Chapter 9 #2
Jocelyn flipped to the next page. “That’s the fun part.” She held her hands about eighteen inches apart. “There’s a hatch up top. More of a crawl space, really. No orc is getting through that.”
Brakkor, who had materialized at my shoulder, said nothing, but I didn’t think anyone needed orc senses to hear his low growl of disapproval.
“I could—” she started.
“No,” my twin brother stated firmly.
“Brak—”
“No. You don’t know how dangerous it could be, Kitten.”
“Nobody goes in there,” I said before this ate another fifteen minutes. Or before I had to listen to them coo at each other. “We move it intact, deal with the interior after. Nothing up there is structural anyway.”
Jocelyn pressed her lips together, but then sighed and nodded, turning to the foreman. “Korrad’s right, there’s probably no need to inspect it.”
The two of them bent over the plans, and I shifted back to my brother.
The excavator was sitting idle about twenty meters back, which explained Brakkor standing around glowering instead of working. A machine that size going quiet on a site day was either a small problem caught early or an expensive problem that wasn’t.
We couldn’t afford the excavator to misfire. So yesterday, Kowalski had pushed through the budget request for the service call without loving the timing. But if Brakkor said the machine needed Dravik, then we would pay Dravik.
Which explained why the male was now crouched at the engine housing with the panel off.
Heavily tattooed forearms. A set of shoulders hunched in a way that said he’d rather be left alone.
Dravik had been the mine’s head mechanic back in Colorado; I’m not sure why he’d taken Abydos’s offer to move to Eastshore, but he’d already started a partnership with Cairo, who owned the autobody shop.
He wasn’t as surly as my twin, but he wasn’t exactly easy to converse with either. Still, I needed to know where we stood on the equipment front, and he could tell us.
So I hid my sigh and jerked my head to Brakkor, heading in that direction.
Dravik didn’t look up when we approached. He had a wrench in one hand and what looked like a filter housing in the other—not my area of expertise—and he was scowling at it.
“Well?” Brakkor said.
“Fuel filter’s shot. Secondary line’s probably gunked up.” Dravik set the housing down on the gravel. “Give me an hour.”
Brakkor grunted. “Great. I’m already an hour late.”
“You can have it fixed, or you can replace the whole fucking thing,” Dravik growled without looking up. “Quit complaining.”
I crouched down to see what I could see, which wasn’t much—and anything I did see wouldn’t make any sense to me. “Anything we need to order in?”
“Brought parts.” He jerked his chin toward a kit bag nearby. “Cairo keeps the basics.”
Good. One problem that wasn’t my problem.
I should have gone back to Kowalski. I had a crew showing up in twenty minutes expecting direction and a beam schedule to finalize before Thursday.
Instead I stayed crouched, watching Dravik work.
He was economical. Every movement had a reason, nothing wasted. There was a long scar that ran up his jaw and across his left eye socket. The explosion at the mine all those years ago had been…brutal. Not the kind of thing you walked away from without carrying some of it with you.
I’d never asked what happened to Dravik down there in the dark. Wasn’t my business.
“You settling in alright?” I said. Because I was apparently incapable of minding my own.
Dravik didn’t look up. “Fine.”
“Cairo’s good to work with.”
“Yeah.” A pause while he fitted a socket onto the next bolt. “He is.”
That was it for a minute. Just the wrench and the wind over the cliffs.
Then, without preamble, Dravik grunted. “Good move. Coming here.” Quiet, mostly to the engine. “Didn’t expect that. I’m glad you found a real home.”
I opened my mouth to agree.
And I realized I couldn’t say anything.
A real home.
Eight months on the island. Jay had taken to it fast; I’d taken to the work, the quiet, the view from the back porch. Having my own house had been enough.
We’d lived in Brak’s condo while the house was being built to my specs, and I liked the space.
The house was clean and functional. The fridge had meal-prep containers and Jay’s sports drinks and not much else.
The living room furniture was positioned for watching hockey and action movies, which was its primary purpose as far as my son was concerned.
One brand of shampoo in the shower. My mug on the counter, Jay’s on the shelf, nobody’s shoes by the door because we came in through the garage.
Now…
Milo’s drawings on the fridge, held up with the magnets I’d had let him pick out at one of those cheap touristy shops by the beach.
Kesha’s editing notes spread across one end of the kitchen table, three colors of pen, and a manuscript she’d been working through for a week.
Her reading glasses on the arm of the couch because she never put them back in the case. The smells of her body washes and oils and lotions permeating every room. Milo’s shoes lined up neatly at the back door next to Jay’s, which were always sideways. The TV remote never where I left it.
Jay eating breakfast and actually talking.
The building I’d built had been a house for eight months.
It had been a home for seven and a half weeks.
Thanks to Kesha. Thanks to my wife.
I took a deep breath, so deep I felt my chest aching, and pressed my claws against it, wondering why my Kteer was suddenly pulsing.
Tonight the boys would be heading to Brakkor’s for the weekend. Kesha and I would have the house to ourselves, and when Jocelyn had requested the sleepover, we agreed that it would give us a chance to sort out the storage bins she’d moved from her car into the garage and we’d been ignoring.
Now, though?
Now, I had no intention of thinking about those bins. Not when it wouldn’t matter how loudly she screamed.
Last night had been…I didn’t have adequate words for last night. I’d had a Mate Bond before. Sex with Sharra had been fabulous after the Bond kicked in, and I’d figured that was the best I’d ever have when it came to a physical connection with a female.
I’d been wrong.
Kesha had come apart in my arms countless times before either of us slept, and I’d lain there afterward feeling something close to smug, which was not a feeling I was particularly familiar with. She’d called my name like I’d done something impressive. The sound she made when I—
Focus. Construction site. Beam schedule.
Tonight.
My Kteer hummed along with all of this, warm and present, and I was glad of it. It had been snarling at me for weeks, and it was good to have it quieter.
Except…
Not quiet. That was the thing. Still humming underneath, some low note that hadn’t resolved.
Like a chord you’ve played right but one string is still slightly out of tune.
I kept running the inventory, because decades of living with that primitive part of me had taught me it was usually pointing at something specific.
Kesha. There. Married. Loved. In my bed, coming home to tonight.
Check.
The boys. Both of them, strong, growing, mine in the way that mattered—Jay calling Milo T’mak without hesitation. Milo calling me Dad and meaning it.
Check.
The house. Home, finally, eight months of functional and two months of real.
Check.
My Kteer had no business still humming like it was waiting for something. I had everything; I’d checked.
It kept humming anyway.
A large hand came down on my shoulder hard enough to rock me forward.
“There it is,” Brakkor said.
I straightened up. “Don’t.”
“You’re getting it.”
“I’m not getting anything, I’m watching our mechanic work.”
Dravik glanced up for the first time. He looked genuinely unsettled, like he’d rather not be a part of this conversation. “Get what?”
Brakkor was grinning at me with the full force of a male who had found his Mate and could not be humble about it.
Asshole.
“You’re getting it. You’re falling in love with Kesha, aren’t you?” my twin said.
My instinct—born of decades of living with this male and sharing a womb—had me lashing out, wanting to prove him wrong.
“No, you dipshit,” I snapped. “I love her. And Milo. They’re my family.”
Brakkor’s grin turned to a harsh bark of laughter. “I’m happy for you, T’mak.”
“Fuck you, I’m older. You’re my little brother.”
He was already moving when I got my arm around his neck, and we went sideways into the grass like we were twelve, and somewhere above us Dravik said something low and profane and went back to the engine.
I wrestled there with my twin’s elbow in my ribs and my knees trying to pin him and thought: yeah.
My Kteer hummed. Low, restless—still not settled, still holding that unresolved vibration I hadn’t figured out yet. But…home.