by Nora Phoenix
Grayson rolled his eyes. “Yeah, clearly he excels at that. Thank you for letting me know.”
“I was just about to come get you because I was getting worried about him, and Palani told us you’re responsible for him.”
There was no judgment in the other alpha’s voice. He’d stated it as a fact, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. It made Grayson even more proud to be a part of this pack that was so open and accepting of everyone.
“I am. Could I ask for your permission to take him off the job for a couple of hours?”
Jawon nodded. “Absolutely. He works harder than any of us, so it’s not like he doesn’t deserve a few hours of rest.”
Grayson grinned. “Who said anything about rest?”
“Fair point,” Jawon said with a smile.
Grayson found him in Vieno’s vegetable patch, working the soil with some kind of tool he’d never seen before. The beta’s shirt was soaked, and the bandanna he’d tied around his head couldn’t keep sweat from dripping all over his face.
Lars didn’t spot him until he stepped into his line of vision. “You’re done for today,” Grayson said calmly.
Lars put his tool into the ground and leaned against it, wiping his face with the bottom of his shirt. “Says who?”
Grayson took a step closer, his eyes drilling into Lars’s. “Says me. Don’t even bother resisting, boy, because we both know I’ll win.”
It took about five seconds before Lars surrendered to the inevitable, putting down his tool and throwing his hands up. “Whatever.”
Grayson lifted an eyebrow.
“Sir,” Lars said, his tone already softening. “Sorry, Sir, for being disrespectful.”
Grayson nodded, satisfied with that answer. “You can add stupid to that because it’s pretty dumb not to take the breaks that were offered to you, don’t you think?”
Lars looked at his feet, shuffling them on the soil. “I don’t like hanging out with the others, Sir. I always feel like they’re judging me. And I don’t want to be accused of slacking. I don’t want to give anyone an excuse to fire me or send me away.”
It was a big difference from the defiant Lars he’d met who had no issues snubbing Enar or even Lidon. Grayson wasn’t sure if he could claim the credit for that entirely, but he was happy to see Lars getting smarter about it.
“No one has complained about you slacking,” he said. “The opposite, in fact. When I just asked Jawon if you could take the rest of the day off, he said you never take time off, so you deserved it. You’re doing well here, rest assured.”
The relief on Lars’s face hit Grayson. The beta was still worried about being sent away. That was something to keep in the back of his mind.
“Let’s go. We’re going inside. I can’t believe you’ve been out here the whole time. I’ve been outside for all of fifteen minutes maybe, and I’m already sweating like an idiot.”
Lars followed him quietly, and Grayson caught his soft sigh of relief when they entered the air-conditioned hallway through the back door. Out in the full sun, Grayson hadn’t even noticed how red Lars had gotten, but once inside, it became painfully clear that the beta had overexerted himself. Anger battled with respect and compassion inside Grayson, mixed in with a wave of warm feelings for his stubborn little brat.
When Lars bent over to untie his boots, he wavered a little, quickly grabbing the wall to steady himself, and Grayson cursed. “I’ll do it,” he said, kneeling to take off Lars’s boots. “You silly boy. You’ve got to take better care of yourself. You’re not indestructible, you know?”
A much more subdued Lars followed him as he led him to the bathroom they always used to shower. Instead of turning on the shower, Grayson put the plug in the bathtub and started running lukewarm water. “We need to cool you down a little.”
Lars was almost lethargic as Grayson quickly undressed him, pulling the soaking wet shirt over his head and wriggling down his shorts and underwear with effort over his clammy legs. He kept holding his hand as Lars stepped into the bathtub, then lowered himself into the water.
He needed something to drink, Grayson realized. “Stay right here and call out if you need me. I’m gonna grab you some water.”
He dashed to the kitchen, where Lidon and Palani were talking to a beta he’d never met and grabbed a large pitcher of filtered water as well as a glass of orange juice. He then realized Lars might need something to eat and stuck two apples in his pockets before hurrying back to the bathroom. He didn’t like leaving Lars by himself right now, but the boy clearly needed something to eat and drink.
Lars was lying in the bathtub with his eyes closed. His face was a little less red, but it still looked flushed.
“Sit up for me for a second,” Grayson told him.
Lars did as he was told without objecting, which, more than anything, told Grayson he wasn’t feeling well. He held out the orange juice. “Drink this first. We gotta get a little sugar in you, my boy.”
He was happy to see Lars down the OJ in a few big gulps. He helped him lie back in the bathtub again, then took a washcloth and gently cleaned his face and neck to remove all the sweat and grime. The white washcloth was almost gray when he was done, and he threw it on the floor, then got a new one, wetted it, and put it on the boy’s forehead.
He folded a big bath towel and put it on the floor right next to the bathtub, then lowered himself onto it with his back leaning against the tub so he could sit with Lars. He’d removed the apples from his pockets and now grabbed them again, using his pocket knife to slice them into quarters, which he handed to Lars one by one. The beta ate them all, first one apple and then a second one, without speaking a word.
It took an hour and another half gallon of water he had Lars drink in small increments before Grayson was content with how Lars looked, even though his skin had gone to a prune-like texture. The redness in his face was gone, his eyes looked clearer, and judging by his increased movements, he’d gotten his energy back.
He gently patted him dry once he was out of the tub. “Stay right there,” he told him.
“Where are you going, Sir?” Lars asked, and there was a hint of panic in his voice.
Grayson turned around, already on his way to get the cucumber lotion to soothe the boy’s irritated skin, and walked back to Lars. “I’m right here, boy. I won’t leave you.”
Lars let his head rest on Grayson’s shoulder, and it sent a warm wave of feelings through Grayson. “I was scared you were angry with me,” Lars whispered.
“I was, a little, but mostly concerned. You were awfully close to a heat stroke. Do you realize that?” Grayson said, gathering him close for a tight hug.
“I’m sorry,” Lars said, and the genuine remorse was easy to spot. “I didn’t mean to make you worried, Sir. And I didn’t realize it, how close I was, Sir.”
Grayson pulled him even tighter against him, cradling the beta’s head against his shoulder. “We’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again, won’t we? Because seeing my boy all stressed and not feeling well doesn’t please me at all. You worried the fuck out of me, so let’s not do that again.”
Lars nodded against his chest, and Grayson felt his body relax more. “Yes, Sir.”
Lars looked up at Grayson, and he pulled his head back a little and bent down to kiss him, an unhurried, slow kiss that had the boy melting against him.
“Thank you for taking care of me… Sir.”
24
When Palani had blogged about the Melloni gene, he had no idea what to expect. It was his first post on a brand-new blog, and it stood to reason that his previous readers from the newspaper would need a little time to find him. So when he had only forty-three views two days after he published his article on the gene, he wasn’t surprised. It was kind of what he had counted on.
That’s why he was floored when he checked again a day later, and the number of views had risen to more than twenty thousand. He tried to discover what had happened, but his unfamiliarity with th
e system made him frustrated. He decided to seek out Grayson to see if he could help him.
“Hey, Grayson, can I disturb you for a second? Or are you super busy writing and in a total flow, and should I come back later?”
Grayson’s chair swiveled around. “Yeah, you can disturb me. The writing was going to shit today anyway. What can I do for you?”
“I was wondering if you could show me how to see on my blog where visitors are coming from. I have a whole bunch of page views for my new article, and I have no idea how these people found me.”
Grayson’s face lit up. “That’s amazing. How much is a whole bunch? Are we talking a couple of hundred?”
Palani put his laptop in front of the alpha and opened it. “See for yourself.”
Grayson’s eyes widened as he took in the numbers, which were rising even as they watched. “Wow. That is a whole bunch. Let’s see if we can find out where your readers were coming from.”
He did a few fast clicks and a different screen popped up, including a little box with the heading Sources. “It looks like two newspaper articles have linked to your blog, see that?” Grayson pointed to the names of two newspapers Palani was well familiar with, even though they were not his previous employer. “If you click on these links, you can see the exact online article they linked from. Let’s have a look.”
Grayson clicked again, and an article appeared. Palani knew the journalist who had written it from an internship he had done at that newspaper. He’d shadowed the seasoned reporter for three months, and while the man wasn’t the friendliest person in the bunch, he had treated Palani with respect and had taught him a lot.
“He’s writing about the gene,” Palani said with amazement. “And he’s using my blog article as his source. How did he find it?”
“Maybe from this post,” Grayson said. “See this link? It shows you had a lot of visitors from this website. Maybe someone found your article and wrote about it, thus alerting other people to the news. That’s how things go viral. All it takes is one person to tag a reporter and boom. And with your name in the byline, I’m not surprised they would take this seriously. Look, your page views are still rising, and fast.”
Grayson turned his head to look at him. “Didn’t anybody contact you?”
Palani looked sheepish. “They may have. Since I became unemployed, I’m not exactly keeping my phone close.”
He excused himself to Grayson and quickly got his phone from the bedroom. The alpha had been right. He had more than two dozen missed calls, a couple hundred emails, and more notifications than his phone could handle. What the hell had happened?
He glanced at the calls first, wanting to make sure he hadn’t missed any that were important. Well, the most important people in his life weren’t leaving the house much these days, so it wasn’t like he had missed any calls from his men.
One number stood out, that from Kaila at the women’s clinic where Dr. Baig had worked. He called her back first.
“Palani, so relieved to hear from you,” she said as soon as she picked up.
“Sorry, I hadn’t checked my phone in a bit. What’s up?”
“What’s up? Honey, I read your blog post. I can’t believe what those poor women were subjected to. So that’s why you were interested in Baig.”
“Yeah. Were you able to find anything?”
“To be honest, I forgot about it, but after reading your post, I remembered, and I did a little digging. I told you all his digital patient records were wiped, right?”
He hummed affirmatively.
“Well, I went through the paper records in the clinic’s basement. God, the spiders there, don’t get me started. I’m expecting a huge amount of chocolate for this, kid.”
Palani smiled. “All the chocolate for you, but please tell me you found something.”
“I did.” Her voice lost the playfulness. “I have made copies of four boxes of patient records for you. All of them were female patients who were seen for fertility issues by Dr. Baig. Now, Palani, you know this violates about every law and rule there is for patient privacy, right?”
A rush of excitement went through Palani. This was pure gold. With this info, he, Enar, and even Sando would be able to find out so much more about the gene, the affected omegas, maybe even more.
“I know. Why are you risking everything for this, Kaila?” he asked.
It took her a little bit to answer. “I lost my son. He died while giving birth, and there was nothing anyone could do. I lost a part of myself that day, honey, a part of my heart broke off that never healed. To read about the horrible effects of that gene, to know that mothers are grieving because they lost their sons to this, it’s brought back that pain. Omegas deserve better than to be treated like this. I know you will use these records not only to go after the people who did this but also to try and find a cure, won’t you?”
His heart broke a little for her. She’d never been anything but nice to him, a lovely lady, and all that time, she’d been grieving her son. “I promise, Kaila. I will do whatever I can to make this right. And I’m so sorry about your son.”
“I know, honey. It’s been ten years, but the pain never really goes away, you know? Thank you for fighting for justice, kid.”
He agreed to have someone pick up the boxes from her later that night—she’d moved them to a storage facility, she’d explained, not wanting to keep them in her hospital office or even at home. Those records would hopefully shed more light on what had been done to these women, though of course, Baig could’ve faked those as well. At least they’d have something more to go on.
He went through his missed calls again, replied to a bunch of missed texts, and then saw his brothers had called him multiple times, so he called them back.
“Palani, what the hell, man?” his younger brother, Rhene, answered the phone. “Can’t you at least give us a warning before you decide to go viral?”
Palani smiled at the obvious alpha tone in his brother’s voice. “Sorry, dude, I wasn’t exactly planning this.”
“Are you okay?” his brother asked. “I guess you never got your job back, huh?”
“No. They demanded I reveal my sources, and you know I would never do that.”
“Not even to save your job? It’s not like these people didn’t know they were talking to a journalist,” Rhene said.
“You never reveal your sources, no matter what the circumstances are. Once you start doing that, you’ll lose the trust of every informant you’ve ever had. Nobody will ever talk to you again, so you might as well have lost your job. I’d rather walk out with my head held high and my honor intact.”
“How did you discover all this about that gene?” Rhene asked.
“Vieno. He had medical issues and was diagnosed with the gene. That’s how the ball got rolling. Did you read the whole thing?”
Palani heard someone talking in the background while he was speaking to his brother.
“Kean is here,” Rhene said.
“Put him on speakerphone,” Palani said. “You know you’re going to have to repeat everything to him otherwise anyway.”
“True that.”
There was a little rustling on the other end of the line, and then Kean spoke up. “Hey, bro,” he said. “You went viral?”
Palani laughed. “You’re going to ask me the same questions your brother already has?”
He spent the next few minutes discussing his research into the gene with them, careful not to tell them anything he hadn’t included in the article. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them—because he did—but more that he didn’t want them to know anything that could endanger them.
“Is this why you’ve been holed up at the ranch, reluctant to come out to the city and meet with us?” Rhene asked.
Palani hesitated. Was there any harm in telling them about the attack? It wasn’t exactly public knowledge, but they had reported it to the police, so anyone who followed police business would have access to the information. Besides, Lid
on had never ordered them to keep quiet about it. Just about their theories of who was behind it, not about the attack itself.
Still, this was not the kind of news he wanted to share with them over the phone. He could invite them to come to the ranch, meet his mates, show what they were building here. Then he could explain everything that was going on. Well, not everything, but at least a little more. He didn’t want them to think he was deliberately ignoring them or that they weren’t important to him anymore now that he had found love with his three men.
“Palani,” Kean said. “Is everything okay? I’m getting a little worried.”
Kean would worry, Palani realized. It was in his nature, always worrying about people, wanting to take care of them. They were very much alike in that sense, so much so that his parents had often joked they were twins born two years apart.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay. And I would love for you guys to come over and meet my men. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but the timing wasn’t right, and when you guys get here I will explain why. Aside from my investigation into this gene, there’s been a lot of things going on, me being suspended and subsequently fired just one of them. Is there any chance you guys want to come down here?”
There was a second or two pause, and then both his brothers answered at the same time. “We thought you’d never ask.”
Even though he had warned his brothers about the security measures at the ranch, Palani saw they were a little apprehensive when Bray let them inside the gates where Palani stood waiting.
Rhene was the first to step up and give him a hug, holding on a little longer than he normally would. Palani hugged him back. “It’s good to see you, man.”
When he let go of Rhene to hug Kean, his beta brother was staring at Bray, who was walking back to the front gate. Just when Palani wanted to tease Kean about his quite apparent ogling, Bray himself looked over his shoulder, then quickly turned his head forward again when he caught Palani’s stare. What the hell was happening here?