Chapter Three #3
“All right.” He sounded skeptical. “At least you’ll have Xavier and Davion out there for tonight, which I guess is good. They’re both day shift guards, but you can change that for the moment, yeah?”
“Yeah, good thinking.” If I was going to be here overnight, I would need a guard on duty while I slept.
Or didn’t sleep, as the case might be. Dragging all of the guards out here from Boston didn’t seem necessary; I was pretty sure I’d taken care of any threat.
So there was no reason that Xavier couldn’t go catch some Z’s once Davion arrived, and then come back on duty after dark.
“As long as you’re safe, that’s what matters to me.
” He cleared his throat. “So you’ll be out there with Xavier, Davion, and Ren.
I’ll inform Seth so he can fill in the other guards.
Tomorrow, I’ll pack for both of us for the gathering, and the guards and I will arrive tomorrow midafternoon. Oh. And Chloe.”
“Yes, we’ll be needing food.” Chloe, our human cook, had only been to the hunt house once, and that was only to tour it so she would be prepared to supervise meals for the gathering.
I was a little leery about having her and the three humans we’d hired as temp workers to assist her around a bunch of werewolves, especially with the full moon impending, but she’d reminded me that she’d done it a number of times while she worked for my predecessor and had never run into issues.
The temp workers, of course, didn’t have that background, but Chloe and I had spent a solid day meeting with them to go over every possible occurrence.
I’d assigned Mandeep, one of the guards who’d worked for Hezekiah before I took the rank, to protect our kitchen staff during daylight hours, and had asked Seth to assign someone to guard them at night.
Except, of course, on full moon night. Each of my guards was also a werewolf and would have to shift and hunt with the rest of us.
Chloe and I had decided that on the day of the full moon, she and her staff would prepare a quick and easy buffet and then go to the rooms I’d assigned them in the smallest guest cottage, where they would stay until the following morning.
Until the past few months, I’d never really considered all the logistics and arrangements that went into the national and regional gatherings.
I’d attended the gatherings, of course, as Alpha of Boston North Pack, but I had won the rank of Arkhon of the Northeast Region during the previous spring’s regional gathering, so everything had already been in place and I’d only had to worry about supervising the end of the event.
Same when I won the rank of Anax at last year’s national gathering.
Next year, I would hire an event planner or something. This year, I would just have to muddle through as best I could and hope that the people I’d hired and trusted would back me up.
“Are you there?” Kyle asked.
“Huh?” I yanked myself out of my thoughts. “Yeah. Sorry. Yes, tomorrow midafternoon is good for you and the others to get here.”
“Cool. Gives me time to pick up our suits from the cleaners.” He chuckled. “Assuming you’re still marrying me.”
“Fuck yes,” I blurted, and he laughed. “You aren’t getting out of that part. The day after the gathering ends, you will stand there in front of the JP with me and legally become my husband.”
“Been looking forward to that since you proposed on Christmas,” he said softly. “I love you, Tobias. Through everything, since the moment I knew you were my mate, I’ve loved you. Hell, maybe even before that. So I have no intention of trying to get out of it.”
“Good.” A lump rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard. “Because right back at you. I fell for you before you were changed, and I’ve been in love with you ever since. Even when I was a shit.”
“We’ve been through a lot. And the only parts I regret are the ones that hurt you.
” He cleared his throat. “All right, enough of this sappy crap. I have stuff to do, and I’m betting you do as well.
I’ll be awake tonight if you want to call, and otherwise I’ll check in with you in the morning about timing and such. ”
“Sounds good.” His saying he would be awake during the night worried me. Kyle slept, but not nearly as much as he needed to, and he rarely talked to me about the things that kept him from sleeping. “Rest as much as you can.”
“Will do.”
“I love you,” I said, because I needed to hear myself say it, even though I didn’t know why.
“Love you too.”
I hung up, because as the Anax I was supposed to hang up first even though I didn’t usually care about that kind of thing with Kyle, and leaned back in my chair.
The day after tomorrow, several hundred werewolves would descend on the hunt house property for the three days of the national gathering.
And then, the day after most of the guests left, Kyle and I would stand before our closer friends and speak the words that would make us legal husbands as well as fated mates.
And a little niggly part of my brain couldn’t help wondering whether we would actually get to that day.