43. Oregano – Meaning Soothing Will banish sadness
43
OREGANO
(HERB OF MAGIC)
MEANING: SOOTHING; WILL BANISH SADNESS
MICAH
________
I woke to the sound of gasping. Ocean sat straight up in bed next to me, chest heaving, staring into the darkness of our hotel room.
“Ocean?”
She startled, looking over at me.
Moonlight drenched the room, and I could see her just enough to make her already dark eyes look nearly black. And she was panicked.
“Are you okay?”
She laid back down slowly, curling toward me. “I think so.”
We were in the center of the bed, the others asleep farther away. I pulled her in and tucked her head beneath my chin before arranging the blankets over us once more.
“Just a bad dream,” she murmured.
I stroked my hand over her hair and watched the way the faint moonlight shone off of it. The world was made of shades of blue at the moment, and my wife was no exception. I loved the thought of painting her with nothing but those shades that reminded me of her name.
“Want to talk about it?”
She shook her head where it rested in the crook of my shoulder. “I’m better now. I don’t get them that often.”
Quietly, I began to purr. Not enough to wake the others. Just enough for her to feel and relax into me. Which she did.
When she and Rett had returned from the ruins, they’d found me knee deep in charcoal sketches of anything and everything. Because drawing was the way I could process my thoughts. I couldn’t just sit and let them run, and while I’d been digging through the problems with the launch, I’d needed to think .
But I hadn’t realized how long I’d been doing that, and my eyes were burning when Rett came into the office in the penthouse and dragged me out to go to bed.
My hands still had dark stains on them.
“Then tell me what it was,” I whispered. “Please. I want to know.”
One of her hands slid over my ribs to my back, holding me closer. A soft sound came from her. She was already nearly asleep once more, but she spoke, voice soft and drowsy. “You weren’t there.”
My purr faltered for a second before I caught it and brought it back. Emotion flooded my chest. Not some kind of terrible monster or even a nightmare about her aunt and uncle. Not about being mistreated or chased or any of the normal things you would think of for a bad dream.
Just us not being there.
Fuck .
I pulled her more tightly against me. She didn’t know yet what we were to her. And though our Omega thought she was hiding it, I saw when she froze thinking about the future. The doubt.
Soon, she would be ready to hear and understand that we weren’t going anywhere, and we never would. This was all for her. Every step of this journey had been because of her.
Us not being there was her nightmare.
I felt the same. If I woke up in the morning and she wasn’t in bed with us, and we found out she was simply gone ? I couldn’t even let the thoughts fully enter because it was so devastating.
Ocean’s fear was the last thing I ever wanted. But if this was her fear, I was grateful. It meant she was letting us in. It meant she was starting to believe the things we told her.
I kissed her hair and pulled the blanket further up over both of us. “We’re not going anywhere, princess. I promise.”
“You’re lucky I love the three of you,” Raina said. She fixed us with an unimpressed stare through the screen of the tablet. “With anyone else, I would have flipped off the phone and said fuck you till morning.”
“Hello to you too,” Cameron said with a grin.
She rolled her eyes, clearly already in a robe and pajamas. Her Omega made tea in the background. “What’s going on?”
“Believe me, it’s the last thing we want to be dealing with right now. But we need you to do some digging and it needs to be kept quiet. It’ll be much harder to do while we’re out of the country.”
I took a pen off the desk and began sketching to keep my thoughts clear. The view of Ocean last night. Dark shadows curving over her, away from where the dim moonlight shone.
When we got back home, I was going to paint it.
Glancing over her shoulder, Raina stood and left her kitchen and closed her office door behind her. “What’s going on?”
“Something’s wrong with the Extasis launch,” Cameron said. “We saw the toys while we were at the party here, and they’re not what they should be. They’re breaking. They feel cheap. Check the reviews. We’re getting slammed.”
I dragged a hand over my face, still chasing sleep away since it was early. “We tried to look into it yesterday, but everything shows that it’s fine from my end. All the design specs I send over. Everything from the technical team all checks out. But it’s not correct.”
Raina looked at my packmate. “You’re very quiet, Everett.”
“There’s not much to say.”
Tilting her head, Raina studied us. “You think this is part of it? Why the board forced your hand?”
“I don’t know.” Rett ran a hand through his hair. “I want to say yes, but throwing out an accusation like that isn’t going to get us anywhere. And so far, our resources haven’t found anything.”
Meaning Aiden. The hacker hadn’t found any evidence of wrongdoing from any of the board. Which meant that they were being excruciatingly careful, or we were wrong.
“Which is why we’d like you to dig around. If they’re doing something, it has to be analog,” Everett said. “Or buried so deep our guy wouldn’t know the difference. If it is them, I still don’t pretend to know why.”
Raina’s eyes sparked.
“You have a thought?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
Cam chuckled. “Care to enlighten us?”
“I’ll get back to you. You’re right. Throwing accusations won’t get us anywhere, and I’d rather come to you with a complete theory than random musings.”
Everett sighed and nodded. “We appreciate this, Raina. Cam put some measures in place to curb the bad press. Free replacements for anything broken. A statement saying we’re investigating a possible production error. Making sure it doesn’t spiral too badly before we can get to the bottom of it.”
“Sounds good. I’ll start looking at it tomorrow. Try not to let this distract you too much from your vacation. All of you deserve it.”
“We’ll try,” I said.
She winked. “Enjoy your Omega. Now I’m going to bed so I can enjoy mine.”
There was no goodbye before the call ended. Cameron laughed. “Bye, then.”
It was early morning here, but it was late night back home. I didn’t blame her. Our Omega still slept in the giant bed, tangled up in the sheets. In a few minutes, we would wake her for the massages we had scheduled at the hotel spa.
But first, “Ocean had a bad dream last night. You didn’t wake up, but I did.”
“Is she all right?”
I nodded. “She went to sleep right away, but when I asked her what the dream was, she said ‘you weren’t there.’ She was already fading, so I don’t know if she’ll remember saying that, but I wanted you to know.”
The same thoughts I’d had crossed their faces. We would never be glad about her being afraid, but we were infinitely glad that something had shifted.
“I’m not sure I can wait for her to go into heat,” Rett said. “I nearly told her yesterday.”
“Let’s wait until after the trip, and figure out what the hell is going on with this.” I gestured to the tablet. “Because once we do tell her, and she knows, we won’t want to come up for air.”
“Damn right.” Cameron smirked. “I promised her we’d use every toy in the trunk. I suppose I can share that with you two.”
“Generous, thanks.” I laughed.
Everett tapped his phone and looked at the time. “Our appointments are soon.”
I glanced down at the little sketch I’d made and smiled as I set it aside. “Then let’s go wake up our wife.”