Page 14 of Beneath His Alpha's Wings
All at once, Kessel yawned. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t sleep at all last night. Unless you need anything, I might actually try to get some sleep.”
“What were you doing?”
He turned away a bit, unable to meet my eyes. “Circling the woods trying to spot the feral bear,” he admitted.
“Oh.”
Kessel cleared his throat. “Anyway, a couple of flights up is my room, and above that is my office. But don’t worry about trying to go up all those stairs. If you need me, just yell, sound carries up the stairs pretty well. And help yourself to anything you want in the kitchen.”
“Thanks.”
He left the guest room, my room, and jogged up the stairs. I took a moment to explore my room. It was very nice accommodations, all things considered. I kept thinking about his description of what a warden was, and his assurances that they wouldn't have killed the innocent people following Knash. That meant either Knash had been lying, or Kessel was. I entertained the idea that Knash's previous mates had put up a fight and the wardens were forced to kill them. But that still didn't explain why Knash hadn't told me the wardens were a sort of police force.
The obvious explanation was that he really was a feral shifter, as they called it, and he didn't want me to know that the good guys were after us. Which meant that Kessel really had brought me to a safe house.
I wandered down to the kitchen and looked around. It certainly felt like a safe place. I spotted the sprawling ocean out the large dining room window and frowned. Sure, itseemedlike a safe house. But was there any way to be sure that Kessel was the one telling the truth? My gut told me yes. Out of the two of them, Kessel was the one I wanted to trust. But it was a little hard to trust the guy who just brought me to an island in the middle of the ocean.
Whatever Tagger cooked smelled delicious, so I decided to help myself, like Kessel said. While the kitchen seemed well-stocked, it was also obviously well used. There were lots of things that were open and in various states of empty, which certainly solidified the proof that Kessel or somebody lived here. It wasn't like they had just gone out and bought a bunch of food for me.
I was just finishing throwing together a sandwich, when Tagger came up the stairs.
“I love you too,” he said into his phone. He hung up and grinned at me. “Josh has an oops batch of my favorite cookies!”
“Um… is that good?” I asked.
Tagger laughed. “Oh, sorry. That would make more sense if you knew he worked at a bakery. Sometimes something gets messed up and he brings it home for me. This box got dropped and the frosting was ruined.”
“Oh.”
He winced. “And Josh is my true mate, if you missed that part. Here!” Tagger hurried over and held out his phone. There was a picture of him with another man, both smiling widely, and holding a tiny baby between them. “That’s Josh and our little Val.”
“Cute family,” I offered.
“Thanks.” Tagger smiled at the picture for a moment, before pocketing his phone.
“How old is she?” I asked, finding that I was much more interested in babies now.
“Eleven weeks,” he said proudly. “Seven pounds, four ounces. She’s going to be big like her omega daddy.”
I wondered if I could draw out some more information about shifters from Tagger. Maybe something could help me figure out if Knash really had been lying or if the wardens were the ones I couldn’t trust. He seemed happy enough to talk about his family, maybe I could use that to my advantage.
“And one of you gave birth to her?” I asked, putting a hand on my stomach.
“Josh did. He’s the omega.”
“Which makes you… an alpha?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
I thought about how Kessel mentioned an alpha can only change one omega. And how it sounded like they needed permission. “Did you change him?”
“Actually, no,” Tagger said. “He was changed a few decades ago, in an accident. Lucky for me, he’s a red fox, so we aren’t too different when we shift.”
“Oh… Hang on, did you say a fewdecadesago?” The man in the picture hadn’t looked a day over twenty-five!
“Yeah.” His eyes widened in alarm. “Oh shit, nobody told you…”
I knew from his reaction what he meant. Knash told me that shifters were immortal, and I hadn't believed him. Although Teddy had said a few things in our short time together that made me suspect he was quite a bit older than he looked. I overheard Knash telling him something about how becoming shifters kept us at a peak healthy age. If the young-looking man in the picture really did have several decades behind him, Knash obviously hadn't been lying about that. It made me frown. That was something I assumed was a lie. How the hell was I going to sort out Knash's truths from untruths?
