Page 66 of Ruffled Feathers

“Cheers,” everyone chimed, clinking glasses and downing the smooth liquor, all except Sonny, who was on call for work. He was drinking pineapple juice. Poor bastard was going to have to watch our Omegas grind on the dancefloor sober.

OJ looked down at Strat. “Want to dance?”

I was far too full to dance, and my horror at the thought must have shown on my face. Sonny laughed, slapping my shoulder. “Don’t worry, True. I’ve got it.” Because there was no way in hell we were going to let our two sexy-as-fuck Omegas go onto the dancefloor by themselves. I didn’t trust any other fuckers.

Rightly so, because as soon as they started dancing, moving against each other sinuously, I got hard as a fucking rock, and I’d bet my fortune so did half of the club. The amount of eyes on my Omegas, watching them hungrily, made my skin itch.

I hated that I didn’t have my claim on Strat. To anyone who was looking, he was still fair game. They couldn’t know he was mine. They were both mine.

I growled low in my chest.Fuck it.Standing, I grabbed the bottle of tequila and walked out onto the dancefloor. Didn’t want the bottle rats to swipe it from the booth. Stepping up behind Strat, I buried my face in his neck as we moved to the fast-paced beat.

Just like everything he did, Strat was an excellent dancer. I passed him the bottle, and he took a mouthful, leaning forward and spitting the shot into OJ’s mouth.

Fuckkkkkk.I wasn’t going to survive.

We continued to dance as one song turned to another and then another. I’d undone my shirt halfway down my chest, and strands of OJ’s hair were sticking to her face. The white of Strat’s shirt was going see-through in some places.

I couldn’t see Strat’s face, but OJ’s pupils were blown wide, and I could scent her over the de-scenter they pumped into the clubs, so Alphas didn’t get frenzied while drinking. I looked up at Sonny and saw we were in agreement. We needed out of this club, and into somewhere that had a big bed.

He suddenly stilled, pulling out his phone and frowning. He flashed it to me, showing the text calling him into work. That sucked, but I guess that meant I got two Omegas all to myself.

Leaning into Strat’s body, I whispered in his ear, “Let’s get out of here.”

Thirty-Five

Lance

The problem with being a mastermind was that you expected a certain level of intelligence from your underlings. Even if they said all the right things, followed orders, didn’t think and justdid, they were still kind of stupid. You’d have to be kind of stupid to take all the risks for a fraction of the reward.

It was how Rio and I had ended up in a shitty bar, watching Max talk to that redheaded fucker, Joseph Powell, who’d somehow dodged getting charged for the cockfighting incident. Max was plying him with decent liquor, and the guy was gobbling it down greedily.

Unfortunately for him—or maybe unfortunately for Anthony Smalls—he had a loose tongue when he was drunk, and Max was really fucking good at interrogation techniques. I was of the school of thought that we should just take him out the back and beat the truth out of him, but Max had insisted that perhaps that would make the evidence inadmissible.

I wasn’t sure what he said while hammered would help either. I sipped at my beer, making enough small talk with Rio that we didn’t look suspicious. I kept looking at my phone; Otillie was going clubbing with the rest of the Pack tonight,and she thought I was at my VA meeting. She kept sending me picture updates, and fuck me, she wasgorgeous.

I’d told her that I was going from the VA meeting back home, because I didn’t really like clubbing, but really, I was going to do something a little risky. I mean, it was true that I didn’t like clubbing. A mass of people, loud music, flashing lights and smoke machines all fucked with my PTSD more than I’d like to admit to anyone outside of a therapist.

“The fucker can talk,” Rio grunted, turning away from glaring at the back of Joseph Powell, who was really getting quite animated. He hadn’t realized that Max was wearing a recording device. I assumed it wouldn’t even have occurred to Joseph Powell that a random guy at the bar could be anything but that.

I lifted my beer. “Let him talk himself right into a jail cell.” Or a shallow grave, depending on what he was spilling over there.

Rio tapped the neck of his beer against mine. “Cheers to that, man.”

We both took a deep sip, and I leaned back in my chair, watching everyone else in this bar. It was definitely a dive, and the clientele showed it. But it was out of the main part of town, the beer was cheap, and the music was still from the eighties. I could see the appeal for the old barflies.

Rio’s eyes slid to me. “I liked your Omega. She’s sweet. I can see why you’re smiling so hard these days, and would go to these lengths for her.”

I gave him a crooked smile. “She’s perfect.”

Frowning at me, he pointed a finger in my direction. “I still don’t know how we ended up with that fucking parrot, though. Today, he called me a cuntwaffle. Where thehellwould a bird learn the word cuntwaffle?” I snorted a laugh, and Rio shook his head, looking amused. “But Max loves that damn thing already. Your girl definitely knows how to match her pets. I doubt there are many people who could stand that language outside offormer military men. If only she could match me to an Omega that easily.”

Otillie had been really subtle about it too. She’d laid the seeds of the idea in Max’s mind. Then, she’d equated the care of an Omega with the care of a pet. Before you knew it, when she pitched the idea of the parrot to Max, he was down, and so was Rio, because it was one step closer to his dream of an Omega.

Clever little Omega.

I must have been smiling goofily because Rio snorted an incredulous noise. “So whipped.” But then Joseph Powell began wobbling his way to the bathrooms, and Max was following him down the hall. “I’ll go around the back,” Rio murmured.

“I’ll grab the car.”

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