Chapter Forty-One
Frey
Missing three days of work…
To Frey, it felt very naughty, especially as his heat had mostly ended by Tuesday evening. On Wednesday, he had spent time with Emmy at home, needing to reassure himself she was fine and that he wasn’t a terrible parent for leaving her without a thought. Lane—no Popi as he said he should be called now Frey was family—had been open about his experiences of his heat when he first had Silas. It had helped, along with how Emmy was so happy to see him.
Lane had done an amazing job of looking after her, and Frey felt bad for denying him the overnight sleepover with their little sweetheart. Lane had insisted that he get her at least once a week overnight and Frey hadn’t argued after recent events in the bedroom with Booker. They’d made love. They’d had beautiful, soul changing sex, and he’d loved every moment .
Everything about the entire experience was nothing like he’d imagined without the fear clouding his judgment. Without it there blocking him from making a physical connection, his thoughts lingered on how they could do it again without his heat driving it. For him, that meant they did indeed need a night to be free of other commitments because Frey wasn’t sure he could let go with Emmy right in the next room, with the door open… no. The ease of accepting Lane’s generous offer drew a little conflict about leaving Emmy, and he expected that. Did it make him a terrible parent when he grinned on the inside, already anticipating things he could try with Booker alone in the bedroom?
Lane said no, and he wanted to believe him with how his body reminded him of the four whole days of sex, mind-blowing—from what he could remember of the first couple of days—wonderful, exciting sex where he didn’t freak out. Yeah, he wanted more. In his mind, he had years to make up for what he’d missed. And he planned on doing that with Booker…
“Frey, wait up,” a voice called from behind, pulling him from where his thoughts had once again wandered without permission while he was at work! He came to a stop and turned to watch Ziggy lope down the carpeted hallway from the direction of the elevators. “I was hoping to catch you.”
Frey grinned, his cheeks pinking at the messages in the group chat. “Hey, sorry, I meant to send a reply to you last night.” He sighed. “Then I got a little distracted by Emmy, who was a little fussy when I put her to bed. It seems Popi prefers to hold her rather than put her in her crib. ”
Ziggy clutched the cashmere vest covering his shirt, belly laughing. “You’re as bad. I’ve seen you,” he spluttered.
Frey gave him an unrepentant look, shrugging. “She’s my daughter, I’m allowed.”
Nudging him with his shoulder, Ziggy nodded while continuing to chuckle. “You are. And she is a total sweetheart. But I see we have something else to talk about.” He pointed at the small bit of scarring that peeked out from the top of Frey’s button-down. “It went that well, your first proper heat?”
He’d kept his voice down, but still Frey checked the hallway before he nodded. “It was… amazing!”
“That good?” Ziggy’s eyes lit up with enthusiasm.
“Let’s go to the coffee lounge, I’m starving as I missed lunch.” Frey, after seeing the chat, wished he’d been more considerate after how Ziggy had wanted to help. It was understandable he’d be concerned for Frey, they’d grown to be close friends. Frey wanted to share his success of getting through a heat and actually loving the bond he’d formed with Booker, only without the possibility of being overheard.
Frey closed the door behind him, but he got distracted by the offering of cakes on the counter. The amount of energy he’d expelled recently, he definitely deserved cake. All the cake.
He strolled to the counter and grabbed a couple of plates, not waiting for Ziggy. The chocolate and raspberry cake Frey knew Lennon had made that morning smelled heavenly. He cut two enormous pieces, plated them and lifted them to turn and offer one to Ziggy .
He eyed the plate Frey offered with a conflicted look, then took it and put it under his nose, sniffing.
“Fuck, that smells so good.” Ziggy patted his stomach with his free hand. “I’m sure I’ve gained at least five kilos since I started work here. Maybe I should half the slice?”
Frey rolled his eyes at his friend. “Give over, there is nothing wrong with you and all I’m saying is Lennon makes the best chocolate and raspberry cake in the history of cakes.”
The chuckle came with a wry smile as Ziggy took the fork Frey offered, before he collected one for himself and went to the comfy couch to sit down. When Ziggy stood staring at him, he arched his brow. “What?”
“Being mated… it suits you.”
Blushing, Frey sighed happily. “It does. I’ve never felt more alive. Like everything is brighter, more colorful. Smells better.” He dug into the cake and took a mouthful, groaning at the taste explosion on his tongue. “So good.” He groaned and took another bite, barely giving himself time to savor it. “But honestly, I’m just down to the bone happy.”
Ziggy came and perched on the sofa next to him, waited for a beat with the look of conflict reappearing, then dug into the cake with his fork.
Frey watched him.
“Good god, that’s so fucking good,” he groaned around a mouthful of cake.
“It really is.”
The silence between them lasted until the plates were empty and both wore satisfied smiles. Ziggy took Frey’s empty plate and got up to place them into the dishwasher. “ Want a coffee?” he asked as he grabbed the coffee pot that someone had recently filled, by the look of it.
“Please.” Frey watched Ziggy, noticing that his usual easy smile was nowhere to be seen now the cake was gone. “You okay?” Was this my fault? Had not reaching out to him pissed him off?
Ziggy didn’t reply immediately while he added cream and sugar to Frey’s drink and brought the two mugs over. “I’m fine.” The smile never reached his eyes.
“You’re not,” Frey accused as he took the cup and reached out with his other hand to keep hold of Ziggy’s. “Whatsup? You were there for me. Can’t I offer the same to you when it’s obvious to me something is off?” Frey didn’t think he was reading the situation wrong.
Ziggy sagged down onto the sofa next to Frey, forcing him to let go. He twisted on the seat, his knee knocking Ziggy’s, who stared into his cup. “Please, you can trust me.”
He heaved a sigh and took a sip of his black coffee, the silence lasting that long Frey was about to try a different tack when Ziggy aimed sad eyes in his direction. “You know the alpha I was sort of seeing?”
Frey nodded, trying to recall what Ziggy had said about the guy when he had raised concerns about Ziggy helping with his heat. “Yeah, it was a causal thing, ‘cause that was what you wanted?”
“No, not strictly true.” He ran a finger around the edge of his cup, gazing at it. “He didn’t want anything more than a casual thing between us. I was fine with that… ”
“But,” Frey nudged when it looked like Ziggy wasn’t going to say more.
“Something changed between us.” Ziggy placed the cup down on the table and got up, walking to the window. His steps were jerky, like he was having trouble holding it together.
The worry drove Frey to place his own cup down and follow. He gently stroked a hand down Ziggy’s arm. “In a good way?” Frey didn’t believe it was with how Ziggy was acting, but he couldn’t be sure.
Ziggy fired him a quick look over his shoulder before looking back out the window. There, in the depth of his gaze, was utter misery. Frey recognized it from seeing it a time or two in the mirror. Frey’s stomach twisted into knots. He slipped an arm around Ziggy’s waist, giving him an awkward side hug. “Wanna talk about it?”
Ziggy’s stiff posture radiated tension. “There isn’t much to say. I want more, he doesn’t. He’s made that perfectly clear. I need to move on.”
It sounded like it was the last thing he wanted to do, but Frey didn’t know what to say to that, having never experienced this situation himself. He couldn’t imagine Booker rejecting him. He didn’t want to when it caused a shiver of fear to run through him.
We’re mates, he’ll never reject us.
I know. Frey did in principle, but it was still all so new.
“Listen, I’m not gonna drag you down with my shit—”
“You can stop that nonsense right now,” Frey cut in. “You were there for me and I wanna be there for you. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
Ziggy took a step back and turned to face him, wearing a look that made Frey want to box whichever alpha’s ears for making his friend sad. “I don’t want to talk about him. It hurts too much right now. So if it’s alright, let’s talk about you and Booker?” He winked, but it held none of the usual fun, his eyes brimming with pain. “I’d rather hear about your sexcapades with the hunky bear.”
“Is that why you didn’t answer my messages?” Bowie asked quietly from behind them.
Ziggy and Frey both spun to see Bowie standing in the open doorway. Neither of them had heard him come in.
Had he overheard what they’d been talking about?
Frey glanced from Bowie to Ziggy, whose jaw ticked as he frowned.
“I’m sorry about that,” Frey murmured, returning his attention to Bowie. He walked towards Bowie, purposefully blocking his view of Ziggy for a moment, to give his friend a chance to regroup. “I got my heat and, well, it was unexpected.”
“Yeah? Was it bad?” Bowie gave him a sympathetic look.
“To be honest, it was my first proper heat,” Frey confessed, working on deflecting any attention from Ziggy. “I was taking blockers.”
Deep furrows appeared between Bowie’s brows. “You mean you ain’t had a heat before this one? ”
He sounded confused and Frey got it. But now was not the time to relay the full story of his past, not at work. He checked his watch. He had a meeting in ten minutes' time. “It’s a long story. Maybe we could do the park this weekend and I can explain it properly?”
Bowie lost the frown and beamed at him for all of two seconds before it disappeared. “I want to, but I kinda got plans this weekend.”
Frey patted Bowie’s arm with how conflicted he appeared, chewing his lower lip between his teeth. “It’s fine. We can do it another weekend.”
“We can?”
The smile was back, and Frey nodded. “Of course, just let me know when you’ve got a free day at the weekend, and we can plan something.” Frey glanced back at Ziggy, giving him a ‘this isn’t over look’ before explaining he had a meeting to go to.
Back in his office minutes later, grabbing his notepad and the two files he’d set aside for the meeting before he went to get cake, he was still thinking about Ziggy. Frey didn’t really know any alphas except for the ones he worked with, and he chewed over whether he should ask Booker if he had any friends that might be interested in someone as great as Ziggy.
Back out of his office, he barely made it to the boardroom with a minute to spare. Booker had taken a seat next to Silas, their dark heads together, murmuring about what they were looking at. Two seats down, Wilder sat tapping away at his laptop. His slim fingers flew over the keyboard that he didn’t once look at .
Frey wasn’t that good and once had said to Wilder how he envied him. Wilder had groaned and complained that Frey wouldn’t have enjoyed his teacher, who had covered the keys and hit his fingers with a ruler if he tried to cheat and cop a look.
When he sat down next to Wilder, he glanced up. “Have you got the information printed out I asked for?”
Frey nodded, taking the file he held and offering it over, his mind switching to the reason they were having this meeting. “I did, I added my comments about the logistics of getting all the merchandise to the shopping malls. The company we use for transport has upped their costs by 5% so I took the liberty of looking at other options.”
“When did they change the costs?” Silas questioned, sounding pissed.
Booker glared at his brother and Frey bit the inside of his cheek to keep his amusement from spilling out at Booker’s reaction. God, he was adorable. “I sent you an updated email about it last week.”
Wilder made a noise in the back of his throat that Frey didn’t get when he looked between the two men.
Silas looked fit to be tied as he reached for his iPad and tapped at the screen. “So you did,” he gritted out.
“Apologize to Frey,” Booker said in a tone that Frey knew all too well.
Oh dear! “He doesn’t need to apologize,” Frey quickly interjected.
Booker shook his head, ruffling the silky strands. “He does, he was being pissy with you for no reason. ”
If Silas had gotten annoyed before, now he was at the next level. His skin flushed red and his eyes were sending daggers at Booker.
Frey had the urge to push his seat back to get out of the line of fire.
“Why? When you two are the reason I missed it. You stunk up the house, making it impossible to concentrate on anything,” Silas accused. “And let's not even talk about the noises.”
Frey didn’t dare look at Booker as he blushed, squirming in his seat at what exactly Silas and the others had heard. Smelled. Having avoided this confrontation in the house, it seemed he had brought it into work for him to deal with it in front of Wilder. Great.
“You could have come into the office.” Booker’s teeth actually snapped together on each word. Frey felt his own jaw ache in sympathy while he tried to come up with something to say that wouldn’t aggravate the situation further.
“Is this really the place for this conversation?" Frey asked as Wilder watched them with avid interest. “I apologize for any inconvenience I caused. It was not intentional.”
“How so?” Silas snapped.
“Silas!” Booker growled, his teeth dropping in his gums and gleaming in the overhead light.
Frey’s ears started to buzz. Oh no, was Booker gonna go all furry?
“I apologize, too,” Silas muttered, clearly not meaning it as he held Booker’s gaze. “What other trucking companies did you look at? ”
Frey shot Booker a warning look when his lips parted, like he was ready to continue the argument. “I have the list here.”
Frey took the additional copies he’d printed off with the figures and companies he’d contacted, all but shoving them at both men. “As you can see…”