Chapter Ten – Secrets
CHAPTER TEN
Secrets
J o giggles, clearly pleased with my reaction. She turns the phone more toward me. “Look at the street. Look at those trees. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
The whole neighborhood looks like something out of a movie. It’s the kind of place that never once crossed my mind as somewhere I’d live.
The best home I ever had was my fathers’ place back in Gavin, Indiana.
They were Tier-Two aegis and worked at homicides: decent rank, steady hours.
We weren’t rich, but we were doing okay.
The house had space, even with all of us packed inside.
By the time I left, Lydia already had four kids: three aegis — John, Colt, and Carl — and Maddie. Nine of us under one roof.
Before today, I used to think that house was nice.
But now, seeing the places Jo’s showing me, I realize it was just practical.
We had a front porch, but no one ever sat on it.
Gavin’s the kind of city where even the good streets have a few boarded-up windows, maybe a house left empty with the lawn going wild.
After Gavin, I spent the next several years in the Strays Program at the Neuropsychology Research Institute of West Kempton University. In a couple of months, our little pack house 144 felt more like home than my dad’s place ever did.
But it wasn’t a real home. It was a sterile square covered in washable tile, walls included.
Inside, we had our nest, a table, a couch, a TV, and a gaming console.
Outside, a sad little square of grass. You couldn’t forget you were in a research compound, because no matter where you looked, all you saw were identical pack houses.
Row after row. Every lawn the same. Every inch measured.
Once we left, officially a pack, Shane was seventeen. Jay and I were eighteen. We went straight into MAB basic training. Two years in the barracks. Just a long rectangular building, with rows of small nests, one per pack.
Then our assignment: Greenster PD. When we signed the lease for our apartment downtown, we were excited. But over time, reality set in. The building smelled like piss; the walls were thin, and the apartment was falling apart.
What Jo’s showing me now looks like another world. She keeps swiping, showing me other listings from the same neighborhood. A white house with green shutters and a swing hanging from a tree. A smaller red-brick place with ivy creeping up one side. Every single one looks amazing.
“We’d stick out,” I say before I can stop myself .
Jo glances at me. “Why? A family of officers and a doctor sounds respectable enough to live in a nice neighborhood.”
She watches my face, sees the disbelief, and chuckles. “And if we do stick out, who cares? The important thing is living somewhere safe and beautiful. Don’t you want to live in a place like that?”
I swallow hard, because the truth is, yeah, I do. I want this for us.
She smiles at me and keeps scrolling through the listings, eyes lighting up at each new one.
It’s been nearly twenty-four hours since she last ate, and I want to take her out for breakfast, but she insists on waiting until Shane and Jay wake up so we can all go together.
My patience is nowhere near as good as hers, though. I head to the nest and shake both of them until they groan awake. Jo protests and half-heartedly scolds me when she sees what I’m doing, but she’s laughing too.
I rush everybody along, anxious to get some food into her. She’s already changed out of her dress into jeans and a T-shirt, and throws a jacket over it, but my brothers and I are still in yesterday’s clothes.
Fifteen minutes later, we’ve changed and are on our way to the cafeteria.
When we step inside, I feel a surge of satisfaction: her scent makes it unmistakable she’s bonded. Unlike yesterday, no one dares to stare. We eat almost completely ignored.
Jo is relaxed now, eyes gleaming as she shows Shane and Jay the houses she’d shown me earlier.
She pulls up Google Maps, showing us how close Milestone is to both Bridgeport and Great Sky, and even drops into Street View to proudly show off the hospital where she works, Joseph Monson.
The place looks huge, one of those blocky buildings with long rows of identical windows and a wide, glass-fronted entrance.
After breakfast, we head back to the housing unit, pack up our things, and load them into the truck. In the garage, Jo spots her little silver Corolla parked next to our truck and lets out a squeak.
“Jesus. I think this thing eats small cars for breakfast,” she mutters.
Shane chuckles. “It does. Especially little ones like yours.”
Before we leave, we stop by the administrative building to check out. I hand over the housing unit’s keys to the front desk officer and sign the forms, but he asks me to wait. When he returns, he hands me a brown paper envelope.
Inside is our bonding certificate.
I grin the second I see it, Jo listed as Johane Elizabeth Larsen and everything. When I hand it to her, my brothers lean in over her shoulders, trying to read.
All four of us are smiling.
“Love my new name,” she says, studying the paper.
“My mother’s maiden name,” I tell her. “Program protocol says the pack takes the name of the leader. My legal name at the time was Williams, my father’s name, but I asked if we could use my mother’s instead. They didn’t care, so we became Larsen.”
“Good choice,” she replies. “I like Larsen better than Williams.”
Minutes later, we’re driving out through the same gate where Alice had screamed at the guards.
We’ve arranged to rotate drivers in Jo’s Corolla for the long trip, letting her recline the front passenger seat to rest. She says her ribs don’t hurt, but after another night of being held tight between us, we’re not taking chances.
Jay takes the first shift, so Shane and I follow behind in the truck. We haven’t been on the road long when Shane turns to me. “Did you like that white house Jo showed us? The one with the ugly bird on the mailbox?”
I know exactly which one he means. The house was incredible, but sitting on the mailbox was the strangest, ugliest bird we’d ever seen. Jo even zoomed in to figure out if it was real or some kind of sculpture, and we all agreed there’s no way that thing was alive.
“House was perfect,” I say.
“I liked it too,” Shane answers. Then after a pause, “Can you imagine, Kory? Us, living in a place like that?”
I think for a second. “Yeah, I can,” I reply with a smile. “We’re mated now, man. No more shitty bachelor apartments.”
Shane nods, grinning. We drive in silence for a while, until I can’t help myself: “Shane, did you imagine how perfect she’d be? All those weeks we were waiting to meet her? I mean, I hoped she would be, but I never thought… It’s just…”
Shane’s smile gets wider, a little boyish. “Her legs, man. I swear. And the way she smells, I never thought anyone could smell that good.”
We chuckle together, both of us stunned that we actually mated with Jo. Pretty, smart, stunning, hot-as-hell Jo.
We stop at the Delaware House Travel Plaza in Newark so Jay can switch places with me, and Jo uses the bathroom. I fold myself into her tiny car for the next stretch, surrounded by her scent while she scrolls through aegis-sized furniture on Shane’s phone.
By the time we reach the Vince Lombardi Service Area in New Jersey, she’s already found two stores in Bridgeport that sell furniture in our size and deliver to Milestone.
We’ve never been to New Jersey before, but Jo lived here for four years during med school, so she knows her way around. She takes us to Shake Shack for lunch and orders Shackburgers for all of us.
Shane drives the Corolla the last leg and just over an hour later, we roll into Bridgeport. Jo’s asked us to stay with her in her apartment until we find our new home, and we’re all eager to see where she lives and be part of her everyday life.
We pull up at a little three-story building just after three o’clock. With a resident’s salary in a city like Bridgeport, she’s had to be smart with money, but she still found herself a good spot.
When we step inside her apartment, her scent is everywhere. The place is small but clean and beautiful. White walls, big windows, and furniture that looks cozy, even if it's much too small for us.
By the window, she’s got a table cluttered with a laptop, a pile of books, and papers covered in handwriting.
The biggest thing in the room is her bookshelf, and I immediately spot Dr. Bureau’s name on a few of the spines.
I want to check it out, but I’m still in my boots and don’t want to step on her thick rug.
The kitchen is so tiny, none of us could fit in the narrow walkway between the counters and the half-wall separating it from the living room. Her bedroom is small too, but bright and well-ventilated thanks to a huge window.
There’s no way in hell we’re all fitting in her human-sized bed, so later we’re heading to a sporting goods store she found online that sells aegis-sized camping gear. We’re planning to buy sleeping bags and crash on the floor for a few days while we house-hunt.
But it’s not just the bed: we don’t move well in a human-sized space.
We’ve been here less than an hour, and I’ve already bumped into a table and knocked over a vase.
I’m still apologizing when Jay sends her table lamp crashing to the floor.
At this rate, we better find a place fast before we wreck her apartment or she kicks us out.
But even with all the bumping and broken things, the growls at each other every time more than one of us tries to squeeze into spaces too small, we’re all excited.
A few weeks ago, we were still in Greenster, losing hope of ever finding her. If someone had told me back then what my life would look like now, I’d have said they were completely delusional. But here we are, mated with her.