Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Linus
Icouldn’t believe it. I was about to be the point person in a major police operation to catch a band of hardcore criminals. Me, a boring little primary school teacher from an uninteresting suburb of Barrington.
“The most important thing is to convince the Dumfries gang that everything is normal and they don’t have to call the whole thing off,” Fenn said, striding over to the kitchen sink so he could look out the window into the back yard and down to the boat house, though there wasn’t much to see in the dark.
“For operations like this, the police just need the perpetrators to express intent to engage in an illegal action in order to arrest them.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. “What sort of intent to engage in illegal action?”
“I’m assuming they have to acknowledge the contents of the van, state what they have to swap for it, and make a move to, I don’t know, take the keys to the van?” Saint said, shifting to stand behind me with his hand on my shoulder.
I could tell my alpha didn’t like any of this.
Paradoxically, that made me smile. I had an alpha!
An actual, bonded mate who I could feel inside me.
He wanted to look out for me and keep me safe, and if the episode in the garage was anything to go by, he wanted to fill my days and especially my heats with the most amazing pleasure.
Maybe I wasn’t so boring after all.
Saint growled slightly, and his grip on my shoulders tightened. I was hot all over, and my blood raced through my veins, proving that even though Lucas’s heat had ended, mine was still going strong. We didn’t have time for wild, gymnastic heat sex, though.
“That’s about the size of it,” Fenn said, turning back from the window. He paused slightly when he saw how close Saint and I were standing together. “Are the two of you in a position to be able to handle this?” he asked.
In other words, were we about to get so horny that we wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the task ahead of us.
“I’m okay,” I said, then took a deep breath to make sure I was. “As long as everyone shows up on time and there aren’t too many delays.”
“We’ll do what we need to do,” Saint agreed with me, still holding me tightly. I was certain he meant that we would sneak off to mate through another heat wave if things got too intense.
I actually hoped they didn’t, which came as a surprise.
The timing for my heat couldn’t have been worse.
I wanted to enjoy Saint, really savor the fact that I had an alpha who I’d bonded with.
He was almost a stranger to me, we had so much to learn about each other, but I was ready to wrap my life around his and to figure out how the two of us were going to be together.
But not yet.
“Saint, do you want to help me survey the area where all this is going to take place?” Fenn asked, giving his brother a loaded look.
I knew, and I could tell Saint knew, that Fenn wanted to talk to him in private about me. I didn’t mind, though. It was nice that my alpha’s brother was concerned. I tried to send my approval and encouragement to Saint through our bond, even though I wasn’t completely sure how it worked.
Saint let out a breath, then took his hands off my shoulders. “Okay,” he said, stepping away from me. “I want to make sure everything is as safe as it’s possible to be for this whole operation. I’ll do anything to protect my omega.”
He glanced back to me as he and Fenn walked out of the kitchen.
Again, I smiled broadly, despite the anxiety gnawing at me.
I didn’t think it was exactly accurate to say the things I felt for Saint or that I could sense he felt for me were love.
It was too soon for that. But the affection and protectiveness of our bond was as close as I thought it could get, given that three days ago neither of us had known the other existed.
Saint paused in the doorway, giving me a stern look that did nothing to help distract me from the continued pulse of heat in my womb. “Stay safe,” he said. “I don’t trust everything in this house.”
It was going to be so easy to fall in love with him!
“I will,” I said. “I’ve got decades of experience in dealing with Lucas’s schemes.”
Saint wasn’t at all certain that would be enough, I could tell, but he walked on.
I sighed happily, then shook my head as I turned toward the sink and moved to get myself a glass of cold water.
It wouldn’t really help, but whatever I could do to cool down, I needed to do.
My mind was already racing ahead to what would happen when this interminable night was over.
I would probably still be in heat, for one.
How was that going to work once the police were here?
There wasn’t really much I could to do end my heat early.
Stress must have been what did it for Lucas, but my body was now thoroughly invested in dragging my heat out as long as possible so I could continue to bond with my alpha.
I gulped down the glass of cold water, though it didn’t really do much to dampen the buzz of need inside me. There was another way to end an omega’s heat, of course. If I got pregnant, my heat would stop instantly.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the idea of it. At the start of my heat, I’d told Saint I wasn’t ready to be a papa, but now?
A baby. My own baby. Mine and Saint’s. I would be able to feel it growing inside me. I would get round with Saint’s child. We could be a family. There could be even more babies. I was only in my mid-twenties. That meant I had the potential to have a dozen babies if I wanted to.
Whoa. A dozen babies was about eight too many, but my inner omega sang at the possibility. We could be a family with all that entailed. Laughter and tears, Christmas excitement and summer relaxation here at the beach house. We could be—
“Are they gone?” Lucas’s sharp whisper from the kitchen door snapped me out of my reverie.
Every sweet, good feeling I had dropped hard into my gut. I felt a little sick as I put my glass down and turned to frown at my brother. “They’ve gone outside to check a few things,” I said.
“Good.” Lucas continued to slink his way into the room, looking around like he didn’t trust that I’d told the truth by saying the alphas weren’t there. “I need to get out of here,” he said. “Where are the van keys? We can both get out of here if we go now.”
I was shocked by how angry Lucas’s plan made me. “You’re not going to steal a van full of firearms and flee from our family’s house after putting us in so much jeopardy,” I told him with a scowl.
“You can come with me,” Lucas said, as if that would make up for everything he’d put me through. “Come on. Where are the keys?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. They were on the corner of the counter near the coffee machine.
The keys weren’t the only thing sitting out in plain sight. Fenn had left Lucas’s phone on the kitchen island. I could tell the moment Lucas spotted it that the whole plan was about to blow up in our faces if he had his way.
Lucas glanced at the phone, then at me. He held my eyes for a moment, and I stared back at him, warning him to leave the phone alone with a look.
Lucas ignored me, of course. With a sudden burst of movement, he lunged for his phone.
I didn’t hesitate. The phone was closer to me, and with a gasp, I pushed away from the sink and swiped at it. I reached it first, but Lucas nearly tackled me in his effort to grab the phone out of my hands.
“Give it to me!” he growled. “It’s my phone.”
“No!” I shouted, twisting this way and that to keep the phone from him. “You’ll call the Dumfries people and call the whole thing off.”
“Damn right, I will,” Lucas said, scratching my arm with his nails in his effort to take the phone. “They need to know they’re walking into a trap.”
“They’re criminals who need to be brought to justice.”
I managed to wriggle away from my brother enough to make a dash for the door.
I thought fast enough to grab the van keys on my way, even though Lucas wouldn’t be able to drive the van anywhere after Saint and I had slashed the front tires.
I bolted out of the kitchen and down the hall to the den, intending to run out onto the back porch, and maybe all the way down to the beach so I could throw Lucas’s phone in the ocean.
“You bastard!” Lucas screamed after me.
The shock of having my twin brother call me such a nasty name stopped me halfway across the den. I turned to gape at him, but that ended up being a bad idea. Lucas threw himself at me with full force. I wasn’t fast enough to move out of his way, and he tackled me, throwing me to the floor.
We hit the side of the coffee table and a sharp pain shot through my left arm, but I managed to keep a tight grip on both the phone and the keys by hugging them protectively to my chest.
“Give them back!” Lucas shouted. “Give them back!”
“No!” I shouted right back. “You have to stop this! The police are on their way. You’re a criminal that needs to be brought to justice along with the smugglers.”
“Bullshit!” Lucas wrestled with me, fighting to get the phone and keys. “I’m just a messenger. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
He tried to yank my wrist away from my body to grab the phone, but his grip slipped and his hand smacked hard against the coffee table. That must have hurt, because Lucas momentarily lost his focus.
I used the split-second to scramble away from him and to muscle myself to my feet.
“You’ve done everything wrong!” I shouted at him.
“You’ve always been a liar and a cheat. You made my life miserable growing up, playing your pranks on me and throwing me into embarrassing and dangerous situations.
If Dad and Papa knew half the things you’ve done to me—”
“Oh, I see,” Lucas sneered, pushing himself to his feet, still rubbing his hand where he’d hit it. “Little perfect baby Linus is going to run crying to Daddy and Papa because he doesn’t get his way all the time.”