Chapter 10 #2
Excellent, because I don’t think I’d do well with her sleeping under the same roof tonight. Not with her scent already wedged under my skin and my body acting as if it’s got no manners.
“Settle in,” I tell her. “Unpack if you want. We can sort food later, take you shopping, whatever you need.”
I turn to go.
“Luca.”
I look back over my shoulder to where she stands in the living room.
“Thank you,” she says, and this time there’s nothing light in it, nothing deflecting. “Really. We met today and you’ve done all this for me, and I know you didn’t have to.”
My insides tighten, a sense of protection sweeping through me that signifies that she deserves so much more. Then I step back into the doorway. “You know what’s funny?”
Her brow lifts. “What?”
“You’re standing there thanking me for basic decency, and you still haven’t started to deal with the fact that your scent match is about four feet away from you.”
Her mouth falls open.
I almost laugh.
“Make yourself at home, Adelaide.”
I pull the door shut before she can recover enough to throw something at me. I keep strolling to the main house, and I grin before I get my face under control again.
Because I wasn’t joking.
Not even close.
I’ve been around Omegas my whole life. I know the difference between someone smelling good and your body clocking it, then moving on. This isn’t that. Her scent has been sitting in my chest since the beach, and every hour after that has only made it worse, or better—maybe both.
By the time I’m back inside, I’m already too wound up to sit still, and notice that North’s truck keys are on the hook, meaning they’re back.
So I head down the hall, press the concealed panel hidden behind the framed print, and the section of wall swings open to reveal the stairs below.
Then I pull it shut behind me.
The lower level runs the full width of the house, and it’s probably not what anyone would expect when they hear that three men say they surf for a living.
One wall is nothing but screens showing live feeds from every camera on the property—the street outside the gate, both angles of the driveway, the perimeter around the shack.
There are no cameras inside there. Along the far wall sits the round bar, bottles lined up with the kind of precision that says this room has seen many nights worth drinking after.
Ace is at the monitors.
North is pouring whiskey.
“Smooth tour,” Ace says without looking around. “You nearly moved her into my office.”
I drop onto the couch, and North hands me a glass. “I showed her the house. That’s called hospitality.”
Ace finally spins the chair around to face us. There’s a restless edge to him now, the kind he gets when something’s been chewing at him too long. “Good to know.”
For a second, nobody says much. Then I set my glass down and look between them. “I think she’s our match.”
Their expressions don’t change much, but North’s eyes sharpen over the rim of his whiskey.
I lean back into the couch. “I’m serious. At the van, I caught her scent properly for the first time. On the bike, it got worse. We’ve been back in the house for twenty minutes, and it’s still in my head.”
Ace grins, leaning forward. “Fuck yeah, that’s how I’ve been since I caught the plane with her. I thought I was losing my damn mind. I’ve never reacted to an Omega like that before. Not like this.”
North lowers his glass. “You think it’s scent-match level?”
“I know what attraction feels like,” Ace states, voice rougher now. “This isn’t that. It’s so much fucking more.”
North studies both of us for a beat, calm as ever, but I know him well enough to catch the weight settling into him. “What are you getting from it?”
I scrub a hand over my jaw. “Chocolate. Something cool under it. Flowers, maybe. Doesn’t matter. It’s not the details. It’s the way it sticks. Like it gets into your bloodstream and refuses to leave.”
Ace points at me once. “That.”
I nod. “Exactly that.”
North leans back, thoughtful now instead of skeptical. “Interesting.”
I look at him. “That all you’ve got?”
His mouth curves slightly. “I’m choosing restraint until I get a chance to spend more time with her, be closer to her.”
Ace just shakes his head. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s where I ended up too.”
North’s gaze moves briefly toward the bank of screens, toward the feed showing the outside of the guest place. “You think she knows?”
Ace answers before I can. “She’s got to. She’s too smart not to.”
“And I may have just mentioned it to her,” I admit, grinning, remembering the shocked look on her face when I confronted her with it.
North finishes his drink, sets the glass down, and then looks up at the ceiling for a second. “She’s fucking gorgeous,” he murmurs. “And that ass.” He shakes his head.
“You’re in,” Ace says.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“I’m saying she’s fucking attractive and she has a good personality. That’s not the same as—”
“North,” I say. “You’re in.”
He throws his arms up. “I haven’t been close enough to her to know for sure.”
Ace turns back to the screens and pulls something up on the left monitor, zooming in. I sit forward.
“Now,” I say. “Let’s talk about the real problem. What’s going on with Adelaide, and who the fuck is after her?”
Ace doesn’t move, but his whole focus changes. The beach, the scent, the fact that Adelaide is resting near our house… all of that gets shoved aside for the thing that mattered the second I investigated her van at the garage.
“She’s being watched. That’s for sure,” North says.
Ace’s jaw clenches. “The question is, who sent those assholes on the beach after her? They were just goons, not the brains.”
“Earlier at the garage, I found a small black tracker tucked under the side panel of her van. She had no idea it was there.”
“What the fuck!” His face goes blank in a way I know too well.
North leans in. “Shit!”
I glance at him. “I dumped it on the way here. Storm drain off the bypass. Anyone tracking it is now having a very boring afternoon.”
North’s mouth thins. “Nice, but it means she’s in more trouble than she realizes.”
“I asked Koa at the garage to keep an eye out for anybody unfamiliar hanging around, anybody asking questions, and to let me know,” I explain. I think of Adelaide standing in that van, telling me she was fine in that flat little voice that meant the exact opposite.
“She has to know more than she’s letting on,” I add. “She came into the ocean for protection against those guys, plus she’s acting way too calm for someone being followed, you know? And she easily accepted to move in with us temporarily because, deep down, I bet she’s really scared.”
Ace’s eyes grow colder, hands curled into fists.
“Someone who wants her has found her now,” he says.
“And they either want to scare her or take her for someone.” He looks toward the screen showing the shack exterior.
“This didn’t start here. I remember she was a bit jumpy back in Seattle, but I made nothing of it. I think she’s on the run.”
“What has she gotten herself into?” North adds.
I reach into my pocket, pull out my phone, and bring up the photo I took of the tracker at the garage before I got rid of the thing. Then I set it on the table between us. “That’s it there, and it looks way too familiar.”
Ace leans forward first. North doesn’t touch the phone, just studies the screen with that still, hard focus.
The tracker is small, black, clean build, no cheap casing, no amateur bullshit.
He nods once. “Professional grade. Not something some jealous asshole orders online after two beers and a bad idea.”
Ace hands the phone back to me. “We’ve seen these before.”
“Yeah.” I pocket the phone again. The room goes quiet for a beat.
Ace takes a second before he answers. “Back at The Breakers.”
I straighten up. I knew it.
North nods. “Used to run those before a pickup. Keep tabs on anyone before anyone makes a move.”
So this is really fucking bad for Adelaide.
The Breakers are a gang with money, reach, and enough fronts to keep their work out of sight. When jobs came up that were too risky, they brought in men like us. Contracts, outside muscle. We did the work nobody else wanted to touch and got paid well enough not to ask too many questions.
That was the trade—quick money for filthy contracts. Surveillance, pickups, cleanup, pressure, elimination. The kind of work that sticks to you afterward. But after a while, it was affecting us, nightmares and all that shit, so we walked out. Told the chief who leads The Breakers that we were done.
Bastard didn’t take it well, but being contractors made it easier to leave than if we’d been fully tied in.
I pick up my whiskey, finish it, and set the glass down hard.
“She stays here,” I say. “Until we know what the hell this is. She doesn’t leave alone. One of us is by her side at all times.”
“Agreed,” Ace says immediately.
North’s already on his feet. He crosses to the enormous cabinet on the far wall and opens it.
The inside looks like exactly what it is: insurance.
Rows of knives in fitted slots, some modern and brutal, others old enough they could be in a museum.
Sword swords, machetes, a pair of kukris, and leather wraps.
Higher up, the pieces are more collectors, the ancient looking blades with carved handles.
Everything is lined up neatly. We kept a lot of it after we left The Breakers gang, because walking away from men like that without expecting trouble later would’ve been suicidal.
We could never be sure they wouldn’t come after us, so we’ve been prepared just in case.
He takes out a dagger, and then sets it on the table.
“Been a minute,” he says, “since we needed these.”
Ace stands and takes his.
I do the same.
North stares back at the screens, expression hardening. “We need answers. Who Adelaide is, who’s after her, all of it. Because if you two are right and she’s our scent match, then we’re about to drag a war straight into paradise to protect her.”