Page 47 of His Captor

My first thought was that Colin had already discovered my connection to Hayden and gone after him. The place was a mess,with dishes and food left out on the counter, a pile of laundry on the old sofa off to one side, and a pile of half broken-down boxes in the middle of the room.

“Um, yeah,” Hayden said, shutting the door behind me and locking it once we were both inside. “Welcome to myveryhumble abode.”

My alpha growled and thrashed. There was no way my baby could live in a pigsty like this.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hayden

Idefinitely hadn’t through my invitation through. All I’d been thinking was that I wanted my alpha, who wasn’t really “my alpha”, despite his baby in me, near me as things around us got a little scary.

Of course, I didn’t let on to Mace that I was scared. And I wasn’t, really. The break-in was a mess, and yeah, the hair stood up on the back of my neck a little when Mace told the whole story of Colin, the bastard, and Victory Holdings. The implications of everything that was going on hurt my brain a little, because it was exactly the sort of backstory I’d come up with in my kidnap fantasy playtimes before.

So far, the only indication that this was real and not just the beginning of another game was the presence of the awesome Det. Shirley. Aside from that, I felt like I’d done the whole extreme danger from organized crime thing before. My brain was on the alert, but my emotions and my sense of danger were elsewhere.

They were on the fact that I hadn’t thought to run down here, correction, waddle down here, to my apartment to clean things up a little before inviting Mace in.

“It’s a mess, I know,” I said, hurrying over to the kitchen to grab the bowl I’d used for cereal, before Simon had come over and taken me for an ice cream breakfast, so that I could dump the leftover milk and soggy cereal bits into the sink. “The maid hasn’t come. I gave them the weekend off,” I joked.

I grabbed the pile of dirty dishes sitting next to the sink and started rinsing them before pulling open the dishwasher to load them.

The trouble was that bending over to put things in the dishwasher wasn’t as easy as it had been before Junior had decided to take up so much room inside me. I might have started to sweat a little as I rushed through the job, nearly fumbling a glass in the process.

Tidying up in general was harder when you were as pregnant as I was, which was why the laundry wasn’t folded, the boxes from the various bits of baby furniture I’d started putting together were in the middle of the living room, and the bathroom was—oh God! I hoped Mace didn’t go into the bathroom!

“I’ll take care of it, I promise,” I said, hurrying out of the kitchen for the bathroom, leaving the water running and the dishwasher door open as I did.

“Slow down, Hayden,” Mace said, stepping into my path like he would catch me. “It’s alright.”

His face was serious and I could see the strain of the evening we’d just had in the lines around his eyes and mouth, but his eyes themselves were bright and glittery.

“I should have come downstairs to clean this place up when you told me to go,” I said sheepishly.

Mace shook his head and took a breath. “No, you were right to stay. I realized that as soon as Det. Shirley started asking me questions. As long as there’s danger in the air, I want you to stick close to me.”

“Ooh, there’s danger in the air!” I said, heart beating faster and smile widening. “I love danger.”

“Yeah, I know,” Mace said in a flat voice, sending me a scolding look.

I came really close to giggling. How was it possible that I’d only known this man a handful of days? Everything about him made me feel like we’d been together our entire lives. It wasn’t just the way he’d fucked me expertly back in Port Lucia. It wasn’t the baby he’d put in me either, or the way we’d interacted in the office for the last few days.

There was something more, something visceral. I wasn’t romantic enough to believe in the fairy tale of fated mates, but I was beginning to wonder if the whole quick bonding when you met someone you were really, really compatible with thing was real. It had certainly happened for Ari and Samson, so why not with me and Mace?

“You should probably turn off the water and finish loading the dishwasher,” Mace said, nodding back to the kitchen area.

I glanced over my shoulder, then winced at him. “Believe me, I should resolve the situation in the bathroom before anything else, before you need to use it.”

Mace puffed into a laugh and shook his head. “Geez, Hayden.”

He let me go, turning to deal with the water and the dishwasher himself, and I hurried past and into the bathroom, closing the door behind me out of sheer embarrassment.

Even though the bathroom situation was grim and I had to quickly whip out the rubber gloves and cleaning supplies I keptunder the sink to give the place a much-needed scrub in as little time as possible, I couldn’t stop smiling.

Mace was here, in my house. My baby-daddy had come home. My alpha was strolling around my nest. Every cheesy way of looking at the situation popped into my mind as I cleaned up things I should have kept clean in the first place. None of it was rational or logical, but I’d never been much of a rational or logical guy. That was Simon’s department.

What I always had been was someone who was willing to jump in with both feet, sometimes without looking, when something felt good. Right now, I would have jumped just about anywhere for Mace. He’d felt so right eight months ago, and he felt right now.

“Aren’t omegas supposed to go into a strong nesting phase right before giving birth?” Mace asked once the bathroom was in satisfactory condition, as I headed out to the main room.

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