by Kelex
“We’ll just have to be more careful. Pay attention what’s going on around us.” Kai considered how out of it LJ had been. “We need to watch out for LJ and Chase, too. LJ’s not doing well.”
“You can’t expect much more from him.”
Kai scrubbed a hand over his face. “We’re not kids anymore. We need to step up and take care of ourselves now.”
Gregor’s words whispered through his mind. His father had said pretty much the same thing just days before.
Lane turned his head and captured Kai’s stare. “You could come and stay at my house now. My fathers would be fine with you there.”
Lane’s father didn’t love Kai. Never had. The bear was hard to get close to and Lane still wasn’t sure why there was such conflict there. “What about LJ? Chase’s family is five different varieties of fucked up. They need to stay here… so I need to stay here.” He cupped Lane’s cheek. “If you want to spend some time with your family, I’d understand. I won’t put you in danger, too.”
Lane shook his head. “Where you go, I go. You know that.”
Kai smiled. He curled up closer to Lane. “I don’t know where I’d be right now without you here.”
Lane pressed his lips against Kai’s. They lay there, holding on, for as long as they could…
Until Kai heard arguing out in the living room.
“Joy,” he murmured before rolling out of bed. His feet hit the cold wood floor before he rose.
After he and Lane pulled on some sweats, they stumbled out into the madness.
Along with the sheriff and a deputy, the house was filled with fathers and brothers.
One of Chase’s fathers, Medford, was arguing with Declan. “You can’t just send my boy to Timbuktu because you fucked things up royally.”
Send my boy? What the hell is going on? Before Kai could ask, his eldest brother cut him off.
“Medford, it’s the best thing for all the boys and you know it,” Royce spat.
“Maybe for your family… but Traylon was my cousin. Your brother killed him in cold blood,” Medford blasted back.
“Traylon and Oberon murdered Gregor,” Graham, the sheriff, roared. “They cheated. I know you were there and saw it with your own eyes, so don’t act like you didn’t.”
Kai glanced at Lane before turning back to the men.
“I saw… I also saw that Declan didn’t challenge Traylon. He just swept in and killed my cousin.” Medford walked a few paces closer to Graham. “And you killed Oberon, Sheriff. Sounds pretty fucking dirty all around, if you ask me. But then, you’ve always covered up for the alpha, now haven’t you?”
“I haven’t covered up shit,” Graham argued, his hackles rising and a low growl spreading through the room.
“It’s coming down to a civil war, gentleman,” Crain, Medford’s brother bear, said. “Sides have been drawn. And you are all on the wrong side.”
A war? Kai frowned. He knew his father’s death had spun his world upside down… but had it rocked the den that deep?
“The wrong side?” Royce asked, laughing.
“Can we just stop for two minutes?” Declan roared. “This discussion isn’t about sides. It’s about protecting the ones we love. As you’ve said, things might take a turn for the worst. I want the boys protected. We have somewhere safe we want to send them. Graham has already gassed up and is ready to take them to the airport.”
Do we get no say in the matter? Before he could voice just that, Kai was once again talked over.
“A safe spot that you won’t share,” Medford said. “You want me to send Chase without knowing where he is?”
“You don’t seem to give two shits where he is most days,” Royce spat. “Does it really matter now?”
When Medford lunged at Royce, Declan held him back. “We won’t harm LJ’s brother bear. You know that.”
“In other words, he doesn’t trust us not to tell others where their family is,” Crain added, looking pointedly at Declan.
Declan held his hands up. “You’re right. I don’t. I’m not real sure who I can trust at the moment.”
Medford mumbled something under his breath and backed off.
“I, for one, think it’s a good idea for Chase to go,” the boy’s human father said, finally speaking.
Lane’s human father nodded his head at the man’s side. “I agree. Lane and Kai should go. It isn’t safe here.”
Kai clenched his fists at his sides. He loved them talking about him and his brother like they didn’t have a voice and a choice of their own.
“Don’t we get a say in all this?” Kai asked from the outskirts—finally finding his space to jump into the situation.
All turned in his and Lane’s direction.
Silence filled the room, as if they were ashamed to have been caught.
“It’s not safe here,” Declan finally mumbled. “Not after what happened to father. We have a safe location to send you, your brother, and both your brother bears—along with Royce’s human and babe.”
“No, Carson’s decided not to go,” Royce said lowly.
Declan’s head whipped. “What?”
“I’ll explain later,” Royce growled, looking none too happy.
“We can stay and fight,” Kai announced, puffing out his chest. “We’re not children.” He turned to look at Lane, and saw a weary look on his brother bear’s face.
“No, but your baby brother and Chase don’t need to be here—and knowing you’re all somewhere safe where you can protect them all would put my mind at ease,” Declan said. “I need you to be there in my place.”
“Horseshit,” Kai spat. “You don’t want your little brothers underfoot.”
Declan stormed closer, pointing a finger in the middle of Kai’s chest. “I want to protect my family the best way I know how. You’ve been nothing but obstinate since I got back—I doubt you’d listen to anything I told you to do. Which could get you all killed.”
“As if you ever did one thing you were ever told. Who was the one exiled?” Kai glared back at his brother. “It sure as hell wasn’t me.”
A growl rose from Declan’s chest, his eyes flashing with angry light. Kai was ready for a punch, a slash of claws, just about anything.
But it didn’t come.
Declan sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face before eyeing Kai. “For once, just do as I ask and go where I know you’ll be safe. It won’t be for long. I promise.”
Kai turned to Lane, who nodded his head slowly in agreement with Declan. There was no point in arguing if his own brother bear was on his brother’s side. He turned back to Declan, irritation running through him. “Fine.”
Declan eyed him a moment, silent. “Go get yourself packed up. Let LJ and Chase know, too, and tell them to get packed up quick. I don’t know how long it’ll take. Hopefully no more than a few weeks. But if there’s anything you hold dear—take it with you.”
Medford spoke up. “I ain’t given my approval for you to waltz off with my cub.”
“Yes you have,” Chase’s human father intervened. He looked at Declan. “Save my boy.”
Medford glared at his mate, but spun and stormed out, slamming the door as he passed through.
Kai wished he could just storm off, telling them all to fuck off, but his father’s voice whispered in his ears.
Stand up. Be a man. Protect your little brother.
Kai turned tail and urged Lane back toward the bedroom. Before he went to pack, he knocked on LJ’s door. He heard nothing and knocked again, worry filling him. When his brother didn’t answer, he cracked the door open and saw both Chase and LJ sitting on the floor, their faces void of any emotion.
“Where are they sending us?” LJ asked sullenly.
“You heard?” Kai asked.
“How could we not hear?” Chase asked, shaking his head. At nearly sixteen, Chase was the youngest of the four, though he looked years older than LJ. “No idea why my fathers are even bothering to argue. Not like they want me around.
”
“Likely for the sake of arguing at all,” Lane said. “They have no love lost on Declan.”
“I don’t want to go,” LJ said, his stare moving to Kai’s. “This is our home.”
Kai lifted his chin. “Technically, Declan now has all that was father’s. It’s his home. And if he wants us gone? We don’t have much say in the matter.”
“Kai…” Lane murmured. “You know it’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it? Our father just died, and now we’re being kicked out of the only home we’ve ever known. Because a few feathers got ruffled? Who did the ruffling? Declan, that’s who.” Kai met LJ’s stare. “Pack. We don’t have any choice.”
Lane’s papa entered the hallway and eyed them all. He placed a hand on Lane’s shoulder. “Let’s get you home and packed. We can bring you back as soon as you’re done.”
Lane’s fingers slid across Kai’s before he left with his father. Kai watched them depart, worry filling him. As soon as his brother bear was out of sight, he went to his room and began shoving whatever felt right into one of two bags. When they were nearly full, he grabbed a frame from the top of his dresser. Him, Lane, LJ, Chase, and Gregor on a fishing trip they’d taken a couple of years before.
He eyed the strong, powerful image of his father. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he drew in a deep breath, trying to will the coming tears from falling.
After rubbing his thumb over his father’s face, he stuffed the frame into one of his bags and did another cursory glance over his bedroom, searching for anything he couldn’t part with. In truth, as long as he had Lane at his side, he didn’t need much else.
And for some reason, he got the feeling he’d never come back to this room.
Ever.
Chapter Three
Nearly a decade later…
Kai felt the buzzing of his phone at his hip as he rushed through the glass doors of Benco, Inc. He reached into his pocket as he crossed the polished marble floors headed for the elevator bank.
He came to a halt mid-step.
Declan.
Kai hit the Decline button and kept on moving. He hit Up for the elevator and waited for the next car to arrive. Not long after, he felt another buzz. Lifting his iPhone again, he saw he had a message.
It wasn’t the first one Declan had left over the last couple of weeks. Call me, he’d left cryptically, without any information. Kai had deleted them all without calling his brother back.
Once inside the next open elevator, he leaned back against the rear of the car and contemplated listening to the message. Declan was being tenacious, and he wondered if there was something wrong.
Why do I care?
Halfway up, he finally hit the voicemail and lifted the cell to his ear, unable to stop himself.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me, you’ve made that abundantly clear. But this is important and you’re clearly not going to call me, so here goes.” Declan paused a moment. “There’s going to be a ceremony—and unveiling of a statue in our father’s honor next weekend. I really want you two here for that.” Declan paused again, and Kai heard a heavy sigh. “If not for me… for Gregor. Come for him. Please. I’ll text you the information in a little bit.”
Kai lowered the phone and deleted the message. It wasn’t the first time Declan had come up with some flimsy excuse as to why he and LJ needed to come home. Kai had ignored them all. He hadn’t stepped one foot inside Bear Mountain since Gregor’s death.
And he had no plans to step one foot in there again.
Ever.
As soon as the elevator pinged at the top floor and the doors opened, he rushed out and toward the boardroom. He was already late for the meeting, and Benny would likely call him out for it. Kai waved to Benny’s assistant before cracking the door slightly and sliding inside the darkened space.
Benny was at the head of the table, his chair turned toward a PowerPoint presentation displayed on the wall. Kai slid into the empty seat beside Lane.
“I think if we raised drink prices just twenty-five cents, we could cover the cost of the new tax regulations coming down the pipe, plus,” Jalin, Benecio’s eldest son, said as he stood beside the projected spreadsheet. “We need to offset that expense.”
“Or we add a drink to the minimum at the clubs,” Joseph, Benny’s youngest, tossed out.
“Three drink minimum?” LJ asked. “We already have a hard-enough time getting them to buy two, the cheap assholes. They just want to get to the girls.”
“The drinks are already sky-high,” Joseph said. “We add to the price, and we’re going to get an earful. And if we raise the minimum, we get an even larger profit of the sale of another drink.”
Benny spun his chair back to the table and immediately eyed Kai. “Now that Kai has finally decided to join us, we should get his perspective.”
“I don’t work in finance,” Kai murmured. He was Benny’s right hand, most days – running errands and following up on projects. “I think your CFO is likely the best one to listen to.” He nodded toward Jalin, who nodded back.
Benny leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “But this decision might cause issues in the clubs. Our patrons aren’t always the best-behaved bunch, even on the best of days. Which choice brings the least complaining, in your opinion?”
Kai sighed. “Renegotiate price with the distributor. You have ten clubs and five restaurants in the area. We buy a lot of beer and liquor—and we could buy it somewhere else, if need be. Let them help shave off the money for the taxes and not pass it on to the patrons.” He shrugged. “Or take it a step farther. Buy out a distributor and take it over. Then we only charge the clubs cost plus what we must to cover expenses. The other schmucks out there who buy from us can pay our taxes for us.”
“Interesting,” Lane whispered lowly.
Benny’s smile widened. “This is why you’re my favorite.”
“Great to hear, dad,” Jalin spat.
Benny ignored Jalin, but turned to Joseph instead. “Let’s do some research on every distributor in the area. In depth. I want to know everything we can about every one of them. See which one is ripe for new ownership.”
“Got it,” Joseph said, jotting a note on his phone.
Benny then turned to Lane. “In the meantime, let’s get some of the bills together and see if we can’t see where we might have some room to negotiate until we have time to get our hands on a distributor.”
Lane wrote a note on his tablet. “Yessir.”
Benny turned back to the table. “Okay, how’s the new club coming? Are we on schedule?”
“Construction is nearly done,” Kai said. “Foreman says we should be ready to start decorating and bringing in stock next week—they’re almost to finishing touches.”
“Good, good. We need to swing by and tour the place—note any last minute fixes,” Benny said. “We got all our permits and licenses ready?”
“All of them,” LJ said. “We did have a little pushback from city council over the zoning again. But I put in a call to our representative and got it all ironed out.”
“LJ to the rescue,” Benny lauded, a smile on his face. He pointed to Lane. “We put an initial liquor order in yet?”
“I can send it in today,” Lane said. “We doing a regular opening amount?”
“Let’s hold off. Use that as a bit of a bargaining chip in the discussion. First orders are huge.”
“When you do put it in, we might want to bump up top shelf liquors, high-end champagne, and the microbrews,” Jalin said. “This neighborhood’s a little better than our other clubs. We might see an increase in sales from the high end. We also need to send some of our better girls over there for the opening.”
“All our girls are top notch,” Benny said. “It’s what sets our clubs apart.”
“Okay… then we send the girls who aren’t too naive. Or too… experienced,” Jalin muttered.
“Experienced girls are more fun,” Benny said, chuckling. “They kno
w just how far to bend the rules.”
Jalin rolled his eyes.
Kai just chuckled. Benny’s love of females was what had gotten him exiled from Bear Mountain in the first place. He and his brother bear, Jack, had mated a shebear. Not only had they broken bear law to lie with another bear… but a female one, at that. Bear shifters were homosexual by nature. Shebears were rare, but they existed.
Usually behind closed doors, as most bear families felt disgraced to have a female child. And no one mated them.
Kai’s grandfather couldn’t handle their mating, nor could the den. The three of them had been booted from the valley, and they hadn’t been back since. It had happened before Kai and LJ had been born. He had no memories of Benny until he’d landed on the man’s doorstep a decade before. In that short time, they’d been made to feel like family.
Benny continued on, covering a few more points before closing the meeting. The men around the table slowly rose and began exiting. A few remained, in discussion with others at the table.
Kai turned to Lane, eyeing his brother bear. “What do you have going on after this?”
“You heard Benny. Pulling old invoices and looking for spots where we can cut.”
“Have time for some lunch?”
“For you?” Lane smiled, his eyes sparkling with joy. “Always.”
“I need to talk with Benny real quick, but after.” Kai returned the smile. “Lunch… at home?”
“Ahhh,” Lane said, a wicked smile lighting up his face. “One of those lunches, hmm?”
Kai only grinned. And then he remembered the call from earlier and that smile faded some.
Lane frowned. “What’s up?”
Kai sighed before opening his mouth to answer. Before he could, Benny cut him off.
“Kai, Lane, can I have a moment?”
Kai rose, eyeing his brother bear, before he walked around the emptying table. “What’s up?”
“What kept you from the meeting?” Benny asked as he leaned back in the oversized captain’s chair. “Anything I should be concerned with?”