Page 71 of Primal Bonds 1

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He picked up the cup and, instead of handing it to me like I expected him to, he said, “Open your mouth.”

Huh? He wanted me to open my mouth?

When I stared at him, quite flabbergasted, he said, “Go on.”

I said, “I can drink it myself.”

He pulled the cup back as he said, “This is my cup of coffee. You want a sip, you do as I say.”

Oh, dear. But because I was desperate, I opened my mouth anyway, and Adam chuckled. “Good boy,” he said.

I drank heartily and when I was done, I said, “Thanks.” Turning to the television, I asked, “What’s on the news?”

“The usual,” he said.

The news presenter was explaining a complex-looking graph I couldn’t quite understand, and there were numbers, too. Was that the normal type of news? I didn’t know. Feeling rather sleepy again, since it was barely six in the morning, I leaned against Adam and then closed my eyes. I felt him tighten his arm around me, hugging me, and I smiled. It wasn’t long before I fell asleep again.

22

Adam

While business news continued to broadcast on the television, Adam turned his attention to Shiro. The boy was in his arms and had his head resting against his chest, which Adam found so adorable. He leaned in and kissed the boy on the forehead, loving how innocent and beautiful Shiro looked in his sleep. He was just returning his attention to the television when Shiro’s soft voice came.

“Daemon… Omega… Alpha… Hikari…”

Adam frowned.Omega? Alpha?How did Shiro knew of these words? Sure, he might have heard of alpha from the streets, as it was quite the urban legend, but omega? Even he himself had only come to associate with the word last night when Nolan had mentioned it. So how did Shiro know of it? And what of daemon and hikari? Of which he had never heard of.

The sound of footsteps caught Adam’s attention and he turned to see Lan coming in through the door. The wolf boy was scratching his toned belly under hisdisheveled shirt as he greeted, “Morning, Master Adam,” along with a yawn.

Adam chuckled. “Morning, Lan. Did you sleep well?”

Lan came to slump on the other sofa diagonally across from the one Adam sat on. He said, “Not one bit. Master Nolan wouldn’t let me leave. He clung to me all night and I couldn’t even breathe properly. He’s terrible when he’s drunk.”

Adam wanted to burst out laughing but held himself in check because Shiro was asleep in his arms. He said, “That’s unfortunate.”

Lan made himself comfortable on the sofa and said, “So, I’m going to sleep a bit here.”

“Go ahead,” Adam said.

It was seven when Adam finally had enough watching the business news and changed the channel to the general news instead. Then he moved Shiro and gently laid the boy across the sofa. After covering both Shiro and Lan with a cozy blanket each, he went into the kitchen and started preparing breakfast. It’d be pancakes with bacon and berries today.

He was in the middle of making the pancakes when Aka turned up, and the moment the boy saw him, he was ready to retreat. Adam wasn’t about to lose the chance to get to know Aka and said, “Mind helping me out?”

Aka, nervous as hell, said, “Okay.” He slowly made his way into the kitchen and then asked, “What do you need help with?”

“Can you take care of the bacon?”

“Okay, sure,” the boy said.

Standing side by side in front of the stove a fewmoments later, Adam asked, “You’ve been with Shiro long?”

Aka, poking the bacon in the frying pan with a pair of tongs, nodded. “Yeah, since I was six. He found me. I don’t remember much now about back then, but strangely enough, I always remember that day so vividly. I remember it was dark and raining and I was sitting in a corner in an alley. People just walked past me like I wasn’t even there. A few noticed me, but then they’d just snicker, and I came to understand later that that was normal. Anyway, Shiro asked me if I was okay, but I never talked to him because before then, I had never spoken to strangers. I remembered being alone and afraid. I think I spent like three days just sitting there, waiting… Just… waiting. Shiro kept bringing me food, just rice balls, but it was nice. Any type of food tasted nice when you were starving. I think it was on the third day when he brought Mom Hana around.” He chuckled, more relaxed now around Adam, which the man noticed.

Adam realized Aka was a chatterbox once you got to know him. He only asked the boy one question, and everything came pouring out.

The boy continued. “Mom Hana was so beautiful, with pale hair and blue eyes. She’s a Japanese white fox, and apparently, her kind is very rare, so that means Shiro is super rare. Mom Hana took me home with her, and then she adopted me. Not officially, you know, there’s no paperwork or anything like that. She just told me she was going to take good care of me and would love me like her own.” He sniffed, tears brewing in his eyes. “So Istarted calling her Mama like Shiro did. We were a family, the kind I always wanted, the kind I never had.”