I was sitting on the couch, squeezed between two massive men, when River’s pocket vibrated several times against my leg, and I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, love.” He chuckled under his breath. “It was my phone and you know it.” Biting back a grin, I shifted to let him fish out his device. Swiping his thumb across the screen, he read for a moment then sighed. “Bugger.” He dropped his phone into his lap and rubbed his face with a tired hand.
“What’s up, Alpha?” Caleb asked with a tiny edge of teasing in his voice. Ever since they’d realized I had accidentally nicknamed River Alpha, which was coincidentally also his call sign, they’d been using it a whole lot more.
“Director has sent out a company-wide blast. We’re all being cautioned. Need to report to HQ by Monday morning or we’re suspended from duty.” River delivered the information to his team with zero emotion, his expression back to neutral and closed off.
“What? How come I—” Wesley patted his pockets, then must have remembered he’d lost his phone at Granny Winter’s place when the shifter Frank had knocked him out. Mine was long gone, before my kidnapping at the paintball park even. “I take it no one has kept Director Pierre informed?”
The guys all shook their head slightly, and Vali grinned wolfishly. “Oh dear. Don’t tell me Drag?’s daddy is going to bitch slap the lot of you.”
“Kit asked that we not inform the director about our movements, and since everything last night, time hasn’t permitted an update to be sent,” River clarified, pointedly ignoring Vali’s shit stirring.
“You’re right; I did ask you not to tell him. I’ll explain it to him, somehow. You all shouldn’t be getting cautioned for this... whatever that means,” I slid my hand onto River’s lap to clasp his, threading our fingers together. More and more when I was around the guys, I had this almost unconscious drive to be touching them all the time—which kind of made sense now.
“I have a feeling you’ll need to do that, too,” Cole grimaced, reading his own phone. “He sounds pissed.”
“It’ll be fine,” I smiled at Cole. He was such an imposing figure, sitting on the edge of a dining chair like he was ready to pounce any second. A retired MMA fighter, his physique was out of this world, and the tattoos wrapping his chiselled frame made me want to drag him back to bed and simply spend hours inspecting them all. With my mouth.
“Seriously, you guys. He is probably just annoyed that we went radio silent on him for a bit. I will explain it all, and you’ll be let off the hook for sure.” I nodded firmly, almost like I was convincing myself. “Vali, you go do what you need to do so your people don’t come hunting us down for, like, abducting you or something.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you sure, drag?? Doesn’t seem fair to leave you to work damage control with Pierre...”
“Vali, I hardly think the headquarters of a secret intelligence agency is really the sort of place a known crime lord should be casually visiting.” I rolled my eyes dramatically, and he gave me a half grin.
“That is a very good point... and I guess these fuckers are capable of looking after you for a few days...” A heavy sigh gusted out of him, and he ran his tanned hand through his shoulder length hair. I’d never normally been a fan of long hair on guys, but fuck me, he pulled it off well.
Looking back up at me with his granite gray eyes, the exact same shade as Cole’s, he frowned. “I am buying you a new phone before I go, though, so you can call me if you end up in the shit.”
“Fine by me, but I won’t need to. He’s my sort-of dad remember?” I smiled; their alpha male possessive thing was so hot. “Austin, you can go sort out your thing too. I am sure Jonathan will understand.”
River made a grunt that sounded like he disagreed with me but then surprised me by agreeing out loud. “Kitten’s right. Austin, I know Master Yoshi is important to you, and the last thing you need is getting stuck with a caution. We can cover for you until you can get back.”
The look Austin gave his team leader suggested he thought we had lost our minds. “Guys, you are aware that that’s a terrible idea? Remember what happened last time someone ignored a caution?”
“It will be fine; our team has some very different circumstances.” River’s tone was final, but Austin flicked his gaze to me, holding eye contact for long enough that my palms began sweating.
“All right, it’s on you,” Austin finally said, shrugging and breaking our stare-off. “Wes, for the record, I am placing a fifty on Princess getting blasted over this.” Wesley snickered, and Caleb stood up to punch his twin in the arm.
“Jesus, it feels like ages since we’ve placed a good wager,” River muttered with a sly grin. “I’ll take that bet. You clearly misunderstand our girl’s powers of persuasion.” His hand tightened on mine, and my stomach flipped with butterflies at hearing him call me our girl.
Despite the fact that I was openly involved with several of them, it hadn’t been a topic we had really ever discussed as a group before, so hearing him so casually own it made my heartrate skip.
“Kitty Kat, what about everything here?” Caleb asked, a serious look on his normally relaxed face. “With Vic and the shifters?”
“I think we have got as much information as they’re willing to part with. If what Vic said about the geas is true, then I don’t know what other options we have short of physical torture...” I chuckled but saw the small tilt to Cole’s head that told me he was actually considering torture as a possibility. “No, Cole. No torturing the innocent shifters. Okay, so we’re heading back to New York, and Vali and Austin are going... wherever they’re going.”
They guys all stared at me with confused frowns, and River gave me an amused look, tilting his head to the side with a half grin. “Kitten, you do know that HQ is in Seattle, right?”
“What?” I gaped at him, sure I must have heard him wrong. “No, it can’t be... Seriously? This whole time, the Omega HQ was less than two hours’ drive from Cascade Falls?”
“Yeah, we kind of thought you knew that?” Caleb grinned, and I met his amused gaze.
He got it.
“Wait, so for years your agents have been hunting my ass down, trying to pin down the infamous Fox, and I was going to school right under your noses?” I covered my mouth to hold back the laughter, but it bubbled out of me anyway.
“Until we found you, let’s not forget,” River reminded me, tightening his grip on my hand, and I rolled my eyes.
“As if there was no magic involved there.” I chewed my lip as the thought occurred to me. Did that mean that the way I felt for them, or them for me, was just because of magic?
“Na-ah,” Caleb snickered. “Not getting off that easily; you obviously weren’t paying attention to Vic’s story. The Ban Dia chose their dianoch. Chose being the key word there. If the six of us are it for you, then you’ve got no one to blame but yourself, Kitty Kat.”