Chapter Five
Soren
He was being held. For the first time in months, someone was hugging him, and not just one someone, two someone’s.
Both smelled of the sky and home wrapped into one.
Cuddling in their embrace, he breathed in their scents until the last of his twitchiness faded and he was able to focus on the question the rhino—and now he was sure he was a rhino—had asked.
“I want to know you,” Soren said. “I was scared I wasn’t going to be able to find a job or a place to stay when this was the one place where I thought I’d be safe.”
“You’re safe now,” Taggart whispered.
“And with me you’ll always stay that way,” Arlo declared, tightening his hold a little.
Soren let out a ragged breath and let his forehead rest against Taggart’s shoulder.
He had two mates. Two. Both were big enough to pick him up and hold him!
“Y-you’re really okay with bringing me home with you when we just met?” Soren questioned, drawing back enough that he could see their faces.
The rhino cupped his cheek and smiled kindly. “I’m Arlington, but no one calls me that. It’s just Arlo.”
“H-hi Arlo. I’m glad to finally know your name. I’d have asked it before if the rain hadn’t been trying to drown us.”
“It’s okay, you know it now,” he assured in a gruff voice that sent tingles through Soren.
“And yes,” Taggart said, piping up again. “We really would like you to come home with us. It’s not Daddy’s home yet either, not really, we just figured out that we were mates last night.”
“Oh, really? So, you haven’t been together for a long time?” Soren felt hope unfurl inside him at not missing out.
“Nope, we only just met a few days ago,” Taggart answered eagerly. “That means we can all learn how to be mates together.”
“I-I know what a Daddy is,” Soren admitted shyly, peeking up from under his eyelashes, “I know what a little is too, sort of. I had a cousin who was one, but s-she’s gone now, and I didn’t get to learn much from her before the bad things happened.”
“What kind of bad things?” Arlo asked as Soren finally unwound his legs from around Taggart’s middle and allowed himself to be put down.
Soren’s lips parted to speak, then he spotted someone pulling into the motel lot and immediately clamped his lips shut as his eyes darted around, taking in the other activity on the sidewalk nearby.
Then he whispered, “Really, really bad.” He had learned the hard way how the council’s spies worked and that they blended in with regular people like him.
It was only the mating scent wafting off Arlo and Taggart that allowed him to trust them this much, because mates were supposed to be safe, even if some proved not to be.
He didn’t have that twisty feeling in his gut around them, and the warning bells that had protected him and kept him from losing his life, weren’t going off.
He trusted that more than words, more than even the mating scent, because he’d learned the hard way what happened when he didn’t listen to it.
“We don’t have to talk about it here,” Arlo said, keeping his voice low. “We can get your things out of your room and take you home where you belong. Everything else can wait until you get settled in.”
“I came here looking for rhinos,” Soren replied, keeping his voice soft and easily muffled by their big bodies. “My brother was here once, a long time ago. He said the scent of rhino was everywhere, and that we should move so we’d be safe.”
“But bad things happened before you could,” Taggart filled in for him, giving him another hug, his eyes glistening in the sunlight.
“Y-yeah.”
“Does anyone else know you were coming here?” Arlo questioned, his eyes narrowing. “Anyone who might have followed you?”
“If they tried, I’m sure I confused the hell out of them every time I got lost,” Soren admitted.
“And I never noticed the same vehicle in any of the places I stopped. I was really careful and stayed off the major highways where I could. And I only stopped to eat where there were a lot of people around.”
“That was very smart,” Arlo praised, making Soren feel he’d accomplished something. He hadn’t felt like that in a long time. “I didn’t spot anyone else on the road when I found you, so I think you’re good, but I never take that sort of thing for granted.”
“Arlo is an enforcer on the crash lands,” Taggart announced proudly. “He’s helping the crash, and others stop the ones who are trying to hurt and capture shifters.”
Now his relief was complete. With that one statement, Soren could finally breathe with ease and trust that going with them was the right thing to do.
“We should have plenty of room for everything in the SUV,” Arlo declared as he hit the fob to unlock it on his way to lifting the rear door.
Nodding, Soren swiped the key card and led Taggart inside, to where his meager possessions sat neatly stacked in boxes and totes beside the door.
He wondered what it would look like to them.
A whole life packed in so few containers.
Even his clothes occupied only a backpack and a laundry bag.
There had been little left to carry away from the burned-out building that had been his home when he’d finally gotten up the courage to return to it.
Bending, he reached to lift the largest box, the one that held his stoneware pots and pans, only to have Arlo pluck it from his grasp before it was more than a few inches off the ground and carry it with ease out to the door to the SUV.
In short order, they had everything loaded, so Soren carried the key around to the front, checked out, and joined them in the SUV they’d brought around while he was in the office.
In the span of less than thirty minutes, he’d gone from being homeless and worried about how he was going to keep himself housed and fed, to riding in the back with Taggart, who assured him, with each glance and smile, that everything was going to be okay.
Arlo
With one call, Arlo had someone come collect and return the rental car Soren had used. He hadn’t trusted the tire and his newfound mate to fate. When they’d returned to Taggart’s, he’d sent both mates inside so Taggart could show Soren around while he brought everything in.
Minutes later, Arlo was still shaking his head at the sight of his little bird trying to lift a box almost as big as him. And heavy too, and yet, Soren had put it in there and gotten it out at the motel, which couldn’t have been an easy feat.
The little thing, from the sound of it, was used to being surrounded by family and friends, according to the tidbits of information he’d given on the ride home. He'd also confirmed that he was a bird, an oxpecker. No wonder he’d been searching for rhinos, he’d have grown up around them.
There were only two in the crash right now, a mated pair who’d arrived the year before, fearing the stirrings that had been going on in their old community. They had come in search of a new start, and the crash had accepted them.
Could it be the same tribe?
Soren had known to come here because his brother had visited and fallen in love with Cookietown, which suggested that there may have been an exit strategy in place to get the flock moved so they’d receive protection from Arlo’s crash.
From what he’d gleaned so far, they’d run out of time.
It was a story he’d heard too often. One he’d grown damn tired of hearing too. Their people, the whole shifter community, should have been safe to live their lives free of the fear that the very people sworn to protect and govern them would betray them and cut their lives short.
He heard laughter when he stepped back inside with the last box, and straightened up from setting it down to see Soren and Taggart sitting across from one another in Taggart’s mismatched beanbag chairs, a Hungry Hungry Hippo game between them.
“Tour over already?” Arlo asked as he approached, his lips twitching at how Taggart eyed him as if assessing how he should play it when he clearly wanted to have fun with Soren.
“For now,” Taggart hedged. “Soren spotted the game, and we decided to play.”
“I always loved playing it with my nieces and nephews,” Soren declared, his smile drooping, but never completely leaving his face.
“Come play with us, Daddy,” Taggart said, patting an empty chair instead of the beanbags.
It was a good thing getting up off a beanbag wasn’t something that would make him look graceful. Taggart was tall, like Arlo, but seemed comfortable on a beanbag.
With a lower table or taller chairs, Arlo would have been banging his knees on it, or worse, tipping it over and messing up their game. Instead, he fit perfectly on the seat offered and took control of the bright green hippo in front of him, struggling to remember how to play.
Okay, marbles in the middle, then Taggart pulled a handle and yelled “go,” he and Soren rapidly tapped the levers on their hippos' backs to make them lunge with their mouths open to gobble up the marbles.
Oh, that’s right, the goal was to capture as many as you could until none were left.
While he concentrated on not tapping the lever too hard, they giggled and clicked away on them, soundly defeating him and the three marbles he ended up with.
Soren came out as the winner with nine, while Taggart was a close second with eight.
In that moment, they just looked so damned happy that all Arlo wanted was to keep those smiles on their faces forever.
“One more round,” Soren encouraged, his eyes having lit up the way all the Little’s did when they were playing with something in the playroom.
Taggart had clearly noticed too, because he loaded the marbles back in their container and waited until they all had their fingers poised over the lever to play again.
“Back, back, back, get away from my marbles!” Soren declared as he pressed the lever over and over again.
“Not if I get to them first,” Taggart declared, tongue poking out from between his lips, he was so focused on the game.