7. Elliott #4
“Oh. How’d you get there? You didn’t walk all the over there by yourself, did you?” he asked, looking concerned.
“No! Jet drove me.”
Zeke and Solomon stopped arguing and looked at me.
“You went there alone with an ops alpha?” Solomon asked.
“Laura said it was okay.” Crap. I forgot to tell her that I was coming back. I quickly sent her a text message. When I finished and looked up again, my three friends were still staring at me. “What?”
“You went somewhere alone with an alpha. That’s huge, El. For your recovery, I mean,” Keane added when I looked confused.
“Oh. Yeah, I guess so.”
“How did it go?” Zeke asked. “Did you panic?”
“No, it was okay. I’m kind of used to Jet. Gail arranged for him to always be my guard.”
“No fair,” Solomon said. “He’s the hottest one.”
Annoyed, I said, “I thought nobody was hotter than you.”
“That’s true—I hope you heard that, Zeke—but I’m talking about among the ops alphas.”
Ignoring him, I sat down next to Keane. “The reason I went to Ben’s is because I wanted to tell him about this guy who emailed Gail.
” I explained to them about the anonymous omega x and his twin brother.
I didn’t mention Ben trying to heal my heats, though, or that there was a chance we could communicate through dreams. I didn’t know why—something just told me not to.
“There goes my theory that you and Ben are related,” Zeke said.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Doofus.”
“Maybe we’ll learn more from the guy. I’m going to the john.” Solomon stood.
“Get Dawson up, will you? I’ll walk him home,” Keane said, and Solomon nodded before walking down the hall.
Keane turned back to me. “Dawson took a nap after we played ball.”
I heard the bathroom door open and the fan that came on with the light turn off.
A second later, Solomon came rushing back to us. “Dawson’s not in there!”
“Did you check the bathroom?” Keane said, standing up. His book fell off his lap onto the floor.
“I just came out of the only bathroom!”
“Right. Yeah, okay.” Keane looked around. Our place was laid out so that the kitchen was open to the living room, and the bathroom and large bedroom were down the hall. There was literally nowhere else Dawson could be.
Zeke was already dialing on his phone.
“Eric? This is Zeke. Is Dawson there?” He let out a breath, his shoulders slumping in relief.
“He is? No, he was taking a nap and we just noticed he was gone. Right. Okay, bye.” He hit disconnect and looked at me and Keane.
“Eric said Dawson came home alone. They thought he’d told us.
They also thought an alpha had escorted him back.
He’s in for it.” Shaking his head, he chuckled.
The front door opened, and Ren and Riku came into the house together.
Riku had a bag in his hand and crossed to the kitchen counter to set it down, then began taking out plastic containers full of food.
“Eric sent dinner,” he told us.
“Good, it was my turn to cook, and now I don’t have to,” Keane said.
“You can cook tomorrow, then,” Riku said.
Keane made a face, then went to help Riku open the containers.
Shortly after that, Camp arrived home.
“What’s that great smell?” he asked.
“Not you,” Ren said, waving his hand in the air and making a face. “What the fuck have you been doing?”
“Cleaning out the chicken coop,” Camp said. “I’ll go take a shower before I eat.”
“Please do,” Ren and I said at the same time before laughing.
“You seem in a good mood,” Camp said to me, pausing on his way to the hall.
“Especially after riding in the jeep with Jet,“ Zeke put in.
Camp’s eyes widened, and Ren and Riku turned from getting plates and cutlery to look at me.
“It was a two-minute drive,” I said. “And I ran from him to the front door like a maniac when we got there. It wasn’t exactly the feat of great bravery everyone’s making it out to be.”
“Eh, give yourself some credit,” Riku said.
“Fine.” Raising my hand over my shoulder, I patted myself on the back.
Everyone helped put the food out and fill glasses with water or the lemonade I’d made, which I’d later added more sugar to.
Camp returned, smelling like soap instead of chicken shit, and we all sat down to eat—seven of us crowded around the table.
I liked it when we ate like this; it felt like family.
I was sure the others felt similarly, although we never talked about it.
“I keep expecting to have a Code Red drill,” Ren said. “We haven’t had one in a while.”
“I hate those damn things. Why do we have to drill?” Riku grumbled. “If something happens, we’ll all jump in a bunker. No need to practice over and over again.”
“Obviously, so we can quickly and efficiently hide no matter where we are on the ranch without panicking. Duh,” Ren eyed his twin with disdain.
“What’s so hard about thinking—where’s the nearest bunker?—and then getting there? There are only five of them,” Riku said.
“It doesn’t hurt to practice. What’s the big deal?”
Riku returned to eating, leaving his brother’s question unanswered.
“How are you going to be in the special ops if you can’t stand drills?” I asked Riku.
Despite the fact that Riku was an omega, he believed so hard that he could join the special ops that I sometimes believed it, too. I mean, who’s to say he couldn’t take heat suppressants and manage it? He was fierce and determined enough, for sure.
“I hope the next drill isn’t in the middle of the night,” Solomon mused. “I hate those the most. Last time, the Code Red woke me out of a good dream and I couldn’t get back to sleep that night. And it was freezing cold in the bunker, too.”
I didn’t say that what I hated most about the drills was the awful rush of adrenaline I got when I saw the Code Red on my phone.
Just the chance that it could be real sent me into a terrible panic.
I knew the others were afraid too, but I became paralyzed with fear.
Literally. To date, every time we’d had a drill, one of my friends had had to drag me into the nearest underground bunker.
After dinner, I showered, read for a while in bed, and then turned the light out. Keane was already asleep beside me, and the rest of the guys were climbing into their bunk beds, tired after a long day.
I was ready to do what Ben and I had talked about. Closing my eyes, I visualized him in my mind. I told myself over and over that, in our dreams, I could connect with Ben. I kept it up until I gradually drifted off to sleep.
I dreamed about the pigs, snorting and fighting over the slop in their trough. I kept throwing them more food, and they kept gobbling it up.
“What are you, a bunch of pigs?” I yelled at them.
Hearing laughter behind me, I turned and there was Ben.
“Are you really in my dream?” I asked him.
He was wearing his pajamas and, looking down, I realized that I was, too.
“I really didn’t think this would work, but it seems to be,” Ben said.
“Were you thinking of me when you went to sleep?”
“Yeah, but then Lucy June started crying, and I had to go rock her. By the time I got back to sleep, I was afraid I was too late to meet you in a dream. But here we are!”
“This is so cool!” I said.
“It really is. Just wait until we tell the others.”
“Don’t tell them yet,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just think we shouldn’t.”
Ben shrugged. “Ok. Now what?”
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. We just know we can do it. Let’s do a test to see if we remember tomorrow. Remember we met in front of the pig trough.”
Ben nodded. “Okay. See you.” He disappeared.
The next morning, before I was fully awake, Ben texted me.
“Remember the pigs?”
“Yes, we met in front of the trough.”
We followed up the conversation with series of gifs of people wearing shades and looking cool.