Page 9 of A Farmer’s Guide To Gamers

I dropped the wrench in my hand for the third time and let it stay on the garage floor as I went to the well-worn couch in here and dropped onto it. My phone was blasting music on the coffee table in front of it, my head bobbing lightly to the playlist that, apparently, was now considered vintage.

Ouch.

Truth was, I was exhausted. We’d worked our asses off building up our indie game studio. I’d been working as a mechanic, the others were just coming out of college, and we’d all hit it off. Even if the pack was ten years younger than I was, we all just fit together.

Our love of video games united us, but I knew it was the way we all had our own lives and hobbies that made us stronger. It gave us the proper escape when things got stressful, and with work being tied so close together, we needed time alone, too.

We never in a million years thought Runefire Studios would hire a group like ours. It started with us making mods of our favorite games, then swirled into trying to find gigs that could use our set of skills. Asking someone to hire a group was a risk, but somehow we landed this one. We’ve been working for weeks to make sure the launch went off without a hitch.

With their funding, and our skills, we’d made one hell of a game.

Now that we’d made a solid profit, we couldn’t stop thinking of starting our own studio. Something slower and not such a quick turnaround. One that was something that could become a classic.

We just needed to agree on what kind of game that should be and we’d have a place to start. Sure, we all took inspiration from the classics, but we had to make sure we put our own spin on things, to make it unique.

Farming sims. Roguelikes. RPGs.

An RPG would definitely be a long shot at the moment but we did all love some epic spanning stories.

I settled back fully onto the couch and tried to calm my mind. We’d figure out what we all wanted to work with and things would click into place. That’s how it was with our group… sometimes it just took some time to get there.

Just as I was drifting off, the music cut off with a loud blaring ring. My entire body jolted and I scrambled, grabbing my phone after just two rings to answer without looking at the screen.

“What?” I answered, my voice rough with exhaustion.

There was a pause before familiar light laughter filled the line.

“Hello to you, too, bro. What’s got your panties in a bunch?” Sabrina sang out and I groaned, not even trying to stifle the sound which just made her laugh harder. “You’re not excited to hear from me? Your favorite sibling?!”

“Oh, I didn’t realize you had Jett with you there. Tell him I said hey,” I commented, a big smile filling my face at her mock-indignant gasp.

“So rude! Honestly, you’ve been gone forever and this is how you treat your little sister?”

“Sabrina, I talked to you two days ago and you texted me yesterday,” I replied with good humor.

“I don’t see your point,” she huffed out, I could practically see the pout on her face. She had that perfected. With as many siblings as we had she had to have something to get her way. It always worked on us alphas, but our beta sister never even flinched. Honestly, Alex was the strongest out of us all.

“Did you call for a reason?” I finally asked around a yawn.

“Yes,” she said. “And your fucking welcome because Mom was going to call and chew you out.”

I winced. “Yeah, I should have called her.”

“Yup,” she said with a happy chirp. “Dinner tonight, no excuses. Bring the pack so we can all finally meet them.”

There was real hurt in her voice and I hated that I put it there. It reminded me too much of my life before my family came in and rescued me.

Jett and I started as best friends. My home life was awful. Both of my parents cared more about their next fix and each other, than their own child. That home was full of dangerous things, including them.

I learned from a young age to stay quiet and out of sight. My meals came from school and I ate dinner at Jett’s house nearly every night. The Ames took one of the worst nights of my life and turned into the best.

The cop cars came first, then my parents were dragged away. I didn’t even make it a step outside before Jade, Steven, and Wyatt were there. They followed us and managed to get my parents to give them temporary guardianship.

Then six months later, they were awarded complete guardianship. The best and only good things my bio parents ever did was sign away their rights and let the Ames adopt me.

And here I was avoiding bringing my pack home. I just cared too damn much about what they’d all think about my pack being younger than me.

Mom would adore them and so would our dads. Not one person in my family was judgmental but my brain never quite agreed.