“I pay for the food at home,” Ballus said.
“No, you make me pay for half of it,” Aaren said. “Even though you eat more than half and I cook everything.”
“Yeah, well, I put a roof over your head.”
“I’m also paying for half of that.”
Aaren looked at Gable. “Ballus came to my workplace the other day, demanding that I give him my employee lunch.”
“You don’t need it,” Ballus repeated.
“Wow,” Gable said, typing into his phone.
Gable was on his side; Aaren could feel it in his gut. So he took a huge gulp of his milkshake and ate some whipped cream, before inhaling another blissful bite of cheesecake.
If all hell broke loose, he wasn’t going to leave Hades’ gift behind, half-eaten.
When he peeked again, he found his alpha grinning crookedly into his roast beef sandwich. Hades looked like he was torn between punching Ballus’ face in, and being charmed by Aaren.
“So, Aaren,” Gable said. “Have you been feeling anxious or inadequate? Do you feel safe?”
Ballus narrowed his eyes. “Are you some kind of shrink?”
Gable shrugged. “I’m just concerned about Aaren, is all.”
“Why would you be concerned about him?” Ballus scoffed. “He’s fine. Just lazy.”
Aaren shot him a nasty look, but Ballus didn’t see it. “Before I found my new sausage supplier, I wasn’t feeling great, no.”
Gable’s mouth twitched. “What are your feelings on your old supplier?”
“The old supplier sucked,” Aaren muttered. “It was a lot of false advertising. I thought I was going to get 100% ground beef, but I ended up finding gristle and bone fragments in my sausage. The whole time, the old supplier kept telling me how good their product was, but I think they were the only ones who thought their product was decent. And they told me I was wrong!”
“You’re wrong a lot,” Ballus said.
Aaren shot Gable a look.You see?!“I was really disappointed and I regretted signing the contract with the old supplier, but I didn’t know how to get out of it.”
“Sucks to be you,” Ballus said.
Hades narrowed his eyes.
“So I was pretty miserable until my new supplier came along,” Aaren said. “The new supplier keeps mestuffedwith sausage, it’s amazing. 100% beef, plus extra spices whenever I want. The sausages are so juicy. There’s so much squirting. I have sausage twice a day, sometimes through the night. It’s like I’m in sausage heaven.”
Ballus made a face. “Why the hell are you eating so much sausage?”
“Whywouldn’tI? I just had some right before I got here,” Aaren said, rubbing his belly. “The juices are still inside me.”
It gave him one hell of a kick to say that in front of Ballus, without him being any the wiser.
Hades coughed, looking extremely smug. Gable shook his head amusedly.
Ballus made a face. “You’re going to get a heart attack from eating that much sausage.”
Aaren almost felt sorry for him. If he’d still been thinking of Ballus as his alpha, if he’d still been living with Ballus, those insults would’ve hurt more. Right now, they rolled off Aaren like water off a duck’s back. “My new supplier is great. I just need to get out of the contract with the old one.”
Gable nodded sagely, typing into his phone again.
Actually, now that Aaren had the breathing room to look around, and now that Gable’s sleeve had slid up his arm slightly, a familiar hawk tattoo peeked out from the back of his wrist.
