Page 22 of Duke's Baby Deal
No answer. Well, Duke could recognize a clue when it smacked him between the eyes.
“I’m sorry you’re upset, but these things happen. And I wasn’t going to not ask him just because you were interested.”
“He’s not even eighteen,” Edmund gritted out between clenched teeth.
“I’m aware of that.” Duke watched him for a moment, then sighed and turned toward the door. “I know it doesn’t make any difference, but it wasn’t on purpose. My plan was to wait until he was eighteen too, but I fucked up, and now I’m trying to do right by him.” He started down the hallway, not ready to get into it with Edmund.
About halfway to the door, he heard Edmund behind him. “If you hurt him, you’ll have me to answer to.”
Duke turned to see Edmund hanging out the door of the office. “I don’t have any plans to hurt him, so you don’t have to worry.”
Edmund snarled at him and slammed back into the office. Duke suspected there would have been a fight if he hadn’t been older, more established, and a hell of a lot more alpha than Edmund. Mac would be pissed if it happened, so Duke resolved to avoid Edmund until things had calmed down.
His route today took him past the park, which presented him with a problem of epic proportions. Bram might be working. Was probably working. Or maybe not. Duke hadn’t realized until just now how much attention he’d paid to Bram’s schedule. He’d been missing for most of November last year, for his heat… Duke’s brain sidestepped the thought of Bram’s heats, but his body wasn’t going to ignore it. His chest tightened and a heavy warmth settled in his groin—not exactly arousal, but if Bram had been around right then, it would have gotten uncomfortable pretty fast. It pissed him off that Justin had gotten that first time with Bram, and he added it to the list of crimes he wanted to make the man pay for.
He skipped the daycare, and kept going, making the loop down through the Winston houses, the first ones that had been built after the Enclosure. They were old, small single story houses crammed cheek-by-jowl, but had been a godsend in a pack suffering from the after-effects of being rounded up and shipped to a shitty collection of warehouses, forcefully separated from family, and in daily fear of violence by their human jailers. Winston had won out as Alpha at the time, and it had been his tireless efforts that had kept the pack from imploding. Even now, despite the houses being in serious need of renovation—or destruction—they were still highly coveted because of their history.
As he walked, he nodded to neighbors and tossed balls to pups, joked with the teenagers and ignored the angry and disappointed looks from the teenaged girls who used to come out to flirt with him. He guessed news of his imminent mating had made it to this neighborhood too.
From Winston, he turned up the road that ran along the edge of the settled area of the enclave. Houses lined the side away from the wall, but the wall side was all grass and a veil of trees filling the rest of the space—someone’s attempt to pretend that the wall didn’t exist. The wall itself stood tall and unmissable, cold and gray, with that dangerous sparkle of silver along the top. He’d never touched silver in his life, though he’d heard Jason describing the sensation. Even before, the silver had always given him a shiver down his spine. He was glad to turn back down the road, through the central part of town.
He met Abel and Bax coming out of the restaurant, surrounded by their swarm of pups, only two of whom were in human form. Taden, of course, couldn’t change yet, and Teca was wearing a dress that looked like it had been made entirely of sparkles. The rest jumped around in wolf form and—oh, there was an extra. Duke sniffed, trying to place the other pup’s scent.
“Tobin,” Bax said with a grin. “He’s spending the day with us and we’re having a sleepover tonight for Fan’s birthday.”
“Sounds like fun,” Duke said to the pups now running around his legs.
Abel was quiet and when Duke looked up at him, he couldn’t help a sigh. Abel knew, and he obviously thought Duke was being an idiot. “Abel—,” Duke began.
“Duke, why don’t you come for supper tonight?” Bax broke in brightly. “Fan wants pizza, and it won’t be hard to make extra. What time are you off?” Abel opened his mouth again, but shut it when his mate elbowed him.
“I, uh,” Duke stammered. He didn’t want a lecture, just wanted to get through this awkward period. He glanced between his two friends, watching him expectantly. Aw, fuck it. “I’m off at three. What time should I be there?”
“Oh, anytime after that is fine. We usually eat around five-thirty, but there’ll be snacks if you’re really hungry.” Bax smiled charmingly and looped his hand through Abel’s arm. “See you then!” And he led his mate and his busy little family away in the direction of the van.
Well fuck. Duke figured he was going to be in for a lecture. He didn’t care. He’d offered for Bram and had been accepted, and that was that.
At the end of his shift, Duke went back to his bachelor’s apartment—another holdover from the overcrowded days. The young ones, just learning to be independent, got single rooms in a dormitory. Older bachelors were moved to apartments shared with other bachelors. He grabbed a quick shower and changed, then trudged off to Abel’s, wondering why he felt like he was ‘waiting for your father to get home’.
He walked up onto the wide porch of Abel’s house and knocked. A roar and rumble filled the air, and then the door opened, spilling what looked like a couple of dozen pups onto Duke’s feet, but which eventually turned out to be five little boys in party mode.
“Duke!” Fan yelled and grabbed his hand. “Come see the Legos! We’re building a castle!” He turned to drag Duke through the house, his body at a forty-five degree angle to the floor as he tried to make Duke move faster.
Bax appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Fan! Leave the man alone. You boys go outside and play. Your pizza will be ready in half an hour.” He shooed the boys outside, making short work of shoes and jackets, then turned to Duke. “They were so excited when they heard you were coming over.”
“I’ll have to play with them a bit before I go,” he said. “Promise we’ll stay farther from the house this time.”
Bax laughed. “Yeah, we had a chat with Fan after about picking better places to play ball. Abel’s in his office with Taden, if you want to go sit. We’re just finishing little pizzas for the boys, but I can get you beer, or a coffee or tea, whatever you want.” His manner was easy, and if Duke hadn’t been alert, he might have missed the slight tension in the way Bax held himself.
“Tea’s fine, thank you.” He followed Bax back toward the kitchen, but took a left instead at the door and walked down the hallway to Abel’s tiny home office.
The former Alpha was ensconced in a ragged old armchair, keyboard in his lap, one foot keeping the cradle in front of him in constant motion. He looked up from the computer screen. “Hey, come in, grab a chair. Just let me save this and shut it down.”
Unlike Bax, Abel wasn’t doing a particularly good job of hiding his mood. Duke was careful with his body language, keeping his shoulders relaxed, his expression pleasant. “I don’t mind. You working on Alpha Hunt?”
“Yeah.” Abel pressed a couple of keys, closed the window, and leaned forward to set the keyboard on the banged-up wooden table he used as a desk at home. “Hoping to push out another couple of levels soon, buy me some time to work on the inventory software again. We need more pups interested in programming.”
“Don’t look at me.”
