Page 44 of Ready or Not

“You’re beautiful and you know it.” I slap her ass, leading her out of the bedroom. “Stop fishing for compliments.”

“If only,” she mutters.

I snort, and we head down to meet Garza and Marina.

The last person I’m expecting to run into at the breakfast table is Ranger.

Bishop stands, leaning against the wall, with a pensive-as-fuck look on his face.

My hackles instantly rise.

“You are very pregnant.” Ranger blinks, pushing his chair back. “It’s nice to formally meet you. I’m Ranger.” He rises with a level of calculated grace that I imagine you’d find in a two-thousand-year-old fae.

Vale tilts her head, offering a hand. “I think I remember you from the club. You came in with Cooper once.”

“Indeed, I did,” Ranger agrees, shaking her hand. He glances at Marina. “Mrs. Garza, thank you for the delightful meal. Why don’t the two of you get acquainted? I need to borrow these three.”

“Oh,” Vale says with wide eyes. “But I thought?—”

Marina goes in for a hug as Vale’s eyes fly to Garza. She pats the older woman awkwardly, but she has nothing to stress about. Marina has been dying for grandkids for as long as I’ve known her. I’m more concerned with what Ranger has to say.

“Merrick and Steele are here too,” Bishop mutters.

Fuck me.

That’s an even worse sign than Ranger popping in for breakfast.

Ranger leads us to Mercy’s office here in the house. Merrick is sitting at Mercer’s desk, typing away on his laptop and occasionally studying the desktop computer.

Steele stands against the wall with his arms crossed. He nods when he catches sight of Bishop, Garza, Ranger, and me funneling into the room.

Merrick and Steele took a job in New York earlier this year. It got messy and complicated. They ended up working with Soren Nikolov, one of the enforcers for the Ivanov family. The three of them all fell for the same omega, which put Merrick and Steele on the same team as Soren.

It was a nightmare that ended with Merrick and Steele blown to hell in an explosion.

Soren and Keeley—the omega—didn’t make it.

Merrick and Steele eventually came back to work, but they haven’t been the same since.

My chest pulses with anxiety and pain even contemplating that kind of loss.

It’s something I don’t think I could come back from. They hadn’t bonded Keeley yet, and I imagine that, if they had, it would’ve been a much uglier recovery. Losing a bond isn’t something I want to think about for the next forty years or so.

If I lost Vale…

I shake my head to will away the throbbing ache that fills my chest at the thought. I’d probably go out in a blaze of gunfire, cleaning house for the shitbags of the world.

“Should we wake up Mercy?” Bishop closes the door behind him and leans against it.

“Let him sleep.” Ranger tosses himself down on one of the chairs across from Mercy’s desk.

“Trust me. No one wants to be woken up to listen to this shit,” Steele says, scratching his thick beard.

Well, that sure does make the hairs on my arms stand up.

Fucking lovely.

Chapter Fourteen

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