I’m going to have to push the renovation team even harder to finish the farmhouse ahead of schedule just so we have somewhere to store all the food it takes to feed six people.
The grocery bill was never something I thought about before, it makes me wonder what else changes when you find your pack.
I go back to the fridge and take out a couple bottles of water and the bowl of various melons. It’s been a while since Liv has eaten anything. I don’t think she had breakfast this morning, and she passed on lunch.
That’s something else I’ve noticed.
Her appetite has been off.
She snacks during her shifts at the bar, always grabs something on her breaks, and she typically has a container of food Niko made her for dinner.
Lately, Liv has just been more or less picking, and slamming water like she’s been living in the desert.
I stop in the doorway of the kitchen as something occurs to me.
We’ve never talked about birth control.
Not me and Liv, unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to bury myself inside her yet for it to even cross my mind, but I don’t think she’s talked to any of the guys about it, and they haven’t said anything about it to me.
Pregnancy is way more likely between mates who share bonds or are scent matched. It’s not impossible for it to happen outside of that, I’ve seen that first hand, but chances are increased significantly when fate has a hand in things.
If Liv has been on heat suppressants, scent blockers, and alpha pheromone blockers, I’m sure she’s on birth control. She’s too much of a planner not to be.
Not that I’m against having a baby. I want a million kids, I always have.
I’m all for it happening as soon as possible, too, but maybe we should figure out what to do about the random attacks from people who would like to murder one, if not multiple members of our pack before we start talking about a nursery addition.
I make a mental note to bring that up at some point, gently and with as much tact as possible since Liv’s reactions have been less rational lately, then walk back into the living room.
Where two of my alphas and one of my omegas arestillgoing at it about their conspiracy theories and imaginary suspects.
“Listen to me, Nikolai,” Dimitri says through clenched teeth. “It is not the O’Boyles. It can’t be.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” he huffs. “Not unless you single-handedly wiped out their entire clan and since it’s fucking huge, I doubt you’ve made a dent.”
“They don’t come out this far,” I say as I walk past my mates and plop down on the couch, kicking my feet up on the coffee table as they all look at me. “What?”
“You know the O’Boyles?” Dimitri asks.
I nod. “Not personally. My dads know them, my grandad did, too, and they don’t come out this far because of that. And before you ask, no, I don’t knoweveryIrish mob family just because we hail from the same island, only the few that go back as far as ours does.”
“I love it when you talk crime families.” Leon grabs the front of his tank top and twists it in his fingers, his nipple rings catching the light as he groans. “Gives me a boner.”
“Everything gives you a boner,” Dimitri grunts over his shoulder as he maintains eye contact with me. “How far back does your family go?”
I shrug. “Far enough. Our biological father is where the Adder comes from, our other dad came along shortly after I turned two, but the mob tie is from our mom. RóisínByrne.” All three of their jaws drop and I have to laugh.
Ransom and I don’t talk about that very often, not unless we have to, because our grandad left the clan to our dads and our uncle when he retired, and when that happened, our dads decided not to use the Byrne name. We try to respect that decision and keep our family separate from the name without actually being separated from the clan because of the reputation attached to it. There was, and still is, a lot of power associated with the Byrne clan, a lot of fear surrounding the big players and the name that became synonymous with political based crime in Illinois.
Don’t get me wrong, Grandad and his men dabbled in more than politics; drugs, guns, and sex work were always on the table. Politics just proved to be the most lucrative for them, and things sort of exploded from there.
In both good, and bad ways.
The bad was what led to our dads making the choice together with our uncle and grandad as soon as he found out he was sick, knowing retirement was going to be forced on him by hisdeclining health. So it wasn’t like there was bad blood between anyone. I think my granddad was happy the business would stay tightly woven through our family, continuing and ultimately expanding under my dads and our Uncle Seamus. He knew he was leaving his legacy in the hands of people he loved and trusted more than anyone; our involvement didn’t end, it just changed.
Ran and I still work with our cousins, Liam and Brennan, who are back home in Illinois and still Byrnes, and my brother and Brennan are technically head of the clan now that our dads and Uncle Seamus have retired.
Not keeping the Byrne name wasn’t an easy decision but it was unanimous and made without hesitation for one simple reason: to protect us, and our mom.
