Chapter 6
HOME BY brEAKFAST
SAGE
I made the case at midnight.
"You're not going," he said. He hadn't turned around.
"I'm not asking to go to the front line."
"You're not going anywhere near that field."
I walked to the counter and stood beside him, not behind him. That was intentional, and he knew it.
"Marcus." I waited until he looked at me. "You know what I do to your element when I'm close."
He knew. He'd always known. The first time I'd stood within twenty yards of him while he trained, his fire had tripled in radius without him doing anything different. He hadn't understood it then. He understood it now.
"Your element isn’t the only one on that field," I said. "Ty, Carter, Darius. Every Gamma. Destiny. Whatever Redmon has waiting out there, they’ll all perform better with me in range. You know that’s true."
"You're eight months pregnant."
“I’m not fighting. I’m in a medical RV that you have guarded by two Gammas.” I smiled. “I’m not asking to breach a structure or get anywhere near Redmon. I want to give our pack every advantage.”
He was quiet for a long time.
This was the part people didn't understand about Marcus — the stillness before a decision wasn't hesitation. It was him accounting for every variable and running the numbers.
He turned his hand under mine. "You don't leave the van," he said. "For anything. If something happens and you feel the need to leave the van, call me first."
"I swear it."
"Our babies."
“The priority.”
He pulled me into him. His hand went to the back of my head, the other to the curve of my stomach. I pressed my face against his chest.
"Home by breakfast, Princess," he said.
"Home by breakfast, Big Guy," I said back.
***
DESTINY
The trucks were loading at four in the morning.
I didn't sleep before operations — never had, not even when I was running solo. Sleep required stillness, and stillness required a brain that wasn't mapping every contingency. My brain didn't do stillness.
Ty found me on the back porch.
He didn't say a word. He just came and stood beside me, hands in his pockets, looking out at the same dark yard I was watching.
That was its own kind of conversation.
"You're running the north approach," he said at last.
"I know what I'm running."
"I'm not questioning it."
I looked at him sideways. He was watching the tree line. His jaw was set the way it was when he was holding back.
"You're going to want to come get me," I said. "When it gets loud, you're going to feel it and want to break formation."
"I know."
"Don't."
"I know, Destiny."
"I need you where Marcus puts you. I need the plan to hold. If you break—"
"I said I know." He finally looked at me. "I got it."
I held his eyes for a moment before facing back towards the yard.
"North approach," I said. "Then I'll move toward the structure."
He stepped closer to me, and the next thing I felt was his arm hooking under my ass and throwing me over his shoulder.
“Ty, what the hell?” I wiggled, but not hard enough to get away. I knew what was coming.
We entered the house, and he carried me to the couch. His shorts hit the floor, and he was fully attentive. I bit my bottom lip in anticipation.
“Clothes off, Angel. Let me take that stress from you.”
I moved without thinking. That’s what Ty did to me. He pulled me out of headspaces I didn’t need to stay in.
He sat me on the couch, spread my legs, and knelt. My hands instantly pulled at his curls.
Damn, this man’s tongue could set my body on fire. He didn’t take his time like he normally did. His mouth went right to my clit, and two fingers inside me curled up, hitting that spot that made me scream his name.
“Ty…”
The first orgasm shook my body violently. Before I could come down, he bent me over the back of the couch, and with the right amount of force, I was pushed headfirst, my ass on full display. He was inside me before I could regain my balance.
“Always wet for me.”
“Always for you.” I moaned.
This was not a lovemaking session. This was the kind of penile whipping that made my legs shake, my breathing hasten, and my mouth form that perfect O.
Ty was a patient, loving man, but a ruthless soldier in the bedroom. He discovered new ways to make my body crave his. I was never submissive in the bedroom; most of the time, I wasn’t even present. Yet with Ty, I naturally submitted, without complaint.
He rocked my body to another orgasm that made me lose complete control.
He slowly pulled out of me, and before I could collapse on the couch and attempt to catch my breath, he turned me around.
My feet were off the floor, and he was back inside me before I could wrap my legs safely around his waist.
“Give me one more.”
My head tilted back as he thrust so deep inside me I could feel him at the bottom of my stomach.
“Eyes on me, Angel.”
I found his eyes, and my heart did the thing it always did. Let me know that I was his, and he was mine.
“Ty…”
“MINE”
“Yes, yours, Ty…. All yours”
His hands gripped my ass with just the right amount of pain that led to pleasure. He moved my body up and down his shaft like I was his personal toy, and I moaned through every bit of it.
“Cum for me.”
And I did, walls tightening, gripping his shoulder so tight that all he could do was yell my name and release inside me.
After cleaning up in the shower, we headed up the path toward the front gate.
The trucks rolled at four-fifteen.
Four trucks. All dark. All loaded.
Weapons were distributed exactly as Darius planned—not evenly, but strategically. We were all dressed in the mission uniforms I had designed, ready for battle.
Isdisa settled in my chest the way she always did before a mission. Cold, clear, focused. The ice wolf with a target and the patience to reach it.
I was walking to the first truck when I stopped.
Sage was already at the medical RV.
She stood at the open door with Gran and Mama Mara, wearing one of Marcus's flannels over her leggings, her locs pulled back. She also looked as if she had won an argument.
I broke from the group.
She saw me coming and stepped away from the van, meeting me halfway.
"You negotiated your way into a war zone," I said.
"Into a medical RV, two miles from a war zone, right in the middle of both teams." She smiled. "Gran said she needed another set of hands."
"Gran doesn't need hands. Gran needs people to think she needs hands so she can take them where she wants them."
We both laughed.
"I need to tell you something," she said.
"Sage—"
"Not about the mission. About you." She took both my hands.
I let her. "You've been fighting alone for so long that being fought for doesn't feel real to you.
It feels like a liability. Like if you let people stand with you, when they leave, it will cost more than if you'd never let them stand there. "
I didn't say anything.
"That's not what this is," she said. "This pack — Ty — we are not a liability. We are not going to leave. And what you are walking toward tonight? You are not walking toward it alone. You understand me?"
My throat did something inconvenient.
"You need to stop making me emotional before an operation," I said.
"Redmon expects you to be emotional," she said.
"So be exactly that. Give him the performance.
Let him see a daughter running toward her mother.
Let him feel good about what he thinks he set up.
" The corner of her mouth twitched—not quite a smile, something more precise, the expression of a strategist who had thought it through and found satisfaction.
"Let him underestimate you. You've been doing that your whole life. You know how."
Something settled in my chest.
"I know," I said.
"You've got this." No question about it. No attempt to convince me of anything. A fact delivered by the person who had known me longest and therefore had earned the right to say it without embellishment.
I looked at her.
All of her—the curve of her belly, the steadiness in her eyes, the woman who had been my blood before either of us understood what that meant.
She had stood in a trial circle and vowed that no one on this compound would ever be without tools to protect themselves, and she meant me in that promise.
I leaned forward, pressed my forehead to hers, pulled back, looked down, and rested both hands on her belly.
The three of them slipped through my palms like warmth — three distinct presences, already themselves, already more than the world had made room for.
I had felt this before, in quiet moments, and it never failed to stir something deep in my chest. I pressed my lips to the curve of her belly, once, soft and certain.
"Home by breakfast," she said.
"Home by breakfast," I said back.
***
The first truck's engine turned over beneath Reeves’s hands — smooth and unhurried. He pulled forward. The compound gates opened.
In this truck: Ty, Marcus, and Gamma Reeves. Second truck: Darius, Everett, and Carter. RV: Gran, Mama Mara, Sage, and the medic team. Gammas out front, led by Gamma Moss.
In the field, you kept moving and stayed alert. In the truck, you sat still, and the tension in your chest required a distraction to stay manageable.
My mind went to Ty.
I held back a smile, thinking about the sexual chemistry and connection I had with this man.
My mind went back eight months — it had been a long training day, a sparring session that ran well past schedule.
I was carrying the kind of exhaustion that doesn't live in your muscles but lies beneath them.
He had been at the door when I came in, had taken one look at me, and said nothing for a moment.
"This is how we end our nights together," he said, took my hand, and led me to the bathroom. I paused in the doorway.
Candles—just enough to change the light, warm and unhurried. The tub is full, steam rising, carrying his scent of sandalwood and amber, deep and grounding. I told him his scent was my comfort, a remark he filed away.
He stood behind me, his hands deliberately unzipping my training jacket, displaying certainty without urgency. I recognized it in him early—the unspoken permission to stop whenever I needed to.
I didn't stop it.
He undressed me slowly, pressing soft kisses along my neck and down my throat. Every piece of clothing was set aside. His hands were warm against my skin.
We got into the tub together, and the warmth of the water, his presence, the candlelight, and sandalwood softened the tight-wound thing I had carried in from the doorway. It loosened not by force but by being surrounded, waiting, and letting the heat work.
He was gentle in ways I had no prior data on.
I thought I understood what it meant to be touched by someone who meant well.
I had been wrong. His hands on me that night were the first time in my life that being touched felt entirely, unambiguously safe.
Not transactional. Not something owed. Not something I was enduring in exchange for something I needed even more.
Ty was gradually unraveling me. He was steady, patient, and utterly selfless.
He sought consent through the silent language of his hands, waiting before taking any action.
An Alpha with the power, status, and desire to take what he wanted, he never used those as excuses.
Instead, he spent a year quietly demonstrating his presence in subtle, everyday ways, asking for nothing more than to be welcomed if I was willing to accept.
I was choosing.
Our first intimate night, in the candlelight, the sandalwood, and the warmth, somewhere between the steady patience of his hands and the specific way he said my name, as if it were worth saying slowly — I had stopped bracing.
Not all at once. Not all the way. But enough. The internal architecture shifted by a degree I would have told you was impossible a year earlier. I let it shift, stayed in the room with him instead of going somewhere else in my head, and found the room entirely safe.
He kissed every inch of my body slowly with purpose.
There was a softness in his dominance that relaxed me.
My first orgasm came with his head between my legs, sending jolts of pleasure I had never known.
And when he entered me for the first time, I had never felt so full and utterly worshipped. I have been wet for him ever since.
I woke the next morning to rain at the window, his arm across my waist, and the particular warmth of a silence that kept him close.
I lay there for ten minutes, with something in my chest I didn’t have an answer for, as I watched him pull on a pair of basketball shorts and head downstairs.
I smelled the eggs.
Terrible but well-intentioned. I ate every single one.
***
Twenty minutes out, Darius's voice came in low from the driver's seat, carrying over the open console that linked all four vehicles.
"The cabin is accessible from the county road turnoff.
We leave the trucks at the logging pull-off, three-quarters of a mile from the property line.
We split the extraction team. Carter will lead up the west road to create a diversion, and we will take the south road, which leads directly into the back of the cabin. "
"She'll be in an interior room," I said. "Away from the entry points. Standard containment layout — the door is reinforced and bolted from the outside." I had been in rooms like that. I knew how they were built and how to move through them.
"Confirmed,” Carter said. His voice was already changing to battle mode.
"Redmon’s men will have eyes on the west approach within four minutes of Carter's team becoming visible," Darius replied.
"That gives us eight minutes from their signal to breach.
We move fast and low. Silver on the approach — if anyone comes out of that building before we hit the wall, we do not slow down. "
Silence.
"And Redmon?" Reeves asked.
"That gives eight minutes before Redmon knows he’s been had,” Marcus said. “Eight minutes before I destroy his existence.” He shifted in the front seat. “That’s eight minutes I need you to hold, pint size.” He looked at me in the rearview mirror with that big-brother side-eye.
“I’ve got this, big head.” I smiled.
We all heard Sage fall out laughing from the RV. “Home before breakfast, family.”
We all replied, “Home before breakfast.”