Running with Raiders: (Alphas of Black Fortune: Part 5) BBW Werebear Shifter Menage by Scarlett Rhone Read Free Book Online Page B

the first island port where they would find members of the den and restock the ship, Reza and his co-alpha and their mate had the moves damned near perfected. Reza and Kelly stayed more or less always in Cressida’s orbit, and the den orbited them. They were their own solar system, and Cressida the sun.
    There were three small port towns where Kelly had been forced to leave off members of his den, three little dots on a map of the Caribbean, and each one presented the same obstacles. Taxes were expensive, and every town required a tax to put to port and a payment for the berth, and all the goods and supplies they needed were expensive, and also taxed. They’d begun to sell their own possessions because they were so short on coin, with no real time to waste ferrying cargo or people for a fee. Then, when they actually found the dispersed members of Kelly’s den, they had to convince them to come to the island.
    Most of them did. In the first town, all of them agreed to come. There were a dozen people altogether, led by Cort’s wife, whose sister had been married to Harry, and those two women had fire in their hearts, to be sure. Reza liked them and their determination immediately. They were quick to say to hell with the small fishing village, and they came close to him and Cressida immediately, hugging and sniffing and curious. Ella, Cort’s wife, had a fondness for braiding Cressida’s hair, which she took with good humor even if Cressida had never struck Reza has a hair-braiding kind of woman.
    In the second town, only one woman with her young son chose to join them. Kelly was crushed. The rest of the den left to survive there felt abandoned, and refused to acknowledge him as alpha again. They had resigned themselves to the life that he had left them to. Heartbroken, Kelly stayed in the captain’s quarters for a few days, drinking himself into oblivion. Reza said nothing of it, letting Cressida console him night after night as best she could. Reza, of course, understood being turned away from one’s family. He regretted that Kelly now knew what it felt like. No one should know what that feels like. Reza even brought him a flagon of ale himself on the third night, while the men were all in town enjoying a last night in port. Cressida had gone with Ella to take inventory.
    “I abandoned them,” Kelly mumbled drunkenly, as Reza set the flagon down on the long table in the captain’s quarters. “I just lef’ them.”
    Kelly was sprawled across the bed on his back, shirtless. Reza took a seat at the table.
    “You knew some of them might not come back,” he reminded him gently. “The important thing is that you came back.”
    “Late,” Kelly sighed. “Too late.”
    “For who?”
    Kelly lifted his head, squinting one eye at Reza. “Hmph.”
    Reza tilted the flagon of wine to him. “You have fulfilled your word. You returned and offered them a home, as you said you would. Your debt is paid, my friend. I think you are not upset about that. You are upset that now you have nothing holding you back. Now all you have to do is live your life.”
    Reza thought this was Kelly’s problem, because it was his as well. So much time spent on one goal: for Reza, it had been returning home, and for Kelly, it had been finding a home for his den. Now that they had accomplished these things, they were left to their own devices, and…what next? Once they made it back to the island, once the den was settled, life would simply…continue apace. The reality of having families and homes, of having attachments, was quite overwhelming for two men who had carried such a weight of loss between them for so long.
    That night, Kelly flapped a hand at Reza and spluttered, “Piss off,” instead of acknowledging it. But Reza knew he was right all the same.
    “You’re pissed enough for us both,” he muttered, taking his flagon of ale, and leaving Kelly to his inebriation.
    The next morning, though, Kelly emerged from the captain’s