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“Oh my Goddess,” Cheryl mutters, as she leans forward and dips a bit of pizza crust into the hot sauce that came with the pie. Her dark eyes are wide as she listens to the rant of a wannabe C-lister on the screen.
“Way to get your panties in a twist over nothing,” I agree, trying to remember what the argument was even about in the first place. A vaguely rude comment that was unintentional, I think.
“These people have no real problems,” Cheryl says.
“That’s what makes them so much fun to mock,” I tell her.
The spoiled, rich women on the screen are so unrelatable they might as well be from another planet. Says the incredibly spoiled Omega, with the unbelievably sexy mate and the Alpha who bankrolls the mansion he lives in. Okay, so they’re kind of relatable. A little. In this one way.
“That house is tiny compared to this one,” I add. “Just as well she doesn’t live around here. She’d have mansion envy.”
Cheryl snorts at my dumb joke. She sighs softly and puts the half-eaten pizza crust down on the box on the coffee table. Snuggles up closer to me.
This is the life. Kind of unreal, and so fucking perfect.
I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure I never screw it up. Unlike the women on screen, who throw screaming fits when the maid uses the wrong detergent or whatever.
We let one episode run into the next, and before I know it, it’s after midnight and I can barely keep my eyes open. I look down and find Cheryl already asleep. I move slowly to find the best way to lift her up and carry her to bed. I manage not to wake her.
I carry her upstairs and lay her down in the middle of our bed, moving the sheets carefully to cover her sleeping frame. Then, I head out of the room to turn the TV off and clean up downstairs.
It’s a little weird that Everett and Noah haven’t come home, but only because they’re so protective of our mate. I know they didn’t go to the bowling alley. That’s got to be the dumbest lie they’ve ever concocted. That place is a dive. There’s no way they went there.
I’ll quiz Noah when they get back, but I’m a hundred percent sure they’re in his room at the academy. I just don’t know what they’re up to, but they aren’t out of the house just to give us space. Something else is going on, and they should know by now they can’t keep secrets safe from me.
I always find out. Of course, it helps that Noah can’t tell a lie to save his life and Everett usually can’t be bothered to keep up any kind of pretence for more than five minutes.
I tidy up in the living room first, turning the TV off and taking the almost empty pizza box to the kitchen. I clean away the glasses of soda next and turn off the lamp.
The kitchen doesn’t take too long to clean up.
We ate the rest of the strawberries before the pizza came, and Cheryl rinsed the bowls while I answered the door. I put the tablecloth in the laundry along with Cheryl’s clothes, and I leave the cushion from the lounge in the dining room.
I’m about to head back upstairs when I remember I left my clothes outside.
I groan at the thought of going out there and grabbing them.
It’s dark, and they’re not just in the yard.
I could get them in the morning, I guess.
“No,” I tell myself out loud. “You won’t remember in the morning, dumb-ass. Go get them now.”
Sighing, I head for the back door. I have my keys in my pocket, so I use them to unlock the door.
I don’t bother taking them with me. I don’t intend to do more than dart out to the woods, grab my bundle of clothes and come straight back. I open the door, and step out into the darkness, letting my wolf in to enhance my vision when I see how dark it is. I don’t see the moon in the sky until it’s too late. I feel my skin ripple, and my teeth sharpen and I can’t fight the urge to shift.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Cheryl
Iwakeupwitha start into darkness, and it takes me a second to realize Oscar must have carried me to bed. I sit up quickly and find I’m alone in the bed. The alarm clock shows it’s just after one in the morning. I try to calm my racing heart, telling myself Oscar must be in the bathroom or he’s shutting the lights off downstairs after he brought me up here, but I can’t seem to make myself believe that’s what’s happening.
Paranoia grips hold and I tear the bedsheets away from me, getting up and turning on the lamp by Everett’s side of the bed. I check the bathroom and find it’s empty.
My senses sharpen quickly, responding to the unexpected situation with a spike of adrenaline.
Oscar hasn’t been okay for days, and the reason for that could hark back to something that happened when he was just a kid. He took it well, and he was fine all night, but it worries me that he’s not where he should be right now.
