Page 8 of A Farmer’s Guide To Gamers

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Dean said carefully, eyeing me like I was the problem now. “We’re just trying to make sense of this. You’re the guy who offers terrible pickup lines and scares off omegas when we go out. We’ve all seen it.”

“She happens to like those lines,” I defended. “I used some of my best ones.”

“She liked them?”

Even Aiden looked unconvinced as he took my coffee mug from me and proceeded to doctor it up with way more sugar and milk than I thought coffee ever needed.

“I’ll have you know she did,” I told them defensively.

Kai held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry, Jack… it’s just⁠—”

“Like I’ve said, we’ve seen you trying to hit on omegas,” Dean crossed his arms watching me closely. “Half the time you can’t even get one of your lines out while talking to them. Can you blame us for being surprised?”

“Shocked?” Kai added on at the end making me roll my eyes as I made myself another cup of coffee.

“She smells like pack,” Aiden said after a long sip of my stolen cup of caffeine. “When do we get to meet her?”

Part of me hesitated about sharing Tillie with them but as I studied my pack I knew that I would. Even with all the shit we’d give each other, we were a pack. Both betas, and hell, even Dean, another alpha, were waiting for my response.

A memory hit me in a flash of Tillie’s soft curves and the taste of her lips against mine mixed with her soft and caring laughter as we talked last night. Was I ready to share her, though? The alpha part of me wasn’t sure.

At least, it wasn’t until Kai challenged me.

“Unless she isn’t real and you’ve somehow made this all up, alpha.”

Dean

Of course, Kai was the one challenging Jack. He knew exactly what he was doing.

We could all tell this wasn’t a level of scent you could fake, but Kai wasn’t the type to let him off that easily.

His smile grew to a shit eating grin while Jack glared at our beta until he finally relented and let out a long-suffering sigh.

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Do we get to know her name before we meet her?” I asked as Jack walked away from our group towards his room.

“No,” he called out before his door shut quietly.

“Well, I’ll be damned, our alpha is growing up,” Kai joked as he shook his head, messy brown hair swinging with the movement. “Let’s clean up this mess before we attract ants in here.”

“I’m going back to sleep,” Aiden announced as he finished the cup of coffee, downing it with a swift movement. “This didn’t help. Try not to wake me up unless it’s an emergency. I was up all night looking at code for Runefire Studios and doing hot fixes.”

“We’ll keep it down,” I promised before turning to Kai who hadn’t lost his smirk. “You’re lucky Jack’s alpha didn’t lose it on you, beta.”

“I know, but sometimes Jack needs a little nudge. Or a big one,” he said, unrepentant with a shrug.

“Try to keep it together and not push too far,” I sighed before heading back to the garage. We’d just wrapped another round of back to back days and were taking today off as a recovery.

The stress was getting to us all, hence Jack taking the bait as the others teased him and storming off last night.

We just didn’t expect him to come back smelling like sin and heaven.

My mind wouldn’t stop conjuring different images of this mystery omega as I tried to focus on putting the transmission together in my current rebuild. One half of the garage was where I did custom work on older cars and motorcycles, the ones that the local mechanics couldn’t touch.

The other half was all mine.

My current baby was definitely a fixer-upper project and new territory for me. Usually, I worked on old cars but this time a motorcycle caught my eye. A real beauty and I had to have it. It was only a shell and I’d been working on it for months. Now, the Honda CB 750 Nighthawk was starting to take shape, piece by piece.