Page 14 of Into the Fire: Before

I raised my brow at Lin and took a sip of my drink, my arms crossed at my waist. “Doctor, hm?”

“An emergency room doc, to be precise,” Lin answered, standing shoulder to shoulder with me.

“Impressive,” I said, turning back to look at our mates. Brooks was on the board, explaining something to Taryn as he pivoted the board back and forth with little pushes from his back foot. I nodded toward him. “He any good on that?”

Lin’s barking laugh was answer enough.

Unease wormed its way through me like spilled milk. I tried to tamp it down, ignore it. Rationally, Iknewthat the chance of any serious, long-lasting harm coming from playing around on a skateboard was slim to none. Maybe some bruises or scrapes. Nothing worth brooding so much over.

Yet.

I knew every inch of my omega’s body. Every freckle and curve. Every scar. Like the little white line on the bottom of her chin, an inch long, from falling out of a treehouse when she wassix. Then there was the quarter-sized patch of white scar tissue on her hip from a diving challenge gone wrong in her teen years. In the past, there’d been sprained ankles, sprained wrists, more than one broken finger, at least two concussions…

My omega was an adventurous one. Just not a particularly coordinated one.

I covered my nerves with a chuckle of my own. “Just know,” I said quietly to Lin, “if she rolls off the roof, I’m killing all three of you.” I took a sip of the drink I’d grabbed from the cooler. Strong, sweet, smooth. Like your favorite home-cooked apple pie held the secrets to the universe, if only you could hear it whisper them. There was no label on the small glass bottle. Maybe they made it themselves. “That is, unless you get just theboardto go over. That, I’d pay for.”

“This may be the first time in human history someone has taken a hit out on a skateboard.” Lin knocked his shoulder against mine. “Hold on, let me get Guinness on the phone.”

“Okay, yes, I’m an overprotective alpha, ha, ha, ha,” I said with a tone of mock offense. All pretenses fell as I looked over at my smiling, giggling omega with the smiling, giggling beta. “She’s just…everything.”

When I looked to Lin, he was watching them as well. “I get it,” he said quietly.

I’d never say it out loud, but I wondered if he did, if he could truly understand how much of a mindfuck alpha and omega instincts could be in the long term. Taryn was the sun my entire world revolved around. Rationally, I wanted her to live her life however close to the edge she wanted to. To taste and see and hear and feel it all.

Unfortunately, my inner alpha couldn’t be reasoned with. She hated the thought of any threat to our omega, real or imagined. The alpha supplements helped some, but it was still a constantvigilance that was difficult to shut off where her safety came into it.

Lin and Brooks were mated, but an alpha and beta bond had to be different. That base instinct to shelter and protect at all costs was absent.

Taryn stood on the board now, Brooks on the concrete behind her and bracing his hands on her waist as he guided her and the board on a slow roll across the rooftop. “Locked knees are less stable. Keep ‘em loose.”

Taryn snorted and turned toward Brooks, which made her fall off the side of the board. His hands around her waist meant it was little more than a step, though. “Oh, you’d like that?”

God, I could see his dimples from twenty yards away. And he never removed his hands. “Nothing I’d love more.”

Lin shook his head and cut a sly glance toward me. “Yeah, he comes across all smooth and sexy now. When he’s falling asleep in his rainbow unicorn t-shirt, on the other hand…”

Brooks looked over at us before giving a dramatic huff. “Isn’t it a bituncouthto speak of our bedroom habits in front of the ladies, Lin? God, I am so sorry for his behavior,” Brooks added, looking between me and Taryn with a scandalized hand over his heart. “Please do not judge me by my alpha’s unchecked vulgarity.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I murmured beneath my breath.

Lin rolled his eyes and chuckled like a good sport, Taryn giggling and a smile fighting to take over my own lips. The mock offense dropped from Brooks’s face as he blew a kiss toward Lin before shifting back to Taryn, resetting for another run on the board.

As Brooks explained how to turn the board, I took a deep breath and—keeping my attention on Brooks and Taryn—asked Lin, “So, real estate, hm?”

“Six buildings across Farendale County,” he said as he took a sip of his drink. “Mostly luxury multifamily spaces. Plus this complex.” He gestured to the building under our feet, as well as the two others. “Caine is our day-to-day guy on-site here.”

“Because he’s such a people person?”

Lin cut a glance at me, only the smallest bit chastising. “Caine is…somewhat of an agoraphobe.”

That took me by surprise. “Oh.”

“Not clinically, not literally,” Lin clarified. “But being out in the world is difficult on him. Being aroundanyoneis difficult. So he’s basically my behind-the-scenes project manager, accountant, executive assistant—whatever needs doing. It was his call to take on the landlord duties here.” Lin’s jaw clenched and he shot me with that sharp gaze, assessing, warning. “Everywhere else, we pay a management company to keep staff on-site to deal with those types of issues. But this is our home, and Caine insisted we shouldn’t pay a company to do what he could do when he was already in the building.”

Heat rushed to my face, and I kept quiet, gathering my thoughts as I watched Brooks—hands still on Taryn’s hips—rolling her faster along the ground. She laughed, enjoying the thrill of the ride with the security of his steady grip. As she approached the edge of the roof and the low brick wall that served as its boundary, my heart pounded in my chest. But Taryn popped her back foot down on the edge of the board. Brooks jumped out of the way as she managed to swivel the board a little more than ninety degrees.

“Superstar!” Brooks called out as he lifted his hands from her waist in victory two blinks before she came to a full stop. “Seriously, prodigy level.”

---