Mated to My Step-brother and His Best Friend novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Loft

"He means it," Abner said in the dark.

Bowie started rowing again, harder.

"Tomorrow's six days early," I said. "His own men won't be ready."

"His men will be ready." Abner pulled the robe tighter. "Arlis has been ready for twenty years."

Nobody said anything after that.

The lights of the house shrank behind us until it was just the one window, and then it was nothing.

We got back to Graylick at dawn.

My mother was standing in the diner lot in her coat.

I don't think she'd moved all night.

She saw Abner climb down out of the truck in his bathrobe, and she didn't run to him.

She walked.

She walked straight up to him and put both hands flat on his chest, checking he was solid.

"You look terrible," she said.

"I feel worse."

"Good. You scared me half to death."

He put his big hand over both of hers and bent his head down to her hair.

I looked away.

So did everybody else in the lot.

The cook came out with a mug of coffee and held it up at the Alpha.

"Sit down before you fall down," she said.

"Ma'am."

"Don't you ma'am me. Your boy ma'ams me all day. Inside."

He went inside.

The Alpha of the Lovett pack sat at the counter of the Graylick diner in a blue bathrobe and ate scrambled eggs, and the old man at the end of the counter watched him the whole time.

Then Deacon unzipped his jacket.

He set the composition book on the counter in front of his father.

Abner looked at the marbled cover.

He didn't open it.

"Where was it?" he said.

"Behind her wardrobe. Where she hid my presents."

Abner opened it.

He read the first page.

He turned to the last one and read that too, and I watched his hand flatten on the counter.

Tell him after the swim.

He sat there a long time with his thumb on her handwriting.

My mother put her hand on his back.

"I sent her down to the water," he said finally, very low. "I told her it was too warm a night to waste."

Nobody had anything to say to that.

The cook refilled his coffee and didn't charge him.

By seven the whole town knew the raid was tomorrow night.

By eight they were in the lot behind the clinic.

Bowie stood on a crate.

He didn't make a single joke.

"Nobody fires," he said. "Nobody. Not if they shoot first. Not if somebody yells. Arlis needs Graylick to shoot first, and Graylick doesn't."

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