Whiskey
Mikhail.
I've been chewing on that name like a piece of gristle since the conference.
Because the whole time I've known him, he's been letting us call him Wraith like that was an upgrade and not him dehumanizing himself.
"Your name is fuckin' Mikhail," I say out loud, because I can't help it.
Wraith—MIKHAIL—is sprawled across the couch with his head in Ivy's lap, his eyes closed, the scarf Plague gave him pulled up to just beneath his eyes. He doesn't move, but his middle finger rises with the slow grace of a drawbridge.
"Mikhail Belmont," I continue, because I have a death wish apparently. "Mikhail fucking Belmont. Bro. Bro, that sounds sick. And I didn't know you were Russian. Like, I know you're not blood brothers, but I thought you were boring all-American Wonderbread like Thane. Uhh. No offense, Captain."
Thane stares at me. "Aren't you?"
"Nah, bro. I'm an Italian stallion," I say to him.
He frowns.
I look back toward the kitchen. "Hey. Valek," I call to the platinum-haired alpha filling his thermos at the sink. "Valek. VAL."
"What?" he asks finally, glancing back at me over his shoulder.
"You and Wraith could be bros too."
"I never told you where I was born," Valek says, rolling the ice around in his thermos and taking a long swig from it.
I narrow my eyes at him.
Not because I give a shit.
Because I know he's fucking with me for sport.
"brO."
His lips curve at me. "What?"
But for once, he doesn’t sound like a total dick.
Fuck. I kind of like the guy for some reason. Even aside from him apparently being part of the fucking pack now, which I'm still reeling from. Then again, since my reality's been completely turned upside-down on its head, why the fuck not add in a little extra chaos?
He screws the lid back onto his thermos and walks past me without another word, brushing close enough that he pushes me aside a few inches.
Never mind.
Dickhead.
I scratch my chest and flop onto the couch next to Plague.
Thane walks into the hallway with his phone pressed to his ear, one finger up to signal he needs quiet. He's already changed out of his press-conference clothes into sweats and a T-shirt, and his shaggy hair is damp from rinsing his face. The dark circles under his eyes have gotten intense.
He mouths Eliza at us.
I salute him.
He goes back to his call.
The silence that settles after feels like we pulled all our organs out, laid them on a table for the world to look at, and sewed ourselves back up without checking if everything got put back the right way.
I pull out my phone so I have something to do with my hands. Open a fan thread. Close it. Open the food delivery app. Scroll through options I don't actually see. My stomach is making demands, but my brain hasn't caught up yet.
"We need food," I announce to the room. "No one's really eaten since breakfast. We're gonna starve to death. And then what's Eliza gonna think?"
Nobody responds to my food declaration.
Rude.
Ivy's fingers are moving through Wraith's hair in those slow, repetitive passes that seem to put him into some kind of trance state. His breathing has gone deep and even, but I don't think he's actually asleep. The eye that doesn't fully close all the way is watching me.
Normally, I'd be a little menaced by it. But it's starting to sink in lately that his ferality is only ever aimed at people who deserve it.
Or provoke the shit out of him.
To be fair, I've, uh. Done some provoking.
"I'm ordering Thai," I announce, louder this time.
Plague makes a soft humming sound. "Green curry, please. No shrimp."
"Fuck, I got a please from you?"
He raises an eyebrow at me. "You might even get a thank you if you play your cards right and stop being a jackass."
I flash him a grin. "What kind of thank you?"
Plague rolls his eyes.
Ivy smiles, bright and happy, like our weird fucking bonding is the best thing ever to her. "Pad thai with extra peanuts for me? And spring rolls?"
"Done, wildcat. Thane! THAAAAAAANE."
"I can hear you," Thane sighs from the hallway, still on his phone. I hear the sound of the mute button engaging. I'm very used to that sound. "Drunken noodles. Extra spicy."
"Valek?"
Valek is settled in the armchair by the window with his thermos and a book. This one's dark with no visible title. He doesn't look up.
"Tom kha gai," he says. "And sticky rice."
"You don't want a pad see ew or something? That soup's gonna take like thirty minutes—"
"Tom kha gai. Sticky rice."
"Okay, Princess Thermos. Tom kha gai it is."
His silver eyes lift from the page long enough to give me a look that suggests he's going to skin me alive later, then return to his book.
I add Wraith's order without asking. He always gets the same thing. Vegetable fried rice, extra tofu, and a mango smoothie. I know this because I've ordered for him enough times, and because I'm not as fucking oblivious as everyone seems to think.
Also spring rolls. Wraith loves spring rolls. And if Ivy does, too, they're gonna have so many spring rolls they're not gonna know what to do with 'em.
I add a few other things and hit submit and settle back in the chair, phone balanced on my chest as I stretch all four limbs out with a loud yawn that has Thane cursing me out from the hall.
Hope to fuck he remembered to mute his phone.
I catch Plague eyeing me again and flash him my biggest grin yet, stretching out a little more so my shirt rides up on my stomach. I swear his ears turn red through his dark hair as he forces his eyes back to his phone.
My favorite part is that he shifts a little closer.
Every time we sit on the same piece of furniture, he migrates toward me inch by inch like some kind of pissed-off resentful glacier. Like it's my fault he wants to occupy the same space.
But sure. Displaced arousal.
Whatever you say, Doc.
When the food arrives, Valek gets the door because he's closest and because I think he likes scaring the shit out of delivery drivers with his whole silver-eyed murder prince aesthetic. The poor kid on the porch nearly drops the bags.
I set everything up on the coffee table because the kitchen table still feels like a war room and nobody wants to eat where we spent the morning planning tonight's PR bloodbath.
Which seemed to go okay, all things considered.
The pack settles around the coffee table like a pack of wolves around a kill, which isn't that far off given the speed at which Plague's green curry disappears despite him being prim and proper all the time.
I commandeer the floor beside the couch, using it as a backrest, because the armchair is too far from the action and I need to be in the middle of things or I'll lose my mind.
I shove a forkful of noodles into my mouth.
"Вы действительно говорите по-русски?"
My head snaps up at the sound of Valek's voice.
Valek is looking at Plague, and Plague's chopsticks are frozen mid-air.
His light eyes lift to meet Valek's with a flicker of surprise, quickly smothered, replaced by the same blankness he wears like a second mask.
"Да," Plague says.
"Очень интересно."
Plague's eyebrow arches. "Не так уж интересно. Я говорю на четырёх языках."
Valek's mouth curves again, but this isn't his usual freaky grin. This is softer, almost amused, and he leans forward in his armchair with his elbows on his knees, the thermos dangling loosely from one hand. "Четыре? Какие ещё?"
"Арабский, французский и английский, очевидно."
"Впечатляет."
I'm watching this like a tennis match except I can't see the fucking ball.
They're having an entire conversation.
And Plague—my Plague, the Plague who bitches at me for mispronouncing bruschetta and once spent fifteen minutes Plaguesplaining at me why irregardless isn't a word—is sitting there chatting away in a whole-ass other language with the silver-eyed wolf across the table like they're at a goddamn dinner party.
And Valek is leaning in.
"Мне нравится ваш акцент," Valek says, and I don't know what the fuck it means but I know the tone. It's the kind of tone you use when you're testing how close you can get before the other person pulls back.
Plague doesn't pull back.
"Спасибо," he replies smoothly. "Я учил в университете. Я хотел читать поэзию в оригинале."
They keep going. Back and forth. Valek says something that makes Plague's chopsticks pause again. Plague responds with something clipped that makes Valek laugh. Still kind of a harsh bark because, hey, it's Valek, he's a psycho, but it's genuine.
Plague's ears are pink.
And I'm sitting here with my pad see ew getting cold, understanding nothing, watching two multilingual alphas have what is clearly a private conversation in a shared language that I don't speak and will never speak because I barely passed high school Spanish.
My jaw tightens.
It's not jealousy.
It's not.
It's just… I don't like not knowing what they're saying. That's all. It's a security thing. A tactical thing. Yeah. We're a pack. It's totally tactical and nothing else.
"I don't like not knowing what y'all are saying," I announce to the room.
Valek doesn't even look at me. "Then learn Russian."
"I barely know English, bro. Ask Plague. If I was gonna learn another language, it'd be Arabic."
Valek arches the smuggest eyebrow I've ever seen. "Oh? And why is that?"
I glare at him.
He fuckin' knows why.
Plague's mouth twitches. I see it even from here, the slight pull at the corner of his lips before he schools his expression back to neutral. He picks up his curry again and takes a deliberate bite, not looking at me.
Valek says something that makes Plague's jaw clench and his chopsticks tighten in his grip.
But he doesn't tell Valek to stop.
And he doesn't translate for me.
The squeeze in my chest comes back.
Fuck this.
I pull up Google Translate on my phone, thumb flying. Hit the little microphone icon. Hold the phone out toward the coffee table without bothering to hide it because they're sure as shit not hiding anything.
Valek's silver eyes flick to my phone. Then back to Plague. He doesn't stop talking. If anything, his mouth curves a little more.
Plague says something clipped back to Valek, and I stare at my screen waiting for the magic to happen.
The words appear one by one.
"Don't tease him. He's sensitive."
I squint at it.
That can't be right.
I'm a lot of shit, but I ain't sensitive.
Scam fucking app.
"Nice, university. Very nice."
"What the fuck," I mutter.
"Problem?" Valek asks me in English.
Plague makes a sound that might be a laugh if it weren't being aggressively suppressed. He covers it with a sip of water. His ears are so red now they're almost glowing.
Valek asks Plague something my phone doesn't catch at all and Plague replies without looking up from his food.
I stare at my phone, which now says "I studied at the sandwich," and I want to throw it into the ocean.
I look across the room at Wraith, who's still cuddling with Ivy, the lucky bastard, while she munches a spring roll. She hasn't eaten anything else, and neither has he. His blue eyes flick between Valek and Plague like he's following the conversation without any trouble at all.
"You understand what they're saying?" I ask him.
Wraith's eyes flick to me and he nods.
I throw my head back against the couch cushion and let out a groan that comes from somewhere around my kidneys. Long, loud, and straight to the gods.
Ivy giggles.
Okay. I feel a little better now. Amazing how everything our omega does is fuckin' medicinal, even for a bad mood. No wonder Wraith's practically in a meditative state.
Valek says something else to Plague. This one is longer, more deliberate, and I watch Plague's reaction like a hawk because it's the only way I can parse what's being communicated.
Plague's pale eyes narrow. His jaw works once. Then his chin lifts and he fires back something sharp that makes Valek's silver eyes widen a fraction before that wolfish grin slides into place.
"Хорошо," Valek murmurs, inclining his head. Tone-wise, it kind of sounds like the equivalent of "touché."
Plague turns back to his curry without acknowledging the concession, but the pink in his ears has spread to the back of his neck.
The fuck are they doing?
Gods know they played some serious motherfucking chess on the motherfucking plane. Now they're doing the same shit with words.
I shove a spring roll in my mouth whole.
It's too big. I realize it's too big while I'm doing it.
But I commit to it anyway because the alternative is saying something I'll regret, like hey Plague remember when I came in your mouth and you actually shut up for a minute or hey Valek how about you flirt with someone who doesn't already have a complicated thing going with someone else even though neither of us will fucking admit it.
Thane catches my eye from where he's settled across the coffee table and raises his water glass in a silent toast.
I choke down the spring roll and raise my beer in return.
Here's to not knowing a godsdamned thing.
Ivy stretches and rises to her feet, Wraith sliding off her lap with a low, groggy growl and faceplanting in the couch, before she starts stacking their containers together. The guy's so fucking wiped, it's like his bones aren't in his body anymore.
"We're going to head upstairs to eat," she says softly.
Wraith lifts his head and looks at her. Worry flickers behind the exhaustion in his blue eyes.
Ivy smiles sweetly at him and pets his head.
"Extra spring rolls in the bag," I tell them, because I don't know what else to say. "Like, a lot of extra. I may have gone overboard."
Ivy smiles at me now and gives me the damn butterflies again. "Thanks, Whiskey."
Wraith unfolds himself from the couch and gathers their remaining containers. He shadows her all the way to the door since we haven't unspackled the loft entrance yet, so close I'm surprised he doesn't trip over her.
Guess he still won't eat around us. And they have a lot to discuss, considering she knows Wraith's birth name now.
Mikhail.
Fucking hell, I'm never gonna get over that, am I?