“So…” he said, and cleared his throat awkwardly.
Naja shook her head. “He’ll fight armed gunmen and insane cartel bosses, but faced with a half-sibling, he loses the ability of speech.” She stepped close to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Welcome to the family.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “He won’t say it, but he’s excited to have some blood kin. For so long, the only family he had was your father, and to say he was a fucking asshole would have been an understatement.”
I just patted her back. I didn’t know what to say. I’d grown up believing I was alone in the world too, but I had Lorso, and then Beckett and Corvin. Then I had no one.
I looked at Gatlin, his gaze intense and his Alpha power close to that of even the Alpha General. “I don’t know how this works. I don’t know what to say.”
He inclined his head. “I don’t know what to say either. I’m glad you exist?” He sighed. “Do you drink? Because I feel like this is a conversation that would be infinitely smoother with scotch.”
I grinned. I definitely drank. Lorso had shunned the ways of humans, but the man loved whiskey.
Corvin let out a relieved breath. “I’m cracking open the thirty-year-old bottle I got as a mating present. If there was ever a situation that deserves good liquor, it's this one.”
I couldn’t agree more.
27
BECKETT
The babies had all been fed and gone down for a nap early—which quite frankly, seemed like a small miracle—and everyone sat around the living room. Kitten was grinning goofily, probably just on the line between tipsy and drunk. She was keeping up with the drinks admirably however, considering she had approximately half the body weight of the rest of us—not including Naja, who wasn’t drinking at all.
“So you don’t remember your—I mean our—father mentioning any woman at all? Any hints who my mother might be?” Her words were slightly slurred, and she kept slipping into Latin, but honestly it was kind of adorable.
Gatlin shook his head. “There’s what, eight years between us? By the time I was eight, I was beginning to exhibit my power, and my father did everything he could to distance himself from me. I wasn’t sad about it, because by then I realized what a psycho he really was. You’re better off just meeting his headstone. He would’ve fucking sold you to Wilkie or some other backwards fucking Alpha Pack in a heartbeat if it suited him.”
Naja muttered something under her breath in Spanish, but I didn’t need a translator to know she was cursing the very existence of the former Alpha General. She chewed her lip. “Courtland did say that he inherited a bunch of ledgers and diaries when he, you know…” She shot a quick look between Gatlin and Kitten, then grimaced. “Anyway, maybe there’ll be something in there. I’m sure Courtland would be happy to let you flick through them, see if there’s anything in there around the year you were born.”
Kitten grinned goofily again, and honestly, I loved her so damn much.
Ellar, Gatlin’s sweet Beta male, nudged me with his elbow. “I know that look, Beck. You’re one more scotch and a few layers of clothes away from bringing her into the Pack,” he murmured softly, and I gave him a lopsided grin.
“You know it.”
The longer the Huxley-Grey Pack stayed, the more comfortable Kitten felt. Maybe it was just the booze, or maybe it was the Pack themselves. While we’d gone to school with Raiden, Finlo and Gatlin were a little older than us, but we all got along. Maybe it was because both Packs had male Omegas, or because Finlo and Cooper were cousins. Either way, if Kitten was going to have some long-lost family member, I was glad they came from this Pack.
Finally, the cubs woke, and Finlo suggested it was time to go home. We waved them goodbye, and Kitten was still smiling. “They seem nice. I want that.”
I wrapped an arm around her waist. “To be nice?”
She slapped at my shoulder but leaned against me. “No, to be a Pack—properly. I want you guys to mate me. I want to take your knots and complete my bond with Darius.”
You could have heard a pin drop, or the sound of all the blood whooshing through my body to my dick.
I wanted to say no. Not tonight, when she was drunk and recently had some life-altering news thrust upon her. But the words refused to pass my lips.
Luckily, Darius had more fucking sense than me. Or better control over the howling Beast that demanded we take her right now, fill her with our seed.
Darius stroked her cheek. “Not tonight, sweetheart. This isn’t a decision you make with a belly full of scotch.”
I huffed but didn’t argue. I appeased myself with the fact that at least it was on her mind, and soon enough she’d make that decision sober as a judge and with love in her eyes. Then I would make love to her until she clenched around my knot and I could make her mine forever.
She flopped against Darius, giving him nipping little kisses along his jawline. “You’re so handsome. Don’t you think he’s handsome, Beck? Now I know why you guys left me. I’d leave me too if I met someone as sweet and sexy as Darius.”
I clutched her tighter to my chest. “We didn’t want to leave you, baby. Remember? We wanted you too. You were always meant to be part of our Pack; it just took us a while to get where we needed to be.”
She sighed heavily, letting her eyes close softly. “So much wasted time. I’m mad at Lorso. So fucking mad at him for convincing me that this town was the gateway to Hell, and that all Manix were bad, when he only really meant one Manix was evil. I could have lived with you. Been a part of a Pack, instead of being alone. I was so fucking lonely.”
Darius tilted her chin up so he could kiss her lips. “Lorso was right though. You heard Gatlin—if his father had known about you, you would have been forced into a shitty mating and been miserable. You definitely wouldn’t have been allowed to be with us.”
