Gabriella hugged him tighter. “I know.Weknow. But Joe’s dad got arrested the other day at the shifter park. Some big misunderstanding because Joe’s adopted. It was a whole thing, and now the other kids keep calling his dad a nonce.”
What the fuck.What the actual fuck?
He knew that a lot of people’s attitudes towards alphas had changed after the sex trafficking scandal, and then the omega-led murders, butschool?What the hell were they teaching the kids these days?
A nudge at his ankle snapped him out of his thoughts, and when he looked down he saw that Marty was already in wolf form. All black, like Johnny, save for the thin streak of brown across his chest. He looked up at him with shiny dark eyes, his pointed ears swivelling back and forth as the girls shifted somewhere off between the trees. He licked Johnny’s shin then tugged at his shorts with his tiny wolf teeth.
Unlike British wolves—all shaggy and heavy boned—African shifters had the sleeker coats and longer limbs of jackals.
Johnny’s mouth twitched and he stroked Marty’s ear. “Coming,” he said, pushing him towards his sisters.
Without another word, Johnny shucked his clothes and bent down. He filled his lungs with the warm evening air and shifted.
It was already well past nine when he and Taylor returned home with their bellies full and mouths burning from Maman’s hot pepper soup. All three terraced houses along Bell Lane were in darkness, and Taylor craned his neck to look up their neighbours’ driveway.
“Blake and Pem are out again,” Taylor said. “Thank fuck.”
Johnny pulled the car around the side of the house, the sound of the loud exhaust rumbling off the wall. “We still need to get the muffler fixed. Blake glares at me every morning,” he said.
“Pft. Only because he gets it in the neck when we disturb Lord Pemberton’s sleep. Honestly, if he’s that bothered he can pay the garage himself. Probably earns three times what we do.”
Johnny tutted, flicking the back of Taylor’s hand. “And who got us kicked out of our last place?”
“Annoying fucking neighbours?” Taylor replied, unclipping his seat belt.
“Exactly. You know Blake doesn’t play games, and I don’t feel like asking Maman for our old room back, do you?”
Because as much as he loved the pack, the thought of having to deal with the chaos of two pre-teen alphas, a nine-year-old omegaandTaylor made a lobotomy sound pretty fucking appealing.
Taylor sucked his teeth. “Nope. She’d kill us.”
They tiptoed up the garden path, skilfully avoiding the recycling bins and massive potted plant that Pember had given them as a house-warming gift, but as soon as Taylor put the keyin the door there came the deafening caw of Cherry the African Grey through the wall.
“Braaa! Intruders! Thieves! Cat burglars! Braaa!”
“Fuck’s sake,” Johnny said, rubbing the aching line between his eyebrows. “She’ll be at it all night now.”
They stumbled into the house, an old two-up, two-down end terrace with an open plan kitchen-diner, a tatty leather sofa and a massive TV haphazardly attached to the wall above the fireplace. Johnny tripped over one of Taylor’s dumbbells, making it roll under his feet and into Taylor’s ankle.
“Ow!” Taylor said, hand scrabbling over the wall as he tried to find the light switch.
“Put the weights back on the fucking rack. How many times, Tay?”
Taylor grumbled, finding the light as they shut the door behind them. Taylor’s hand was still hovering near the door, his face so close to Johnny’s that he could smell the shaving products Papa had used on Taylor’s cheeks for the cutthroat shave.
“Hey,” Taylor said, not stepping away but instead looking Johnny dead in the eyes. That was something he did a lot, like he was pinning Johnny down so he couldn’t look away. It should have been intimidating as hell, but his lips were so pink from Maman’s pepper soup that it was difficult to take him seriously. “I’m going for a shower; wait up for me?”
Johnny gave a small nod. It was weird seeing Taylor clean shaven and with a decent haircut again. Maman had kept it longer on the top, letting the ginger strands fall to the side in a twat-ish hipster kind of way. It suited him, and Johnny could see the riot of freckles covering his cheeks and chin that had been hidden under that God-awful beard.
Taylor scoffed. “Take a picture, why don’t cha?”
Heat crept up Johnny’s neck, and it was a fucking good job he was dark skinned, otherwise Taylor would have clocked the blush. “It looks good. You look good, that’s all,” he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.
Taylor looked like he had a sarcastic remark on the tip of his tongue, but poked it with his fang instead. “I know,” he replied, turning and tossing his head so the strands fell across his forehead.
“Dickhead,” Johnny chuckled, throwing the car keys into the bowl under the stairs and slipping off his boots. He went to the kitchen, setting down the massive sack of cherries and blackberries Maman had insisted they take home before pouring himself a glass of water.
The kitchen was a bombsite and there was a weird rotten fruit smell coming from the sink, so Johnny put away the plates and cups that were stacked on the draining board, wiped down the worktops and ran a mop over the dried splodges of egg spattered over the shiny grey tiles.
