34. Seraphina
34
SERAPHINA
A knock at the door to the suite roused us from our sleepy little pile too early the next morning. Blaze, naked and rumpled, staggered off to scare away whoever it was, and he returned to the bedroom holding a package and a small duffle bag.
“This one’s for you, querida,” he said, tossing me the duffle. He opened the small brown box and peered inside. “And it appears our parents have decided we’re now allowed to have our phones back.” He tossed the opened box onto the bed near Loki’s feet.
“Oh, how fucking nice of them,” Loki muttered into his pillow.
I sat up and unzipped the duffle. Inside was a pair of yoga pants, two old Palisades Prep T-shirts, socks, a sports bra, underwear, and a pair of running shoes I kept in my room at home. My phone had been placed neatly on top of the pile. “I got a change of clothes and my phone back, as well,” I announced. “Jere probably sent this.”
“Look at us,” Hawk said, rolling in the nest to lay his head on my thigh. I ran my fingers absently through his curls. “Back in our parents’ good graces.”
“Feels weird,” Blaze added.
“It does,” I said. “I don’t think I like it?”
“Don’t worry, Lamb.” Loki crawled over Hawk to wedge himself between my legs, and he gently pressed me back into the pillows. He began nosing at his healing bite mark at the base of my throat before running his tongue along the crescent-shaped scars. “I’m sure our parents, for all their overly controlling machinations to force us together, will still be appalled that we bonded our omega before the ink had even dried on the courtship agreement.”
I sighed happily, now playing with the long blond strands of Loki’s hair with the hand that wasn’t buried in Hawk’s curls. “You’re right. Even my sister cared enough about decorum to wait to bond with her pack until she graduated from the OFS and my mother threw their bonding ceremony. And they’d been courting since high school.” I released a delighted laugh. “Mom is going to have an aneurysm.”
Blaze’s smile for me was both sleepy and sexy as he crawled back into the nest and plastered himself to my open side. “Indeed,” he said, “our mothers are going to have a time of it, as well, explaining this breach of protocol to the ladies at the country club.”
“Serves them right,” I muttered. “All of them.”
Loki grunted in agreement, and then he asked, “How are you feeling, doll? Last night was… a lot.”
The hint of nervousness spiked through our bond. I petted his hair in soothing strokes, and he relaxed against me. “I feel amazing, Loki. I’m so content and so happy that it almost pisses me off. I’m pissed that my mother and my sister were right every time they assured me that bonding with my pack would be beautiful and magical, and I never believed them.”
Was asking for a very permanent bond from the guys last night an extreme case of jumping the gun, even for me? From a logical standpoint, probably, but I couldn’t find a single niggle of doubt within me. Not a single regret, worry, or negative emotion.
And other than Loki’s nerves regarding whether I might be having second thoughts the morning after, I felt the same assuredness from the guys in our bond.
Our bond .
I was bonded.
And I knew, without a doubt, that there were no more perfect men for me in the world than Gabriel Montgomery, Alexander Cruz, and Jasper Dallas—the black sheep of North Texas high society.
Our pieces fit.
There had been Alphas for me out there after all. I’d just had to go into a seedy biker bar to find them.
“We understand why you felt that way, Little Flame,” Hawk said. “We were pretty guilty of those thoughts, as well. You think something isn’t for you until you meet the person who flips all your preconceived notions on their head.”
“Or blows the head off your mark from the roof of a motel,” Loki added wryly.
We laughed until it faded into silence, all of us content to bask in the newly bonded glow. Here, in my makeshift nest behind the locked door of the hotel suite, it was just us. No parents, no investigation, no confronting the real-world consequences of our actions.
However….
“Maybe we should talk about where we’re going to, um, live?” I said after a few minutes had passed. “I really would like to finish my degree, as useless as it is, so I’ll have to be at school during the week, but… where will you guys go when the case is closed?”
Terror froze my insides. What if they went back home?
“Shh, querida, no,” Blaze said, pressing his lips to my hair. “We’re not going anywhere. We actually, uh, started house hunting. Before we got shut up in here, anyway.”
“We were feeling optimistic, Lamb,” Loki added. “We even have a realtor. He’s trying to sell us on a very large, very expensive condo in Sun City Tower, but I find it irritating that your brothers already have the penthouse.”
Hawk snorted. “Careful, Gabriel. Your rich boy is showing.”
I gasped excitedly. “I would love to live there. My parents are so annoyed with Austin’s pack for living downtown and not buying a mansion next door to them in the Palisades. They can be annoyed with us too. But wait….” I shifted from under them, moving to sit up. They grumbled, but they released me, naked abs flexing deliciously as they sat up and half-hard cocks just… there. This had maybe backfired on me? I shook it off. “Will you continue to work for Sentinel if you live here? I mean, I can put in a word with the bosses at Bryce Solutions for you, but those guys can be real assholes.”
Loki laughed. “We haven’t really discussed it, but we suspect our parents are interested in opening a small satellite office for Sentinel down here. They’d have to have considered the options when they decided to marry us off to an omega who’s entrenched in the South Texas elite.”
I scowled. “I’m sure they thought I’d just pick up my life and move with you guys into a giant house down the street from one of your parents’ packs, barefoot and pregnant. They all think that way.”
Hawk shrugged and wrapped a possessive hand around my ankle. “We like it here, Sera. We’re not leaving.”
Loki pinned me with his crystalline gaze. “And we are very okay with putting off the pregnant thing until we’ve had many, many adventures together, Lamb. There are a lot of bad guys out there who deserve to meet one of your bullets. We’ve discussed this, and we want to make sure you know that we appreciate that you’ve been so resourceful in taking control over your body, despite the fact that the law doesn’t allow you to have an IUD.”
Be still my about-to-grow-wings-and-fly-away heart.
I sniffed, blinking back a shock of tears. “Thank you. Sometimes I can’t believe you guys are real.”
Hawk pulled me into his lap and ignored the jealous growls from the others. “We are very real, and we love you. Let’s celebrate our bond one more time before we face the world outside, yeah?”
I squealed as he tossed me into the middle of the bed. He peeled my thighs apart and buried his face in my pussy. His wicked tongue sent my brain blinking offline within seconds. Loki and Blaze pounced next, Loki busying himself with my boobs while Blaze took my lips in a searing, possessive kiss. It took no time at all before I was shaking and shouting my release for the entire hotel to hear.
We didn’t leave the nest for hours after that.
Sometime later, after we were all showered, dressed, and fed, I finally powered on my phone. Two voicemails awaited me, and I had to rack my sex-addled brain to figure out who I could possibly be in trouble with now.
Paige: Oh, hello there. Don’t mind me, it’s just your best friend—the one who’s spent all night worrying about you. Yes, I am aware you probably do not have your phone back yet, but that’s no excuse. You should have used those sneaky little fingers to pickpocket some unsuspecting person, steal their phone, and CALL YOUR BEST FRIEND to tell her that your courting Alphas are the Alphas you FELL IN LOVE WITH ALREADY, OH MY GOD SERAPHINA! I had to hear all of this from Isabella, who clearly still thinks there’s some kind of trickery afoot because this is indeed pretty unbelievable. I swear to God, if you don’t call me the second you get your phone back, we are FINISHED as friends, and you will have to find someone else to make sure you do your homework.
Right. But in my defense, I’d been too busy weeping all over the floor of Bryce Manor to be able to pick anybody’s pocket.
Henri: ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? I show up fashionably late to your choosing gala because I was tasked with getting all the vendors packed up and paid out, and also I didn’t want to be in the blast zone for whatever nonsense you had up your sleeve this time, and THEN I’m told you were whisked away by the Montgomery Pack because you know them and have already fallen deeply in love with them? What in the seven hells is going on, Seraphina? This is my fault for not asking you more questions. Like, obviously I knew the Montgomery Pack was connected to Sentinel, and I knew you were assisting some Alphas you irresponsibly banged over the summer with an investigation, but, I mean… I could not FATHOM that the sons of the wealthiest packs in the entire state would be hanging out amongst a bunch of biker criminals for months on end! How could these be the same men? Honestly, I’m just pissed I didn’t get to be in on keeping such a delicious secret from you with Jericho. What are you doing now? Taking all the knots, I’m sure. Goddamn it, Seraphina. Call me back.
Well, he could just take some time to cool off. It’s not like I knew any of this shit and had kept it from him on purpose.
Blaze had managed to put some sweatpants on and was spread out on the couch, scrolling on his phone. Loki and Hawk had, regrettably, put T-shirts on along with their sweatpants and had set up their company laptops at the suite’s little dining table. They’d just gotten their unsupervised access back to the Sentinel network and were checking emails.
I’d managed to put on my oversized Palisades Prep T-shirt and a clean pair of panties after my shower earlier, but nothing else. I was curled up in an armchair, but after I’d cleared out all my emails, voicemails, and social media notifications, I caved to the omega urge to crawl into the space between Blaze’s legs and put my head on his bare chest.
“Hey, Princesa,” he said. He snuggled me close and began to play with my hair. “Any news?”
“Just that Paige and Henri are mad that they were left out of all the revelations that were had last night.”
“I see. Henri is the high-strung little twink that works for your dads, right?”
I snorted. “And he’s my best buddy. We’ve gotten close since he was also made to support my projects with Jere on the down-low.”
“Poor guy.”
“Yeah.”
Blaze swore as his phone vibrated obnoxiously in his hand. The sounds of buzzing against the tabletop nearby meant that Loki and Hawk had received the same alert.
“Oh!” I said, realizing that my phone had buzzed too. I grabbed it from the floor next to us. An unknown number was demanding my presence at a meeting at “Sentinel Local Command 1” in half an hour. “Look, Blaze! I’m official now.”
“You sure are, baby. Let’s hope you don’t lose this enthusiasm later. My dad can be a micromanaging asshole.”
“Indeed,” Loki added. “We’re being summoned downstairs for a full briefing. We can get you caught up on everything that we’ve figured out since the situation at the lake, Lamb.”
I rolled off a grumbling Blaze and jumped to my feet. “I’m ready. Well, after I find some pants.”
They all muttered protests at that even as pride and excitement swelled in our bond.
We were truly a team, and it was time to make sure everyone knew it.