Accompanied By The Night

Episode 06

Bryn gasped, throwing her head back, her hair falling over her back and across my arms, feather-light and smelling of flowers and earth. Mine. Mine. Mine. The scent and feel of her overwhelmed me. She was everywhere, and I was drunk with it.

“Night, I’m gonna—” she cut herself off with another gasp, goosebumps rising along her ass, down the back of her legs, and up her back.

“Yes,” I groaned back, upping my pace slightly.

We came at the same time. Our juices mixed, dripping to the floor. Bryn hummed with satisfaction, swaying her hips in a slow, sensual figure-eight against me.

“I love you,” I told her as I kissed her back, tasting the salt of her skin.

“I love you, too,” she said. “Travel safely, okay?”

“Always.” And I kissed her back again.

I smiled as I walked out of our bedroom. I’d woken alone, but my body was still deliciously sore from the previous night. On his way out, Night had kissed me goodbye, and I could almost taste him on my mouth.

I headed to the alpha’s office with the key to the office study. I wasn’t looking forward to going through all the files and records the Redwolfs had left behind, but at least the memory of Night’s touch would see me through it.

When I reached the door to the office, I slid the key into the lock. It clicked open, and the door creaked as I pushed it. The office was a mess. Papers were piled haphazardly into piles of varying sizes; documents were spread out across the floor as if someone had been rummaging through them before being interrupted. At a glance, it looked like these papers held the Kings’ census information and notices of those who had died or gone missing over the past decade.

As I picked up the papers and collected them into a neat stack, I wondered why Troy would be interested in this information. What was he planning on doing with population records? Maybe once I had a chance to really look at them, I’d find an answer to that question. But first, I needed to do some organizing. There were reams of paper collected in seemingly random piles. My stomach churned just looking at the mess. Having another person around to help me with this chore would make this so much easier. I could always rope Tavi into helping me.

“Um…hello?”

I jumped, almost dropping the small stack of papers. A sense of something else lingered at the edge of my mind, another presence, a sense of magic. With that feeling came a voice, but it wasn’t mine, and it wasn’t my wolf’s. It sounded a bit like…

“Tavi?” I asked. “Is that you?”

“Bryn!” Tavi responded. “Yes, it’s me. I felt…another person in my mind, and I thought I was going crazy. I had no idea that was you.”

“But how are we…how is this happening?”

“It’s part of our bond!” She had so much excitement in her voice that she almost sounded like the old bubbly Tavi from before Troy had kidnapped her. “Alphas and betas can communicate like this, but I didn’t think we would be able to do this because this was supposed to be temporary.”

“This is amazing!” I had tingles. Despite the setback of Troy’s escape, the fact that I had an alpha connection to Tavi made me feel like it hadn’t been a series of misunderstandings that had led to me being alpha. “I was just thinking I could use your help.”

“You needing me must have formed our connection. What can I do to help you?”

“I finally got into the alpha’s office, but it’s a mess. I could really use some help organizing everything.”

“I can be there in a few minutes. See you soon.”

I was already downstairs when Tavi arrived. She wore a large gray hoodie and jeans, and her long black hair was tied back in a messy ponytail. When I hugged her, she stiffened but warmed up to the hug after a second and patted my back.

“I guess Night already headed back home?”

“That’s right.” I led her upstairs to the office. “He left this morning. He’s probably about halfway there by now.”

“It’s not like him to leave us unsupervised,” she joked.

I laughed. “Well, Dom’s still around.”

“He didn’t go with Night?”

At her surprised, somewhat squeaky tone, I glanced over my shoulder at her. “Yeah. He’s probably overseeing the rebuilding.”

Her cheeks reddened. “Oh. Okay.”

“Tavi, is something going on between you and Dom?”

“What? N-no.” She shook her head vehemently. “There’s nothing at all.”.

“You seem a little…flustered?”

“No. I’m just surprised he didn’t go with Night, is all.” She forced a laugh. “Anyway, aren’t we supposed to be organizing things instead of gossiping?”

I enjoyed teasing Tavi a bit, but I couldn’t push it too far. The excitement she’d shown at our alpha/beta bond and the fact that she wasn’t looking for a place to hide at the mention of Dom’s name showed me she had made real progress from when she was more reclusive.

When we stepped into the office, Tavi let out a gasp. “Wow. You weren’t kidding.”

“Yeah. I wanted to go through the accounts, but at this rate, I’ll be lucky if we can finish organizing before the end of the day.”

“Well, I don’t know about that. Let’s just see what we can do now.”

“Sure.”

The most intimidating mountain of paperwork was on the birchwood desk. Corners of paper stuck out at random points of the messy stack. If we weren’t careful, we’d pluck out one of the pages holding the pile in place.

Tavi and I took each side of the mass and carefully dismantled it. Though I hadn’t set out to look through the papers until they were more orderly, I couldn’t help but glance at them as we collected them.

There were a lot of overdue bills, requests for repairs, complaints about various goings-on around the pack. Unsurprisingly, it looked like Troy hadn’t taken his responsibilities as alpha very seriously. Very little, if anything, had been handled as far back as a few months ago when Gregor showed signs of being sick. It was as if Troy had never intended to do a good job as alpha. His methods of dealing with his pack were deplorable, but some of these requests were for things the pack needed, like a construction request for a new shop at the market.

My stomach lurched. I pressed a hand to my mouth and closed my eyes. A wave of nausea hit me like a brick.

Tavi glanced at me when I dropped a sheaf of papers. “Hey, are you okay, Bryn?”

“I don’t know…I think so? My stomach hasn’t been agreeing with me the past few mornings.”

“You look a little pale.” She came over to me and pressed the back of her hand against my forehead. “You don’t feel feverish. Something you ate, maybe?”

“That’s what I thought at first, but it’s been pretty consistent since Troy escaped. I’ve also been getting these headaches.” I touched my temples—the pain had lessened, but I felt the lingering ache as I talked about it.