Page 9 of Aleko
“Well, apparently, they wandered a little too far,” said Pellos.
“They said they were going out for dinner! What the fuck are they doing in jail?”
“The same thing Australian tourists usually do in jail, I assume,” said Pellos.
Alex let out a snarl of anger. “I swear to the fucking gods that someone out there is trying to cockblock me.”
Pellos chuckled.
“I’m not kidding. I think Fate has it in for me.”
“Or maybe they’re just selkies, and what else would they do but get drunk and arrested,” said Pellos, and Alex sighed. “Which is a less dramatic explanation, but also maybe a little more likely.”
“I think I prefer my explanation,” said Alex sourly.
“Mm-hmm,” said Pellos, his eyes twinkling.
One of the assistants came in and smiled nervously at Alekos but went straight to Pellos with whatever was on her clipboard. Pellos had streamlined all of the day-to-day operations, and Alekos no longer had to come into the warehouse unless he wanted to. All of the work could be done from his home office.
Alex dropped onto the couch against the wall and waited for Pellos to be done. He had named Pellos CFO a few years ago, not because he’d felt the need but because Pellos had put his foot down about it. And now he realized he should have done it sooner. Pellos no longer needed any handholding or instruction—he could run the company on his own, thanks. It made Alex proud, but he was also starting to get bored. Pellos had made life too easy.
Alex watched as the girl, who he thought was from accounting, nodded at whatever Pellos said and went off with a smile. Pellos might be oblivious to the fact that the girl had smelled much warmer when she was standing next to him, but Alex wasn’t. Pellos, with his olive skin, dark hair, and classic profile, looked like one of the Roman statues come to life. But Pellos, as far as Alex knew, had a strict hands-off policy about employees. Like the rest of the pack, Pellos preferred temporary dalliances.
“And last, but not least,” said Pellos turning back to him as the office door closed, “a storm in the Aegean last night either sank our ship or knocked out the communications because it’s like they just fucking disappeared. I can’t raise them on any channel.” He looked up at Alex with a frown. “Would you know? If something had happened to Luca, I mean?”
“No,” said Alex, shaking his head. “He’s not like you. He doesn’t really belong to us.”
“I was yours after a week,” said Pellos. “Luca has been here over a year. I would have thought…”
“I don’t know,” said Alex. “To be perfectly honest, I have never understood how I ended up with any of you.” He tried to sound like this was a complaint.
Pellos chuckled. “You’re just extremely lucky.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?” asked Alex, but then laughed. Pellos was right—he was lucky as hell to have any of them. “Anyway, sorry, but I have no insight into Luca’s location. The last time I spoke to him, we couldn’t speak freely, and I got the impression that he was in a hurry to get out of town. He said he had successfully completed the purchase, but there was more than we had thought. I just don’t know what that means.”
Twenty-eight-year-old Luca Giavanese was the pack’s expert in magic. Alex thought that was young to be an expert in anything, but Luca came from a long line of witches and brought a wealth of knowledge with him that even Alex couldn’ttouch. Luca’s most recent trip to the Middle East to retrieve a potentially valuable artifact had made Alex nervous, but the promise of something that might help them here in Greece had been too tantalizing. Alex knew that other packs and entities, including warlocks, from across the globe would also be looking to collect the flotsam of war, but he had more contacts in the region than they did.
So far, Alex didn’t think any of the European packs had really noticed that he was attempting to gather Supernatural artifacts. To them, he was just the bothersome upstart in the wasteland of Aegean, where no magic had grown since WWII. No human was even aware of it, but most of Greece had been a magic-free zone since the Night of 1000 Deaths. No Supernatural had wanted to live there since, but that made it the perfect place for an outcast like Alex to make his home. But it was more than an unclaimed piece of land for Alex. His mission was to discover what the Nazis had done and find a cure. And for the first time in seventy years, he could see that there was a chance of success.
“I’ll see if I can call in a few favors with some pilots,” said Alex. “Maybe we can’t get a visual confirmation that everything is all right.”
“I’ll feel better when everyone is home,” said Pellos, and Alex seconded that with a grunt. “Killian hasn’t even sent me a text.”
Alex heard the hurt pretending to be annoyance in the comment. Pellos and Killian had always been close and usually maintained an open text thread on inside jokes and stupid gifs when Killian was out on work trips.
“That’s my fault,” said Alex apologetically. “It’s a wolf thing. He can’t call.” Pellos looked at him sharply, and Alex smiled awkwardly.
He hadn’t wanted to tell Pellos that Killian’s mission to the library was to find a record of how to make werewolves. Pellos deserved to be a Shifter and to have the long life that went withit as much as the rest of the pack, but there were no guarantees, and he didn’t want to get Pellos’s hopes up. Alex would have to trust that Killian would get the job done. That also meant that he couldn’t explain that in the quiet of his head, Killian now had a shadow—a twin point of light named Moira. She didn’t belong to Alex, but it was as if he could feel her through Killian. It was almost more than he could hope for that Killian had found a mate, but he clutched that hope to his chest.
“Hopefully, they’ll be home soon. Did you talk to Sebastian about the refugees?”
Pellos raised a knowing eyebrow. “You mean, did Sebastian talk to me about your girl?”
Alex growled in irritation.
“The blonde one, right? I’ve talked to her before,” said Pellos, rummaging on his desk.
“You have?” For some reason, it hadn’t occurred to Alex that anyone else might have met the girl. She was his personal ghost, haunting the edges of his thoughts. It was irrational, but he didn’t like that she was real for someone else. “What was her name?”
