24. Benjamin
24
BENJAMIN
“ W hy did he get to go up with our mate?” Fluffy is not happy at all, and usually I’d be on his side, but I also feel a little slighted. Of course, I want to be the one getting the cuddles with my mate and pup. She likes us best, so we would just be giving her what she’s too shy to admit out loud.
But right now, I know that we’re needed downstairs so that we can dig into all of this shit with Ryan and start figuring the shit out that my brothers are incapable of doing. They’re smart...ish, but without me, they’re useless. I have the true skills of our family.
“Our brothers need us, and we need to protect our mate,” I tell Fluffy.
“We shouldn’t be punished because our brothers aren’t talented enough to do what we can.” He’s so smug as he says that, and I cough out a laugh.
“What are you and Fluffy arguing over?” Topher asks, passing me a beer as he comes back in from the kitchen.
“We’re not arguing.” I shove the beer back at him, and Topher chuckles but dutifully snaps the can open for me. “ However, Fluffy is upset that Seb is upstairs with Maia and Phoebe, and we’re stuck down here working.”
Topher nods, handing me the can once more. I take a sip, before putting it down on the coffee table, and start typing once more. Topher comes and sits on the sofa with me and levels me with a weird look.
I mean, to be fair, the look isn’t the weird thing. It’s his face.
“In a problematic way or a needy way?” Topher’s words are as caring as they can be, and I roll my eyes at the soppiness of it all.
“Topher really would be the den mother if he wasn’t an Alpha,” Fluffy says. “Do you think if we pretend we’re jealous of Seb, he’ll give us more time with our mate and pup?”
I smirk. “Doubt it. He’d probably make us spend more time with them , bonding and talking about our families.”
I turn my attention to Topher as I close out of the website I was on. “Needy. We’re not getting jealous over our brothers, Toph, don’t worry. We’ve all got our roles in her life, and I know mine.”
“Do you?” Fluffy asks, and I frown at the emotional tinge of his words.
“We’re not getting jealous, are we?” I demand.
“No. But I do wish I was upstairs with her. I do not want to kick Seb out of the bed.”
“Orion sometimes gets mad at you all,” Topher says. There’s a fond expression on his face as he thinks about his wolf, or our mate, or a combination of them both. I narrow my eyes as I take in the ease and contentment.
“He’s probably thinking about the way he masturbates with Orion,” Fluffy says dryly. “The big question is whose name Topher calls out. Maia’s or Orion’s.”
“I guarantee he’s done both.” I hide my laughter, and Fluffy’s amusement makes the situation even funnier.
My wolf is smart enough to give me some privacy while I tend to my needs. I do the same when we’re in wolf form, letting him have time to lick himself and hump some trees.
“I prefer bushes.”
I laugh, and Topher throws a glare my way. I forgot he was even talking, to be honest.
“It’s not because he’s jealous, Ben. It’s just because sometimes, well,” Topher rubs the back of his neck, pink tinging his cheeks. “He thinks you’re better than me at wooing her.”
“Wooing?” I ask with as straight a face as I can manage. Fluffy’s uncontrollable, his hysterics causing our bond to light up with glee.
Topher rolls his eyes and sips at his beer. “You know what I mean.”
“No, Toph, I don’t.” I plaster on the biggest confused expression I can and lean towards him, dropping my voice low. “What does this wooing business concern?”
“Oh, fuck off.” My brother chuckles as Alex comes back into the room with Ryan’s box of things. He puts it on the table before heading up the stairs. We never did hand it over to our parents, and I’ve scoured the things a couple of times over the last few weeks. There’s not much there, nothing that can really help me figure out what Ryan’s plans have been.
He was at uni, got good grades, had Maia and his perfect little life, all out of the spotlight. Alone as far as I could see. And yet, he’s been having secret meetings and working for private organisations.
I wish the bastard was one of the standard idiotic villains who wrote down their plan in monologue form, outlining all his backstory and his future, which would let us figure out exactly what he was doing. Alas, I’ve found barely fucking anything.
I’ve got the company—Fresh Fur Creations—under constant monitoring, and nobody can even buy stock in the company without me getting an alert. Sadly, I’ve not seen much of anything coming from them. At least, nothing that seems sketchy off the bat. It’s pissing me off.
I need more hours in the day, and I’d be unstoppable.
Ten dedicated purely to my mate. I can love her. Spend time with her. Maybe even convince her to let me do some... wooing .
Ten hours specifically to engage with Phoebe. I need her to understand I am the best of her dads. One is dead. One is too stern, one is too boring, and one is too... ugly, which leaves me. The best dad. The fun dad. The most handsome dad.
I’ll need five purely for eating and taking care of myself. This body does not create the beautiful sight that Maia adores without a little bit of effort.
“My effort,” Fluffy drawls. “More often than not, it’s me who is forced to go to the gym.”
“It works out your... aggression,” I counter, smirking.
“Soon enough, I’ll have a mate that will soothe away the aggression,” Fluffy says, excitement thrumming through him and me. “And then you can go to the gym yourself. I’ll be saving all of my strength for our darling mate.”
I snort.
“Something funny?” Topher asks with a frown.
I forgot he was there. Again . He’s just not stimulating enough when he’s in this kind of mood. Reflective, annoyed, drained... boring.
“Just Fluffy.” I turn back to my laptop and open up the website I was working on gaining access to.
I’ve been slowly compiling information from everyone at the company and cross-referencing their information with things we know about Ryan. It’s so far been a pretty dead end, but I’ve still got a few names to run.
I’ve not been digging into his death much, but now it’s important that I do figure out exactly what happened. For Maia’s sake, but for ours, too .
If my mother is found to have killed without a legal reason... our pack will be turned over to my brother’s and I.
We’ll be in a better position to protect Phoebe, and we’ll be able to provide Maia with a safe and large environment.
“Do you think there really was footage?” I murmur, my eyes raking across the screen.
“It would be hard for it not to exist,” Alex muses. He’s changed clothes and comes to sit on the armchair. “He lived in pretty public human areas, and there likely would have been security footage, even from a shop or some shit. Someone, somewhere, will have evidence of it.”
“Then I need to start digging properly,” I mutter. I zone out the debates Alex and Topher are having, and instead, get to work.
Every so often, Fluffy pipes up with something that helps, but for the most part, it’s just me, and my computer, and a whole fucking lot of nothing.
I groan, spotting that it’s nearly midnight, and stretch my arms, cracking my back. I need a minute.
Or ten.
“You okay?” Alex asks, peering over the laptop he’s working on to raise an eyebrow at me. I nod. “Good. I’ve managed to schedule a meeting with all three of the family lawyers for Maia, so hopefully, we’ll be able to move forward.”
“Good, good,” I say before groaning.
All at once, we’re hit with a pang of rage from Seb, and freeze. He’s upstairs with Maia and Phoebe, and yet, the anger raging through him is so intense it causes me to worry. What the fuck is going on?
“Go to mate! Find mate! Mate hurt! ” Fluffy roars, begging for me to move from the sofa. The weight of Seb’s anger is like a crushing weight, dragging me down. I’m struggling to push it away and remember it’s not mine.
Topher and Alex aren’t struggling like I am, and Topher lets out a growl, snarling at Alex who has jumped up to go and do something.
“Breathe,” Fluffy soothes, trying his best to soothe me through our bond.
The issue is that I’m too weak to fight off Seb’s connection, I’m drowning under his feelings, that I can’t acknowledge my own. I can’t function.
I’m so fucking pathetic.
“You are strong, and sensitive, and you are the empathy that this group sometimes lacks,” Fluffy says, pushing forward ever so slightly, offering me his strength. “Our mate is safe, Benjamin. Our pup is healthy. Neither Seb nor Kane would be able to contain themselves if that weren’t the case. He’s still upstairs. She is fine.”
“Don’t move,” Topher commands, and Alex freezes. Moments later, I can feel a connection open between the four of us, and weirdly enough, it helps ground me a little.
“What is it, Seb?” Topher asks, holding his hand up as I move to get up now, too. No matter how confident Topher is, I feel a huge pull, trying to take me to Maia.
I can barely feel her, but through the bond with Seb, I can feel his worry, his upset, and his anger . Something has upset our brother, and I have no doubt it’s related to our mate. I hate that whatever burden she has, she’s chosen to share with him .
Then again, after my pathetic attempt?—
“Not pathetic,” Fluffy argues.
“I feel pathetic. I wish I was stronger.”
“She is sad,” Kane’s the one to reply, which surprises us all. “Big problem. I will share later.”
“No,” Alex protests, moving to leave once more. Topher doesn’t allow for it, snarling at Alex to sit down. Whilst Alex and Max could probably fight off Topher’s weak commands, he knows that it’s not the right move. “Tell us what is going on.”
“No,” Kane says. “Mate is distraught. I’ll fix her, then share.”
And then he’s gone, blocking the three of us from his mind as he tends to our “distraught mate. ”
“What do you think has happened?” I ask weakly.
“Are you okay?” Alex asks, turning my way. I nod, and he returns it with a heavy sigh. “If she’s upset, I don’t want to go and make it worse?—”
“But it fucking kills me to sit here, knowing that she’s distraught ,” Topher says in agreement.
“Please. Go to mate. Help mate.”
“Fluffy’s begging for me to go to her,” I say, hanging my head. Topher kicks my thigh, and I groan but look over at him. “What?”
“So is Orion. It’s not a weakness to love your mate, Ben.”
“It’s just a weakness to be crippled because your brothers are stronger than you,” I say, resting my head on the back of the sofa. I shove the laptop to the side and take the beer when Alex offers it.
“You’re so fucking dramatic,” Topher says, rolling his eyes. “You’re not weak. You’re just sensitive to our energies. It makes you one of the most important members of our little?—”
“Do not finish that sentence,” I say, giving Topher a grimace. “Your vocabulary needs some work, Mr I Need To Learn How To Woo My Mate.”
Alex sniggers.
We don’t pick the work back up, each of us taking the opportunity to poke and prod each other—Topher, we just picked on Topher—and wait for Seb to come down and fill us in on whatever we’ve missed.
It’s clearly big.
Unlike Ryan’s cock.
“Was that needed?” Fluffy asks dryly.
I smirk. “It most definitely was.”
“ E than has been tormenting Maia for the last eight months or so,” Kane says, glaring at each of us as if it’s our fault our cousin is a demented fucker.
The four of us are all sat in the living room, the lights on low. Maia’s upstairs asleep in bed, with Phoebe in her crib. We’ve got her door shut, and all of us would hear if she’d come down. There’s no chance my practically deaf mate would overhear something, but it’s best to be safe.
“He’s been tormenting us longer by even being alive,” I mutter, shoving a handful of peanuts into my mouth. I grimace. Who the fuck bought unsalted peanuts? It’s disgusting.
“No, I mean he has been tormenting my mate. He’s been following her around, showing up out of the blue, standing outside her windows, and overall just being a creepy son of a fucking bitch as he taunts our mate and makes her think she’s hallucinating her dead fiancé.” Kane clenches his fists, and the glare he has trained on each of us intensifies. “It gets worse.”
“Worse than him following her every time she leaves the house?” Topher demands, his tone as hard as his eyes.
“Much worse.” Seb grimaces. “He’s been here. To our home. And none of us fucking noticed.”
The temperature in the room drops a good ten degrees, and each of us are lost in our anger and confusion.
“Not possible.”
“Our mate is not a liar,” I reply with a frown. Relief fills me quite quickly, though. “But that just means Ethan has crossed pack lines, and his life is now forfeit. We marked him for death years ago. Now, we can legally follow through.”
“I don’t care about the law,” Fluffy says angrily. “I care about justice.”
“Don’t we all?”
“Inside?” Topher’s mouth is pressed in a straight line, and I can feel the dominance pouring off him in waves. It only powers Fluffy and me up that much more, and we’re practically vibrating with energy.
My shift is so close, and I’m about to hurl over the edge and become my wolf when Seb growls low. I freeze, waiting to see how he responds.
“Calm, brother,” Alex says, and I can’t tell if he’s talking to me, Seb, or Topher. We’re all just as reckless and agitated.
“No. Outside. But so were we . The night Maia met the twins, he came here to see her and Phoebe,” Kane says. “My mate was in danger, and none of us fucking noticed. Our pup was around that vermin, and nobody knew.”
“Maia is an idiot for keeping this to herself.” The words tumble out of my mouth without my permission, and despite Fluffy’s angry growl at me, I can’t bring myself to listen to him.
She is.
She’s put herself and our pup in danger by being this... stupid.
Did she really think she was seeing Ryan? Ignoring the fact that nobody would want to see that cowardly fucker, she really thought that seeing ghosts was a good thing?
She was pregnant. She had a baby.
Did she really think she was the peak of mental health when she’s fucking hallucinating?
“She would have been scared. She was alone because he left her,” Fluffy says angrily. “She protected herself and our pup. She kept them both safe until she came to us, and it’s meant to be our job to now keep them safe. We failed. All of us failed.”
“Do not dare say those words to my mate,” Kane roars, stepping forward, and I have no doubt that if it weren’t for Alex’s intervention, those clenched fists of his would’ve met my face.
“Our.” Alex’s one word has my head snapping over to look at him, just like Kane’s does. “Maia is our mate, and we’re all entitled to our feelings over our mate’s actions.” Alex waits until Kane nods before turning to me with a raised eyebrow. “What was she meant to say to us, Ben?”
“The truth? Hey, guys, I’m a fool who thinks I can see the dead. I’ve spent the last eight months hallucinating your dead cousin. Don’t worry, though, rather than invite him into the bedroom to watch me get myself off, I let our pup meet him, instead.” I clench my jaw and desperately try to hold Fluffy back.
Mainly because my wolf is likely going to want to hurt me and not anything else.
“She should have told us tonight,” Topher says, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “The moment she heard about Ethan and started putting this all together, she should have said something.”
“She never intended to keep this secret,” Seb says quietly. “Forgive her. Now.”
“Not how it works, brother,” Alex says, and Seb growls low. He storms over to the armchair and sits down with a heavy sigh. “Maia made her choices, and whilst we all will have a united front when we address them... we are allowed to be upset whilst we work through them. She did omit a very big secret, and it’s something that is hugely concerning from a safety perspective.”
“Which is why she was so scared to admit it,” Kane says, and I missed that change. He looks at Topher. “She knew you’d be mad. Ben, she wasn’t surprised about. But she thought you’d understand, Alex.”
Alex shrugs. “I do, mostly. I’m frustrated that, once more, our family has lowered the bar, yet again, and has hurt her. I’m concerned that if they’ve been following her for as long as they have that there was a reason Ryan was reckless enough to give our mate our baby. I’m scared that this ploy is going to end in Maia being hurt.
“And I’m fucking terrified that they’re hanging around, waiting to snatch our pup away from us. It would destroy Phoebe. But worse than that, it would kill Maia. Our family doesn’t have a good history of protecting the women in our family... so what hope does that leave when we can’t even figure out what the fuck is going on?”
I blink at him in surprise before dropping my head in my hands.
“She’s in danger. Our pup... our mate... what the fuck is going on, Fluffy?” I moan to him, not wanting to vocalise my words to anyone and cause more issues.
“Breathe. Our mate is safe . Our pup is in bed, asleep, safe with her mother. We won’t let them be harmed. We’ll figure it out. You will figure it out.”
“I don’t even know what I’m figuring out. That’s the issue. There’s some big plot underway, and I do not understand what it could be.”
“Well, I’m annoyed she didn’t open up to any of us.” I glare at Seb. “What made you good enough?”
Seb shrugs. “She likes me.” His face darkens, and a moody expression covers it. “But she won’t admit it.”
“I don’t think she realises it yet herself,” Topher murmurs.
“So Seb gets this mysterious love from her, and the rest of us are left to fuck ourselves?” I roar to my wolf as my hands shift into claws. My nails on my left hand dig into the sofa.
“She cares for us, too,” Fluffy says calmly. “I’ve felt it. You’ve smelt it. We know that it’s there. She might not admit it, and she might be so angry... but there’s a part of her that can feel the bond and is already letting us worm our way into her heart and earn her love. You have a place in her life, Ben. We do. We’re just as much a part of the bond as the others.”
“So you say. And yet she never wants us.” I clench my jaw before slowly letting out a breath. It doesn’t work.
The shift overtakes me, but rather than ending up on the floor, I’m standing on the sofa. I sit down on my ass and growl when there’s a sigh from Alex .
“She did the best she could,” Alex says. “We can’t be mad at that.”
“You might not be,” Topher says.
“And you are a hypocrite if you are,” Alex counters. He levels Topher with a look that has Fluffy whining. “Our mate did what she could to survive. She was pregnant, terrified, and alone. No matter how fucked up our cousins were, she loved Ryan with her entire soul. We need to accept that and move the fuck on.”
Fluffy growls, and all three of my brother’s look my way. I don’t know what they’re expecting. I can’t shift back, not when I’m so emotionally charged.
“Her past gave us Phoebe,” Seb says.
“And that’s something we’re all eternally grateful for,” Topher continues. He looks over at me in my wolf form before turning back to Alex. “She never lied. Not really.”
“I wish she told us about Ryan,” Alex says. “But it’s not like she truly understood what she was seeing. She was protecting herself in her own way.”
“I made it clear she is never to lie about that again,” Kane says, and I bark out my agreement. I rest my head on my paws and listen in. “That is dangerous, and no mate of mine will keep secrets about her health.”
“And, of course, you got away with it,” Topher mutters, and I laugh. It sounds funny in wolf form, but I don’t care.
“What the fuck do we do now?” Alex asks, looking around the room. “I don’t even know what is going on anymore.”
I shift and cross my legs. “So let’s create a mood board. It’s time to figure out our issues and what we know. Get it all on the same page.”
“Tomorrow,” Seb says.
I frown, and I’m not the only one.
“Maia shouldn’t be alone,” Kane says, and I nod. “Tomorrow, we’ll brainstorm, and then, we’ll get vengeance. ”
“Vengeance for who?” I murmur, not sure what the answer is going to be.
Do we want vengeance for Morgan?
For Phoebe?
For Maia?
“For them all,” Topher says.
That works.