"Don't play dumb with me, Branson. You know what invitation, just like you know why you've been running us both ragged with endless consultations these past weeks."
"We're running a construction company. I thought that was what we did."
Aver made a sound that was half growl, half snort. "You should've seen it. Hand delivered. Gold foiled edges. The paper was heavier than a rock. Good stock."
I could only imagine the hours Aver's mother would've spent on choosing the card stock. She probably had her spies reporting back to make sure she was the Walker family with the thickest paper.
I scanned the untidy stacks of paper on my desk in the office Aver and I shared in the house we lived in with our two other cousins. Carbon copies of pastel pink, blue, and green fluttered each time a breeze blew from the cracked window. "Maybe mine was lost in the mail."
"You wish. Your mom makes mine look tame. If I know Delia Walker, she's enlisted an entire parade to bring it to your door. Oh yeah, unrelated, I'll be late tonight."
An alert popped up on my computer screen telling me the perimeter sensor alarm had been activated. I groaned.
"Uh oh, is that Mommy Dearest now? Was I right? Is it a parade? Or just a full marching band?"
I yanked open the curtain to the driveway that wound down from the main road. I couldn't see anyone coming. "I don't know. Maybe it was just a raccoon. I'll check it out later. I've got three proposals to finalize as well as updating those numbers for the Forstein addition. Maybe, if you see them, you can try and explain why the granite specially shipped in from Italy would be more than the original locally sourced stone we'd quoted them."
Between the two of us, Aver had a better way with words. His father had groomed him from a child in public speaking, in hopes that it would help him assume leadership of the wolf pack. Now, Aver lived off pack land and co-owned Walker Construction. How the mighty had fallen—according to Aver's father. "If I see them. But I doubt I will. I'll be at the club—"
"Say no more. I don't want to be roped into whatever scheme this is, and I will take no part in you playing this part."
"Things aren't that easy, Branson," Aver replied tiredly.
"It's as easy as 'Mom, Dad, I'm gay, stop setting me up with female shifters you think will lure me back to the pack.' It's what I said."
A knock at the door made me frown. I hadn't heard any of the other sensors. The perimeter alarm had gone off, but not the porch or the door. I pulled up the front door camera but didn't see anything. I'd told Aver that camera was angled too high.
"Awesome, now I get nagged at from both sides. Would you like to also criticize my other choices in life? How many beers I have at the end of the day? The many ways in which I am disappointing my family by living outside of the pack?"
I grinned, but I didn't feel any happiness from Aver's annoyance, just grim acceptance. Which I imagined he felt as well. Sometimes, it was easier to give a mouse a cookie. At least then it got them to stop asking for the whole bakery—for a while. "I'm sorry, you're right. Agreeing to a date now will get them off your backs, but not for long with the Winter Solstice Celebration approaching. Have you spoken to Nana? I have a voicemail I haven't checked from her waiting at the end of my to-do list." At this rate, I wouldn't be getting to the end of my list likely until Aver had returned from his ill-fated date.
"I have a voicemail too. I'm afraid to check it. I never know with that one. Either she wants us to come over so she can stuff us with pies and tell us we are smart and brave like when we were kids, or she needs to warn us of the latest apocalypse the stars have brought to her attention. It's a gamble I just won't take today. She probably called Wyatt too. Let him handle it."
Another knock sounded. I frowned. "Hold on, there's someone here. That sounds good, about Wyatt. If he is going to claim to be Nana's favorite, he can fend off her endless prophecies." I exited the office, not bothering to close the double doors and walked down the hallway to the front door. "I've been telling you, we need to lower the front door cameras…" I saw the vague outline of a small body through the frosted glass oval insert in the center of the door. So there had been someone there.
The figure was alone, not in a band or parade, so that knocked Aver's suggestions out of the running. I opened the door, my eyebrows lifting as my mouth dropped open.
"What is it?" Aver's voice spoke from far away. Except he was where he'd been the whole time while I'd found myself in a load of shit.
"Who sent you?" I barked, and the young man on my porch flinched.
He was short and slim with silky brown hair and blue eyes. He wore hardly anything, despite the frost on the ground that still hadn't melted from the night before.
"Do I need to come home? What is going on, Branson? Dammit! This camera is too high, I can't see anything!"
"Maybe you should. See if Dave can handle the site for the rest of the day." I slipped the phone in my pocket despite the fact that Aver was still speaking.
The young man on my porch had begun to shiver. My treatment of him could have started the trembling, or the fact that he was dressed like a virgin fit for sacrifice to an angry god. He'd recently bathed, adorning himself with so much cologne I should've smelled him long before the perimeter alarm had gone off. His shirt was white and so thin I could see through it. I imagined that was the intent. But, I couldn't ask him in or even offer him something to warm him up, not if he was sent from my mother.
And he was definitely a shifter.
"P-please, Alpha Walker—"
"Don't call me that," I snarled with more menace than this poor boy deserved. I sucked in a calming breath, shoving my fingers through my hair. "Who sent you? My mother, right?"
"Elder Delia said I wasn't to return if you weren't with me." He clasped his hands in front of his body, lowering his head so deep his chin rested against his chest.
I wished I could believe him, ask him in, give him a blanket, and then send him on his way, but Delia Walker had been trying to bring me back to the Walker family since the four of us—Aver, myself, Wyatt, and his twin brother Nash—left together at eighteen.
An act I'd followed by coming out.
Now, Aver got set up on blind dates, while I got barely legal, or possibly not at all legal, meat offerings.
My lips twisted into a scowl of disgust. I was sure the young man was very nice, and maybe, with a few years and pounds on him, he'd make some man very happy. Right now, he reminded me too much of my nephew, and when I thought of the types of things Delia, my mother, would've suggested to this kid to help him persuade me to return with him, I wanted to throw up. "What's your name?"
It was odd that I hadn't known him by scent, but maybe the cologne was blocking anything familiar about him. He was probably sixteen or seventeen now… Since it had been ten years since myself and my cousins had left, I should have had at least an inkling of recognition.
"Paul, Al—sir."
"Paul?" I didn't remember anyone by that name from the pack families.
"Paul Tyson, sir, I wasn't born in this region. My family comes from the south."