Page 62 of Scapegoat

“I love you. I’ll always love you and I’ll do anything to make your life easier.”

“Then start the car,” she said. I blinked, just staring at her for a second before realising what she was saying. “I’m guessing you always ate what your mum made you and, when you left, it’s been counter meals and McDonald’s the whole time.” I nodded slowly. “So I’ll teach you the basics: but first we need supplies.”

“I’m a quick study,” I promised her. “You’ll only have to show me once.”

“Good, because if you think you’re going to make a mess like that in my kitchen most of the time…”

She smiled then and I found myself echoing the expression, even as my heart pounded.

Which is how we came to be standing in the local shop twenty minutes later.

“This bacon?” I asked, picking up a thick packet.

“Too fatty,” she said. “This one is better.” My wolf growled at that, liking the idea of crunching down on chunks of pork fat but Kai shot me a knowing look. “The fatty stuff splatters everywhere and fat burns sting. You won’t think it’s so yum if all that golden skin is covered in burn marks.”

I watched her wave a hand at me and smiled before stepping closer to her.

“Golden skin?”

“What?” Kai looked at me in irritation, but I didn’t think it was real. She looked more like a fluffed up cat, trying to make herself out to be a threat, rather than a wolf shifter. Her eyes narrowed but I just smiled. “You need me to say it? You three were the golden boys back home and you were the most golden.” The longer she held my gaze, the happier I was, and so was the wolf. When she was watching us, she was seeing us, seeing the potential between us. “Every guy wanted to be you, and every girl wanted to get under you.”

“And all I’ve ever wanted is you.” I was close enough to touch her, so I did, grazing the backs of my knuckles down her cheek. “There was no one else, will never be anyone else but you. I—”

“Need to grab some food and go,” she said abruptly, pulling away to grab some of the items on the list, but she wasn’t going far. Her scent… I could smell that sweet, sweet smell of omega receptiveness, so I moved in closer, shadowing her every move, listening to her advice about what food to buy, and what to leave on the shelf.

I paid the guy behind the counter, standing close enough to Kai to make clear who she belonged to. He looked away automatically, ringing up our purchases, but when it came to pay, I handed him my card. Shearing wasn’t exactly high on a city kid’s list of jobs you wanted to do, but when we’d roamed around the countryside looking for our mate, we’d worked out real quick that it was a lucrative industry to get into if you could work fast enough. Top tier shearers could earn up to 300k a year and have no student loans to pay off, so we had no issues with money. I grabbed the groceries and carried them out to the car, following behind Kai. But when I’d put the bags into the back of the ute, I stopped her, because I needed to make sure she understood what I was trying to say.

“I need you,” I corrected her earlier statement. “I need to make you happy in…” I sucked in a breath. “In ways you don’t understand.”

“That’s what this is?” she asked, the moonlight caressing her face as she peered up at me. “Then we’ll make a great couple, because all my mum taught me was how to make others happy.” Her lips twisted as I let out a low hiss. “So I’ll teach you one thing she taught me. Most people can’t fuck up scrambled eggs, so let’s see if we can work on your skills there.”

“The idea with scrambled eggs is to make them either light and fluffy, in which case use milk and a little bit of water,” Kai instructed, breaking a dozen eggs into a bowl. “Or to make them dense and rich by using cream.”

“Cream all the way,” Jay said, the three of us clustering closer. “Now lemme have a go at that.” He plucked an egg from her fingers and then tapped it sharply against the edge of the bowl, cheering when he got the egg into the bowl without any shell.

“Looks like we’ve got egg cracking sorted,” I said, taking the rest of the eggs and the one in her hand away.

“OK, so once you’ve cracked all the eggs into the bowl, you need to aerate them.”

“Aerate…?” Atlas asked.

“Whisk air into the mix. Eggs are quite heavy, so putting a bit of air into them makes them lighter and fluffier,” she replied, then handed me a fork. I grabbed it and stabbed at the egg yolks that were already in the bowl, scowling at my brothers when they cracked eggs on top of my hand. “Not like that.”

She grabbed the bowl back from us, breaking the yolks, yes, but using the fork to beat the eggs in a circular motion, until the mix turned pale yellow and uniform in colour.

“Now we add the cream,” she said.

“Lots.” Jay licked his lips as he watched her pour some in.

“Not too much,” she told him. “It can dilute the eggs and make it a bit bland. Now some salt and pepper—”

“Surely we can do that,” I told her, holding out my hands for the bowl. I smiled as I saw the reluctance there, but she handed it over anyway, watching me season the mix.

“Now you can chop the chives nice and fine,” she told Atlas, handing him a bunch of garlic scented grass, or at least that’s what it looked like. A knife and a chopping board were put before him. He started slicing into the bunch so finely it became a green mush until Kai shook her head. “Your mother used to baby you, didn’t she? I learned how to chop chives when I was eight.”

She demonstrated the technique until Atlas took over and chopped the lot up. I assumed they went into the mix so I grabbed the chopping board and used the knife to push them into the bowl, then grabbed the fork she’d been using to whip the mix and beat the herbs into the eggs.

“Good, now…” She picked up a frypan the guys had cleaned before we arrived, then inspected it closely before setting it on the cooktop, turning up the heat, but not as far as we had. “You guys burned it because you tried to cook the eggs too high, too fast. You don’t want the heat too low, just right.”

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