What’s up with you, man?” Zachary groaned as Brenton once again zoned out at his desk. Brenton snapped back to attention and shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Brenton mumbled.

“Don’t lie to me, ass,” Zachary growled, throwing a convenient pencil at his Alpha. Brenton caught it and snapped it in half.

“I have not had sex with Riley since before we were grabbed,” Brenton growled. Ah, his Alpha just wasn’t getting laid. That would make Brenton a little cranky. “And I am not sure I will ever get to again.” That was much worse.

“Ah, that,” Zachary sighed, leaning back in his spot on the couch. He looked down at the massive stacks of paperwork they were supposed to be going through. Shit they had missed while everything was going on.

“Yeah, that,” Brenton growled more. Normally, Zachary was the one growling this much, but Zachary knew this was really eating away at Brenton.

“It’s only been… shit, a little over a week?” Zachary reminded him, shaking his head. “You’re expecting too much too fast.”

“I am not expecting anything,” Brenton bit out, “but I would like to not terrify our girl every time I go near her.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.” Zachary threw his hands up. “I’m not really good at this kind of shit. Talk to fucking Andrew, he’s better at it. Or the doe, Abigail. She’s a fucking professional.”

“I will talk to Abigail when you do,” Brenton crooned dangerously, and Zachary stiffened. He didn’t want to talk to Abigail. He didn’t want to admit he was having dreams of cages again. “I thought so,” Brenton muttered after a long moment of silence.

“Not fair,” Zachary growled.

“I am your Alpha. I do not need to be fair. I choose to be.” Brenton smiled, and Zachary remembered that Brenton could easily end this by just forcing Zachary to sit down with her. Brenton was being nice by giving him the choice.

“I have a question,” Zachary finally said, going for a change of topic.

“Let’s hear it,” Brenton huffed. “You know your words, Zachary.”

Haha. Zachary bared his teeth at Brenton before continuing.

“Who’s your best guess on the shifter who sold us out to the hunters?” Zachary kicked his feet up onto the coffee table, which was new. The last one had been destroyed when Zachary was stuck in the office while the hunters tried to raid their home.

“No ide-” A knock cut Brenton off and Zachary inhaled deeply before standing up from the couch to answer. Zachary pulled the door open and grinned at Andrew.

“What’s up?” Zachary asked as Andrew walked in and fell onto the couch.

“One of the contractors quit,” Andrew growled. “The one that has to remake the diner’s kitchen. Caleb.”

“Why?” Brenton asked, narrowing his eyes. Zachary was also curious.

“He didn’t give me a reason,” Andrew sighed. “Just said he would refund the deposit and that the project wasn’t for him.”

“That is… concerning,” Brenton said with care. It was, Zachary thought, since they had hired shifter-owned companies to rebuild the diner. It was very concerning. The contractor for the kitchen was a golden eagle and popular to use in the restaurant business. He had a second sense about what chefs needed and how to create an optimal work space for them.

“Isn’t it?” Andrew huffed. “And the cougar I was using for the displays and counters out front? He was lying to me today, but I’m not really sure why. I can’t call him out until I figure out what his game is.”

“What was the lie?” Zachary growled.

“He upped his estimate by about half a million dollars,” Andrew groaned, “saying something about having to work around so many other people. It was utter nonsense.”

“He is just looking for a fatter paycheck.” Brenton gave them both a disgusted look. “We will pay him what he wants. If the work is shoddy, he will pay for it with something other than the zeros in his bank account.”

“I’ll let him know.” Andrew nodded, pulling out his phone. “Where’s Riley? I figured she would be in here under your feet at this point in the day.”

“She went to get her nails done with Abigail,” Zachary told him as he found his seat on the couch.

“I’ll have to see it to believe it,” Andrew chuckled.

“I do not like this,” Brenton whispered, looking down at his papers. “No one has ever broken a contract with us before…”

“You still thinking about Caleb?” Zachary frowned at Brenton, who gave a slow nod. “Shit happens. There’s been a lot going on. We’ll hire someone else.”

Zachary didn’t like the look Brenton and Andrew shared after that.

“No one has ever broken a contract with us before,” Andrew repeated, and Zachary huffed.

“I heard Brenton,” Zachary growled, and, when he went to say more, Brenton continued.

“They are not scared of us right now,” Brenton whispered. “This is only the beginning. We are about to find it very hard to find someone who is willing to work with us without a substantial amount of money being on the table.”

“Oh fuck,” Zachary looked between Andrew and Brenton, realizing where they were going with this. Andrew’s phone went off and he sighed as Zachary kept talking. “I can beat him in court over it. It’s really not a big deal, guys.”

“I have a feeling you’ll be in court a lot, if that’s your plan,” Andrew chuckled, holding up his phone. “Brenton is right, Zachary. This is only going to get worse before it gets better. That was the lynx working on the plumbing. He’s backing out of the project.”

“Goddamn it,” Brenton groaned, rolling his eyes up to stare at the ceiling. Zachary grunted, grabbing Andrew’s phone from him and turning it off.

“We’ll deal with it,” Zachary snarled. “I can’t believe this shit. Half the people we hired for the diner also worked on this house. They know we pay well and stay out of their hair. They know we don’t force them to grovel like other prides.”

“It makes me wonder why they are all stepping back from us,” Andrew added, grabbing his phone back. Zachary watched him shove it back in his pocket without turning it back on. Good.

“Andrew, I hate to say it, but the diner just really is not the highest thing on the priority list right now,” Brenton sighed, leaning back in his own chair and kicking his feet onto the old desk.

“Oh, I know,” Andrew laughed but it ended quickly. “No, what I’m wondering is why the contractors feel the need to step back from it.”

“That is an important question.” Zachary pondered it for a minute before looking at the papers. He really needed to get through those, and pondering some obscure question was only going to distract him. “You can file it with the other thousand questions we need answers to.”

“Amen to that,” Brenton grumbled. “Let’s just get through this day by day and handle things as we can. We will not get anywhere trying to fix everything at once. And I would ask Gabe to look into the contractors, but that would only be a nightmare for him. We hired the best, so he would be seeing hundreds, if not thousands of people who contact them for work. We will hire humans if we have to for the diner.”

“With that,” Andrew sighed, “I’m going to lay here and take a nap.”

“Alright.” Brenton went back to his own work, and Zachary followed suit.

Zachary looked at Andrew and gave a small smile. It’d been a long time since the cougar had willingly hung out in the office. Watching him fall asleep, it was easy to forget that Andrew was third, and, even though the pride only had six members, that meant something. He was calm and peaceful by nature, but underneath that was a strong mind and a dominance that could be a force to be reckoned with. Zachary knew that Riley could easily match that dominance, though, if she continued down the road she was on.

“He and Riley going to fight over third?” Zachary asked softly, once Andrew was too deep in the nap to wake up. “Well, not fight… you know what I mean.”

“I do, and no,” Brenton chuckled. “I thought they might, but I’m certain Andrew is never going to let her step higher than him. He’s too stubborn to go lower on the totem pole than he already is. Not like third is very low but he had a hard-enough time letting go of second as it was.”

“Good to know,” Zachary huffed and with that, they both were back to work. At least Andrew and the diner conversation took Brenton’s mind off Riley and what was going on there. Zachary hoped, at least.