Chapter 5

FIVE

This wasthe first time Felix had been out of my sight for more than a second, and I fucking hated it. But if I stopped moving and focused, I could still feel him in the house. I knew exactly where he was, and if I really concentrated, I could sort of feel how he was feeling. I stopped, hand on the refrigerator door, and tuned in to Felix. Right now, he was excited and safe, and that made the tightness in my chest let up just a little.

I still didn't like that he was away from me, though.

It had been less than twelve hours, and my entire world had shifted on its axis, my universe now circling around one person, my only job to keep him safe and happy. Which was what I tried to focus on as I made up the guest suite across the hall from mine. Did I want him to stay with me? Obviously. I was hoping we'd get to take things a little further than we had in the basement, but I felt like that was Felix's decision to make, and I didn't want to push him.

I'd never wanted someone as much as I wanted Felix, and I'd been fighting all day to keep my need to take him and claim him in check. When Felix kissed me, I'd let go more than I'd intended to, and I thought we were on the same page, but I also felt like maybe I'd been riding the line of taking advantage of his fragile emotional state after his shitshow of a day. In some ways, I felt I'd known Felix forever, but just because we were fated didn't mean we really knew anything about each other.

And if realizing McMahon was the closest thing I had to a friend was a kick in the balls, finding out Felix was my fated mate was a kick to the head and the heart. But I couldn't deny it. The proof was marked on my body—I'd noticed when I'd caught my reflection in one of the mirrored walls at the diner. When Felix and I officially claimed each other, the fact that I was mated for life would be obvious in both my human and orca forms.

As I went through the motions of making dinner—pasta with jarred sauce and a simple salad—I thought of all the things I would do to keep Felix safe from whoever was onto him, and I wasn't surprised to find there wasn't much that didn't make the cut.

The back door slammed open.

"Damn it," Cal cursed as he stood on one foot and tried to pry off his boot that was caked in mud. All of Cal was covered in mud. I could see his eyes where he'd obviously had on sunglasses or goggles, and I saw where the mud had cracked when he'd sat down, but otherwise, he was a mess.

"What the hell happened to you?"

His head swung my way, and he almost lost his balance since he was still standing on one foot, still trying to pry his shoelaces apart.

"I don't want to talk about it."

I snorted. "Yeah, I wouldn't want to explain why I looked like I was auditioning for the role of swamp thing either."

Cal stopped tugging at his boot long enough to flip me off. "It's mud, not pond scum, you ass."

"Same difference. You'd better not be planning to come in here like that. If you get dirt on the floors, Quin will kill you. Did you drive home that way?"

"No, I walked from Walla Walla. Of course I fucking drove."

I shook my head. Quin, Cal's twin, would shit a brick when he saw what had to be a muddy mess in Cal's Land Rover. Cal gave up on his boot for a second and started to step toward the threshold. I held up a hand. "It's been a long goddamned day, and I'm not in the mood to deal with a pissed-off Quin tonight."

"What would you suggest I do?" He lifted his foot again and continued trying to tug the laces free. His first boot popped off, chunks of dried mud falling all over the patio. His sock underneath was almost as bad.

I thought about Felix for a second, but he and Julius were distracted. "You'd better strip down out there."

Cal was working on his other boot. "Fine. But I think Quin's going to be more pissed to know I walked through the kitchen naked."

A quick glance at the clock on the microwave told me our other brother would be home any minute. "Then you'd better hurry so he doesn't find out."

Cal grumbled but did as I'd instructed, not wanting to face his twin's wrath.

Then he hauled ass through the kitchen to the front stairs, hunks of dried mud falling from his hair as he ran.

"You're cleaning this up later. And you're going to tell us what happened."

All I got in response was a muffled "Fuck you" before Cal's door slammed and the water in his bathroom turned on.

Seemed I wasn't the only one who'd had a shitty day.

As soon as Cal's door slammed, the front door opened, and the last of my brothers strolled into the kitchen, looking far more put together than his twin in a three-piece designer suit and carrying an Hermès laptop bag.

He took one look at me and narrowed his eyes. "What's wrong?"

I scoffed. "Nothing's wrong."

"No. Nope. You're lying. You"—he sniffed the air—"smell strange, and"—he paused, listening—"there's someone else here. So what happened? Who's here? And why is there dirt all over the floor?" He lifted a foot and brushed some of the offending dirt off his custom-made brogue—I only knew it was called that because I'd had to hear about it for months while he was designing them—before grabbing a small broom and dustpan from the pantry and sweeping up the little pile of dirt I hadn't even noticed was there.

"You're right. We do have a guest."

He'd returned the broom and dustpan to the closet and was looking over my shoulder at the sauce I had warming and the pasta water that was just starting to boil. "We have a guest, and that's what you decided to serve?" Quin was the only one of the four of us that could really cook.

"My options were limited."

"Mmm." He slid out one of the stools at the island and sat, pulling his laptop out of his bag. Quin left the office, but he never really left the office. He claimed the world of high-end art never slept, but I knew it was the other side of his business that really kept him busy after hours. "So who's the guy?"

"What guy?"

"The guy in the basement with Julius. The one you smell like. Gross, by the way. If you're going to fool around with someone, at least shower so we don't have to smell it." Like Quin's taste, his senses were also the most "refined."

"We didn't hook up per se."

He raised an eyebrow.

"You know, it's really weird that you point that kind of shit out."

He shrugged. "You still haven't answered the question."

"His name is Felix. I'm doing McMahon a favor and acting as his bodyguard for a while."

"Hmm. And this favor to McMahon involves debauching the poor"—another sniff—"poor, what is that? Sea otter? Yes, this favor involves debauching this poor little sea otter?"

"Not technically. No. And he's not little."

"So tell me the rest."

I ground my teeth together, which just made Quin smile. Of all my brothers, he drove me the most nuts. Most people would think it was Cal, but nope, his twin could piss me off just by breathing sometimes. "Fine. He's my fated mate, okay?"

"Who's your fated mate?" Cal asked, picking that exact second to walk back into the kitchen in sweats and a T-shirt, hair wet and dripping onto a towel around his neck.

"Oh, for fuck's sake." I dumped the pasta into the boiling water while Quin filled him in, making sure Cal got the picture that I'd been cagey with the details.

"I surmise this Felix character will be staying with us for a while?" Quin asked.

I nodded.

"Uh-huh. And you're sure he's your mate?" Cal asked. The twins gave me identical skeptical looks, so I pulled my collar down again and showed them the change to my saddle patch, right above my collarbone.

They both sat back, stunned, and whistled in unison like it was something they'd rehearsed. I hated when they did shit like that.

Cal absently rubbed a hand over his own saddle patch, his gaze a million miles away, then he cleared his throat and pulled himself back to our conversation. "Wow. I'm honestly surprised. I kinda figured if anyone was going to find their fated mate, it'd be Julius or Mr. Stuffy Pants over here." Cal motioned to his twin, who shrugged and nodded.

"I have to agree." Quin blinked like he was shocked to find himself agreeing with his twin.

"He's my fated mate. We were fated to meet, right? That's kind of how this whole thing works."

"Yes, but it's also a law of averages, wouldn't you say?" Quin looked a little smug.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What Stuffy Pants is trying to say?—"

"Stop calling me that."

Cal grinned, clearly pretty damn pleased with himself for getting under Quin's skin. "What my better half?—"

"That's just as bad." Quin glared.

"Fine. What Quintillus is trying to say is that you've kinda got to see people to meet people. When was the last time you went on a date that wasn't a cheating spouse you were looking into for a case?"

I didn't want to answer that question, so I didn't, turning my back on the idiots at the counter to stir the pasta.

"It's interesting, is all. If I hadn't seen the mark, I wouldn't have believed it."

"You're both assholes. I had as much chance to find my mate as you do. It's fate. It's meant to be." For as practical as I was in almost all other things, I believed in the fated mates stories my grandmother told more than any of my brothers. I wanted it to be true that there was someone out there just for me, someone who'd stay with me no matter what. I was sure a therapist would have a field day with that information. They'd probably tell me it had something to do with losing my parents at a young, impressionable age, so I hadn't said anything. And I didn't now.

"Hey, hey. We're happy for you. We're just shocked." Cal sounded genuine, but sometimes it was hard to tell with him. "It's just kind of a weird thing to come home to on a Wednesday."

"I'd say I'm a bit more than shocked, but certainly, that's part of it." Quin was typing on his laptop but still keeping up with the conversation.

"Thanks. And I didn't know meeting your mate was a thing that could only happen on certain days of the week." The timer on my phone beeped, and I pulled out a colander to drain the pasta. "One of you set the table."

Cal and Quin squabbled for a minute, then played a rushed best-of-three round of rock, paper, scissors, though with their freaky twin thing, it never went well, until Quin finally decided to be the bigger man and just do it.

"You can clean up the mud I know you tracked through the house." He directed his statement to Cal while he grabbed a stack of dishes, then went back for another, adding Felix to our normal count while Cal gave Quin's back the finger and went to get the broom and dustpan.

I tuned them out, instead focusing on the thin thread that connected me to Felix and mentally tugging on it a little, wondering if he felt the same thing I did.

A minute later, he appeared in the kitchen. "Did you need something? It was weird… I was just sitting there, then I felt like you needed me."

Movement in the room had stopped, and I knew without looking over my shoulder that Quin and Cal were both staring at Felix, who realized we weren't alone a beat later.

"Uh, hi. I'm Felix." He held out his hand and took a few steps toward the twins, who stood frozen, one holding the broom, the other a handful of forks. But the assholes proved they had at least some manners and met him halfway a beat later, exchanging handshakes and introductions.

"Thanks for letting me crash here while things get sorted out." Felix looked better than he had earlier, but the smile he gave the twins didn't quite reach his eyes.

Quin raised a brow. "Our dear brother hasn't told us what's going on."

Felix looked my way, and I lifted a shoulder. "I'm tired of talking about it."

"Me too, but we should probably explain. Especially if I plan to keep digging."

As if summoned, Julius walked into the kitchen. "I'm starving. Is dinner ready?" Sometimes it was easy to forget we were four grown-ass men and not a bunch of teenage boys.

For the next few minutes, the five of us worked to get dinner on the table, and when we were all seated and Quin had gone through his pompous routine of selecting a bottle and pouring a glass of wine, Cal met my mate's gaze across the table. "I think it's time you tell us what's up. And more importantly, do I need to grab a gun?"