Page 7 of Into the Fire: Before

Caine Arceneaux and his antiquated prejudices could suck on a tailpipe. I made my way down to suck on something entirely more enjoyable.

Thirty-one

Taryn

“Andthat’sthelastof it,” Brea said as she shifted the oversized box she’d carried upstairs to a corner of our storage space. She stood with a satisfied sigh, brushing a stray red hair out of her face. “We are officially moved in.”

Damn alpha strength. Brea had hoofed up and down the stairs with twice as many boxes as I had, yet there she stood, looking ready for a photo shoot in her stupid soft gray t-shirt and stupid sexy jeans. Meanwhile, sweat glued my hair to my neck and forehead, and I was breathing exactly like I’d climbed up and down two flights of stairs six times in the last half hour while carrying moderately heavy and awkwardly sized boxes.

Honestly, I was a little mad at her.

Until, that is, she strutted over and put her arms around my shoulders and leaned in for a slow kiss.

Introducing La Musque, the fancy alpha’s body odor.

“It feels nice, putting down roots,” she said in a hazy voice, a soft smile on her lips and a hum behind her words.

I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. “Yeah, it does.”

We’d spent the last two-plus years as nomads—by circumstance, not choice. Rootlessness was exhausting. Constantly rebuying and reselling of furniture as we moved from city to city…never having a steady address for more than six months…saying goodbye and moving on just as you got friendly with the neighbors.

Not this time, though. Farendale was going to beourcity. The one we chose together, the one where we’d stay for the foreseeable future. We’d signed a two-year lease. We’d retrieved our most precious sentimental items from long-term storage. We were making plans to furnish an actual nest in our actual home for the first time since we’d met.

It all made the whole thing feel so…real.

Grouchy landlords aside, Amethyst Commons was an absolute steal of a first home, too. Three beautiful brick buildings, covered in sprawling hibiscus and muscadine vines, dominated a quiet city block. The interiors were full of warm lighting and rich wood grains. Vintage-looking brass mailboxes stood to the left side of the entrance lobby opposite a cozy grouping of three plush aubergine chairs. Rugs and tapestries and lamps and paintings everywhere, but not overstimulating. A beautiful oak stairwell ran up the center of the building, matching doors with cut glass on each side granting entrance to the first-floor units, including ours.

All details that had the omega in me frothing at the mouth.

On the more utilitarian side, each four-story building had a quaint courtyard, as well as on-site laundry and storage. Add to that a rent cost that was just low enough to be only mildly irresponsible to take on, and we’d jumped on the listing like a trampoline.

We’d just finished lugging up our surplus belongings into our designated third-floor closet space with the golden3on theoutside. Small, sure, but getting a little of the clutter out of the apartment was convenient as hell.

I looked through the crowded space, and my eyes snagged on a box in the corner, mummified with duct tape that was probably the only thing maintaining the (semi) square shape. That certainly hadn’t been one of the approximately five million boxes we’d just loaded into the room.

“What’s in this one?” I asked as I broke away and approached the box and pulled apart the folded-together flaps.

“What—”

“HA!” I shouted in victory as I pulled out the long-sought-after charger for my toothbrush. “IknewI hadn’t lost it! You just hid it from me!”

“What?” Brea sputtered, looking with confusion at the box. “That box is labeledWinter Sweaters.It’s June.”

“I think we’ve established that boxes can hold more than one type of thing, haven’t we?” I kept digging through the box. “What else have you hidden away?”

“I haven’t hidden a damn—”

NO. WAY.

I gave a dramatic gasp and pulled out the skateboard that had been stuffed down beneath the messily folded winter sweaters and quilts. Brea’s sigh was confession enough. “Okay, hon, listen—”

“Thief!” I cried out. “Thief! Dirty, dirty thief!”

The skateboard had been an impulse flea market buy a few months after we left Pockston. The moment I’d spied it piled on a table with some grungy CDs and stacks of board games, every cell within me hadneededit. Brea, of course, had worried I’d end up comatose or with a broken neck. Luckily for me, Brea was also a sucker for my omega eyes—that oh-so-sweet look I’d long since perfected and pulled out whenever I wanted something. The merchant had even come down on the price, offering it forten bucks less. Brea’d shot daggers at him from her eyes…but then she’d pulled out her wallet.

A week later, my pre-heat had started. Two weeks after that, Brea had gotten her acceptance letter to the social services program at Remington State, and thus our whirlwind began. In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about my skateboard. And during one of our many moves, my alpha clearly thought that she could simply facilitate my continued memory lapse.

A shrug of resignation was her only reply, and I laughed. “Tsk, tsk. Such a mean alpha, keeping me from shredding asphalt and kicking ass.”

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