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Little did he know, that was what we were there for, hopefully to give him some good advice, aka, get his head out of his ass and go get Jillian.
“Does it speak to you or some shit?” Creek said, and I cracked up. He covered his mouth as though he didn’t mean to say the words.
Dean whipped his head toward us and scowled. The tension in the air was palpable, but as angry as I was, as frustrated, the rage wasn’t coming from my side of the conversation. Dean was pissed already.
“What…are we having a meeting now or some shit?” Dean spat the words at us but I didn’t react. He was protecting himself. He still saw us as a threat. Which we weren’t. We were supposed to work together for one goal: Jillian’s joy.
“More like a fucking intervention.” I let the words hang in the air.
“I’m a little busy.”
Gods, it was like our egos were having a mental battle. I needed to step back and call a truce, again, for the good of Jillian.
“What are you working on?” Creek stepped forward. He picked up the roll of blueprints next to Dean and turned them this way and that until they made sense. “Damn, this is one hell of a house. You worked this up?”
Okay, I’d recruited Creek, but clearly he was better at this than I was.
“Yeah. It’s what I was going to school for before…”
Creek nudged Dean with his elbow. “Before you turned furry and came to this pack and then all mating hell broke loose?”
They both laughed, and it crackled the thick air around us just enough to relieve some of the tension, not a lot, but it was a start.
“Nailed it,” Dean said and pointed to the cleared area. He had been working his ass off on whatever this project was. He was stubborn and a hard worker. “And it’s a house for her.”
Her. He couldn’t even say her name.
“For Jillian?” I asked and stepped to stand next to him, trying to envision it even though I couldn’t make heads or tails of the design. Just looked like a bunch of lines and measurements to me—flat and lifeless.
“Yes.”
“Whoa, there’s a bedroom for each of us, and each one has its own sitting room and bathroom. It’s like three houses combined around one central kitchen and a big living room. And then I’m assuming the biggest area is Jillian’s corner of the house?”
Dean nodded and gestured to everything before pointing to the corresponding area in the air. He had planned this out perfectly. We would all have our private areas but also have space to congregate.
“I don’t understand.” I had to say something. We couldn’t just go on, ignoring the hippo in the room.
“Look,” Creek said, moving to the side of me and pointing things out.
“No, I understand the plans. What I don’t understand is building a house for a mate that you won’t see and her other mates that you apparently despise.”
Shit. Not the way I’d wanted to broach the subject, but words were impossible to recover.
Dean squared his shoulders, and his brow drew down, deeper than before. “I…fuck…I don’t know. I’m hung up on it. My brain won’t let it go that it’s not the norm. I have friends with harems, and I’ve seen them together, just living their happy lives, but I can’t quite step over the line. It’s not my wolf. It’s not my heart. It’s my fucking head.”
I countered him. “But your head came up with this. Might not be your head.”
He turned on me. “What do you want me to do? Huh? I’m sorry I’m not jumping into this harem thing with no holds barred like you two. I was just getting used to being a shifter with the help of my mate and then, two minutes later, surprise, she’s got two other guys.”
Creek wandered around, inspecting wood and scanning the area. My bet was that he was overthinking his words. He finally stopped right next to us. “You’re thinking about this only one way, Dean. You’re looking at it like we’re your enemies, people you have to compete with, but really, we’re a team. You’re good at making Jillian happy in one area and I’m good at another. Shane makes her happy in a completely different way. She’s such an incredible female, it takes three normal guys to make a complete mate for her. There is no coming up short because we work together.”
“I can’t cook for shit,” I said, offering up a shortcoming.
“And I can cook, but I’m not reading with her. Hell, I don’t read books at all.”
I snorted. “Truth is, I hate them, too, but she asks, so I read them to her.”
Dean’s gaze ping-ponged around. “I can cook. I love to read to her.”
