I didn’t care about his scolding, I grabbed the lapels of his coat and dragged him in so that I could inhale his vanilla scent deep into my lungs. “You’re here. How are you here?”
A moment later another body was slamming into us as Rhodes made it across the street. His emotions were all over the place—anger, worry, and most overwhelmingly he was ecstatic over the return of our third packmate.
Pulling Edison’s face to mine, I relished in the desperate kiss we shared, not quite believing that he was actually standing in front of me until I watched him pull Rhodes in for a kiss of their own.
“We should get out of this rain,” Edison said a few moments later once we’d gathered quite the crowd of people watching our reunion. “I’ve rented a suite in a hotel nearby.”
“Where are the others? Why are you by yourself?” Rhodes began to question as we walked hand-in-hand in the direction of Edison’s hotel. “How did you even find us in the first place?”
“I’ve always known where you were,” Edison explained as he nodded to the front desk person, handing the man his umbrella. “Your neighbor, Mrs. Doyle? She’s Oona’s cousin.”
Mrs. Doyle was the friendly old woman who lived up the road from our little cottage. She was always checking in on us, but I figured that she was just nosey and lonely as she lived all by herself with just her dogs for company.
As soon as we stepped onto the elevator I gave his shoulder a hard shove. “So you knew where we were but you couldn’t get us any message telling us you were okay? What the hell, Edison?”
All of my relief that my husband was okay was quickly replaced by anger. I’d barely kept it together—but at least I didn’t feel the guilt that Rhodes had.
It oozed off of him for weeks because he felt like he’d failed to protect Edison which was his entire job.
“I couldn’t,” Edison said with a shake of his head, pressing the top button for the penthouse and scanning his room card. “That night I only took out about half of the older generation and it took me up until last week to make sure that each and every one of them was taken out of commission and that it was safe enough for me to bring you two back.”
I didn’t say anything until the elevator doors opened into a well-lit suite. “Collum and the rest of the security team is a floor below this,” Edison continued, slowly answering the questions that Rhodes had pelted at him rapid fire on the street. “I was by myself because I wanted our first meeting after three months to be, well, private. Though the tourists snapping photos of us will probably live on in their iPhones forever.”
He was trying to make a joke. I knew it, but I still didn’t find it very funny.
Edison glanced between the two of us before shrugging. “Well, I had to try at least.”
I flopped down onto the hard leather couch that filled up most of the suite’s space, pulling a throw pillow into my lap for something to hold on to as I watched my two alphas settle in across from me.
“You were shot that night. How did you survive?”
“I didn’t do it alone. Liam Flannagan and his men had taken most of our guys who were in the mansion that night hostage and I was running out of options,” Edison began, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees as his fingers hung threaded together between them.
“So you used the maids,” Rhodes provided with a shake of his head. “Well there goes that secret.”
“The maids?” I frowned, thinking of Aoife and Quinn, the sweet girls who always helped clean my room. “How did you usethe maids, you didn’t use them as distractions did you, Edison? Because I won’t stand for you using those poor girls like that.”
Even as I spoke, Edison’s grin told me that I was way off.
Rhodes leaned over to me and put his hands over mine. “No, Perr, the maids are anything but distractions. Oona has trained them to defend themselves and the manor if need be.”
“Oona? Sweet housekeeper Oona? Oona, who looks like Mrs. Claus?” I snorted with disbelief. “Yeah, right, and I’m secretly a ninja.”
“Well you better brush up on your throwing star skills then, pet, because there’s more to Oona Coughlan than meets the eye.” Edison’s laugh was almost a bark as he grinned at me. “Her husband was a part of the IRA in Northern Ireland in the seventies before they fled to come to America. The woman knows her way around a gun fight.”
I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of the grandmotherly woman holding anything other than the silly feather duster that she always carried around.
“After that night I was out of commission for two weeks while I recovered from the gunshot wound—which was another bit of luck. Three inches to the left and the bullet would have ripped through my heart.”
Just hearing him talk about it made me feel nauseous and despite my anger with the alpha I found myself getting up and crossing the space. I crawled into his lap and wrapped my arms around him as he continued.
“Once I was out of the woods I knew there was no bringing you two back unless all of the older generation was out and the younger men were installed at the new branch heads.”
“And it all worked out?” Rhodes prodded, also sliding in close so we were basically all in contact with each other in a huddled mass on the couch.
“More or less, though I will say that we have a couple less branches on our family tree now… and I found the mole who was leaking our information.”
Rhodes frowned, clearly confused. “Wasn’t it Rory?”