Chapter Twenty — Trinity #2
By the time I was fully ready, they were all in the kitchen. Logan cooked something at the stove that smelled savory and delicious. Theo typed on his laptop. Bastian had some kind of workout shake, and he winked at me.
Hopefully at some point I would stop perfuming every time they looked at me, but today wasn’t that day.
Brooks looked up from his phone and grinned. “Morning.”
“Good morning.”
He caught me around the waist as I reached for a piece of fruit from the basket on the counter. “Did you have fun last night?”
“I slept last night. But I did have some fun this morning.”
“Did you take another shower?”
The air in the kitchen stilled, the rest of the Alphas in the room were suddenly listening. “No, I didn’t.”
It hadn’t seemed necessary to do a whole extra shower. I cleaned myself up instead.
Brooks reached down and gripped my thigh beneath the skirt I wore and slid it up until he touched my underwear. “If I slide my fingers under these will you still be messy?”
Shaking my head, I smirked. “As hot as that might be, I’m diabetic.
This isn’t sexy, I’m sorry. I get yeast infections more than the average woman, and I hate them.
Not about to risk one when we’re just starting this.
Believe me, I have no desire to be out of commission with one. They’re the worst.”
He teased the edge of my underwear with a grin. “Good to know. And as much as I’d like to show you what it would be like to be bent over the counter and taken, I know you have to go to work.”
“You don’t?”
“I do. But my work is here or in the downstairs gym with this one,” he nodded to Bastian. “Occasionally an off-location gym if he needs a different sparring partner or equipment we don’t have.”
“Lucky.”
Logan turned off the stove and came over to steal me from Brooks for kisses. “You’ll have to let us know what kind of foods you need, and we’ll make sure to have them.”
I leaned into his embrace. “That’s okay. I can eat anything. And I can buy my own groceries.”
Chuckling, Logan backed me into a corner between the countertops. “Trinity, you’re ours.”
“Yeah…?”
“You’re ours,” he murmured against my lips.
“You live here now. I know we haven’t gotten all your things yet, and I know this is new, but you are ours.
Even if you can’t feel it yet. At some point, we’ll need to know what kinds of foods you like, the ones that are good and bad for your condition, and the way you monitor it. ”
“That… is another fair point.”
Slowly, he kissed me one more time. Teasing my mouth open with lips and tongue until I wasn’t thinking about anything but him. “What were you saying?”
“I know it’s a lot, considering we’ve been together a day, but we’re already planning on forever.”
My heart skipped a beat. That’s what this was, right?
Forever? And I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
I wished I felt the match the way they did so I could understand the depth of it.
If everything worked out, this was for the rest of our lives.
I believed them, but it was hard to understand when I couldn’t feel it yet.
“So stop acting like the things you need are a burden.”
Oh. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I’m just… I’ve been on my own a long time. It’s what I’m used to. It will take some time.”
“We don’t care how long it takes. Now get to work so you can come back and we can play.”
I laughed and pushed him away, finally retrieving the banana I’d been aiming for. “I’ll probably leave a bit earlier today, anyway. I need to go to that warehouse park on the east side.”
Theo looked up from his computer. “Why?”
My instinct was to brush it off because it was fine, and I needed to be careful around this story. But we were also doing complete honesty.
“I’m working on a story that’s kind of intense.
A source gave me a flash drive that’s encrypted, and I tried to crack it, but I’m not a hacker.
Ocean’s Alphas have a hacker who works with them.
He just moved here from Albion, and his office is over there.
I’m going to go see if he can undo the encryption. ”
“What’s the address?”
“Why?”
Standing, Theo rounded the island and stood in front of me. “Because you’re my Omega, and even though I believe you are fully capable, I’d rather you not go to a warehouse park to meet a complete stranger alone. Let me go make sure he’s not a creep first.”
“I don’t think the DuPont Pack would work with someone who was a creep.”
“Probably not,” Logan said, “but Theo isn’t wrong. I don’t like the idea of you over there by yourself.”
Theo stared hard at me for a second. “Does this have anything to do with the theory you don’t want to say out loud yet?”
My eyes went wide, and I swallowed. “Yes.”
A long, slow breath. “You think this story might have something to do with your apartment being trashed?”
The kitchen went silent and still again.
“I have no proof of that, so I honestly don’t think so. The timing is too coincidental and too fast. But I can’t rule it out right now.”
“Address.”
The refusal was on the tip of my tongue, but I held it back. These were my Alphas. My scent matches. If Isolde or Ocean’s packs found out they were going to do something like this alone, they would absolutely insist on finding out more first. This was instinct and concern. Not control.
I pulled up the email from Aiden on my phone and texted the address to Theo. “Even if he’s a creep, I still need him,” I said. “I need the flash drive unlocked.”
“I can take it for you.”
“That I can’t do,” I said. “Because of what might be on it, I can’t have anyone doing anything to it without me there.
Kind of like a chain of evidence.” I held out a hand, “and I’m not talking about you.
I trust you. But, like you said, we don’t know the hacker.
I want to be in the room while he’s working on it. ”
Theo made a face. “That’s fair. I don’t like it, but I understand it.”
“Thank you. In that case, I’ll come straight home. And I still might leave early.”
“Please do.” Theo kissed me, and I was pretty sure I was going to die from the overwhelm of all of them. I didn’t know how my friends did this. And I wasn’t even bonded to them.
Holy shit, Ocean and Isolde didn’t know yet.
“Can I tell my friends? About the scent match?”
“Absolutely. I’d tell everyone I know if we weren’t keeping it quiet from Mama Hart for a while,” Brooks said.
“Okay.” If I didn’t leave now, I was never going to.
“Have a good day.”
Bastian caught me at the door. “Trinity.”
“Yeah.”
“Is that flash drive safe?”
I nodded. It was currently in my bag, inside a small, notepad-sized box that was practically indestructible and only opened using my fingerprint. I used it for my notes when I was actively tracking something down like this. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Be safe.”
“I will.”
He kept watching until the elevator doors closed between us.