Chapter 24
“Look at you looking all outdoorsy.”
Dom was on his knees in the living room in front of me, hands on his thighs as he looked me over, starting from the hiking shoes he’d just tied with some fancy double knot.
I moved the zipper of my new jacket up and down a few times. “You’re too excited about this. It’s worrying.”
He stood without using his hands at all to get back to his feet. “Nope, I’m the right amount of excited, and you don’t need to worry one bit. Ell, agree with me.”
Ellis was making a packed lunch in the kitchen. He’d prepped a thermos of oolong without having to be asked, and while I didn’t love old tea from a thermos, it would make the outdoor activity more bearable, I was pretty sure.
Ell’s blue eyes twinkled as he zipped up the picnic bag and looked at me.
“You look really good, Marcus. Want a lollipop for enduring Dom’s shoe obsession?”
I grinned. Dom looked scandalized and pointed at Ellis.
“Stop that. Our boy already compared me to that shoe fetish serial killer he and Linc are way too knowledgeable about. I’m making sure he’s not getting any blisters while breaking in his new shoes, okay?
That’s me being responsible and caring.”
I looked at my new shoes, moving my feet in them. “I’m not going to walk for long enough to get blisters.”
Noises on the stairs made me look that way.
Linc had changed and was wearing a jacket over a pair of cargo pants that suited him really nicely. Now that I was really looking, he had that perfect kind of waist-to-shoulder-width ratio. At least, perfect for me.
“Of course you aren’t. If your feet start hurting, we’re going to carry you.”
Dom turned his nose up. “You’re just trying to hog him all over again. Don’t think I don’t notice. You carrying?”
My eyes went wide. “Carrying? As in, a gun?” I raised my arms. “Look, if this is going to turn into some macho fest complete with shooting at empty beer cans or something, I’m staying here.”
Ell rounded the kitchen island, picnic bag in hand, and while Dom was putting an arm around my shoulders, he started cooing and stepped right up on my other side.
Linc looked at me. “No macho fest, and we don’t litter. But remember how there’s possibly a hunter out there? We’re just being careful. I’m not planning to use my weapon unless I have to.”
I frowned, but okay, Dom and Ell having their arms around me was sort of…calming? What was up with that? Ell was too broad and big. The man shouldn’t be calming at all.
“You know how many injuries are caused every year just by guns accidentally going off?” I asked.
Linc nodded. “I’m aware. Do you think you can trust me to know what I’m doing though?”
Ell rubbed my arm. “He’s not going to do anything stupid. I wouldn’t let him keep the guns in the house if I thought he would either.” He glanced over my head. “Dom’s more likely to hit himself with a hammer than Linc is to drop his gun.”
Dom gasped. “Hey! Don’t believe him, Little Red. I’m excellent with my hammer, and Linc’s good with his gun, okay?”
I’d flirted with people before, or at least I’d tried flirting with people before, so I knew this wasn’t my forte, but I still tried hard to stare Dom down.
“You’re about one innuendo away from me trying out how these shoes feel when I kick your butt.
” Yes, I was better at writing about flirting than I was at the flirting itself.
Dom pressed his lips together and wiggled around next to me before saying, “You’d be owing me a chai latte then, right?”
Ell hummed. “What’s that about lattes?”
Dom was still looking at me. “You have to buy him one when you slap his ass. He says that’s a rule, and I didn’t want to argue the rules. I like rules.”
Linc gasped. “Excuse me? That’s what you two did in town?”
I felt the heat rise all the way to the tip of my nose. “No, he just—it was just—it’s the flannel!”
Dom’s eyelids went to half-mast. “Finally you’re admitting flannel is sexy.”
Dom was too close, entirely too close. I could’ve kissed him and…
The worst part was that maybe I wanted to.
He’d hold me, and there was a part of me that was screaming to fall forward into this werewolf polycule, let them catch me and hold me.
Was I that desperate for people to be nice to me?
Probably. That couldn’t be saying anything good about my self-worth at all, and that in turn probably meant I should work on myself before getting into any kind of relationship.
The thing was, I could reason all of that out in my head, but unfortunately, I also really wanted to kiss Dom. Come to think of it, he smelled really nice.
With a considerable effort of will, I turned to Linc. “Can you make him stop?”
Linc sighed and put a hand on his hip. “I can try. So you’re okay with me bringing the gun?”
I shrugged. “Nope, but I guess I’m trying out trusting you.”
He nodded. “Thank you. I appreciate that, truly. Come on, walk with me.”
Dom groaned. “Again, you’re hogging him.”
He still hung back though, and Linc walked me out onto their deck.
I wasn’t used to going out of the house and not hearing any noise—no city noise, at least. There was a lot of quiet here, but also birdsong.
They were probably telling the entire bird neighborhood about the amazing feeder up by the attic window.
I turned once we were down the stairs, and sure enough, now that I knew what to look for, I could see that the roof had one flatter part and then the taller triangular section that held the attic.
“You like the house?” Linc asked.
I tore my eyes away from the roof before I could find the little window with its bird feeder. “Oh. I mean…it’s unusual, right? Like a little witch’s cabin if the witch was really rich.”
Linc’s arm brushed against mine. Probably just an unintentional touch, but for some reason, it made butterflies flutter like mad in my belly.
An actual butterfly flew by right in front of my face toward a little garden with rows of…
I was gonna say homegrown food, not that I knew plants.
Someone, probably Dom, had paved a winding path from the back stairs to the vegetables.
The lawn around it was tall enough to reach my ankles; a mix of grass and flowers, dandelions, and other things that were usually driven to extinction in the suburban greenery. Not here.
“Three incomes will do that for you,” Linc said. “Dom’s really behind most of it though. There are very few parts of the house he hasn’t touched and improved.”
I looked over my shoulder at Dom and Ellis walking behind us. Dom had the audacity to look kind of bashful and shrug. “It’s not that big a deal. I’ll make sure we have plenty of lights outside next. So you don’t get lost in that dark, Little Red.”
There was that cluster of butterflies in my belly again, making me feel all soft and gooey on the inside.
I turned back around so I could watch where we were going.
There wasn’t a path that led into the woods, not really, but someone had at least piled up a few big stones where the yard ended and the wilderness began.
My heart was beating out of my chest, and I wasn’t so sure it was only because I was going into the woods again.
“Marcus, did you have a chance to think about my offer?”
I looked up at Linc. His face was dappled with the sunlight that filtered through the foliage, and his green eyes shimmered.
“The writing gig, you mean?”
He nodded. “Yes. If you were concerned that it would come with strings, that won’t be the case. You’d get a contract, benefits, PTO, all the good stuff.”
I nodded. “You said I’d be working with Naja? Where’s your main office, anyway?”
I had to look away from him to navigate the soft yet uneven forest floor.
It was nice and cool under the trees, and it made sense now why Dom had insisted I wear the jacket.
It was mostly red, and he’d sworn up and down that it had nothing to do with the nickname he’d picked for me and was all about the fit and how it suited me.
I hated to admit it, but the damn thing did actually look good on me, and it was a very nice jacket too.
“We’re remote for the most part. We rent an office for full team meetings and coworking sometimes, and we have a warehouse for hardware and gear.
The team meetings are almost always over in New Harbor, and we’d be flying out for one or two days about once a month.
Naj would be your supervisor. She’d be showing you what to do. ”
I nodded. Behind us, the other two were pretty quiet, but I could feel their presence, watchful and curious, like a groom at the wedding waiting with bated breath for the bride to say the right thing.
“You’d still hire me if I decide that this whole werewolf polycule thing isn’t for me?”
Behind us, one of the others whined while the other inhaled sharply.
Linc brushed against me again. “Yes. It would… We want you here. We really, really want you here, Marcus, but you have to choose it. We know that. But yes, my offer stands regardless. If it helps, Naj doesn’t put a lot of stock in the idea of finding your mate and all of that.
She’s joyfully single and doesn’t plan on changing that. ”
“That makes sense.”
“Makes sense for Naja, not for everyone else,” Ellis said from behind us.
Dom hummed. “Exactly.”
Had I thought before opening my mouth? Nope.
Upsetting Ell and Dom made me feel itchy.
Not in the literal sense, but it was uncomfortable.
Mostly because I didn’t mean it, not necessarily in the context of me and them.
This was getting emotionally confusing. Then I remembered that foursome we’d had yesterday, and the confusion made my insides churn like the contents of a blender.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway. I’d be working with her?”
Linc tugged me to the left around a tree. I hoped they knew where we were going. There was no path here that I could see.
“Yes. You’ll be able to mostly set your own schedule too.”
“Is she a werewolf as well?”
“Yes. A beta. She’s also really good at her job. She wants to work with you.”
Honestly, at this stage, it was a pretty easy yes. Freelancing was fun all right, but I wouldn’t mind projects not piling up all at the same time. The only thing I felt bad about was the writers I was doing work for.
“Could I… I have a few gigs I might want to let run out over time. I’m a virtual assistant for a few fiction writers, and I don’t want to just drop them.”
Linc glanced at me. “Nothing wrong with that. I’ll tell Naj not to overwork you.”
I snorted. “I’m powered by good tea and sarcasm. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Are you taking the job?”
Linc sounded cautiously hopeful.
I went over it in my head one more time, but I had made my decision. Maybe I’d made it yesterday when he first floated the idea.
“I guess I am.”
There were relieved sighs all around, and Dom’s arms came around me from behind. “Congrats, Little Red! We have to have a party, don’t we?”
“We do,” Ell said. “Dom, careful with his stitches.”
I groaned. “They’re so fucking itchy. Can’t they come out already?” I looked back at Ell, whose eyes were turning stormy.
“No, they really can’t. Ten days.”
Dom’s breath washed over my left cheek. “He’s evil, isn’t he?”
Linc took my right hand in his and shook it. “Welcome to the company. We’re called Four Point Security Solutions, by the way.”
I nodded. I’d seen the logo during that talk with Naja, the one about the video I never wanted to think about ever again.
“Thanks. Send me the contract, I guess.”
Linc beamed. “I’ll print it out for you when we get back.”
Dom was still hanging on to me, and I petted his arm to get him to let me go. He did, but pushed in between Linc and me.
“Want to guess where we’re going, Little Red?”
“To wherever you wolf out?”
He threw his head back and laughed out loud. It made some bird thing or something rustle in the underbrush, which made me almost jump out of my skin. Dom still had his arm around me though, and he pulled me along.
“We can wolf out for you whenever you want.”
“There’s a river that runs through our territory,” Ell said from behind us. “It’s nice, and a good landmark too.”
I shook my head. “Nope, you’re not going to have to show me landmarks. Didn’t I promise I wouldn’t go into these woods on my own ever again? I really only did it in the first place because staying with the car seemed like a worse idea.”
Behind us, Linc sighed. “Let’s not revisit that particular decision tree.”
Ell huffed. “Agreed. I just wanted you to know where we’re going, Marcus. It’s not that far at all.”
I frowned as Dom took his arm off my shoulders to move a branch out of the way. The plants were growing so close together here that we had to move in single file.
“I didn’t hear a river. Shouldn’t I have heard it?”
“Not in this terrain,” Linc said. “Watch your step from here on out, okay?”
I was about to ask him what he was talking about, but before I could, we came to an outcropping that didn’t look all that confidence inspiring. Dom made his way down there using branches and rocks as handholds, and I followed when he held out a hand and smiled as if this was a dare.
From that point forward, we didn’t talk much. The terrain wasn’t great, and if it hadn’t been for my fancy new shoes, I would have stubbed my toes more than a few times.
I saw an intricate and sizable cobweb and a whole colony of ferns, and there were a lot of birds around.
I used my impressive skills as a woodsman and shroom identifier when I spotted a fly amanita and told them about it to catch my breath.
I had no idea if that was really what it was, but after walking around under the trees for twenty minutes, I was kind of noticing my nonexistent stamina.
Not long after that though, we arrived at the river.
“Wow,” I said. The place was gorgeous.