Page 4 of Captive Omega

Garrison

Nancy, the Pack Ashe housekeeper, smiles warmly at me, front door wide open as I walk from my car toward her. “Good to see you again, Garrison. He’s in the garden.” She steps aside, pushing the door closed as I enter the mansion.

“Can I get you a drink?” She peers over her shoulder, her blue gaze capturing mine as I trail her through the white marble foyer and out to the garden.

“I won’t be staying long.”

Rune is standing next to the pool on the stone patio. Everleigh is at his side, resting her white-blonde head on his arm.

I frown at the bottom of the garden where contractors' tools sit piled up around a two-story, light wood structure. The building is up, though no doors or windows are in yet.

“You’re late.” Rune’s Cajun accent drifts toward me as I join him under the patio spotlights, stuffing my hands in my pockets as a cool wind whips my way.

“No. I’m not,” I tell him mildly as I note the company name on one of the downed tools. I passed a white truck with the same name and logo stamped on the sides as I drove up to the security gate at 8:55. Late for contractors to be leaving a job.

Whatever Rune is building, he must want it up fast.

“And if traffic had held you up?” he asks as Everleigh leans around Rune to smile at me.

I nod a greeting at her, still distracted by those tools. “I’d have remembered to leave twenty minutes early to avoid it.”

Rune bounces his amber gaze from me to the building and he snorts a laugh. “Go on, you can ask. You look like you’re itching to.”

It wasn’t long ago that someone kidnapped Everleigh from this very garden.

“I passed a truck on my way up. Meritt’s Contractors. Did you?—”

“Told you there would be at least one work question, cher.” Rune gently bumps shoulders with Everleigh as he grins at me. “Garrison Brewster does not have a work off switch. And yes, I had Blaine do a background check before we hired them. Surprised he didn’t mention it.”

I’m not. We’re nearing the annual checkup, which is right about the time getting anything out of Blaine requires surgical precision.

“It must have slipped his mind.”

“Hmm…” Rune gives me a long look and drops a kiss on top of Everleigh’s blonde head. “We weren’t about to let just anyone wander around here.”

My visits to the house have been brief and late. Much later than the 9 it is now, so the contractors must have left before I arrived.

We’re in the middle of finishing up our third round of hiring security for the newest Ever Safe location to open in over a month. Despite Ever Safe being a Pack Ashe business, it has morphed into a joint venture between Pack Ashe and Lucas Security, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

We’re both in our thirties. Rune is thirty while I’m thirty-six, but we both know what it is to build a business from the ground up.

Rune and his pack have the funds to make it the most luxurious free heat clinic in the city, with a bar, sex toys, and top of the range everything in air-controlled suites for an omega to see through their heat without their perfume triggering every alpha within sniffing distance. Lucas Security has the skills to make it the most secure.

During my last visit to the house, Rune briefly mentioned he was building something, a project Kylian was taking the lead on.

"What exactly are you building?” I ask.

I withstand another probing stare. Rune knows Blaine didn’t tell me shit. We’ve been friends for years, so the why question is coming.

Everleigh blows out a heavy sigh. "That is the small cabin Kylian said he would build for my mom to stay when she visits."

Olive Deane, Everleigh’s birth mother, has good reason to be wary of alphas, so it doesn’t surprise me one bit why she wouldn’t be comfortable stepping into a house filled with them.

My eyes narrow on the two-story building. "That doesn't look like a small cabin."

It looks like a family home.

She sighs again. "It doesn't, does it?" Turning to the house, she shouts, "Kylian, you said it would be small."

---