“Military-grade. Yes. No, we’ll do that part ourselves. Off-book. Just you, Ky, Lo, and Mish. No logs. Like my place. After dark. ETA?”
Logan looks outside, and the sun is still high in the sky.
“19:00 should do it. We’ll be here.”
Leo and Arlo return, and Arlo holds out his hand for the phone, which Logan summarily hands over.
“Hey, Cat, it’s Arlo. Tell me what’s in stock for the interface, please. Yeah? Let’s do three, plus the mobile ones. No, Logan will do it. I know. We’reworking on it, chica. Yeah, it’s been a while. Ha. Writing my memoirs—you know how it is. Sure thing. Bye.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know it’s probably been difficult hiding his pregnancy, and he has no doubt been dodging friends’ requests and nosy coworkers.
But also? Gideon would read the hell out of those memoirs.
There is an air of mystery about the aloof omega; in fact, the Kennedy pack formation itself was Netflix-worthy. The bits and pieces he’d been privy to were unbelievable—and spanned the globe.
When he hangs up, he sits down beside his mate, and Leo hands him a bottle of water.
“Thanks for coming, man,” Jay says to their family friend.
“I don’t know what you’re going through, Jay, but I can understand a little about how you might feel about your Nix.”
He leans back so he can feel Arlo behind him.
“We’re luckier than most in our mates, and having someone in your home when it’s about to get messy is shitty. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen, and I’ll explain what we’re going to do tonight under the cover of darkness.”
Gideon is awed by the sheer level of security they’re installing.
Something as simple as having Tsuki around means they have to account for mass-tripping pressure-sensitive alarms. If any of the alarms are tripped, they will go directly to Sentinel Security’s central response unit rather than the local police department.
It’s so intricate compared to anything Gideon could have conceived, and he’s shaken again by how his hubris had nearly gotten his mate abducted under his nose.
There’s a burst of sweet vanilla, and all five men in the kitchen look up.
It’s his fresh-from-the-bath, flushed omega, dressed in fleece pajama pants and a purple hoodie with“Boo-Yah”written across the belly of a cartoon ghost.
He’s beautiful, especially when he’s happy, and seeing his friend makes his smile even bigger.
Gideon thinks he should have tried to slow Nix’s enthusiasm beforeLogan or Jay intervened, but Nix is faster.
“Arlo! You came!”
Nix forgoes propriety and hugs his very first friend as if this were the hundredth time they’d met and not just the second.
Arlo catches him easily, and when Nix presses a kiss to his cheek, the older omega’s eyes pop wide open, but a tiny smile lights up his face.
He moves to intercept Logan, should he not take kindly to Nix’s PDA, but it proves to be a non-issue.
The big man is frozen—as most people are when they experience the full brunt of Nix’s soul in its purest, most beautiful form.
His nostrils flare, his pupils dilating as if his instincts betray him before he locks them down. The big alpha’s face is the definition of micro-expressions—shifting from surprise to awe, back to surprise again, then cute overload, before finally settling into a business-like smile.
His eyes give him away, though—they’re full of mirth.
Probably because Arlo is decidedly not affectionate, and yet his arms are holding Nix close as if Nix were his child.
“Nix. How are you? This is my mate, Logan.”
Arlo has four inches on Nix, and where Arlo is broader, Nix looks diminutive and gentle.
