Page 156 of Trick Knot Treat

Chapter 38

Zaire

She’s finally sleeping. I think I will love heats. One day. Just not in the club room with bikers downstairs and both my omegas smelling like my favourite brand of booze.

I pull the door shut and go across the hall to the bathroom, cleaning myself thoroughly with soap that eliminates scent, before I take the stairs two at a time, wondering whose scentless clothes I am wearing.

Gummy is in the kitchen, humming along, and turns, smiling at me.

“I just snuck in this morning. I couldn’t leave you all hungry.”

“We could have ordered something?”

“Ew, no. Not this early, you would have ended up in a drive-thru eating greasy burgers made by teenage kids that are so cookie-cutter that your dog could have made them.”

I snort a laugh, and then I hear the scrambling of paws. Spectre slams into me, whining and snorting, checking me all over.

“Hey, Spectre, how are you? You look good.”

“We’ve done walks twice a day, he’s got his own bed, but he slept with Crash and me. He’s a beautiful boy, but he missed you very much.”

I bury my face in his shoulder, feeling a bit of tension I wasn’t aware I was carrying dissipate.

“We’re going to head home today.”

Gummy looks up, and his face falls, but then he smiles. “Of course, you have to go home. You need to get back there before Sunshine Cove descends on you with all their fierceness.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“I believe a certain soon-to-be mother-in-law attacked my baby when he tried to take Khione.”

I bark out a laugh. “I would have loved to have seen it.”

“Oh, me, too.”

He slides me a plate of food.

“Eat. It will help get you all perked up again, and trust me, Khione will be down as soon as she smells the bacon.”

“I wasn’t expecting everyone to be so friendly.”

Gummy puts the food in warmers and sits opposite me with a mug of coffee that smells divine. He slides one across the table to me.

“Ah, well, the thing is, we all have a soft spot for Khione. Her mother left her with us when she was a baby. None of us really knew what we were doing, so suddenly, there we were baby-proofing a club room.”

“Why didn’t he give her to someone else?”

“Because he took one look at those sea-foam eyes, and he knew that she was not just his but the answer to a heart's wish he hadn’t been aware he was making. How could he walk away from such a gift?”

I stare at Gummy, thinking that perhaps Khione’s dad and I would understand each other really well one day.

“Everyone loves her. As you can well see, she has this magical ability to be both joy and kindness. She’s one of the guys and one of the girls; she’s an omega’s omega but can hang with the betas and alphas without challenging them. We all doted on her.”

“And Harvest?”

“Well, Harvest is another thing completely. He was a kid who came with a real dirtbag of a dad. The guy got kicked out of the club for breaking rules, and he took off, but he left the kid here. And Crash has a weak spot for the underdog. So, Harvest stayed. What’s another kid when he was already raising one? And we just imagined this happy world. But you know, the world doesn’t work out the way you plan. Instead, we’ve got-”

“Me.”