Page 91 of Talk About… Trouble

“Give it a shot,” I said. “It’s really soothing.”

He looked a little skeptical but didn’t hesitate to uncap it, starting on the opposite shoulder.

“How is that not ticklish as hell?” Braxton laughed.

Thankfully, Shepherd didn’t shrug. He just chuckled softly. “It’s actually really relaxing for me, too.”

“Remind me to cover my body in tattoos like this,” Nash said, wiggling his eyebrows to make me laugh. “Every fucking inch of me.”

“You did promise me that you’d do it to your ass,” I laughed, reminding him of an earlier conversation.

Devon snorted. “Okay, now I have to hear this.”

By the time I finished talking, he was cracking up. I had a feeling that in the next month or two, Nash would have a fresh tattoo just for us.

“I think the one thing that we have to remember is to give ourselves some grace,” Devon said, as he took another color, uncapping it, leaning in to start on a new section of Shepherd’s back. “After I left, I had a lot of trust issues. How could I trust anyone with my heart when my parents didn’t even want to keep me around? I always felt like a disgrace, like I couldn’t be myself. Then, of course, I was too much for everyone… too bratty, too mouthy, not submissive enough. Sometimes those insecurities come back, and I have to fight them down. I know these are not on the same level at all with your triggers, but I just mean that we have to remember that sometimes things are going tobring those old feelings back up. It’s just how we handle it that counts.”

“The bond helped a ton,” I admitted, “And this is helping. Not just the coloring, but the whole day spent out here.”

“There’s something about this property,” Nash agreed. “I’m glad that our pack house is here.”

“So, what about the property out at Whitaker Ranch?” Braxton asked. “What are you going to do with it?”

“It’ll always be mine,” he said. “And our kids’ after me. But, I’m not sure yet. We can figure it out after everything settles here.”

“It’s life. Nothing is ever truly settled,” Braxton joked, but he let the subject drop.

I hadn’t even realized how much time had passed until my stomach rumbled.

“That’s our cue to provide for our omega,” Nash said, pulling Braxton with him.

“I’ll grab you guys hot chocolate and give your hands a break,” Shepherd said. He kept his shirt off but stood up, walking away, giving us a view of our artwork.

“He’s like a walking mosaic at this point. I love it,” Devon joked.

Shepherd tossed a smirk over his shoulder but didn’t say anything else.

“We have a proposal to plan,” Devon said. “We need to pick up the rings, pick a location, and maybe I can try out a date on them.”

“That sounds perfect,” I said. “Maybe we can get someone to call them and distract them while we set it up out on the pasture. That way, if it ends up in bed, we are right here.”

“I love the way you think, baby,” Devon laughed.

We fell quiet as Shepherd came out with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate. He eyed us curiously but didn’t ask what we were talking about, letting us keep our secrets.

The moment the door closed behind him again, we were back to planning. There was something empowering and bold about accepting your fate and then putting into motion exactly how you wanted it. We weren’t waiting around for others to know what we wanted or asking them to do it. This was us creating our own future.

Now if it could only go off without a hitch.

Wren

“Do they really have to make courthouses look this intimidating?” I muttered as we walked up the imposing stairs of the large stone building. It had everything from giant pillars to stone lions that flanked the front doors.

“I swear they do it on purpose,” Devon agreed, giving one of the lions a pat as we passed them, making our alpha and beta chuckle behind us.

“Oh, there you are, Wren,” my lawyer said as he waved me over. Carl Sands was an incredible lawyer, one that came highly recommended. He took this case not expecting much, honestly. In the legal world, omegas tended to come out on the bottom.

Somehow, he managed to find all the others, rounding us up for one big lawsuit. That was the only reason we were at this point.

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