A Mate for the Alpha and His Brothers (3 page)

Brayden blinked. He didn’t consider it very smart either. Seventy percent of them would expect sex in exchange for the ride. Although she was an adult. What she did was none of his business. Carefully, he replied, “Perhaps there are other options we might explore.”

Brayden was relieved when his Alpha gave him a tiny nod.

“I don’t have any money, and I really need to leave town. Therefore, I have no other options,” Elsie said softly.

“Did you steal that dagger?” he asked.

She could have demanded a reward for returning it if she hadn’t wanted to sell it.

The hurt and enraged look she gave him answered his question. Brayden was suddenly embarrassed at having asked it. Usually it was Favian who acted the clown. Right now he must have been channeling his brother.

“No, I didn’t. It was given into the keeping of my brother. Once the gang finds out I’ve taken it, my ass will be grass. I plan to be as far away from here as possible when that happens.”

“I agree that placing yourself out of the gang’s reach is essential. However, we need to remove your brother from their area of influence as well. If he is managing precariously now, once the dagger is gone, his position will be even more precarious,” said Amory.

“I know. But right now I have nowhere to take him. I have to find a job first, and that’ll be easier when I can put a better address on my resume.”

Brayden looked at Amory and raised an eyebrow. Once again Amory nodded the merest inch.

“The reason we’re known as the Yooper pack is because we used to live on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We moved down here to Ohio to be closer to the bulk of our work. The traveling was becoming onerous. However, we still have strong connections in the UP. It’s possible a family might agree to help JJ if he went there.”

“That would be wonderful.” Elsie gave him a lovely smile and then deflated and sank back in her chair.

Now what’s the problem?

“I can e-mail some people today,” said Amory.

Elsie shook her head. “I can’t afford the bus fare to send him there or the accommodation fees, or school books, or—It’ll have to wait until I get a job. Besides, the rent on our apartment is paid for another month, so he’s safe there at the moment. The Fixer is unlikely to look for the dagger for a little while. He has to find a new buyer first.”

“The Fixer?” asked Brayden.

“The man who hires the gang to steal items he has a buyer for. The deal for the dagger fell through.”

So The Fixer is Lewis Lutterworth. Lewis. Lewis!

“You said you father’s name was Lewis Clyde. What was his last name?”

“Parker. The same as mine. He and my mother were married then. They separated when I was about nine or ten, and then he came back again for a while when JJ was conceived, but he left well before JJ was born. I always thought that was sad. He might have been happy once he realized he’d gotten a son.”

Brayden thought a decent man would have been happy with a healthy daughter, but he didn’t comment. He’d never had any kids, so it wasn’t his place to say rude things about her father. Although it was interesting Lutterworth’s name was Lewis and so was her father’s. He shrugged. Likely a million men had that name. Brayden tried to work out if Lutterworth was old enough to be her dad. She was in her early thirties. Lutterworth was mid fifties. Yes, he was the right age.

“We need to decide what happens next for Elsie. I suggest you stay here with us for the time being unless you’d like us to organize your transfer to the UP. Staying here might be better though. You can talk to Naftali Meyer. He runs the office side of the business and can tell you what jobs are available here if you wish to work. But there is no expectation that you will work. The choice is yours.”

Elsie stood up. “I don’t think you understand. I have nothing. No assets, no money, nothing. Your security guard saw my wallet. After I paid the rent on the apartment, I had twenty-five dollars left. That has to feed me until I find a job. Paying for accommodations is not an option for me. Now, I’d like to leave please. It’s five miles to the diner, and then I have to find a ride. Thank you for your help.”

Brayden stared as she marched toward the door. He hoped she opened it gently. He hadn’t fixed it yet.

“No, Ms. Parker, it’s you who doesn’t understand. I will not permit you to risk your life out of some ridiculous desire to be independent. You will stay here in safety and work for Naftali in a job of your choosing, or we will send you to the rest of our pack in Michigan and you can work there and save up enough money for JJ to join you. But you will not endanger your life going off with some truck driver who you’ve never met.”

Brayden folded his lips together. Yep. That was his brother in full Alpha Dom mode. Little Miss Human was staying here. Conversation closed. Brayden looked at her carefully. She was an attractive little thing. Thin, but a few good meals would round her out nicely. She was clearly smart and a woman to match Amory needed to be smart. He wasn’t just the Alpha because of his big physique. He was also damn clever and needed a woman who could think as fast as him, which it seemed Elsie might be able to do. She was also tough. She’d been brave enough to come here and brave enough to stand up to Amory. There were a lot of adult men who would never have dreamed of doing that.

Well, well, well. Maybe his big brother had caught himself a mate. Or at least a potential mate. In that case, it was up to him and Favian to keep her here long enough for her to get to know Amory and learn what a good man he truly was.

“I’ll move my things in with Favian, and Elsie can have my room.”

“Thank you, Brayden. Take her to Naftali first, and they can talk about work. Unless you’re determined to go north? You’ll be perfectly safe here with us, I assure you of that.”

Brayden heard the pressure in Amory’s voice to get her to stay here with them. That proved his brother wanted her. Their Alpha needed a mate. The pack included three sets of triplets, and all of them had recently found mates.

Brayden wished there was a woman for him and Favian. There was only thirteen months age difference between his brother and him, and they’d always done everything together. But a mate for the pack’s Alpha was even more important. He worked far too damn hard. A mate would encourage him to look after his health better, and sex was damn good exercise.

Brayden wouldn’t have minded fucking her himself. She was such a little thing, but he had to admire the strength and courage and sheer moral goodness that had brought her here. Hmm. If he helped her stay here, maybe he and Favian could share her with Amory. If triplets could share a woman, why not the three of them?

Brayden shrugged off his thoughts. She was still standing near the door and hadn’t answered the Alpha yet. He stood as well and forced his shoulder muscles to relax.

She appeared worried and unsettled. He longed to tell her the panthers would care for her, would accept her, and welcome her. But the decision had to be hers and made freely. Panther rules were strict. Coercion was not acceptable. Besides, if she went to the UP, they’d keep in contact with her and eventually entice her back here.

“Very well. I’ll stay. I can keep watch on JJ better from here and maybe help guide him.” She pulled in a deep breath, and her chin lifted. “Thank you for your kind offer. I’ll work hard for the business.”

* * * *

Favian hadn’t gotten to bed until well after two that morning, which was happening way too often in his opinion. No matter how hard Amory worked—and he worked damn hard—the piles of paperwork just grew higher and higher around him.

He and Brayden were already spending hours each day taking minor jobs off Amory’s hands—running errands, filing paperwork, solving minor problems, even feeding their damn Alpha—but it wasn’t enough. He and Brayden needed to sit down with Amory and make the Alpha divide up the work, slicing off stuff he didn’t have to deal with himself so he had time and energy to devote to the important stuff.

The problem was that the Alpha wasn’t just responsible for the people in the pack and the smooth running of their daily lives. He was also responsible for managing the business that gave them all an income. He was like a company CEO, plus the patriarch of the family, with a side job of den mother when things went wrong in the pack’s lives.

It was unsustainable for one man to carry the load, and it was Favian’s job as the second oldest brother, to get Amory to see the need for change and to set some delegation of duties into place. That was complicated by the fact that, at times through history, shape-shifters had been persecuted by humans, so when shape-shifters were robbed, they tended to come to Amory for help because they trusted him, whereas they didn’t necessarily trust the human legal system.

Favian rolled over in bed and squinted one half-open eye at the clock beside his bed. Nine. Waaay too early. He pulled the bedding over his head and relaxed again, only to hear bumps and thuds coming from next door. What the fuck? Amory would have been in his office for hours already, and Brayden was supposed to be helping him this morning.

The door to his bedroom opened wide, and Favian lifted the sheet off his face to see Brayden coming in, carrying a towering pile of clothing.

“What the fuck?”

“I’m moving in with you.” Brayden disappeared.

“We haven’t shared a room since kindergarten. What’s wrong with your own room?”

There was silence, followed by more thuds, and finally Brayden appeared, dragging two overflowing suitcases. “Elsie.”

“Elsie who?” Favian was wide-awake now and sat up in bed waiting for Brayden to come back. When he did, it was to drop an enormous pile of underwear, socks, and T-shirts on the spare bed in the room. “Elsie who?” he asked again.

“I have to clean the room. Go and have a shower, and then I should be able to talk to you.”

It seemed like good advice. So far Brayden wasn’t making any sense at all. Who the fuck was Elsie, and why did she need Brayden’s room?

All the time he was showering, Favian was running the names of cousins, second cousins, and people from the pack back in Michigan through his mind, and he couldn’t think of an Elsie. Even among the kids who had been young when he left, who might be coming down here to join the business or go to school, he couldn’t place any Elsies, or even any girls whose name he couldn’t remember.

Favian got dressed, poured himself a giant bowl of Special K, and then went and sat on his bed to eat it until the noise of the vacuum cleaner stopped. He heard the thud as Brayden dropped towels and bed linens into the laundry hamper, and then he finally appeared in Favian’s room again.

“This human chick turned up this morning with a jeweled dagger,” Brayden said.

Favian paused, his spoon halfway to this mouth. Jeweled dagger? That sounded familiar. “Aha. Lutterworth,” he said.

“Exactly.”

Brayden told him the story and then began shoving all Favian’s clothing to one side of the closet and hanging his own clothes in the other side. Favian wanted to complain about the rough treatment of his possessions, but all he could think of was that Amory—Amory of all people—had taken an interest in this woman and obviously wanted her. Amory, who was always cold, calm, and collected, had yelled so loudly Brayden had smashed the door down and come running. And it was only because Elsie said she was leaving. That was almost an unbelievably strong response by Amory. The only answer was that the Alpha had chosen her for himself. A mate was just what their brother needed. A woman to help him in his work and pull his head out of his files for a little while every day.

“A mate for Amory would be perfect. It’s absolutely what he needs more than he needs our help.” Favian hurriedly finished eating his breakfast.

“Once he’s settled, you and I can start looking around for a woman to share,” added Brayden.

“It’s not going to be that easy. How are we supposed to woo a woman without ever mentioning we’re panthers?” replied Favian.

He was only half thinking about what he was saying. They’d had this conversation several times a year every year since they’d turned twenty-one. Nothing had changed. Well, nothing had changed except that three families in their pack had recently found mates, making it even more obvious that they were still single.

“She hasn’t got a sister, unfortunately, but she might have friends. After all, someone had to tell her about us, or she wouldn’t have come to us with the dagger,” said Brayden.

Favian watched as Brayden dumped the contents of the second drawer in his closet into the top drawer and forced all his clothing to fit and then filled the second drawer with the stuff on the bed.

It was obvious all Brayden’s things weren’t going to fit in, even by cramming them and slamming the drawer shut, so Brayden dragged the suitcases to the closet and left them on the floor there.

“Watch out for my good boots,” said Favian.

Obediently, Brayden moved them to the side and slung his own footwear in among them.

Favian just shook his head. They had the same size feet and a lot of similar things. Finding a pair of boots to wear just got ten times harder than usual. Still, if this woman was a potential match for their Alpha, it was a small price to pay for having to share his bedroom, he supposed.

“Let’s get back to Amory. It’s even more important than ever now to make him allocate some of his regular duties to us so he has time to spend with this woman. He’s damn lucky she arrived on his doorstep. He’d better not wait too long to decide if she’s his mate or not,” said Favian.

* * * *

Elsie listened very carefully as Naftali Meyer explained the office routines to her. Apparently most of the young adult males in the pack rotated between a range of jobs that involved tracking down missing items using computer searches, physically repossessing those items, and writing reports.

A team of other people, mostly women and older men, did the usual business jobs such as sending out accounts, banking, paying bills, and monitoring websites. Then there were even more mundane jobs again, such as buying office supplies and groceries that a third team took care of. It was to this final team that she’d be added.