A Mate for the Alpha and His Brothers (8 page)

Likely Point Two was getting her brother up to their old pack in Michigan and settling him in. He’d thought either he or Favian would escort her while the other one remained here to help Amory. But that was feeding into Amory’s workaholism, instead of helping them learn about Elsie. Why couldn’t they make it into a road trip? One day to drive up there with JJ, which would give them plenty of time to get to know him as well as to spend time with Elsie. One day settling JJ into his new home and new school and then a day to drive back again, just the three of them and Elsie.

Two nights fucking Elsie. Three days in her company. Could Amory really take that much time away from his desk, even if he kept his cell phone switched on all the time?

Brayden sighed, stood up, transformed, and pulled his jeans back on.

I don’t see why not. If anything goes bad and he’s needed here, he could hire a fast car and come straight back. I believe this could work.

* * * *

For the first time in months, Amory had woken up completely refreshed and re-energized. He’d even stopped in the kitchen long enough to cook himself bacon and eggs, and to toast a couple of slices of rye bread to sit the eggs on, before snatching up a knife and fork and heading downstairs to his office.

He had to confess the meals had been a hell of a lot better in his home since Elsie had been catering for them. He and his brothers had a tendency to order in things they’d like to eat and then forget about them until they were past their best-before date. Or, even worse, be halfway through cooking a meal before realizing they’d forgotten an important ingredient. Under Elsie’s rule, there were always things he liked to eat in the refrigerator. Clearly she was a genius.

He forked up some egg, speared a piece of bacon, and began checking his e-mails. Today he seemed to get through them faster than usual. There were just as many as ever, but under the new system his family had devised with him, he was able to get rid of about half of them to his department managers, and today only one was really difficult to answer, forcing him to put down his fork and scroll through his files to research a reply.

Even then, he managed to finish his breakfast before it was completely cold. That was some kind of a record as well.

He got up and turned on the coffeepot. It was sparkling clean, and so were the mugs waiting beside it. That, too, was Elsie’s work, as was the empty space on top of his filing cabinets. There were no longer piles of folders waiting to be put away. She did it every few days, and he’d never yet found a file out of place.

But it wasn’t that. He admitted now that maybe he did need an assistant, and she filled the role to perfection. But more importantly, she was a woman who filled his heart. She could hold an intelligent conversation but still make him laugh. She’d beaten him at chess. Likely she could have beaten him far faster than she had, but she’d taken pity on him and let him play on. Her smart mind was demonstrated by the ways she’d worked with him and his brothers to ease some of the burdens from his shoulders.

Amory felt guilty that he hadn’t yet contacted anyone about her brother. Time was running out, and he needed to do that.

He scribbled a note on his desk calendar, picked up his coffee, and settled down to work, but he couldn’t concentrate. Now that he’d started thinking of Elsie, his mind flashed images to him of her neat little blond head, with her blue eyes smiling up into his face. Or her pert little breasts, the nipples hard points digging into his chest, and her lean limbs. She was only a little thing, but she was strong and healthy. She’d only gotten out of breath when he’d kissed her at length, not from the fucking.

Hell yes, the fucking. Damn, they needed to do that again soon. But all of them the next time. She hadn’t objected to having Brayden’s fingers in her ass, so he thought likely she’d accept a cock in there as well. Maybe not next time, but soon.

He went to sip his coffee again and found the mug was empty. He set it down with a grunt and noticed the note about JJ.

Damn. I’ll do it now. I’m not working right now, anyway.

He scrolled through his cell phone contacts and pressed Zebulun’s number. It rang for quite a while before the older man picked up.

“What’s the problem, Amory?”

“No problem, Dad. There’s a seventeen-year-old boy, a human, we want to bring to you so he can get out of the way of the gangs and go to school.”

“Uh-huh. Why us? Why here? He’s not someone who’s been working for you and has to leave, is he?”

“No, but it’s connected with work.” Amory leaned back in his chair and told his father about Elsie and JJ.

“What did you say their father’s name was again? That name is ringing bells in my mind.”

“Their father was Lewis Clyde Parker. Elsie was named LC for him. Why he didn’t call her Lois or Louise or something I don’t know.”

His father just grunted, and there was a moment’s silence.

“You might be thinking of the criminal, Lewis Lutterworth. We thought of him as well, but likely there are a million Lewises in America, and there’s no suggestion Parker was a criminal. Just not much of a father.”

“Something is nagging at the corners of my mind. It’ll come to me. Or maybe your mother will remember. I’ll speak to her later. Now, what’s your plan for JJ?”

“Favian or Brayden, or maybe both of them, will bring him up with Elsie. He needs a family to live with, preferably someone with a boy his age who likes school so he can get back into the habit of going to school. Elsie said his school was not worth shit. Likely he’ll be behind in his work and need a little help as well as a good role model. But if he’s half as smart as Elsie, he’ll catch up in time to graduate with his class.”

“Are you planning to mate this woman? She sounds like she might be just what you need.”

“That topic hasn’t been discussed, but Favian, Brayden, and I all like her.”

“Well, don’t mess around, boy. Get fucking.”

Amory held the cell phone away from his ear and just stared at it. His father—his
father!
—was telling him to—

“Whoa, Dad, TMI there. Way, way, way TMI.”

“Shut up, boy. You’re getting closer to forty every day. I never thought I’d have to give you a kick in the ass to get your life on track at this age. Let me know when you’re coming. I’ll get everything set up at this end.”

“I’m not coming. One of—”

“Of course you’re coming. All of you are. You can mate her on our traditional lands. When the right woman lands in your bed, it’s not the time to dillydally and risk wasting your opportunities.”

With that, the phone went dead in his hands. Once again Amory stared at it. His dad was approaching seventy, but he hadn’t lost any of his power. Not that he planned on a trip to the UP any time soon. Brayden could handle that for him. He had work to do.

Although mating Elsie was a possibility that really appealed to him.

Elsie was sitting in the back row of the minivan, Amory’s chess set on a lap table between her and JJ, and they were paying chess. She’d taught him how to play when he was very young, just six, and although he was still unable to beat her, she seldom allowed him more than a single pawn as a handicap now. They hadn’t played for a while because she’d sold her chess set, but they were both enjoying this game, and he was remembering his old skills really fast.

“You’re getting too good, Jay. From now on, no handicaps for you.”

“Bullshit, El. At least let me win a few matches before you reclaim your pawn.”

“You can win now if you’re clever.”

“I can?”

She smiled as he frowned over the chessboard. Brayden turned around in the seat in front of them and leaned his chin on the back of the chair as he stared at the board. After about five minutes silence, he said, “Okay, I give up. How?”

“Like this,” said JJ, moving his knight.

“Well done.” Elsie moved a pawn, but unless JJ was clumsy, he had her in checkmate now.

He crowed with laughter as he made the final move. “Yee haw! The first time ever I’ve beaten her!”

“Would you have won if Elsie hadn’t said you could?” asked Amory.

JJ frowned and stared at the chessboard. Elsie waited patiently. He was a good kid. Life had been really hard for him, much harder than for her. He’d never known their father. LC Senior wouldn’t have won any prizes as the best dad, but at least he’d been there mostly when she was a small child. He’d pretty much ignored her, but she did have some memories of sitting on his knee and once of him giving her a princess tiara for her birthday. She’d been six, or maybe seven. He’d also sat by her bed and read her a story one time when she was recovering from some childhood ailment and had been awake late at night, unable to sleep. So, she supposed, in his own selfish way, he had cared about her.

Whereas he hadn’t even stuck around long enough to find out the new baby was going to be the son he’d always wanted.

JJ spoke slowly and thoughtfully as he answered Amory’s question. “I might not. I hadn’t seen that move. But I had been looking at moving the knight, so maybe. I’d seen that her king was vulnerable, but she’s damn good at escaping from my plots.”

“She’s good at escaping from everyone’s plots,” said Amory. But Elsie thought he sounded happy with JJ’s honest answer.

They’d been in the minivan moving steadily north for hours now. Elsie had no way of knowing the time, as she had no watch and her pre-paid cell phone was back at the panther headquarters. She’d only used it to put the number on her resume in case someone wanted to interview her for a job and hadn’t even bought a charger for it. When the battery had died, she hadn’t worried because she was happy working and living with Amory, Favian, and Brayden.

Maybe once JJ was settled, she’d get a real phone, not a throwaway one, so she could talk to him. She packed the chess pieces back into the box while JJ leaned forward and said, “Tell me about the family I’m staying with. You said they had two sons.”

Favian was driving, and Amory was sitting in the front passenger seat, an iPad on his knee. Elsie didn’t know if he was working or not, but he’d spoken to JJ first, so he couldn’t complain about being asked a question right now.

“That’s right. The MacRae family. Roz and Josh have two boys about your age, Cal and Deke.” He turned around in his seat and faced JJ. “You’ll go to school. You’ll pay attention and work hard in class, and you’ll graduate with the rest of your class. Is that understood?”

“Hell yes. A real school will be wonderful. My old school wasn’t fantastic, but I didn’t know how bad a school could be until we had to move. Animals in the jungle behave better than some of those kids.”

Favian called back over his shoulder, “We’re not promising that this is the world’s greatest school either, but the pack send all their teenagers there, and they wouldn’t do that if it was a jungle.”

“How much do you know about shape-shifters, JJ?” asked Brayden.

Elsie tensed. She wasn’t exactly sure about the answer to this question herself. She would have liked a little time alone with JJ before the trip to make sure he understood a few things, but she hadn’t had the opportunity. Of course he knew about shifters, but…

“Mom explained about shape-shifters when she did the whole Santa Claus, tooth fairy thing. I was likely seven, and I already knew about Santa and about werewolves. Looking back now, it was all rather weird. On the one hand, she was saying that people can turn into wolves and, on the other, that a man in a red suit who everyone had seen heaps of times isn’t real. At the time it made sense to me, though. One of the kids in my class in the first grade was a wolf. You people are the first panthers I’ve ever met that I know about, but one of the kids in the gang was a wolf. I knew the moment I saw him run away from a job. No one moves that fast and that…I don’t know, smoothly maybe? Kind of like a dancer, only running. Anyway I knew.”

“Thank you, JJ. You’ll be fine.”

“No, thank you. Elsie was doing her best for me, and it wasn’t mom’s fault she got sick, but that neighborhood was toxic. We were going to have to move because we couldn’t survive there. I’m glad she found you people.”

“We’re glad she did, too. Elsie means a lot to us,” said Amory.

Heat raced through Elsie. The warmth in his voice tugged at her heart and her cunt and everywhere in between. She wanted to stay with the men forever. Maybe it wouldn’t work out, but she sure hoped it did.

* * * *

Brayden had taken over the driving from Favian after two and a half hours, and that was almost two hours ago so he had maybe an hour left to drive, or perhaps a little less. The route was an easy one, and traffic wasn’t that heavy. The standard joke in Michigan was that there were only two seasons, winter and construction. Well, they’d gotten lucky so far today. It wasn’t winter, and there’d been very little construction. He just hoped that didn’t mean they were about to meet up with an endless series of workers digging up the road.

He flicked his gaze up to the rearview mirror again. It had been ten minutes or more since a white car had come racing up behind them driving like a bat out of hell. But instead of passing them, which it could easily have done, it’d dropped back, sitting a couple of hundred yards behind them now and traveling the same speed as them, which happened to be the speed limit.

Brayden wondered if the driver had a CB radio and there were police ahead booking speeding motorists, so he eased off the accelerator a bit, dropping to two miles under the speed limit. There was no sense in risking a fine unnecessarily.

Amory had his nose in his iPad again, typing away on the screen, and Favian seemed to be taking a nap. In the back row of the minivan, Elsie and her brother were talking quietly. Brayden couldn’t remember the last time they’d taken a road trip as a family. Likely not since they’d actually come from the UP to Ohio to live. When they were kids, summers had been spent on the lake. Surrounded by a national forest, and with Lake Superior to the north and Lake Michigan to the south, nothing was much more than an hour’s travel from them.