Page 70 of Labor of Love

“Grandma Josie,” Giovanni said. “It would be my honor to pick Ezra up from the airport.”

Grandma Josie smiled back and for a moment, just a moment, it looked downright predatory.

“Huh, so Ez is coming back,” Albert mused as he picked at the label of his beer bottle. “I thought he’d stay in the military until they forced him to retire.”

He was lounging in the yard like the lazy lion he was, one dark arm thrown over his eyes to block out the last rays of the setting sun.

“Nah,” Ginny called from the fire pit. “He was gonna go twenty years and then come home with a pension and job potential.”

She was poking at the remaining coals with a long stick, the pyromaniac, sleeves rolled up over her bulging biceps. Shewas still dressed from her job at the local landscaping business, having finished her shift right before their monthly hang out.

Giovanni just rolled his eyes and looked over at Rory who was curled up in one of his deck chairs with a book. He was small for a shifter, let alone an alpha, but avian shifters were never particularly large to begin with and both of his parents barely topped five feet.

Rory just shrugged, keeping his opinion on the matter behind his teeth.

“Look, it isn’t that weird,” Giovanni said. “There are plenty of reasons that he could be coming back, and you know shifters always have an easier time getting out of military contracts than humans do.”

“Yeah, but he sighed a second contract, he was supposed to be in for another two years at least,” Albert pointed out. “And Ez is an omega, the militaryreallydoesn’t like parting with those. There’s not enough of them to keep the alphas steady to begin with.”

“Ezra wouldn’t stand for that kind of obstruction,” Giovanni protested.

“Dude, it’s been a decade,” Ginny called. “And something about this smells fishy.”

“How?” Giovanni threw up his hands, leaning back on his deck railing, and nearly overbalancing. “How does anything smell fishy?”

Rory licked his lips. “Ezra’s different than you remember. He isn’t fourteen anymore. Have you even seen a picture of him these days? You know he’s still unmated, right?”

Giovanni’s eyes narrowed, wondering what Rory was trying to imply. “Yes.”

Ginny huffed and dropped her stick, sauntering back over to the porch. She hopped up the steps and flopped down into one of the free chairs. “Look, GG.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me that,” Giovanni sighed.

“You have to remember that you’re Pack Alpha now, not just a random alpha member, not just a possible heir to the pack— theonlyheir we had to work with,” she kept going like he hadn’t spoken.

Albert raised his hand. “He had a Pack Beta, there was a possibility that it wouldn’t be Gio.”

Ginny rolled her eyes. “Hendrickson was a useless thug andRorycould have kicked his ass in a dominance fight if it came down to it.”

His arm fell back into place. “Never mind, just playing devil’s advocate.”

Ginny continued. “We all knew you were going to get husband hunters eventually, and discharges take time; the military is full of red tape, especially when it comes to omega shifters. Why would anyone go through that if they didn’t have to? Ezra already signed his second contract; he wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t like the environment. Which leaves us with the question of why he’s coming home now.”

Giovanni’s heart skipped a beat.

Ezra might be coming home for him. Ezra mightwantto come home for him.

Which probably wasn’t what Ginny wanted him to focus on but fuck, that was a heady thought. It probably said something about his sanity that the possible manipulation wasn’t putting Giovanni off and was actually making it more appealing, but Ginny didn’t need to know that.

The look on her face said she might be putting it together from his silence, though.

“Oh, come on, Ginny,” Giovanni said. “I’ve been Pack Alpha for a year and a half, if Ezra wanted to do something like that, he’d have done it within the first six months.”

“I’m just saying,” Ginny sighed, a look of utter exasperation on her face. “That something smells like fish and it damn sure isn’t sushi. Do you remember the first six months of your rule? Because I sure do.”

Albert barked a laugh and levered himself up into a sitting position. “Drop it, Gin. GG isn’t going to listen to you even if you’re right. He’s too far gone.”

“I am not!” Giovanni protested. “And she’s not right. Ezra isn’t a gold digger. I barely have any gold to dig. And besides, the first six months of my… takeover were fine.”

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