Page 48 of Knot my Alphas

“Please, Julian,” I say in a low, quiet voice. “Don’t overexert yourself. You need to rest so you can better soon.”

“It’ll take me weeks to fully heal,” he says, falling back against the mound of pillows with an annoyed look.

“Your leg,” I say, gesturing toward his right leg. “Is it fractured?”

“Nah,” he says with a pout. “It’s a case of damaged ligaments but it hurts worse than my broken ribs.”

“How long will it take to heal?” I ask, starting to cut up his pancakes.

“The doc said it’d be at least a week before the pain starts receding,” he says, looking irritated. “It’ll be another two weeks to fully heal.”

“Is it hard to go to the bathroom?”

“I manage my bathroom business on my own but it’s almost impossible to take the stairs,” he says, glaring at his injured leg. “It hurts like hell when I bend my knee.”

Stabbing a piece of pancake, I hold it up to his lips.

Julian opens his mouth and wraps his luscious lips over the fork.

“This is so good,” he moans, chewing through the pancake. “I’ve missed your cooking so fucking much. Caleb and Damon have kept me on a diet of cereal and cold milk these past couple of days. You have no idea how good it feels to be eating some real food.”

“Do you want more syrup?” I ask before feeding him the next bite.

“Sure.”

I drizzle more syrup while he picks up a blueberry from the plate and pops it into his mouth.

“I’m going to do some meal prepping,” I say, continuing to feed him the pancakes. “They can carry food with them even if they don’t have time to eat at home.”

“You need to make sureyoudon’t overexert yourself,” he says in a grim tone. “Cooking a single meal for the three of them is a hard enough task.” Picking up a blueberry, he holds it out for me.

Leaning in, I open my mouth.

He pushes the sweet berry between my lips and smiles brightly.

“It’s not that hard,” I say, chewing the sweet, juicy fruit. “I’m used to meal prepping. There were days when we were all so busy, we didn’t have time to cook anything. Eating out every day can get expensive, so I’d cook big batches of food on the weekend, pack them up in the fridge, and we’d have a homecooked meal on the go.”

“Your parents suck,” he mutters, feeding me some more blueberries.

“They’re not my parents,” I say, thinking about the faces of the two strangers I’d seen in the painting at Callahan’s manor. Sitting up straighter, I gaze at Julian. “There’s something I need your help with.”

“Anything,” he promises me at once.

“Do you have access to military personnel files?” I ask in a low, hushed voice even though it’s just the two of us in the room. “Most importantly, records of dead soldiers.”

His eyebrows rise high on his smooth forehead.

“I think my dad was part of a military pack,” I quickly explain. “He died about twenty years ago.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was dressed in a military uniform with decorative metallic braids as well as stripped bars of gold and silver,” I say, recalling details of my father’s painting. “He had dark hair and looked about the same age as Caleb and Damon. His wife’s name was Rosamund. If you can find the list of personnel who died twenty years ago, we can narrow the list by checking in the names of their spouses.”

“You thought about everything,” he says, looking suddenly sober. “I have access to the files you want. They’re not restricted, so it’s not a big deal. However, the tech room is completely destroyed. It’ll take a while to set everything up again.”

“There are plenty of computer units in the attic,” I say. “We can use those.”

“The information we need can only be accessed through a specific IP and on a specific server,” he says with a grim look.

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