Page 7 of Unraveling Connections

“That’s great news,” I reply, relief flooding through me. “And before you even think of arguing, yes, you are staying in until they clear you completely.”

Atlas chuckles, “I told you she wasn’t going to let you leave before that.”

Peter yawns as he taps away at his laptop before he closes the lid, and puts it down next to his chair, “We all told him that you would insist that they properly cleared him before he left. I am exhausted.”

“Well, you were all right,” I agree, with a smile.

We all settle down, and Trick lowers the lights so that it’s dim. I lay a blanket over Jensen so that he doesn’t get cold and kiss him on the cheek before I go around to everyone and kiss them good night.

“Come here, Firecracker,” Luc states, lifting his blanket and holding out his arm for me.

I repress a yawn as I toe off my shoes and climb in next to Luc, laying my head on his chest as he wraps his arm around me and brushes the hair back on my head so that they don’t tickle his face anymore. My eyes drift closed as I take a last glance at all my men and Peter and make sure that they are all okay.

Peter smiles, “We're all good, Ever. Everyone is here, and everyone is safe. Get some rest because one thing I know for certain is that there is no guarantee how long we are going to be safe for.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Riot mutters, his eyes closed, and his blanket pulled up under his crossed arms.

I sigh. Unfortunately, Peter is right. We often go through phases of having relatively quiet moments, where we do our jobs and get to relax for a decent amount of time between the jobs, and then there are periods of time where it’s one job after another, with barely any time to recuperate between jobs or anything. We end up feeling strung out, and Trick has to put his foot down in order to get us to actually stop. We can’t help everyone, and we want to try, but there are many agents at the organization that are incredibly capable and able to do the jobs. It is easy to think that we have to take on everything, but we don’t, we are still learning that.

Of course, that’s not to say that we don’t have skills that are sometimes needed, skills that are unique to us and our team, but not as often as you would think.

The problem is that the most recent issues have been more personal, meaning that only we can deal with them. We don’t want other people dealing with our personal stuff. Especially everything to do with my mom and her link to Hunt. It would actually be quite nice to go back to not dealing with personal shit for a while, but I guess that is going to have to wait until after we have dealt with Hunt. Then maybe we can get back to doing cases that have absolutely nothing to do with us.

“Night, guys,” I mutter, my eyes already closed.

I smile as they all reply in their own sleepy voices before I feel sleep drag me under.

Chapter Three

Ever

The loud blaring of an alarm drags me from sleep.

“What the fuck is that?” Jensen grumbles, “Someone turn it the fuck off.”

There is some banging and crashing before Peter finally says, “Fuck that’s the alarm.”

“What alarm?” Luc questions, his voice rough with sleep and doing things to me that I really shouldn’t be thinking about right now.

“It means there’s someone in your house,” Peter replies.

“What?” Luc exclaims.

Trick takes over the explanation as Pete taps away at some keys on his keyboard, “There are some sensors set up at your parents’ place so that if anyone steps foot in the place again,we will get notified. Alaric set it up before he headed back to headquarters.”

“Okay, so someone’s tripped them?” Luc asks. “Do we know who? Can we see anything?”

“Yeah, he set up cameras too, just on the perimeter of the house,” Pete replies somewhat distractedly.

“Great, do we know them?” Riot asks.

Pete shakes his head, “I can’t see anything on the feed, but it seems weird. Something must have triggered it, maybe an animal?”

“We’ll go and check it out anyway. If it is one of Hunt’s people, we don’t want to let them slip through our fingers; the more of them we can get off the streets, the better.” Trick replies.

“We don’t all need to go,” Atlas points out with a yawn.

Jensen stands up and stretches, “Me and Ever will go and check it out, I won’t be able to go back to sleep for a while now anyway.”

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