they looked ready to throw down if the need arose.
They’d left the cabin before we had, to give Millie and I some privacy for her first shift, and doubtlessly already changed for the night when they’d heard Logan’s horn. With the unexpected ware’s arrival, they’d had to cut their fun short and shift back, which would likely leave them all in a foul mood. Well, all of them but Colt. That dude was never in a bad mood.
I didn’t have to introduce anyone but Gavin to my brother. The rest already knew him, though admittedly not well.
In the interest of getting this done quickly, I said, “Logan, Iknow you’ve met Flint, Stark, and Colt. This is Gavin. He recently moved here from Alaska.”
Logan didn’t bother shaking anyone’s hand. Just gave them a disinterested head nod as he took in the group of younger men with vague interest.
Amused, my brother offhandedly commented, “Wow, you Cascia House boys really stick together, don’t you?”
“Yeah, we do,” Flint spoke frostily, his glittering green gaze as hard as the emerald gem it resembled.
You can say what you want about Flint, but the man always had my back. This instance was no different. Though Flint had no bad blood between him and Logan, he’d always disliked the man on my behalf just out of some warped sense of principle. I’d never encouraged it, as it was pointless and petty to do so, but I appreciated the ware’s unflagging loyalty non-the-less.
“I see I broke up a scheduled run. My bad,” Logan lazily returned, as his calculating gaze moved from one hard face to the next. “I tried calling, but nobody answered. That’s why I honked.”
After a failed change, Millie was going to be sore and exhausted in no time, if she wasn’t already. I’m not sure what it is about your first change, but for lack of a better term, until you clear the pipes out by fully shifting, you feel all stopped up.
Millie wouldn’t be the only one frustrated tonight. My brothers weren’t going to feel much better. They’d badly needed this pack run and had been looking forward to it because we were all together. Pack runs were always better than going solo. But with Logan’s sudden arrival, we weren’tgoing to just head back to the woods and start all over again. As put out as I might be, it was my duty to catch my brother up to speed about what had been going on with Millie and the Tupilaq Pack. That’s why he was here, after all.
When she shivered again, I wrapped my arm around my mate’s shoulders and suggested, “Why don’t we all head inside and have some drinks by the fire to warm up.”
The only one who would feel the cold was Millie, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Alright,” Logan agreed. “I’m curious to hear the story of your little omega mate. It sounds like an interesting one.”
I’m not sure if I imagined him scenting the air as he spoke, but it set my teeth on edge at the mere possibility that he’d done it.
