Epilogue #2
“What show is on tonight?” Sebass asks, gnawing on her ear. “Is it a rerun?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. But I think this one is on one of those special premium channels, if you get what I’m saying.”
“Is that so?” Atlas says, grabbing me by my belt loop. “Well, I wouldn’t want your subscription fees to go to waste,” he purrs at her, wrapping himself around my back. “What do you say, Alpha? What to give them a show they won’t forget?”
Sebastian
“Listen, I’m not going to be able to help you out tonight,” I tell Clicks, running my hands through my hair. “I’ve got plans.”
“You always have plans,” he says, rolling his eyes through video chat. “But when I need your help doing something important…”
“Cyber stalking an Omega you’re too scared to talk to isn’t important,” I chastise.
“Stalking is a strong word.”
“You’re following his movements on street cameras, Clicks. That’s like, the definition of stalking.”
“I mean well.”
I roll my eyes. There is no convincing Clicks that he’s going about this the wrong way. I’ve tried and tried and tried. But he’s too afraid to put himself out there, to leave his command center.
“Anyways, I’m out. I’ve got two Omegas to bother,” I say, ending the web call.
It wasn’t exactly a lie to say that I have plans, but it also wasn’t the whole truth. There are no formal plans tonight, but I’d like to spend the evening with my pack.
Charles is in the kitchen cooking something that smells delicious and spicy, making my stomach rumble.
“How long until dinner?” I ask, peering over his shoulder. “And where is everyone else?”
“It’s got to simmer for another twenty minutes,” he says, putting a lid on the pot he was stirring. “Let’s head outside while we wait. Everyone is out there.”
We head outside together, where the other four members of our pack are lying in the grass or tossing a ball with Wilson. I flop down next to Atlas. He looks up the game of Tetris he’s playing on his phone.
“Hey, Sebass,” he says, scooting a little closer to me. “All done working for the day?”
“Yeah. Clicks, and I found that Alpha, who was hiding out and avoiding paying his child support.” What we do isn’t all glamorous and dangerous. A lot of times, we’re barely a step above bounty hunters.
Not that any of us mind. We only take cases we believe in, and this dude running out on his family has my teeth on edge.
“We’ve got that extraction tomorrow,” he reminds me. “Are you sure you’re going to be able to make a distraction?”
“Psh,” I wave off his concerns. “Child’s play.”
He rolls his eyes but doesn’t contradict me. I am the best in the business, especially when it comes to distractions.
Athena laughs as Wilson jumps up on her thighs, knocking her over. He licks all over her face as Harvey tries to drag the massive mutt off of her.
“Do you think she knows?” I whisper.
He shakes his head. “She has no idea. We may pull this off.”
“Let’s hope. Otherwise, all of our planning goes down the drain.”
“Pessimist,” he hisses. “Don’t jinx us.”
“All I’m saying is, a lot is riding on my back. Are you sure I’m the one you want to trust with this and not Charles?”
Atlas grabs me by the front of my shirt and pulls me close to his face. “Keep talking shit about yourself, and I’ll be the one riding your back.”
“Is that supposed to be a threat? Because it sounds like a fun Friday night to me.” I playfully kiss his nose before scooting backward out of his reach. “I’m just so bad at everything,” I whine dramatically. “The worst. I provide nothing for this pack.”
Atlas climbs to his feet and stalks toward me when Charles grabs the back of his shirt. “Dinner is almost ready.”
Our Omega shrugs him off. “It can get cold. I have an Alpha to teach a lesson to.”
Athena makes an excited squeaking noise and crosses the lawn to stand next to me. “What are we doing?” she whispers.
“Pretending not to know our worth, so Atlas shows us.”
Her dazzling grin takes up most of her face before she throws the back of her hand over her head. “How terrible it is that this pack is saddled with people like us, Sebastian. They deserve so much better than us.”
That gets Wyatt and Harvey’s attention, if the growls from the other side of the yard are any indication.
“Charles,” Harvey says sharply, “turn off the stove. We can have dinner later. We have a couple of brats to teach a lesson to.”
Athena and I share a sneaky look before we spin on our heels and run back into the house, the rest of our pack hot on our heels.
Charles
“I still don’t understand why this needed to be a surprise,” I tell my packmates as I buckle myself into the front seat of our SUV. “This didn’t need to be treated like a mission.”
Atlas scoffs. “It’s more fun this way.” The little puppy on his lap yips happily and licks his nose.
Two weeks ago, Wyatt saw online that a puppy mill had been broken apart, and the dogs needed homes before they ended up in the shelter.
The standards at this mill were low, and the puppy we adopted had to have his eye removed because of infection.
He’s recovered from his surgery and is now ready to come home with us.
From the moment Wyatt showed us his photo, we knew he was supposed to be a part of our lives. Something about rescuing this pup, who came from awful conditions because assholes wanted to breed dogs repeatedly for profit, felt right for our pack.
“She’s going to love him,” Harvey says, stroking the dog’s head. He’s got ridiculously long brown ears, and the breeder claimed he was a basset hound, but I’m sure there’s something else mixed in there.
Either way, he’s super fucking cute, and Athena is going to be thrilled.
Wilson, probably not so much. Who knows how he is going to react to no longer being an only dog.
“What have they been doing today?” Wyatt asks. “Where does she think we are?”
“Sebastian took her to the spa,” I remind him. “She thinks we’re meeting with the Mansons.” She doesn’t ask many questions about what we do on a day-to-day basis. Honestly, I prefer it that way. I like her to have some distance and plausible deniability when it comes to the grey area we operate in.
“They should already be home, though,” I continue. “Sebass texted me a few minutes ago that they were on the way.”
We pull into the driveway and pile out of the car, the new pup happily running around our ankles. I can hear Sebass talking to Athena over his shoulder as he opens the front door.
“Come on, I need you to tell me if you think this cloud looks like a dog,” he’s saying. “I swear, I saw a dog out the window.”
Atlas smothers a laugh as he watches our pack mates come outside. Athena has her hand over her eyes, looking up at the sky.
“I don’t see it, Sebass,” she says. “None of them looks like a dog.”
“Shit, I must’ve gotten confused,” he says, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her hand down. “I guess it was a real dog I saw.” He points at the pup that spins in circles on the grass, and Athena’s eyes widen as she runs to it, crashing to her knees in front of it.
“What a lame line,” Atlas teases the Alpha.
“It worked, didn’t it?”
I kneel next to my Omega as she lets the one-eyed dog climb all over her. “What do you think?”
She throws her arms around my neck, nearly taking me to the ground. “I love him, I love him, I love him!”
Wyatt laughs and scoops the little thing up in his arms. It squirms and wiggles, and he nearly drops it. “He’s a wild one.”
“What’s his name?” she asks, stroking his head.
“He doesn’t have one,” Harvey says, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her flush with his body. “We thought we’d come up with a name as a pack.”
“Milton,” she says definitively. “Definitely Milton.”
I don’t want to be the one who has to tell her no, but no one else will, so it’s up to me to be the bad guy. “Definitely not. Wilson and Milton rhyme. It’ll get too confusing.”
She groans and throws her head back dramatically. “Fine.” She exaggerates the ‘e’ for way too long, and I struggle to hold in my laugh. “Norman.”
“Norman and Wilson?” Sebastian asks. “Sounds like we’ve got two grandpas living with us.”
“Yep! It’s distinguished.”
“I like it,” Atlas says, siding with Athena as usual. “We can call him Norm.”
Norman the puppy wiggles out of Wyatt’s arms and bounds around the back of the house. He’s fast for a little thing. Most of my pack takes off after him, but Athena and I run through the interior of the house to beat them to the backyard.
Wilson is peacefully sleeping in the sun until Norman crashes into the backyard and lands on him.
I swear, lunging forward to separate them before Wilson can nip at the pup, but my anxiety appears to be unnecessary. Wilson looks at the dog through narrowed eyes before yawning in his face and falling back asleep.
“Huh. It’s like when we try to wake up Wyatt,” Athena says, weaving our fingers together. “Grumpy expression and then back to sleep like nothing happened.”
I lean down and kiss the top of her head. “So did we surprise you?”
“Very. I didn’t think you guys wanted another dog.”
Atlas and I lock eyes across the yard. He’s got a broad smile as he shifts his attention to Athena’s bright face. Those Omegas would do anything to make one another happy, and we’ll do whatever it takes to ensure they stay that way.
“He needed a home, and we have the perfect one. We have so much love to go around,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pulling her close. I don’t look away from Atlas’s smiling face. “Thanks to you two.”
Athena
Full circle.
The phrase is on repeat in my head as I stare at the bright green balloon.
I have come full circle in the best possible way.
“Wow, what makes that balloon so interesting?” I look over my shoulder at my brother-in-law. He’s got a teasing expression on his face as he holds out a plate of vibrantly yellow cake to me.
“I was thinking it reminds me of this talent I work with,” I say casually. “You know. Full of hot air.”