The Office #2
“Here.” Adam pushes it toward his brother, then he picks up a receipt, reading my messy handwriting along the back. "Okay,” he says to himself as he grabs a sticky note.
He reads in silence for a moment, his dark blond hair falling slightly forward, his brow furrowed. His fingers trace a line of text, moving slowly across the flimsy paper.
"Your handwriting is really small," he says.
"I was trying to fit a lot in," I say.
"It's like reading something written by a very anxious ant.”
Perrin snorts.
"I can read it perfectly fine," I say.
"I'm sure you can," Adam says pleasantly. "You wrote it."
Raff's chest moves beneath me in a silent laugh, and I elbow him lightly in the ribs.
"Hey, Elle?" Perrin says, not looking up.
"Yeah?"
He turns the notebook around and holds it out toward me, his finger pressed to a paragraph near the bottom of a page dated about three weeks after my parents were killed.
I glance up, already knowing what it says.
There was a sound, I'd written. Rattling. Thin and metallic, like something small hitting the inside of something hollow.
I can practically hear the sound right now.
Tnk. Tnk. Tnk.
The weird rhythm of it, thin and irregular. Almost like a rattle.
Tnk. Tnk. Tnk.
“What was the rattling?” Perrin asks.
I shrug and Raff’s arms come around my middle. "I never figured it out. I wrote it down because I wrote everything down. But I could never connect it to anything."
"We'll figure it out," Raff says with a quiet certainty that I desperately want to believe.
Something warm moves through my bond a second later. Cliff sends me soft, sweet reassurance, the emotional equivalent of a hand pressed between my shoulder blades. My body responds to his comfort, the tension I've been carrying all afternoon loosening its grip one muscle at a time.
I pull in a deep breath as Raff pulls me a little closer, his thumb tracing a slow circle against my hip. I sink back into his big body. He's so solid and warm against my back, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that my own breathing starts to match without me deciding to.
The combined scent of my pack wraps around me like a blanket, and I suddenly realize how tired I am.
It’s obvious we aren't going to find anything today.
"Really?" Adam's head snaps up, glaring at Raff.
Raff goes completely still behind me, his hand freezing on my hip. "What?"
"Stop it," Adam says firmly.
Raff blinks. "I'm not doing anything."
"You absolutely are," Adam says, pointing at him. “And I don’t need to hear that.”
The room goes completely still.
Perrin looks up from the notebook. Cliff looks at Adam. I look up at Raff, who is looking at Adam with the expression of a man who has no idea what is happening.
"I didn't say anything," Raff says, his tone matching Adam's.
“Yes, you—”
Adam completely freezes, his big brown eyes staring directly at Raff’s face.
Moving slowly, Adam turns his head to look at Perrin. The omega’s expression shifts wildly, landing somewhere between horrified and absolutely delighted.
"Raff wants to plow you in your glasses," Adam says.
Perrin's head comes up so fast that his reading glasses nearly fly off his face.
"He's been thinking about it for the last ten minutes.
" Adam's voice lifts higher, caught between wild laughter and shock.
"He wants to fuck you so bad!" The omega is practically vibrating, his whole body leaning forward, his eyes bright and glassy with happy tears.
"I have never been so freaking happy and disgusted in my whole life! "
I laugh as my hands fly to my mouth.
Cliff tips his head back and laughs too. The kind that shakes his whole chest.
And Perrin, who has gone the color of a fire truck from his ears to his collar, ducks his head and smiles. His reading glasses sliding down his nose as his shoulders shake with a laugh he's trying very hard to keep quiet.
Then Adam looks up at Raff.
“Can you feel it, alpha?” Adam asks hopefully.
Raff goes quiet and I shift in his lap, so I can see his face properly.
The alpha’s hand moves slowly to his chest, pressing flat against his sternum.
"Holy shit," he whispers. "There you are."
Adam makes a sound that isn't quite a word.
He looks up, and the expression on his face is so open and so completely undone that I feel my own eyes start to sting.
This man who fills every room he walks into, who carries himself like nothing in the world could knock him sideways, is sitting on a living room floor looking at his omega like he was just gifted the most precious thing in the world.
I am so full of joy I can barely contain it inside my body.
"This feels unreal," Raff says, his voice rough at the edges.
I turn to Cliff, and our eyes meet.
His face is doing the same thing as mine: joyous and a little overwhelmed and so incredibly happy for the two of them that there aren't words for it. He leans toward me, his mouth opening like he's about to say something, and I tip toward him to hear it.
Then Raff stands up.
In one fluid motion, he reaches down, hooks his arm around my middle, and flings me over his shoulder.
I yelp, grabbing the back of his shirt, and before I've finished processing what's happening, he's crossing the room, grabbing Adam by the waist, and throwing the omega over his other shoulder like we weigh nothing.
"Raff!" Adam shouts, half laughing, half genuinely alarmed. "What are you—"
"Upstairs," Raff says, turning toward Cliff and Perrin. "Get your cocks upstairs right now!" He turns toward the stairs. "I need to fuck each and every one of you and I need to do it now!"
Dangling over Raff’s shoulder, I lift my head, catching the look on Cliff’s face.
The pack alpha smiles wide as he closes my notebook. Then he takes Perrin’s hand, and follows us up the stairs.