Luke was still asleep when Gage woke up, and as tempted as Gage was to wake him with his mouth on Luke’s cock, Luke needed the sleep. Gage took a few minutes to enjoy his view. Luke said he loved Gage last night. Granted, it was in the heat of the moment, so it probably didn’t count, but now Gage desperately wanted to say it back to him. He had to find the right moment, though. Gage dressed and made his way out to the kitchen where Jess was having breakfast already. "Coffee's ready," Jess said. "High test."

"Is there any other kind?" Gage scoffed.

"There might be now that Luke's pregnant," Jess said.

Gage vaguely remembered there were lists of things that pregnant people were supposed to avoid. "I trust him to make those decisions." But he sure as hell was going to look it all up as soon as they got this house thing done today.

"I'm still drinking it," she said. "But maybe not my normal four cups a day."

They heard the front door open and close, and a moment later Evan waddled in with a too-chipper smile on his face and Dare followed, looking like a grumpy cave man. He headed straight toward the coffee, pushing Gage out of the way and filling another mug, his expression losing a fraction of its murderous look as he downed his cup right away. Gage took a tentative sip of his own. It was way too hot to drink yet.

"Do you have any nerve endings in that mouth?" Gage asked, incredulously.

"You would think he'd have burned them all out by now, wouldn't you," Evan said. "But he's surprisingly dexterous with that tongue."

Cole staggered in, covering his ears. "TMI, TMI. Things I do not need to know about my brother, 101." He grabbed Evan around the shoulders and gave him a nookie, but Dare set down his mug, picked up Connor, moved him to the other side of the coffee machine and started refilling his mug, all without a change in expression.

Cole collapsed in a chair next to Jen. "You're a lot less fun now that you've gotten all mated and dad-to-be-ish," he complained, glaring at Dare.

"And I don't know," Jess added, "I think you've had more fun teasing Dare with the baby on the way than before, if that's possible. But beware, Cole, turnabout's fair play and we have a little one on the way now..."

Cole's face drained as a feral grin grew on Dare's face.

Evan laughed. "I ousted him from the house before he could even hit the Keurig, so he's extra wolfish this morning. Watch out."

Two cups later, Dare seemed more like a human being, and Gage was itching to get on the road. He had no idea what they might be looking for or if they would find anything, but whatever it was or wasn't, he wanted to get it over and done with.

"I'm going to go check on Luke, and then are we ready to hit the road?"

Cole and Dare nodded, and Gage went back to their bedroom.

Luke was still asleep, and Gage curled in bed behind him. "Hey, sleepy head." Luke grunted and rolled back against Gage.

"I'm getting ready to head out."

"Kay," Luke mumbled. "Stay safe."

Gage gave him a peck on the lips and tucked him back in as he left. It was all so...domestic. No matter what happened over the next few days or weeks, Gage didn't want to go back to where they had been, living in different houses, talking on cell phones at the end of the day. He wanted this. He wanted kisses goodbye in the morning, and chats about their days over dinner.

He suspended that line of thinking as they jumped in Dare's Camaro. 

"Not gonna lie," Cole said, sliding sunglasses over his nose. "I feel kinda badass. Three tough dudes, on a mission, in a really sexy car."

Dare snorted. 

"Laugh all you want, Mr. Dad. Just wait until Evan makes you turn this in for a minivan."

"We already have an SUV, and Evan loves this car more than I do."

Gage couldn't see Cole's face, but he could hear his disgust. "Ugh, I know for a fact that Evan doesn't know the first thing about classic cars, and I do not want to know what you did to him in here. In fact, I don't want to be in here anymore. Let's take my car instead."

Dare just grinned and revved the engine. 

Gage’s house looked...surprisingly the same for all that had happened in the last twenty four hours. He unlocked the side door and the brothers followed him in.

"So what's the plan?" Dare asked. Gage was surprised he was deferring to him. But then again, they were in Gage’s territory, not his and more specifically, Gage’s house and not Dare’s. 

"Let me take a quick look and see if anything stands out to me," Gage said. He checked the downstairs and then the bedrooms upstairs, but nothing seemed out of place. "Okay, thorough search time. This may go faster if we shift and try to catch any unusual scents."

The other two men didn't bother nodding, they just shucked their clothes and shifted. Dare was nearly all black and his wolf form dominated Cole's, the opposite from their human forms. In wolf form, there was absolutely no question that Dare was all alpha. Cole was dark, but a more mottled black and brown. Gage quickly followed them and then gestured upstairs with his nose. There should be less scents up there to confuse them. Just him, Sean, and Luke. Gage took the downstairs. The kitchen was a muddle of the three of them, and there was the faint hint of Jen, like flowers, and a stronger hint of Amy, cotton candy, which made him realize he had barely talked to her the past couple of weeks, especially with everything that was going on. He needed to call her. Or maybe text. Whatever she was comfortable with. He couldn't get past the idea that something was different about her since he left for college, but he couldn't pin down what it was. Maybe it was just the resulting awkwardness from turning her down when she'd asked him to mate her. Or maybe it was one of a million other things. Whatever it was, Gage had been a really sucky friend lately. 

Gage made his way through the rest of the house, spending as little as time as possible in the bathroom with all its overpowering cleaning chemicals. More Amy in the living room, which he expected after her helping him unpack, along with the hint of Mark. Gage tried to track his scent down, but it didn't seem to deviate from where he remembered him standing that first visit out to the house a couple months previous. Cole and Dare padded down the stairs and joined Gage and they shifted back so they could talk. 

"You would think we would learn to shift where our clothes were," Cole said, but he sat on the couch instead of going for them. Dare simply leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Even naked he had that whole dark and brooding thing going on. Maybe especially.

"Find anything?" Gage asked.

"There was a cotton candy scent I wasn't familiar with," Dare said.

"Yeah, I smelled that too." 

Gage shook his head. "That's just my friend Amy. She helped me unpack one day. That may have been the last day I did any unpacking." He looked around at the mess in the living room.

"Do you want to do a deeper search?" Dare asked.

"What exactly should we be looking for?" Gage asked. He wasn't sure if he'd hoped they would find something or not.

"Anything not yours? Anything that could cause harm or would have been placed with malicious intent. Wolfsbane. Surveillance equipment. Drugs."

"Drugs?"

"I was in Sweden when the pack leader was framed for misusing pack funds and one of the pieces of evidence brought against him were some drugs they had planted in his office."

"But they figured it out?"

"Well, yeah, or we wouldn't have known it was a plant." Dare grinned.

Chances are, they wouldn't find anything. The only reason they were really checking anyway was the weird way Mark had been hanging around yesterday, and Gage hadn't found any unsuspected traces of him, let alone anyone else. If they found something, it meant Gage wasn't crazy and someone was after them. If they didn't find anything, well, someone still could be, but Gage was more inclined to think he'd developed a case of paranoia. "I honestly would feel better if we tore the place apart, even if it's a little crazy."

"Hey," Cole said, "have you met us? We do crazy really well."

"It's not like you have a lot of stuff to look through. We'll take the downstairs this time if you want to take the bedrooms," Dare said, exhibiting more of the take-charge attitude Gage had expected. He didn't mind, though. Chances were, Dare would be his alpha at some point if nothing changed his plans to join White Falls. 

"Let's do it."

Gage started with his room. It felt invasive to go through Sean's room. He remembered how he'd been at that age. Not that he'd had anything anyone cared about beyond a few risqué magazines. He wondered if Sean needed those, or if he could rely on his visions... There were so many things Gage didn't know about his gift. And so many things he did not want to know.

Gage stood in the center of his room for a moment at a loss. Where should he start? Just pick a spot, Gage. Otherwise we'll be here all day. He started with his nightstand. He took everything out of the drawers, tossed them on the bed and then took the drawer up and turned it upside down. Nothing. As he put everything back in, he wondered if he should just toss the condoms. Would they be any good by the time he needed them again? Would h need them again?

Then he stripped the bed. He checked between the mattress and the box spring, he checked under the bed. Nothing. His bedroom was the only place he'd really spent the time to put together, and even it was pretty sparse. The entertainment center across from his bed was the only other furniture in there. Gage started at the top and worked his way down, emptying the top two shelves of books first. It was on the second shelf that he found it. A tiny wireless camera.

"Gage?" Cole's voice came from the bottom of the stairs. "We found something."

Well, he wasn't paranoid.