Twenty-Four Days Until Christmas
Tenor
"Eden needs a new computer." Luke's words startle Tenor out of his brooding where he had been staring out the front window of the cottage for the past hour, staring at the grey sky.
The omega in question was currently out with Julius and the two of them still hadn't come back yet. They had gone on a grocery run a few hours ago to try and stock the cottage up before the snowstorm hit that evening.
Nervousness began to churn in Tenor's gut as the first few fat flakes of snow began to fall from the sky. Nervousness was a feeling that had been entirely unfamiliar to him until he had met his omega and realized how vulnerable and breakable she was.
The scene outside looked like something off of a Hallmark card, the fluffy white snow blanketing the evergreens and the long driveway in the hazy gray light of late afternoon, but that does absolutely nothing to calm him.
The four of them had quickly learned that the shitty pothole-ridden roads that led to their cottage didn't get cleared by any of the nearby municipalities, which meant they quickly devolved into deathtraps in the snow.
A truck with four-wheel drive and tire chains hadjoined Eden's baby blue Bronco in the driveway outside. But now that truck was missing, with his omega in it, on those icy as shit roads and Julius' dumb ass behind the wheel.
And yet... he couldn't deny that as critical as he'd been about the cottage at first, and as much as he hated the roads and the goddamn snow, he'd grown to love the place.
Other packs probably would want more space, maybe an actual bedroom, rather than a six hundred square foot one-roomtwo-hundred-year-old cottage. But for their pack, it was perfect. Before Eden, they had spent their lives either living in barracks or otherwise in close quarters when on missions or in combat.
And when Eden had come into their lives... well, this was quite a bit bigger than the thirty square foot jail cell they'd shared. At least their bed here was big enough for them all to stretch out in.
And he loved waking up to his mate every day. He loved being able to look up from where he's sitting and see her in the kitchen or on the couch or sitting in her little reading nook with her toes tucked under her round ass.
"Dude, are you fucking listening?" Luke's pissy little voice interrupts the pleasant daydream he was having of the weekprior when he'd caught Eden rubbing her little pussy in her favourite yellow chair while she had been reading something that had tentacles on the cover.
"Why does she need a new computer?" Tenor's brain finally catches up to what his pack brother was saying. Eden had been using his old laptop and as far as he knew, she only used it to attend her online lectures or play games. He hadn't noticed any problems with it and she hadn't complained as far as he knew. "Is it broken?"
"It doesn't have enough RAM. It keeps crashing while she's playing The Sims."
"Huh," Tenor says, then shrugs. His own mother's shrill voice echoes through his head, telling him that you can't buy anything at all for the entirety of the month of December unless it's a gift. "Might be a good Christmas present?"
Fuck. Christmas. He hasn't even thought about Christmas until now. It's going to be their first Christmas out of prison. Their first Christmas as a completed pack. The first Christmas they've been in the same country as their families and not locked up for almost a decade now...
Should they do something special? Stupid question. Of course they should. Eden deserved to have the full magic of Christmas experience. He'd bet his left ball she never even got presents before, and that thought cuts him deep.
Eden's life before them was fucking bleak. She had been alone her whole life, passed between foster homes. She didn't even know who her birth parents were.
The fact that the three of them had somehow wound up with her and now had the privilege of taking care of her and making sureevery other day of her life was happy and safe was the best gift anyone could've given them.
"We should go shovel the driveway," he says to Luke, looking over at where the big bastard is laying in the nest and playing on his phone.
He leans closer to see what he's doing. Looking at pictures of their mate. Typical. All three of them were obsessed andthey couldn't even summon any embarrassment about it.
"Don't want her to slip or anything when they get back."
Those are the magic words that make Luke launch off the bed and walk over to the brass hooks next to the door where their coats were hanging, one for each of them.
Eden had an extra couple hooks, of course, because she needed multiple coats to go with all of her outfits. Hanging there was a belted lambswool coat for when she was feeling dressy and a massive calf-length puffer coat in vibrant lilac for the colder days. The third hook was lying empty and waiting for her to return with her parka.
Luke is already dressed in his sherpa-lined mountain man flannel coat and out the door before Tenor has even taken his own jacket off the hook.
His bear of a pack brother has somehow gotten even bigger since they got out of prison, like mating Eden sent his testosterone into overdrive and gave him another growth spurt. The three of them all did the same workouts and ate the same protein, but Luke just kept getting burlier, like he was Clifford the Big Fucking Red Dog and Eden's pussy was making him bigger.
Luke was already making quick work of clearing the snow by the time Tenor gets out the door. They'd learned pretty quickly that if the let it pile up too much, it would all pack together and become infinitely harder to clear, so starting now was the smart move.
"I'm not sure we should be encouraging her to play The Sims," Tenor tells Luke conversationally as he picks up the other shovel and gets to work on the opposite side of the driveway. "Have you seen what she gets up to on there?"
Luke grunts in response. Probably a no, then.
