Page 7 of My Pucking Life

Opening the door and stepping inside, I surprise myself by laughing when I see all the men currently under my roof in the gym. Most are working out, but Eris still looks to be moping about something.

Benny stands and drapes his arm around my shoulders with his signature shit-eating grin on his face. “Now that the boss is here, we can have a party!” he hollers and whoops around like an idiot.

I roll my eyes to make a show of my expected annoyance, but I'd be lost if my best friend ever lost his light. “Is it really a party if everyone's here because they can't sleep? Which…why is everyone else, other than Khaos and Andrei, here?” I look around the room suspiciously.What is bothering all of my men so badly that they can't sleep?“All right, out with it. Don't make me pull rank. What's going on?” My voice ends softer than I usually use with my men, but I've learned that even as werewolf men, Leera has taught me that it's okay to be more than what's expected of us.

So, while I am still their Alpha that can and will kill to protect those that I love, they are also my best friends. When no one answers, I walk over to the pull-up bar and drop both bottles of water onto the floor next to me and continue, “I'll start then…”Why do men make talking about what we're going through so difficult?I reach up, wrapping my hands around the pull-up bar, and begin lifting my body, talking between reps, “I'm concerned about all these powers Leera has that we don't understand…I'm constantly on alert because she's in danger…I want to murder my father for killing Khaos' pack…I’m afraid to get to know my sister and have someone else to care about…I don't know if I'm ready to learn what I didn't know about my mother and father…I'm weirded out about why Eris and Dolos—I fix them with a stern glance—are acting strange…fuck.” I finish, dropping to the floor and retrieving one of the bottles of water to chug until it's empty and crinkling it in my grasp.

For an uncomfortably long time, no one says anything, and I think that I got too touchy-feely with them. I'm surprised that it's Khaos that speaks up first, “I don't know what to do…” Everyone stops what they're doing, waiting for him to continue. When I spoke, they kept about their workouts as I was, but now we're all giving him our undivided attention. “At the end of the day, I always had my pack, my people…Hockey is fun and all, but it was just an outlet; it didn't bring me the peace and the closest thing to happiness I'd felt in, well, most of my life…I can't believe Runa is your sister…I—"

“Runa?” I interrupt with fire burning the back of my throat.

His eyes widen when he realizes that was the first time I'd heard her name, and then he nods.

“Runa means…” I trail off, unable to finish my sentence.

“Yes, Runa means secret in the ancient language, but that's all I know. I would assume it's intentional, but I don't know more about the situation. That's for us to learn in a couple hours, it would seem.”

I walk over and grab a towel off of one of the shelves to wipe the sweat from my face. “I interrupted you. Continue.” I nod towards Khaos as I begin gathering weights for the bench press.

“I can't believe the King's advisor had his own daughter killed…I'm worried about Leera—we just got her back…and I'm ready to be caught up on all the shit you said I missed and what's going on with her.” Now that he's finished talking, he walks up to the treadmill to run while we all continue discussing everything that's going on.

Andrei rises to his feet. “I guess this is as good a time as any for me to take over. I just wanted to say, ‘I'm sorry’ again, Roman, I couldn't tell you until I was sure.” He swings his head to me, and I nod, letting him know I'm not upset with him. He then swings his head to Khaos, who is no longer running. He's straddling the treadmill belt, waiting for what Andrei has to say next. “I suspected it from the first time I met her, but Leera is not only my twin sister…she's also the lost princess of Zabella. You would have felt the royal shift.”

“WHAT?!” Khaos roars at us all, “How in the actual fuck does this shit keep getting worse?! I thought I felt it, but I hadn’t stopped to think what it meant. She doesn't have to be a fucking princess if she doesn't want to be!” he growls and begins to pace.

“She won't,” Andrei and I answer in unison, and I continue, “We've already told her that. It's her choice, but with the current state of things, she's considering embracing it if it means taking down whatever plans mine and India's father have laid out. From what we've been told so far, it's not good, and we have a lot of information that we still need to collect.”

Khaos looks a little calmer, but he's definitely still wound tight and ready to fight at the drop of a hat.

“So, I guess I'm mostly worried about Leera and her new powers and reuniting her with our parents,” Andrei finishes with the things currently weighing heavy on his shoulders when Khaos asks, “Hold on. The King and Queen didn't have just one child? They had twins? Why didn't you take your place as the heir to the throne then?”

Andrei takes a few moments to catch Khaos up on the full description of the situation that he explained to all of us at the full moon ceremony while we all continue working through our frustrations on the gym equipment.

When they've finished, Benny looks towards the twins and Slate, as if gauging to see if one of them wishes to speak, and shrugs when they don't. “My turn, I guess.” He smiles. “I'm worried about Leera's safety and happiness through all this crap she keeps going through…I'm irritated that all of this is making it hard to want to focus on hockey…I'm really just tired of everything being heavy again…That's why we left…” When he finishes speaking, he shakes it off, moving as though a shiver just shot up his spine, almost as if he's dislodging the negative emotions, and replaces his signature smirk on his face before turning to the twins, “Out with it, you two,” he teases.

Dolos opens his mouth to speak, but Eris cuts him off with a look that says he does not want to talk about something.

Benny, have you been able to get either of them to talk to you?

No, Boss, they've both had everyone blocked out since we were at Khaos' pack.

Crossing my arms and watching them clearly mentally argue with each other, I begin to lose my patience.What the fuck could they have going on that they won't talk to us about it?

Dolos just shakes his head at his brother before he turns to me. “We've just got some of our own shit we need to sift through. We'll catch you up when we've reached an understanding ourselves.”

Eris snatches his hat off the floor, sliding it on backward, and stomps out of the room without a word to anyone, and we all stare at Dolos.

“He'll come around, and then we'll talk about it just…just not yet.” He shrugs and ducks his head as he heads after his twin.

All eyes swing to Slate, the last one in the room who hasn't had something to share in our weird men-have-feelings-too discussion. My wolf snorts at me, and I roll my eyes again. Slate finished lifting not long after I entered the gym and has been straddling the bench, tapping away on his laptop ever since. “You'll all be disappointed that I don't have any touchy-feeling things for you. I guess I am a little stressed at not being able to keep a better track on Avram and Boian, but I know our pack. I know us. We'll figure it out. We always do.” He never looks at us, still typing wildly on his laptop with his neck craned over the damn thing. Strangely enough, his words, though few, made me feel a little better.

Just to irritate him, I walk over and ruffle all the thick black hair on his head. It works; he lifts his head to shoot me a glare, but when he does, all I say is, “Thanks,” and it catches him off guard, and he shrugs it off and returns his attention to this screen.

“Well, boys, I'm feeling a little better…I think. I'm going to return to my mate and try to get a couple hours of sleep before Leera's pow-wow.”

5

My alarm blares to life, but I'm not able to get up to shut it off. I'm trapped. There is a large muscular arm wrapped around my body, holding me in place. I try to wriggle out from under his arm, which only causes him to tighten his hold on me. While I'd love to stay in his embrace all day, we have an agenda to tackle today, the most important item being learning the hard stuff about Roman's sister, father, and mother.

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