Intent on His claim (Beauty and the Beast #3)

Chapter 56

Warren came down the stairs just as he concluded his voice message to Belle.

"Good morning your Grumpiness," Axle grinned. "Can I get a little help here?"

Warren sighed. "I had thought that your first task as a butler would be to hire a full staff," he muttered but obligingly went round the counter where Axle was making breakfast.

"Yeah right. A human staff wouldn't be able to take the secrets and too many shifters in the house would make you antsy."

"My disposition is not quite so temperamental," Warren denied.

"Okay, they'd make me antsy," Axle deadpanned. "You know you have Belle's phone, right?"

Warren decided to set the table since Axle was ready to plate the food. He elbowed Axle aside to get to the counter and Axle raised a brow. "Do you have a point?"

Axle chuckled on a sigh. He got a faint whiff of Belle's scent on Warren and realized that Warren had been in her room. Slept there, maybe?

A silly memory suddenly surfaced and he grinned. "Hey, remember years ago when you went crazy thinking I'd met your mate? You swore you could smell her off me."

Warren laughed. "Ah, yes. That was an experience."

"You forced me to retrace my steps all over the damn town trying to find her."

"And your serial womanizing got in the way," Warren reminded. "There was a lot of ground to cover."

"I still swear that I didn't talk to that many girls that day," Axle defended. "I definitely couldn't have gotten anyone's scent on me."

"So you proved."

"The only person I remember actually spending any time with that day was this little girl. She was super funny," he remembered. "The moment she saw me she walked up to me and called me kitty."

Warren raised a brow. "A little human girl called you a cat?"

"Right? It was fascinating how excited she seemed to see me. I figured she was lost so I spent like a hour with her before someone came for her. She was so comfortable, talked a lot. She said her name was Annie and she was four –"

"You never mentioned this," Warren interrupted, turning to Axle.

Ax angled his head at Warren's serious tone. "Yeah, we were a little preoccupied with finding your mate. There was no reason to bring her up."

Warren's eyes drifted closed. "This was exactly fourteen years ago."

"And?"

"Annabelle would have been four years old."

Now Axle's brows shot up. "And I'm guessing she went by Ann?"

Warren laughed at the irony. "I did scent my mate on you that day."

"Huh. We were so obsessed with finding her and yet I met the little lady instead," Axle mused.

Ashley came skipping into the kitchen. "Good morning! What'd I miss?"

Warren smiled. He was glad that Roger had made the call to shut down Ashley's visions. Gruesome visions were bound to take a toll on his sister – though Roger had refused to clarify on the precise nature of her recent visions.

Still, seeing his sister's bubbling joy was enough to lift up his spirits. "Don't disappear. We have a morning meeting."

Ashley pouted. "Were you born to suck all the joy out of life?"

"Precisely. And I'm older to ensure that you cannot escape me."

"But before that, we made your favourite breakfast," Axle pointed out.