4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Aydan

The tick of the clock distracted me from my work. Every little creak and noise in the house pulled my focus away. Typically, once I finished my morning routine—a quick run in the woods, either in my bear or human form, followed by a hearty breakfast and five minutes of browsing the internet for silly videos—I'd get straight to work. Usually, I had no problem concentrating, but not today.

Today my mind wasn't on paying the bills or fixing a road or visiting the teens. No. It was on the houseguest who'd managed to turn my life upside down simply by showing up. Sure, part of it might or might not have been his fault. I probably wouldn't ever know for sure, but his story didn't exactly sound complete. His fault or not, it was still a lot to deal with.

The house was filled with the stench of skunk. It was horrible, but I was getting sort of used to it and could probably live with it if it weren't for Jayce. Jayce spent his day walking around, muttering to himself, humming happily, and wearing the shortest pair of shorts I'd ever seen in my life.

I wasn't one who cared about what omegas or anyone else wore. It was their body to cover or not cover. But in Jayce's case? I hated the way it had my body reacting. Seeing his globes peeking out when he bent over… yeah, that had me thinking things I very much should not be thinking about my brother's bestie. That was for sure.

He leaned on the doorframe, sipping his coffee. "I really appreciate you letting me stay here," he said. "And I'm sorry I got here so late yesterday. Can I make it up to you?"

My mind flashed to a very naughty place, and I pushed all those thoughts away. This was Jayce, not some random guy I met at a bar. He was going to be one of my den members. Not only was my thinking inappropriate, it bordered on creepy given that lens.

"Become a contributing member to the den, and you'll have made it up to me," I replied, flipping through the papers I was trying to read but hadn't retained a single word. For all I knew one of them was a memo announcing aliens landing in New York City and claiming The Statue of Liberty as one of their long-lost artifacts or something equally bizarre. The papers had turned into props and nothing more.

"Do you have a particular job in mind? Corey didn't have any idea what you do for work."

He blew onto his mug. His pink lips pursing as he cooled his coffee. Try as I did, he kept managing to bring me right back to the less-than-appropriate thoughts.

Jayce's brow furrowed. "Corey knows what I do for work. I'm a floater."

"A what now?" I asked, throwing down my paper, because clearly, I wasn't going to get any reading done.

"A floater. You know, a temp."

"Enlighten me," I said, leaning forward. No wonder my brother hadn't mentioned what he did. It didn't make a lick of sense.

He adjusted his stance so that he was leaning on the doorframe even more, making the white tank top he was wearing bunch up around his abs, exposing about two inches of skin between his waistband and his shirt.

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply to clear my head. Big. Mistake. I ended up coughing, and when I opened my eyes again, he was looking at me with an I'm-sorry-but-aren't-I-hot glance. Or maybe I was imagining all of that because gods helped me, he was hot.

Where in the world was my mind going? Perhaps it had been too long since I'd indulged if I was thinking about a pack member this way. A quick stop to the local human bar to find a one-night stand might be just the ticket—only it was off the table too because of Finnegan. How had I forgotten about him? But I had completely. Weird.

One thing was for sure, I needed to not be thinking these thoughts about our brand-new den member. It made me no better than the alphaholes I was trying to protect my den from. Thinking about someone else this way was practically cheating, considering I was contemplating proposing a mating to one of the omegas in the pack.

I'd started courting Finnegan a few weeks prior. Not really courting as much as hinting around about officially courting. Every fiber in me was dragging their feet. I needed a mate, and he appeared willing to consider that, but gods, it wasn't what I wanted. But that didn't matter in the long run.

Was it a love match? Absolutely not. Could it turn into love? Probably not. But I didn't need love or true mates or any of that. I needed to be practical. Waiting until the goddess sent me someone wasn't fair to the den. They needed a mated Alpha.

Gods, I wished fate had been on their A-game. Finnegan was not ideal. He felt it too. It wasn't as if he thought we were a love match. I wasn't even sure he was agreeing to consider attempting something for any reason other than I was available and had a decent position in the den.

In that way, we were both practical. I needed an omega mate, and he liked the idea of being part of the Alpha family. It was a win-win in as much as that kind of thing could be.

"So, sometimes with small packs or dens, it's hard to fill every position that you need all the time. Sometimes the post office needs an extra person, sometimes the diner, sometimes the mechanic shop. You know, that kind of thing."

"That still doesn't explain what you do." Even if he had been spot-on. That had been one of the most difficult things to navigate. We didn't have work enough for a ton of new people, but also we had more than we were able to comfortably handle.

"I float. If the post office needs me, I work there. If the hair salon needs me, I work there. If Corey needs me to crunch numbers, I crunch numbers. Someone needs me to drive a garbage truck? I drive a garbage truck. Split wood, bake cookies—a floater. A temp."

Huh. That sounded… it sounded exactly like what we needed.

"So you just wake up in the morning and go wherever you're needed? Is there, like, a three-month schedule you follow?" The logistics were confusing, but the idea was a good one. There was no denying that.

"Oh, no. Sometimes it changes hour by hour. Like last year, we had a whole ton of snow all of a sudden. So, while I was supposed to be working at the salon, filling in for a member who had just had a baby, I had to cancel that whole day. Everyone had to reschedule their appointments. It was a mess." He stretched to the side, his shirt riding up even more. Kill me now. "The snow needed to be plowed, but in the middle of plowing snow, the power went out, so I had to switch gears and hook up people's generators. It was a long day. I had to do so much, but I learned a whole lot."

Different things every day. No set schedule. It was chaos. The very thought made my teeth itch. But also, it would solve some major stressors in my life, that was for sure.

"Here, you will find a regular job. We have schedules and plans. We don't need floaters." Even as I said it, I wasn't confident I meant it.

His nose wrinkled. "Everyone needs floaters. Schedules are boring."

"Schedules make the world go round." And now I was just being stubborn.

"I'm pretty sure that the earth's rotation predates time and would continue to work whether it was scheduled or not." His tongue darted out, and for a second, I thought he was going to stick his tongue out at me.

I pushed my chair back. "How could it possibly predate time? That doesn't even make sense."

"Time is made up."

I threw my hands in the air. "I cannot talk to you. You are impossible."

His brow furrowed. "Because I think that time is silly?"

"You can't think that time is silly. Time is constant. It is never-ending."

"Right. But the way we measure time is what I'm talking about. Seconds, minutes. It's all made up. We could just as easily measure time in anything else."

"I'm not having this conversation. I'm busy. I have things to do." And I was pretty sure he was wrong. Time was math, wasn't it?

"Yeah, I peeked at your schedule. We're supposed to go on a tour, and I figured maybe I'd shower again or talk to Rissa before I try to visit Corey. Or I'll have to visit Corey outside. I don't really want to stink up anywhere else."

"That's a good idea. Maybe we should postpone your tour."

"No, we can't do that. It would disrupt your schedule." He winked. "I can't just hide until this goes away. That could take months."

Oh, gods, it could take months. He wasn't wrong. "Let's go talk to Rissa," I said. "We'll start the tour right after."

Jayce checked his watch. "According to your schedule, you have twenty-seven more minutes of paperwork to do. Do you want to finish that?"

I let out a low rumble.

He giggled and turned away. "See you in twenty-seven minutes, Alpha."