Page 126 of Priceless

My hands still had dark stains on them.

“Then tell me what it was,” I whispered. “Please. I want to know.”

One of her hands slid over my ribs to my back, holding me closer. A soft sound came from her. She was already nearly asleep once more, but she spoke, voice soft and drowsy. “You weren’t there.”

My purr faltered for a second before I caught it and brought it back. Emotion flooded my chest. Not some kind of terrible monster or even a nightmare about her aunt and uncle. Not about being mistreated or chased or any of the normal things you would think of for a bad dream.

Just us not being there.

Fuck.

I pulled her more tightly against me. She didn’t know yet what we were to her. And though our Omega thought she was hiding it, I saw when she froze thinking about the future. The doubt.

Soon, she would be ready to hear and understand that we weren’t going anywhere, and we never would. This was all for her. Every step of this journey had been because of her.

Us not being there was her nightmare.

I felt the same. If I woke up in the morning and she wasn’t in bed with us, and we found out she was simply gone? I couldn’t even let the thoughts fully enter because it was so devastating.

Ocean’s fear was the last thing I ever wanted. But if this was her fear, I was grateful. It meant she was letting us in. It meant she was starting to believe the things we told her.

I kissed her hair and pulled the blanket further up over both of us. “We’re not going anywhere, princess. I promise.”

“You’re lucky I love the three of you,” Raina said. She fixed us with an unimpressed stare through the screen of the tablet. “With anyone else, I would have flipped off the phone and said fuck you till morning.”

“Hello to you too,” Cameron said with a grin.

She rolled her eyes, clearly already in a robe and pajamas. Her Omega made tea in the background. “What’s going on?”

“Believe me, it’s the last thing we want to be dealing with right now. But we need you to do some digging and it needs to be kept quiet. It’ll be much harder to do while we’re out of the country.”

I took a pen off the desk and began sketching to keep my thoughts clear. The view of Ocean last night. Dark shadows curving over her, away from where the dim moonlight shone.

When we got back home, I was going to paint it.

Glancing over her shoulder, Raina stood and left her kitchen and closed her office door behind her. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s wrong with the Extasis launch,” Cameron said. “We saw the toys while we were at the party here, and they’re not what they should be. They’re breaking. They feel cheap. Check the reviews. We’re getting slammed.”

I dragged a hand over my face, still chasing sleep away since it was early. “We tried to look into it yesterday, but everything shows that it’s fine from my end. All the design specs I send over. Everything from the technical team all checks out. But it’s not correct.”

Raina looked at my packmate. “You’re very quiet, Everett.”

“There’s not much to say.”

Tilting her head, Raina studied us. “You think this is part of it? Why the board forced your hand?”

“I don’t know.” Rett ran a hand through his hair. “I want to say yes, but throwing out an accusation like that isn’t going to get us anywhere. And so far, our resources haven’t found anything.”

Meaning Aiden. The hacker hadn’t found any evidence of wrongdoing from any of the board. Which meant that they were being excruciatingly careful, or we were wrong.

“Which is why we’d like you to dig around. If they’re doing something, it has to be analog,” Everett said. “Or buried so deep our guy wouldn’t know the difference. If it is them, I still don’t pretend to know why.”

Raina’s eyes sparked.

“You have a thought?” I asked.

“Maybe.”

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