“Goddess, I can’t remember the last time I had a shower.”I chuckled as Hector looked into the bathroom. “Imagine how I feel.”“Did you want to take one first?”Shaking my head, I was reading over the information the front desk provided. Apparently, there was a shopping district not too far from where we were. I looked at the little map printed on the page.“Auri?”“Oh! No no! Go take a shower. I’m going to head down and pick up a few things. At least some food for you. See if we can’t look semi-normal.”Hector walked into the kitchen where I had been leaning on the counter looking at the booklet. “Want me to go with you?”My eyes roamed over his naked figure. Sure, we had been naked for weeks but this was a completely different environment. It was hard keeping the smile off my face as I took him in.“No. I blend in a little more than you do.”“I can blend in.”This made me laugh. “Hector, you’re almost a foot taller than the average height here. Not to mention you absolutely are some
I sat in the back of a taxi headed back to the hotel. The last thing on my to-do list was adding another 5 days to our stay. I worried Hector’s heat may be worse than mine or even Ezekiel’s. It had been a struggle to keep my power reigned in. It felt unruly and wild. But I did itch to see how much more power I had compared to before. There wouldn’t really be time to test it now. For now, I just needed to focus on Hector and maybe getting reconnected to the world.The taxi stopped in front of the hotel. I grabbed my bags full of food, herbs, two laptops, and a few other necessities. Walking in, the receptionist was about to come around to grab the elevator when I stopped her. It was a quick an easy process to add another few days onto the stay and then she helped me into the elevator. As I was headed up, the door opened and the entire floor was dark. Setting the bags on the counter, I narrowed my eyes and looked around but I couldn’t see anything.Walking into the bedroom, I saw Hecto
***Ezekiel’s POV***I sat across Vale at desk in the office. We are both immersed in different paperwork. I could feel his gaze fall to me sometimes but I didn’t look up, trying not to be distracted as much as I already was. This paperwork was important and it needed to be approved, signed, and submitted as soon as possible. Having my beautiful mate sitting across from me did not help. He had come home a couple weeks ago. It had been almost a month he was gone this time and I found that it never got easier to be away from him.Worse, the pack house was quiet without him. Auri was gone. It already been years and I think both Vale and I had started to accept that the strongest person in our lives was gone forever. Not to mention Hector. He was always gone from the pack house. Suddenly though, he started to not take any of our calls, even from Pipsqueak. We knew something bad happened but Vale said he was still connected to the pack. So there was some semblance of hope. Lucy had moved in
My eyes roamed up to the voice and the cigarette dropped out of my mouth between the rocks. Hector was standing before me. Cigarette between his fingers, brought up to his lips. He was thinner, gaunt. A look in his eyes that said he was far away, a pain I saw when I came back from the BloodHunter Coven but then so much more. His hair was cut short and he was completely clean shaven. Getting up, I threw my arms around him and hugged him. He chuckled awkwardly but did pat my back a couple times before letting go.“You’ve been missing for almost a year! What the hell happened?”He sighed, smoke coming out as he did. “It’s a long story. One probably best left for everyone to be present for.”I nodded, still taking in that he was here. “Are you hungry? We can get some food set up. Something to drink?” I glanced down at the duffle next to him. “You’re room is untouched. So you can drop your stuff off.”There was a moment of silence before his eyes finally met mine. “Right now, I’d like a ci
We all watched as Hector dished up some of the almost curry-like concoction. Jax put the bread in one of the breadbaskets we used. He took everything to the table but Hector held one bowl back. Opening up the fridge, he took out the container of sour cream. Putting a large dollop in the center, he smirked and held out the bowl to me. I took it and looked down at it. It smelled amazing even with the sour cream.“It softens the spice. You should be able to take it now.”I rolled my eyes but swung around and took my bowl to the table. Everyone was sitting down and it was so long since we had done this. Sadly, everyone was more serious.“Anyone have any news before I start? I’d like to eat a little before I talk my head off.”Hector grabbed a baguette slice and dipped it into his bowl. Everyone seemed to take that as a go ahead to eat. Lucy was the first to start.“Hospital is all set up. We also managed to snag two OBGYN doctors for the hospital. I had to bribe them quite a bit but we’ve
Hello everyone! I know it's been a minute since I've updated on the things going on. It's probably been a little frustrating and I know the writing process on my end for this story has been a little frustrating as well. I promise you I am still working on this one! I hit a bit of a wall and ended up throwing a number of chapters out the window. As I was going through that, I've been hit one after the other with health issues. The last of which I was out for two weeks with covid + pneumonia and landed myself in the ER. I was already in a compromised state but here we are. I'm slowly on the mend and even though I'm really not supposed to be working as much right now and just focusing on getting better, my love of writing and sharing with others has me continuing to work a little at a time. I've also been going through some of my older stories and working on editing them as well. Just because for a few days it was easier to read than to even must the brain power to dig in deep and to w
Vale contacted the pack to tell them we would be adopting the twins. Now, my days were split between the normal tasks around the pack and doing a bunch of research on babies. As much as I wanted a family, I’d never been close enough to having one that I needed to know all the in’s and outs. I didn’t have any friends who had pups either. Rose would have been the first. I felt wholly unprepared. Hector moved out of his room because it was next to ours. He said we would want to be as close to them as possible and relented his room to us. We offered him one of the bedrooms on the third floor but he ended up taking Auri’s old room. He was reverent about it. Not taking any of his furniture and swapping it. Instead, just using hers. It was hard, seeing him and what he had become. It wasn’t that he was crumbling, at least not on the outside, it was more like there was nothing inside. Hector performed every duty and task at 100%. Even with not shifting once, he took over training which freed
The day before Lucy, Hector and I had gone into the closest major city to order furniture for the nursery. They delivered it early this morning and I’d taken most of the afternoon unwrapping and placing everything where I wanted it. Yesterday, I’d chosen the paint too, opting for a grayish-blue color. One of our pack members was an artist and I had her come in and paint black line-work on the walls. My theme was moonlight forest. So on one wall was a forest of trees as an accent and then the moon over some grass with flowers on the other. It was simple lines but it came out better than I imagined. It was starting to look like a nursery. I ended up drilling Hector while we were out of what Auri did with her four kids and he answered most of them as best he could. He said he had more of a hand in Vale’s upbringing. Bryan had his hands full with his two kids at the time and Auri with still working through her injuries. So Hector stepped up but it was a long time ago. Still, he provided