The Alpha King Call Boy
Chapter 240

"I'll be back soon," I promised, looking down into Fiona's blue eyes.

"I know." She shook her head like she didn't want to heat any more of that kind of thing right now.

I kissed her again. We'd been trying to say goodbye for who knows how long, at least ten minutes, standing next to the car that was about to drive me and Kayden to the airport.

The rest of the battalion had already left the palace. My Beta was inside the car, patiently waiting for me. Nina had taken the baby back to the room to give me and Fi a moment alone.

"What's this?" I asked when Fi produced a small gold gift box from the pocket of her heavy knit sweater.

She pressed it into my hands. "Just a little something I thought may bring you comfort during your travels. A little reminder of home."

I opened the box and found a familiar sight inside. It reminded me of the last time I did this- leave Fiona to travel across the country.

She'd given me a similar treasure back then.I brought the shiny purple silk scarf up to my face, covering my nose and mouth with the fine, soft fabric and breathing in deeply. Yes, it smelled like Fiona. Like sweet lavender and love. She must have worn it for a bit before wrapping it up like this for me.

Underneath the scarf was a folded piece of white paper. The side facing up had my name spelled out in Fiona's tidy handwriting. That part of the gift was surely to be saved for later.

"Thank you," I told my beautiful wife, pocketing the gifts and kissing her lips yet again.

After a few seconds, she pulled away reluctantly, "Go," she breathed, her hands compulsively straightening my tie. Our eyes met and held in an intense gaze. "You can kiss me more when you return."

I took one last long, greedy breath with my lips pressed to Fiona's neck, taking in her fragrance and pheromones direct from the source like an addict desperate for one last hit. Then we traded "I love you"'s and kissed one last time, and then one last time she told me "go," and I went.

We traveled by air for seven hours on a private jet I'd chartered so that the pack could travel all together and more importantly - out of the public eye. There were no airports near Grayson's property that operated commercial flights. But I'd arranged for our jet to land on a long-disused jet strip much further out into the desert, on a private property whose owners had been paid handsomely for its use:

Our friends from the Cold Moon Pack were there waiting for us there, as planned. I saw their fleet of miscellaneous vehicles waiting for us from the window of the plane as we made our descent to the ground. Trucks, cars, vans, SUVs. All manned by a single driver. Members of Grayson's pack who he'd recruited to come out here in their personal vehicles to transport my men from here the rest of the way to his garage.

I deplaned first after we touched down, descending a steep ladder onto hot, crumbling tarmac just as the vast, cloud-streaked sky over the desert began to take on painterly shades of pink and indigo, warning that darkness was coming soon "Grayson." I met the Alpha's outstretched hand with my own.

"Alexander," he said, gripping me in a firm handshake and bowing his head.

We didn't waste time with any further pleasantries. My pack filed off the plane and straight into the waiting vehicles and then we were all off, driving fast in a tight caravan through a red desert that smelled of nothing but dust and the exhaust fumes of the automobiles tearing through it.

An hour later we finally arrived at Grayson's garage. To my delight, the entire property was gated with metal fencing topped with menacing cords of barbed wire.

The garage was a long, narrow building with six roll-up vehicle doors lining the front, a small office on one side and a second-story addition built over the top of the other. A much smaller, tin-roofed single-story structure some hundred yards further down the private road had to be Grayson and Liv's home.

White fluorescent light shone from the high windows of the garage.

Grayson parked right in front of the building, facing the closed door of the first bay. We went around the back of the garage and entered through a big steel backdoor that had been propped open.

The garage had been emptied of vehicles and all else that usually filled it. Steel chains, spare wheels, and other parts and instruments hung from the walls, and in some corners toolboxes and auto supplies had been piled high and pushed as out of the way as possible.

In place of all its regular contents, the garage was now filled with neat rows of cots. It was immediately clear walking into this place that it was set up for a camp-in. It looked like an emergency barracks. Like a proper, professional safe house. "This is more than I expected," I told Grayson as my eyes roved the setup. "You did all this?"

He offered me a kind of helpless shrug. "Not really. It was Liv. And Dana helping her."

"We will be plenty comfortable here," I told Grayson as we headed back down the stairs. "I can't thank you enough."

"It's not a castle," he said, trying to suppress a little smirk. "But you'll be safe here."

There were little bundles on all the cots. I could smell what was in them, even through the more prominent fragrance of gasoline and machine oil. Smelled like turkey sandwiches, apples and chocolate chip cookies. "Sack lunches?" "Again.. the ladies. They've been at this for days."

"We ate on the plane, but this is perfect. We need all the calories we can get ahead of the climb."

"We'll have breakfast for you all in the morning, too. Now. There are about sixty cots down here. The rest are upstairs." He thumbed over his shoulder at a metal staircase that led up to that second-floor studio.

There were no windows in the studio, at least not on the side that overhung the garage. But a light was on beyond the closed door, a bluish, electric glow that I discerned to be blacklight. I followed Grayson up the stairs and inside.

It was bigger than I expected it to be. A single huge, rectangular room with heavily polished hardwood floors and walls made entirely of floor-to-ceiling mirrors. Blacklights illuminated the space in dim neon, and there were a half dozen gleaming metal stripper poles spaced at regular intervals.

The dance studio had also been filled with cots and sack lunches, just like the garage. About two dozen were crammed into this room, which smelled more like light cleaning solvents than motor oil and was comfortably air-conditioned.

If Grayson thought I'd be scandalized that his wife had a pole dance studio above his business, I was not. I was just grateful that some of my men were going to enjoy what looked like an honestly very comfortable space to camp. "How much did you spend on all this?" I asked Grayson as we descended the stairs.

He wiped his mouth, hesitating, and swiped his eyes over to watch as my soldiers made their way through the garage claiming cots, inspecting the food bundles and unfurling their bedrolls.

"Like I told you," he said in a steeled, serious tone. "It's my duty to serve the crown. I don't need you to pay me -"

"I'm going to reimburse you. How much?" Always visit FindNovel.net for more novels and updates.

He wiped his mouth again. I started thinking it must have been a lot he'd spent on all these cots. Not to mention all the food. And then there was the cost of shutting his business down to clear the garage out this week, too. He wasn't going to give me a number. I forced him to give me his bank account information instead, and forwarded it to Brandon. I just told him to send a million dollars, and hoping that should cover it and then some.