Chapter 30 Elias #2
“He sent them packing, but we hadn’t gotten to the part about why they wanted him.”
“How did they know where he was, though?” Isaac asks.
“Magic use has a signature if you can see it, and if they were just errand boys, someone definitely could.” Connall sighs. He hesitates before continuing. “Yesterday, when he and Quinn were fucking…he glowed. Even I could see it.”
“Fuck, I forgot about that. He didn’t do that when we were sending Vincenzo’s shitheads packing, but maybe he had more control over it then.”
“So why did he run? Does he think they’re coming here?” Isaac asks. “Why wouldn’t he warn us?”
Connall and Soren’s eyes go wide as if they hadn’t considered that at all. Leave it to Isaac’s mega brain to be ten steps ahead.
“Well, shit. I don’t think he knows when he does that glow-thing. No, I think he left so he could steer them away from us. Something about what he said made me think he’s on the run for real and that collateral damage is a worst-case scenario.”
That jibes with what Elias knows about Kaian’s personality already, although how he’s maintained that innocence on the run is a miracle.
“We can’t stay here, then. If they’re coming for Kaian and the Vincenzos fucked it up before, they won’t send the second string this time,” Elias says.
“Izzy, get your pants on and find me some shoes. I’m going to throw food in a bag. ”
“No, sorry, Eli, but no time for provisions. I am grateful, but we have to go. If they know where we are, then they have a few hours on us. Hopefully, pinpointing the house isn’t an exact science. Where are my fucking shoes?”
Connall disappears out the side door while Isaac finds them workout shorts with drawstrings and T-shirts from the chest of drawers in the primary suite.
Elias spends the time throwing all the fruit they have cut up already in containers into a grocery bag despite his alpha’s order.
He won’t have Isaac burning through his meds because he doesn’t have food in his stomach.
And he’s sure he heard Soren’s growling while he paces by the door.
“Hey, catch.” Elias throws him a banana. “Eat it. You’re ramping Izzy up, and hunger doesn’t help.”
His hunger really isn’t making Isaac worse, but the alpha peels the fruit and shoves the whole thing in one bite at Elias’s request.
“Impressive,” Elias smirks.
“I’ll show you impressive—” Soren growls, cheeks pink. “But later. Thanks, by the way. I haven’t really been focused on food and…”
“You were starving. I know,” Elias says. “Everything’s going to be okay.” He means it to come out as a statement, but there’s an uptick at the end that reveals his doubt.
“I’ll make sure of it.”
They roll out the front door and down the drive. Connall is scanning the street like he expects the magic retrieval team to jump out of the bushes.
The white truck is right where Soren says he left, miraculously untowed but with a parking ticket on the hood. Connall tucks it into the pocket of his scrubs like he’s going to make time later to actually pay the damn thing.
“Uh…how are we doing this?” “Uh…how are we doing this?” Soren asks, because there is a single bench seat in the old truck and four of them.
Isaac has the truck door open before anyone can do anything else. “Alpha can drive, I’ll squish in the middle, and you can ride on Soren’s lap, Eli. Ta-da.” It makes more sense, given that Isaac’s skinny butt would fit better between them than Elias’s broader hips.
It’s still a tight fit, and Soren has to lift Elias up and onto his lap so he can rest his legs over Isaac’s lap and his feet in Connall’s.
Connall does a U-turn before heading out the same way they’d seen Quinn go twenty minutes ago. His long fingers trace absent circles over Elias’s bare ankle. He can feel Isaac’s firm thigh under the back of his legs, but it’s Soren’s hard dick under his ass that has his attention.
Soren’s lips tickle the edge of Elias’s ear, and he shivers. Warm breath fans his cheek and jaw. “Comfy?”
Hard is what he is, and aching places that he’s just learned prefer to be filled every hour of every day.
“I could pull your shorts down, and we could do the whole ride back to the city with my cock in here and my teeth in your neck, little mouse. Would you like that?” He’s slipped a long-fingered hand under Elias’s ass to press between his cheeks.
Elias is still wet from last night, and he clenches hard at the memory of being taken by Soren and Connall and then Soren again, over and over.
“Soren. Fuck. Enough,” Connall grits out. He’s not five hours off his rut, and this cannot be helping him keep the truck on the road and not in the ditch. He cracks a window to sweep the scent of their arousal out into the night.
Elias can’t help shifting his hips to feel Soren’s hardness rub up against his hole through the workout shorts. His common sense seems to be burning away. “Later?” Elias whispers. “Because that sounds so good. Every bump, and you would be so deep…”
“Soon,” Soren adds with a chuckle, pressing a soft kiss to his wet mouth.
They’re on the road ten minutes before Isaac slips his head onto Connall’s shoulder and his hand into Soren’s. “Where would they go? You said Quinn had a place near Slice of Life?”
“Fuck. I forgot. I think they burned his place to the ground. Probably just pissed off or making a point.”
“We’ll drive by. Maybe he went there to see if any of his stuff—” Isaac sniffs.
Isaac loves the life he and Elias have made in their little apartment. Every surface covered in things that make a home, from craft supplies to their guinea pigs— “Shit! Izzy. What about HyunnieBinnie?”
“Oh no! I forgot my babies!” The guinea pigs had food and water for three or four days max, but they’d need feeding today.
Elias’s phone is dead in his pocket, although he was sure he’d left it in his bag when Gideon had driven him to the hospital. “My phone doesn’t have a charge, Iz. Maybe we can—”
“Can you text Gideon to go pick up the keys to your place at Quest? I don’t think I should take you back there until we know what we’re dealing with. Use my phone. It’s in my pocket.”
Isaac takes way too long digging out Connall’s phone from his loose scrubs pocket, and by the time he’s done, Connall is visibly sweating, and Isaac is grinning like the cat that got the cream.
After Connall unlocks it, Isaac finds Gideon’s number.
He texts back and forth so long that Elias has to look for himself, because in the entire time Elias has known his old boss, Gideon has never been what you call verbose.
There are at least twenty texts between him and Luca, who must have stolen Gideon’s phone right out of his hand.
They’re on the outskirts of the city when he finally lowers the phone.
“Luc is so nice. He’ll go to our place and take HyunniBinnie home with them. He’s excited about it, even if Gideon is not.” He giggles, and Elias can’t help but smile, too. The stoic alpha was a proud cat person, but avoided other animals, rodents especially.
“Gideon will survive. Now, where is this bakery?”
When they drive slowly past the building where Quinn’s apartment had been, the upper floor is a black hole. There wouldn’t be anything left of Quinn’s stuff.
“Maybe we could stop…see if we can find anything? I don’t—I hate to think he’s up there in a pile of burned stuff, alone…”
“He’s not up there, baby. He wouldn’t stick around if there’s nothin’ left,” Soren murmurs, his eyes far away as if he’s recalling the moments he spent there with Quinn. “He’s not sentimental like that.”
Elias wanted to disagree. He’d watched Quinn press the grocery receipt from their delivery yesterday flat and tuck it into his bag.
“If they’re not here, where would they go?” Isaac asks.
“Fuck if I know,” Connall says, voice rough. He slams his palm against the steering wheel. “If he had nowhere to go, what would he do? Should we hit the bus depot?”
“Shit.” Soren’s jaw works like he’s chewing glass. “He’s been talking about heading back to NYC or New Orleans, where he’s got family.” He says it like he hates the memory of every time Quinn brought it up.
Isaac whimpers and sets his teeth into Connall’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut. Elias’s belly swoops too. It’s easy to hold down the nausea of the rejected bonds when he’s not actively thinking about them leaving.
“But he was saving for a flight,” Soren adds, the words coming out clipped. “He’d need the extra cash, and today was payday.”
The clock on the dashboard says it’s after three AM. Connall glances at it, then back at the road. “He’d have to wait until later today, then, to see his boss?”
“Nah.” Soren’s laugh is sharp and humorless. “The Wicked Witch will be there for at least another hour yet.”
“He dances, right?” Connall asks, too controlled. “Where?”
Elias knows before Soren says it that no one is going to be happy about what happens next.
Soren swallows once, then says it anyway. “The Glory Hole.”