Chapter Seven #3
A low growl bubbled up from her stomach. “I’ll kill him.” She snarled, moving to stand up and head back outside. Moe pulled her back down.
“Whoa there, killer, it’s not as easy as that. We can’t kill him or maim him as long as he hasn’t broken any laws in Arkadia. I’m afraid you got in your one lucky punch,” Madison advised.
“I’d listen to her. She is a genius when it comes to the law.” Giddey nodded, his eyes empathetic.
Abby took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest. “If he comes near my mates or my nephew I’ll rip him apart and let her worry about the law.” Abby wished she had hit him harder.
“Okay, no more contemplating murder in front of me, wait until later when I’m gone,” Madison said, grinning at Abby.
“I have an idea. Giddey, maybe you can help. How good are you at spotting gay men?” Damian asked, a sparkle in his eye.
“If it were an Olympic event I’d have gold cock rings!”
“Okay then. So, is he gay?” Damian asked, pointing to Moe.
Abby’s mouth twitched at the thoughtful expression on Giddey’s face. He looked her mate up and down, taking in every detail. Finally, he frowned and shook his head.
“I’m not sure, he’s scrambled my senses. Is he?” Giddey leered at Moe.
Abby brought Moe’s hand up and kissed it.
Giddey slumped down in his chair. “Straight.”
Grinning, Rhys picked up Moe’s other hand and kissed it.
Giddey perked up. “Bi. That makes me feel better. Gorgeous men deserve to be with gorgeous men. No offense, ladies.” Giddey shrugged.
“See Rian, Giddey had trouble too, so you can just stop with the ridiculous idea that you’re not gay!”
“Him, not gay?” Giddey started laughing hysterically.
“I know right? I’ve been putting up with his craziness since Moe and Rhys found out they were mates. I think it was when he found out that his favorite porn actor wasn’t really gay, just gay for pay, that sent him over the edge.” Damian lay his head down on the table, exhausted.
Bethany rubbed her brother’s back sympathetically.
Asling reached up and popped Rian in the back of the head.
“Ow!”
“You’ve been gay since before I was born, Rian Stafford, stop being so melodramatic.” Asling rolled her eyes.
“She reminds me of Cassie, no nonsense.” Abby smiled for a second and then a panic set in. “Fuck a duck! I forgot to call Cassie and check in!” Abby scrambled for her phone.
“It’s only been a couple hours, you’ll be fine.” Rebecca waved her hand at her friend.
“You don’t understand, I got distracted in Nevada for a bit.” Abby stared at her phone dreading making the phone call she had to make.
“You totally hit Vegas! How long were you there?” Rebecca asked.
“Umm, like a week, but I had just finished a really huge project when Cassie called about the Christmas cards. I needed to unwind.” She held out her phone to Rebecca. “You call her.”
“Fuck. That. Noise.” Rebecca shook her head.
“Becca, language,” Ma called from behind the counter.
“Sorry, Ma.”
Abby took a deep breath and prayed for voice mail.
Cassie answered on the first ring.
“Abby? Abby where in the hell have you been!”
“I umm.”
“Do you have any idea how worried Meg and I have been?”
“I…”
“I swear, first Rebecca, then you. Did you fall into a vortex where you forgot how to use your fucking phone?”
“No, I went to Vegas.”
Wrong answer.
“I’m sorry, I thought I heard you say you went to Vegas when I specifically asked you to find Rebecca and make sure she was okay. Your phone must be malfunctioning.” Cassie’s sarcasm dripped through the phone.
“I won like two hundred dollars and I got you a shot glass. There’s a naked guy on it and when there’s liquor in it you can totally see his…”
The sound of something being repeatedly hit against a hard surface echoed through the diner from her phone.
“I found Rebecca. She was in Arkadia. She’s mated and has the cutest little kiddo and is perfectly fine,” Abby said, quickly trying to avoid a full Cassie explosion.
“Thank god, she’s okay.”
Abby nodded, relieved that Cassie sounded like she was calming down.
“Wait a minute, how is she in Arkadia? It’s a shifter-only town. The only bears there are the Arkadions. Please tell me she didn’t mate one of the Arkadion brothers.” Cassie’s voice carried and the Arkadion boys sat up straighter in their chairs, glaring at the phone.
Abby smiled nervously. “Umm, she’s mated to Aleksander Arkadion.” Abby waited.
Rebecca just sat there grinning like an idiot. She never seemed to get on Cassie’s bad side. The silence was starting to freak her out.
“And umm, I found my mates too. Moe Jones and Rhys, he’s a vampire. So, I’ll be moving out here with Rebecca.” Abby waited. She couldn’t even hear Cassie breathing. Had she killed her best friend?
“Let me get this straight.”
Abby winced.
“You and Rebecca will be living in close proximity to each other and she is mated to the Arkadion, making her the single most powerful female in the paranormal world as Alpha Mother?” Cassie asked, her voice quiet and dangerous.
“Umm, yup.”
“Why me! Why gods in heaven me!”
Abby pulled the phone away from her ear.
“For four years I watched over the two of you. Abby, you are like this natural disaster, it’s never your fault, but that doesn’t change the fact that cities are leveled in your wake.
Rebecca is twisted enough to do that shit on purpose just to watch people squirm!
Four fucking years! Do you know that after I joined Sentinel my assignments were like a vacation compared to watching over the two of you?
Bombs in Iraq? No problem. Serial killer in Brazil?
No worries. My Commander was convinced that I was a heartless bitch, because nothing disturbed me as much as listening to the two of you hatch schemes.
Nothing panicked me more than keeping the two of you alive.
Fuck Almighty! You and Rebecca are like a horrible Syfy Saturday movie gone wrong, like a tornado on a collision course with a nuclear power plant about to explode. I can’t do this. I can not do this!”
“Now, Cassie, remember your breathing.”
“Fuck my breathing!”
“Rebecca built a bomb when she was eight. Do you remember what she told us? She had just finished reading Lord of the Rings and was afraid the Uruk-hai were coming for her family. Did she hide under the covers? Did she ask her dad to check under her bed? No, that crazy midget built a fucking bomb and that’s not even the one that got her banned from laboratories from the US government, that was her science fair project when she was twelve! ”
“Hey, we’re older now. We’re both mated. We’re all kinds of mellow yellow, aren’t we Rebecca?” Abby held the phone out to
Rebecca and made a face at her. “Yup! I haven’t killed anyone yet, well except for the hyena that kidnapped me, and he totally deserved it. Though that may change if Salsiby goes near my son again, but I have a formula that I’m working on that should take care of his ass…”
Abby brought the phone back to her ear. “ See , she hasn’t killed anyone lately.”
“Ulcers. You two give me fucking ulcers! Do you know how hard it is for shifters to get one ulcer, much less two? Do you!”
“Umm… we love you?” Abby said, unsure of what else to do.
A huge sigh and thump was heard. “I know. I love you two walking disasters too. I’m assigning Sentinels to Arkadia. Try not to blow up the most important paranormal city since the dawn of time before they get there.”
“Go home and drink some of that white wine you like so much. I got this,” Abby said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Bye, Abby, give my love to Rebecca. I’ll be visiting soon to see my nephew.” Then the line went dead.
“That went well.” Abby looked up.
Aleks, Gabriel, Moe and Rhys looked ill.
“So, when do we go ghost hunting?” Rebecca asked, completely oblivious to her mate’s growing panic for his future.
“Tomorrow at eleven?” Abby suggested.
“Works for me.”
“Can I come too?” Giddey asked, looking intrigued.
“You bet.” Abby took another bite of her sandwich.
“Aren’t you afraid, Giddey?” Ashby asked, still looking worried.
“This chick singlehandedly got hot Sentinels to be assigned to Arkadia, I’m sticking to her like glue.”
“Watch and learn young grasshopper, watch and learn.” Abby winked at him.
Aleks, Moe and Rhys groaned behind them.