Page 98 of The Pack Next Door
“She saw us.” I tried to keep the smug note out of my voice and failed. “But you said something about needing more staff?”
“You’re here to help?” Sebastian was a slender man with the look of someone who existed in a constant state of anxiety. “Oh gods, get in here!”
“But what if Briar—?” Emma said.
“Better to ask for forgiveness than permission if we’re going to get all this new stock checked over,” he said, hurrying back into the warehouse. We followed hot on his heels and saw there were pallets stacked high everywhere. “More stock keeps arriving every day and we haven’t even touched Tom’s pottery stuff. Briar keeps asking about the insurance claim, but we have to unwrap hundreds of pieces individually, photograph them and then document each damaged one.”
“Phone cameras OK?” Jace asked, eyeing the pallets.
“Phone camera, Polaroids, or even daguerreotypes, if that’s all you can manage.” He gestured to an obviously damaged pallet sitting at the back of the warehouse. “You get that job done.” His eyes went wide, the white clear around the brown iris. “I will personally beg Briar to mate every single one of you.”
“Seb!” Emma hissed. “He doesn’t mean that.”
He poked his head up and over her shoulder.
“I do.”
“We don’t have any way to get you in with the boss.”
Emma’s flat voice, the way she crossed her arms, made clear this was not a woman to be convinced by pretty words or lies. I decided I liked her right then and there.
“That’s not your job,” I replied. “It’s ours. You deal with the rest of this stuff.” With a shake of my head I looked at all the pallets, sure I knew what we had to do next. “And we’ll get this job done.”
“Just don’t break anything. Tom?—”
Emma’s harried tone was misguided.
“Is a grumpy prick who will lose his shit if another piece breaks?” Jace nodded. “We know. We met him.”
“OK, well, there’s a big table at the back. Unpack every item and put the bubble wrap in that bin there.” She pointed to a massive hessian sack that hung from a metal frame. “We’ll reusewhat we can, but Seb and I will have to check the pieces again before they go out.”
“Looks like we have a job to do,” I said, turning to my brothers.
Doing something, that’s what helped settle me. Probably because every time I peppered the dads with questions, they sent me into the backyard to chop wood. For a moment, I smiled, remembering the way that felt. Shame and satisfaction made for weird companions in my heart and that had me turning to the others. We’d worked out a system between us. I grabbed pieces and set them up on the table. Gideon unwrapped and inspected each one and then passed the damaged ones to Jace to photograph.
“You know I’m done with them, right?” I said, coming to a stop at the end of the table.
“What, the ceramics?” Gideon looked past me to the still half-full pallet.
“No.” Setting a razor sharp axe into the hands of a seven-year-old seemed negligent at best right now. With what I now knew about our parents, I had to wonder if there was something else to it. “Our parents.”
“What made you—?” Jace started to say, but Gideon nodded slowly.
“I know.” His lips thinned, and I saw the war that was waging inside him. “Me too, if I’m honest. How the hell do you have a relationship with someone who just sees you as a means to an end?”
Jace’s hands stilled, and he put his phone down carefully. Hands smoothed across the tabletop before he looked back our way.
“Yeah.” His jaw worked and then he nodded decisively. “I mean, they were going to let us go along with the bullshit of becoming the ruling pack, even if it meant we lost Briar.” Hiseyes when they met mine were full of something I knew all too well, though he showed it rarely. “They didn’t give a single shit about us, did they?”
What’s the worst thing about being the black sheep? You know you’re right. That the family dynamic was fucked, that Mum would’ve rather stayed with mates that would abuse her, because the dads were a means to get what she wanted. That the dads focussed on Gideon to the point of exclusion to the rest of us, seeing themselves in my brother’s size, strength. That way they could ignore their own very obvious weakness. I saw it all but was forced to accept the reality. Either that or walk away from my entire family and become a lone wolf.
“No,” I replied, trying to soften the word, but how did I achieve that? “I don’t think they did.”
“Well, thank the gods that Briar doesn’t want kids.” Jace’s tone was hard as he turned back to the pot in front of him, snapping off another shot. “Because honestly I’d be scared to have sons, lest we turn out to be deadbeat dads as well.”
That warranted a deeper discussion, but the sound of people talking had all three of us perking up.Click, click, click, I knew the sound of those heels on the concrete, and sure enough, Briar walked in. Not the omega anymore. A polished business woman replaced my wanton mate, a bag hanging from her arm, her hair tied up in a neat bun. There was no need to tell my brothers what to do. We each pushed ourselves away from the table and moved around it, stepping closer.
“…so who’s going through Tom’s shipment?” she asked, looking up, then going pale when we appeared.
