Page 9 of Frenzy
“Yeah, I have to go.” I kissed her once more and then stood, staring down at her, all rumpled and sexy in bed. “Love you, Bon. You know that, right?”
She gave me the softest, sweetest smile. “Love you too.”
I let out a long sigh and dragged myself toward the door. “Is Darius doing a night shift tonight?”
She nodded sleepily, her eyes already closing. “Yep.”
“Come over. We’ll do pizza and I’ll give you one of those full body massages you like.”
One eye popped open. “The ones with the warm coconut oil that we use as…” She trailed off, waggling her eyebrows. I grinned back at her and winked. She gave a happy hum and snuggled further into the blankets. “You’re on. Now get out of here before I drag you back in here to do something with that impressive morning wood you’re trying to hide.”
I laughed, blowing her a kiss as I tiptoed out of the house. The sun was just starting to pinken the sky as I jogged back to my apartment. I did everything by muscle memory: showering, getting dressed in my suit, doing my hair. The whole time, my mind was on Bonnie and the Sanctum and what the hell I could do to ease her load.
There were no easy solutions. There weren’t even any safe solutions. She wouldn’t quit. The Alpha General wouldn’t spare more funds. We could reach out to the rest of the community, I guess, but that would create more work for her. Plus, she’d hate people thinking that she was fucking it up.
I jumped on my ATV and drove the short distance to the Legion building. We went everywhere by ATV in Maxton, with a few exceptions. Bonnie’s van was one, as well as people who needed a vehicle for work purposes. Honestly, the less we had to do with the human bureaucracies, the better for us.
I wasn’t the first person here; the Legion were the biggest employers in Maxton after all. There were people here getting deliveries early, plus the Legion Force—our army and security arm—which meant that the lights were nearly always burning in the Legion building.
I went through the routine of setting up the office for the day, sifting through emails and paper requests, sorting through who wanted to vent and who had actual issues, and moving them into the schedule as needed.
The Alpha General strolled into the office five minutes before his first appointment for the day and grunted in my direction. Well, that was close enough to a greeting. No sooner had he shut the door than his first appointment arrived. Settling everyone in, I let myself get lost in the minutiae of my work.
The other Legion Generals turned up through different times of the day to take meetings and generally shoot the shit, like they were prone to doing. They made the hard decisions but as a general rule, none of them actually worked very hard.
I approved several requests for aid—none of them were large amounts, and I knew the Alpha General would have rejected them just because he believed in survival of the fittest. Might work for anthropology, but not for leading an entire race of people.
Just before lunch, my phone rang once more. I thought about ignoring it and pretending the desk was unmanned, but that was unprofessional. I loved my job, most of the time. It was frustrating but I could do some real good for my people from behind this desk, even if I was only a Beta.
“Hello, Alpha General’s office.”
“Uh, Rad? It’s Tom. I’m working down by the ward entrance, and three huge vans just rolled in. They don’t look like regular Maxton people.”
I blinked. “But they got through the ward?”
“Uh yeah, just drove straight through.”
My mind whirled. Since the female Omega had been found by the Huxley-Grey Pack, we’d had our wards tightened so extensively that you wouldn’t be able to cross them if you so much as thought about junk-punching your Manix husband.
But three carloads of strangers just drove straight through them?
“How long ago was this, Tom?”
He paused at the other end of the phone. “Oh, I dunno, Rad. Maybe five or ten minutes? I didn’t know if I was overreacting or—”
The door flung open, and in front of me was a huge Alpha Manix. A stranger that I had never met.
“Don’t worry about it, Tom.”
I looked at the men with the Alpha, my nose twitching as I took in all their scents. There was an Omega Manix, and he was fucking beautiful. Warm skin, bright blue eyes, dark hair that was too long.
Actually, they all looked like the polar opposites of anything in town. Tall and dark to our fair and blond. It was hard not to throw up my guard. There was a shifter beside the Omega Manix, though I couldn’t pick what flavor. He was covered in tattoos from the neck down, covering even his fingers, giving him an aura of danger. That was contrasted with the way his eyes crinkled at the corners like he was laughing at me, and the small dimple on one cheek. He was like a happy pitbull or something.
My eyes were dragged back to the huge Alpha. His face was kind of familiar, but where did I know it from….
“You’re Naja’s brother!” Naja was the new female Omega who lived up with the Huxley-Grey Pack. Her arrival had been the most dramatic thing to happen in this town in a decade.
The Alpha was in a beautifully tailored three-piece suit, though he’d obviously lost his jacket at some point, and he’d rolled the sleeves of his dress shirt up his forearms. Holy hell, he was delicious. That hard-on that I’d been nursing all day from Bonnie sprang back to life, and I cleared my throat.
