Chapter Twenty-Eight
True
I’d been up with the sun and maybe before her. Today was the day. We’d bought the house, and since the sellers were motivated and this was a small town with not a huge amount of hustle and bustle about selling and buying houses, we closed in less than three days.
Our mate would move in with us today. Things with Hazel hadn’t gone the way they did in books or movies. We started off rocky and Shiloh was marked before mating her. And I hadn’t had the opportunity to even kiss her.
None of that changed the way I felt about her.
I’d tilt my whole world upside down for our mate.
“What else do we need to do?” I asked once the others got up. They were late. “It’s nearly time.”
“We have another hour.” Lindon checked his phone.
“I’ve been up for hours checking everything,” I snapped back.
Belladonna Woods was the coziest yet spookiest town we’d ever been in.
The atmosphere was eerie and romantic all the time, but given its detachment from the nearest city or the outside world, getting the things we needed for the house proved to be difficult.
Two-day shipping wasn’t guaranteed here. Not even close.
We had to wait a week to get all of Hazel’s nesting materials in. She picked some of them online, but I bought some myself, things that I wanted her to have.
Soft blankets. Plush pillows. All kinds of textures and densities. I could imagine her spread out in her nest, beckoning me.
Still, I wouldn’t dare push or pressure her. Hazel had been through so much, including what we put her through. The last thing she needed was a pack demanding what she wasn’t ready to give.
“True, everything is ready. We’ve gone over things. Her nest is painted, and we cleaned it top to bottom. Food is made. We have it all covered, brother.”
Shiloh was right. And while we all knew her, Shiloh and Lindon had a bond with her that I hadn’t forged yet. I was the tiniest bit jealous.
Maybe more than tiny.
Lindon smiled. He did that a lot since Hazel came into our lives. “I bet all those girls are having breakfast and taking their time with her. They’ve gone through hell together. I almost hate to take her away from them. They are her pack, in a different way.”
“They are,” Shiloh said. “I’m glad our girl has a pack of females who always have her back. And she has theirs.”
Ten minutes passed. “Can we please go get her now?” My knee bounced. I wanted her here. We had a dinner to prepare and more than anything, I wanted to see her face when she saw her nest all painted and ready for her.
A nest was one of the most important things for an omega to have, and our girl had only had makeshift approximations. Temporary. But now she had a permanent one.
“Hold on. Look at this.” Lindon brought his phone over and showed us a text. There was no contact name, but that was not a surprise given who we were and our jobs and the people we kept in contact with. Sometimes the best intel came from the rottenest of apples.
“It’s her dad,” I said, a growl lacing my tone.
“He’s going to people and offering her up again. He believes he knows where she is. But no one is taking the bait.” Shiloh read the texts to us.
“It would be so easy for me to just make the trip and kill him. But he’s our mate’s father. Though I doubt she would miss him.”
“We keep watch on him, and everyone knows who he is now, and they also know who her mates are. I doubt anyone will make a move, but we stay alert and vigilant. Besides, I don’t plan on leaving her sight for a very long time. Maybe not me but this pack.”
We agreed on that.
“All right.” Lindon looked around. “This is as good as it gets. Let’s go.”
We walked the short journey to the shop and walked in.
The shop was closed that day as it was every Monday, and Clover stopped us at the stairs.
We were not surprised. “Stay here. We need a minute. This is hard for all of us. I know it’s good, and she’s happy, but it feels like losing our best friend.
” She took one step up after Goldie then turned, her foot still in the same place.
“But if you hurt her, Augustine is the very least you have to be afraid of. It’s the quiet ones you have to worry about. Remember that.”
I believed her.
Again, they would all make great bounty hunters.
It took another twenty minutes before Hazel came down with the last of her bags and we took them from her. There were several rounds of goodbyes.
Tears. Smiles. Promises.
I would bet my ass, one if not all of them would be over at our house the next day.