by AJ Merlin
Which was exactly how I wanted it.
Finally, forty-seven minutes after I boarded the bus, I stood up as it slid to a stop at the Heights, only a few blocks from Wilder’s apartment.
Not that we were meeting at his apartment. He’d invited everyone to a surprisingly upscale restaurant, for the Heights, and had made sure we all knew where it was.
What a damn thoughtful dire wolf.
Of course the others had cars, and Wilder lived here, so I figured I was the only one with a commute that bordered on not-so-fun.
Well, whatever. Struggle built character, right?
Sure.
Unexpectedly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and a tingle went down my arms, ending in my fingertips.
I slowed, remembering this feeling from the other day at work, and glanced over my shoulder to the sidewalk behind me.
Unlike the other day, the street wasn’t empty. While there weren’t droves of people, there were enough to obscure my vision just enough.
What if I wasn’t imagining things?
My eyes scanned the sidewalk, going over each and every nook and cranny twice before I was half-satisfied.
My shifter senses told me something was wrong…
But I couldn’t find anything that actually might be.
Perhaps I was being haunted by the ghost of Christmas Past, in which case I would make a list of all presents I’d wanted as a kid-including a white pony-to ask him to take the list to Santa.
Forcing myself to turn, I walked again down the somewhat busy sidewalk, though my attention was anywhere but on where I was going.
There it was again.
That ringing of my senses, my instincts telling me that something was there and I just needed to look behind me-
I hadn’t noticed that anyone was standing in front of me, not until I ran into them with a yelp and my nose picked up on the familiar scent of Hades that now enveloped me. My heart pounded anyway, adrenaline coursing through my veins and sending me into a brief moment of fight or flight.
“Sorry!” I gasped, his arms coming up to steady my shoulders and keeping me where I was as I rocked back on my heels.
“Alek?” His grin was fading at the worry plain on my face. “I’ve been calling your name for awhile now. Are you…” When I turned to look behind me, he followed my gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“I just…” I trailed off, my eyes scanning the street as the feeling of wrongness faded. “Did you see anyone following me?”
“Following you?” Hades repeated. “Like who?”
I couldn’t help the way my hands shook, or the way I kept looking at the people behind me, as if one of them might morph into something dangerous at any moment.
“I don’t know,” I murmured, and shook my head. “Maybe I’m just…weird, lately.”
Who would be following me?
“I could ask the obvious?” Hades offered, shoving his hands in his pockets a second later.
When I looked at him quizzically, he continued. “Are you getting close to your heat?”
“Why?” I tilted my head, gazing up at him. “I’m twenty-four. I’ve had them before, you know.”
“No, I get that,” Hades agreed. “But not with us.”
“Us?”
“Not us specifically.” He opened the door to the restaurant and gestured me inside. “Alphas.”
Once inside, I stopped and looked at him in surprise. “Really? You think that’s why I feel on edge sometimes?” Would that really explain the sense of being followed?
I wasn’t so sure.
“It might be,” Hades shrugged, gesturing for me to follow him.
I did so, winding through the white-clothed tables of the comfortably dim restaurant, my anxieties about this particular meeting coming right back.
Naturally, Roman and Wilder were already seated at a booth that occupied one corner of the restaurant, tucked into a corner with a great view of the back courtyard.
The round booth was probably meant for more than four people, but not when those people were alphas currently trying to give each other elbow room.
“So we didn’t have to send out a rescue party,” Wilder commented, seeing me with Hades.
Roman smiled, looking to be the most relaxed out of all of us. His nostrils flared slightly, and he glanced at Hades before looking back to me. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I dismissed. “Yeah, I’m good. I just got lost.”
“She thought someone was following her,” Hades amended, and I glared at him in surprise.
He grinned and waved for me to pick a side. “Starting out a relationship with lies won’t get you anywhere,” he pointed out, sitting down next to Wilder when I marched my ass over to the side Roman sat at.
“Someone’s following you?” The enforcer asked, his attention on me instantly. “Who? Did you get a good look at them?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know if someone’s actually following me, or I’m just…” I trailed off with a shrug. “It’s happened a few times lately and there’s never been anyone there.”
Wilder and Roman traded a look that I couldn’t read, and Hades hummed under his breath while he flipped through the menu.
“What?” I asked, when Hades glanced up at them too.
Was there some already-established alpha language between them that I wasn’t able to read?
If so, that was fast.
“They don’t want to ask the same thing I asked,” Hades inferred.
“Probably that you’re close to your heat,” Wilder added bluntly. “Are you?”
“I mean-kind of?” I scoffed.
“What does kind of mean?” Roman inquired.
“It means kind of. As in, sometime in the next couple of weeks, I should probably start thinking more seriously about it.”
“How very specific of you,” my dire wolf complimented, taking a long drink from the bottle of beer in front of him.
A waitress reappeared as if summoned by him taking a drink, and passed me a menu. “Hello,” she greeted, the well dressed beta dipping her head. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water,” I said, giving her an easy smile.
“Do you want anything else? Wine, maybe? We have a really good Moscato, if you’d like to try it,” the waitress went on.
“No, that’s okay,” I denied, my hands resting on the menu in front of me.
“We have twelve beers on tap, as well, if you’d like.”
“Nah, I’m good with water.” Frustration edged along my spine. Were we going to go through the list of all alcoholic beverages until she was satisfied that I really just wanted water?
Perhaps her insistence came at the fact that every one of my alphas had liquor in front of him. For Wilder and Roman, it was a beer. For Hades, it was wine.
Of course the fancy alpha drank wine.
“Okay. If you change your mind, you can let me know,” she said, and waltzed away to a different table.
“If your drink of choice is something fruity or pink, we won’t judge, love,” Wilder said teasingly, a grin playing at his lips.
“I don’t drink,” I replied with a smile of my own, sitting back against the bench.
“Why’s that?”
I could have used this as the perfect time to tell them about my past. Even just a little. ‘I don’t drink because my mother was a violent drunk,’ would’ve been quick and to the point. That didn’t mean I couldn’t appreciate the scents of my alphas, all of whom smelled a bit like expensive liquor to my sensitive nose.
That was fine. I wouldn’t drink, but the thought of them intoxicating me was even better.
Still, I could’ve said something, and it would’ve been so easy…
But I didn’t. Instead I shrugged one shoulder. “I just don’t like it.”
“Bad college experience?” Hades assumed, sipping his own wine.
“I didn’t go to college.” None of us had money for college. Noah and I were lucky th
at we didn’t still live with our foster parents, or Bea.
“Not everyone needs six degrees that they can somehow apply to their porn career,” Roman agreed teasingly. “I’m also in the no college club,” he added to me.
“It’s a good club,” I said sagely.
Both of us turned to look at Wilder, who blinked. “I’m not in your club,” he said kindly. “But I waste my six degrees on something much more fulfilling than cam work.”
Hades snorted and leaned over to bat his long eyelashes at the dire wolf. “You waste whatever education you may have on running dive bars and fight clubs. Are you sure you’re one to talk?”
“I like to think my official title is somewhat better than dive bar owner, thank you very much,” Wilder replied with good humor.
I let out a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding, suddenly at ease now that I could see neither alpha was mad at the other for their bribes.
“And what’s that?” Roman inquired.
“Ruler of the Heights.”
“That’s fair, though ruler sounds a bit medieval of you,” I said, thumbing through the menu in front of me. Thankfully, this place’s price point wasn’t so high that I’d have to consider my food budget for the rest of the week.
What a relief.
“Maybe I am a bit medieval, love,” Wilder turned that beaming grin on me. “I think you like it-“
“Does it bother you if we drink?” Hades went on, cutting Wilder off with a hand on his glass as if he might throw it across the room if my answer was yes.
Slowly I lifted my gaze to him, and blinked. “Not in the slightest,” I promised. “You could all get so drunk that you’re convinced you’re flying chimpanzees and it wouldn’t bother me at all.”
In truth, it didn’t bother me. I’d come to terms a long time ago with the fact that other people drank.
Now I operated more on a ‘wait and see’ kind of notion, instead of assuming the worst.
Of course, if anyone-not just these three alphas-ever showed the smallest sign of aggression or drunken rage, I’d be gone before they had a chance to sleep off the hangover.
“Are you sure?” Roman pressed. “If it bothers you-“
“It doesn’t,” I promised. “Unless you-“ I swallowed my words, about to put a voice to my thoughts about drunken violence, but shook my head. “Unless I have to carry you out of here because you’re too drunk to walk, I really don’t care. Even then, I won’t mind that much.”
Blessedly, the waitress took that moment to come back with a glass of water. “Do you guys know what you want to order?” She asked, smiling specifically at me.
I was not sure what I’d done to deserve such special attention, but I pointed to the menu and said, “Can I have the grilled chicken sandwich, please?”
“Fries okay?”
“Absolutely.”
Between them, I was sure that the three alphas ordered the most expensive things on the menu. Roman got salmon, while Wilder and Hades both got some fancy cut of steak, and both stressed-of course-to have it cooked medium rare.
I rolled my eyes, and handed my menu to the waitress.
“Did I keep you guys waiting long?” I asked, once she was gone again.
“Not really,” Hades replied. “I got here a bit early, and found Wilder already yelling at the staff. I wrangled him, and brought him over here.”
“I came in a bit after, you know, to figure out who I needed to arrest,” Roman teased.
“Sorry to make you wait with my imaginary stalker problem,” I said, an apologetic grin on my face.
But was it imaginary? I’d only said the words so the others didn’t think I was concerned.
“It’s okay,” the enforcer said, before the others could. “You don’t need to be sorry.”
“I thought you were convinced I was your stalker?” Wilder ventured.
“Right, sorry. I must’ve forgotten. How could I not think that, when you showed up at my old work place and broke into my house.”
“I did not break in,” Wilder hummed around a sip of his beer. “You need new locks.”
“You broke her lock?” Roman blinked in surprise.
“He did.”
“I did not.”
“He was sleeping on my bed when I got home.”
Roman set his beer down and said, very casually, “Surprised you could get to it in that disaster zone.”
I gasped, just as Hades laughed. “Is your room really that bad, Alek?” The panther alpha asked, leaning his elbow on the table as he grinned.
“No.”
“Gods, it’s awful,” Wilder huffed. “Piles of clothes, makeup, and who knows what else. I almost died in there.”
“Oh my god you did not-“
“Who would’ve thought you need someone to make you clean your room,” Hades was laughing again, and shook his head.
“Oh yeah? Who’s going to make me, you?” I shook my head. “Hades, I’m pretty sure you’re allergic to my street. Do you know where I live?”
He sipped his wine and sat back. “Are there Brazil nuts scattered along your street and through your apartment?”
I blinked, taken aback. “What?”
“You think I’m allergic to your street, so it must be full of Brazil nuts. Which, for the record, is the only thing I’m allergic to.”
“What the hell is a Brazil nut?”
“If there are not any in your apartment, I’m not sure why you’d think I was allergic,” he went on.
Oh. Well. This was a bit awkward. It was one thing to giggle in private about Hades Ahlleron not setting foot on my street because of status reasons.
It was a whole different issue to bring it up to his face.
“It’s just not your side of town,” I said at last. “Even though it’s Brazil nut free.”
“She’s calling you delicate,” Wilder told him sweetly.
Hades met my eyes with a lifted brow. “I’ll consider this an invitation, then. But if I show up and your apartment is a mess, we’ll have to have a discussion about that, Princess.”
My thighs clenched under the table, though I only sniffed casually and looked at Roman.
“I mean, I wouldn’t try him,” the enforcer said. “If he said that to me, I’d clean my room at the first opportunity.”
“You just want him to throw you on a bed and kiss you again,” I pointed out.
Roman thought about that for a moment. “Yeah, that’s probably true,” he admitted. “Who doesn’t?”
“Me,” Wilder said, and shuddered theatrically. “No offense, Hades, but there are many, many things I will do before I kiss you.”
Now Hades’ sweet grin was all for Wilder. “That’s so funny, Wilder,” he began with a purring growl. “Since I don’t remember offering you my mouth or any other part of me.”
I couldn’t help the choked off laugh that made me nearly spit out my water, and I didn’t miss the way that Roman’s mouth curved into a wide grin.
“I don’t know,” I said nonchalantly. “You guys would be really pretty together. Don’t you think, Roman?”
The coyote shifter nodded sagely. “A very nice contrast,” he said to Wilder, who fixed him with a poignant, yellow eyed stare.
“So,” Hades began, interrupting whatever Wilder was thinking of saying. “Alek. What did they get you as courting presents?”
“Roman got me a stuffed animal. Of a maned wolf.” I smiled and my sweetest alpha smiled back. “Which is the cutest thing I’ve ever gotten.”
“I got her a bracelet traditional to my clan,” Wilder said airily, not waiting for me to say. “Black leather braided with silver beads carved by-“
“You got her jewelry. Got it,” Hades nodded. “I know what to steer clear of now.”
“You haven’t gotten her something?” Roman seemed surprised at the statement.
“He brought me coffee! And he gave me porn,” I pointed out, feeling defensive of Hades and what I perceived as gifts.
&nb
sp; “Porn and coffee?” Wilder snorted. “And you turned your nose up at my bracelet? Shame on you, Hades Ahlleron. You could at least buy her an island.”
“I don’t need an island,” I promised quickly. “Or anything else of that caliber. No trust funds, no multi-country corporations.”
“What about a precious gem mining company?” Roman asked.
“And certainly not a precious gem mining company! I elbowed him lightly with a smirk.
“Wilder’s right, though,” Hades said, sobering after a small chuckle. “Porn and coffee aren’t gifts, princess.”
“I don’t need anything else,” I pressed once more. “I accepted it, I loved it. I loved everything from the three of you.” How could I make him-or any of them-see that it didn’t matter how much the price tag was on an item?
How could I make them see that it just mattered that they cared enough to want to do something like that for me?
“Get her a car,” Wilder suggested, taking another drink of his beer as the waitress returned with our food and began setting it in front of us. “Alek seems like a Maserati kind of girl.”
While I’d been set on paying for my own food, it was a battle I didn’t win.
Frankly, it wasn’t even a battle I got to have.
The check never came, and when he saw me glaring at him suspiciously, Wilder smiled cheekily.
“Something the matter, love?” he hummed, chin in his hand.
“I could pay for mine,” I told him.
“So could they. But since I invited all of you here, I took care of it,” the dire wolf shrugged. “Call it being a proper host.”
“Then let me just order a few bottles of wine to go, hmm?” Hades reached for the wine menu threateningly, but Wilder plucked it out of his fingers. “I thought you wanted to be a proper host.”
“You don’t need wine, Hades. Doesn’t your family have tunnels sprawling under the city full of hundred year old liquor?”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“Am I?”
“Is he?” I couldn’t help but ask suspiciously.
The panther alpha laughed and stood from his side of the bench. In a few easy strides he’d closed the gap between us, and wrapped an arm around my waist to pull me in for a surprisingly unchaste kiss that had my heart racing and my face hot.