Mr. Blackbourne's Mistake

Chapter 2 - Pushing the Plan

Sean

Kota frowned around the room as he pushed his glasses up his nose. "Why aren't Sang and Mr. Blackbourne here for this?"

Sean kept his sigh to himself. He was not happy to be the one having this conversation with the guys. This was Owen's plan. But he'd agreed to it, so he could hardly back out from helping now. Besides, he didn't want to be the one laying out the full plan for Sang right now—which was where Owen was. So instead he was stuck revealing the final bits of the plan to these seven.

All of them had—repeatedly—had lectures from and informal discussions with Owen about the importance of all of them being settled with their polyandry relationship with Sang before moving forward, including possibly testing out dating a single person. This had been going on for three months, with Owen chipping away at their confidence in a choice they had already made, a situation Sean still didn't like. He just . . . couldn't help the little spark of guilt in his chest that said it wasn't fair for them to encourage Sang toward a polyandry relationship before she'd experienced anything else.

Clearing his throat, Sean said, "Sang and Owen are discussing what she'll be doing for the next year."

Frowns spread throughout the room of their townhouse living room—well one of their living rooms, since they owned more than one of the connected townhomes.

"What?" Gabriel said. "What the freak does that mean, what Sang will be doing? She'll be helping us. Does she have some secret special mission within our mission? Why would you keep that from us? Why are we just hearing about that now?"

"No," North said, his voice fierce. "Absolutely not. Sang's not going off to do her own thing on a mission like this without us right there to back her up. No way—"

Sean held his hands up to quiet them, raising his voice to say, "She's not coming! Sang won't be on this mission."

This time, his words brought confused silence.

"But . . ." Luke began, tilting his head in an almost dog-like way. "Where will she be?"

Sean swallowed, his heart sick at even saying the words, at even the thought of being separated from Sang for an entire year. Especially with Owen encouraging her to try out another relationship in the meantime. "She . . ." He cleared this throat, changing what he was going to say. "She hasn't had the same opportunities as the rest of you to explore her interests and find out what she really wants to do with her life. So Owen has found a year-long program the Academy had ties with to help her figure that out."

Victor's eyebrows rose. "You're not seriously saying that Sang is staying here while the rest of us leave? You can't expect us to leave her for an entire year. That's ridiculous. Has she agreed to that?"

North stared at Sean with narrowed eyes as the others continued to complain.

"You remember that year where every time we turned around someone was after Sang, right?" Nathan asked, his voice hard and tinged with sarcasm. "What do you think will happen if we're gone? She's a magnet for trouble!"

"Exactly," Gabriel agreed. "That's why she's Trouble. We can't just leave her for a year. And you know she doesn't have any family other than us. Someone has to look after her."

"The Academy looks out for their own," Sean argued, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. "Of course we're not just abandoning her to the wild on her own without any support. She'll stay in Academy housing while in an Academy approved program, and Dr. Roberts will keep on eye on her for us." And Sean selfishly hoped that eye included scaring away any guys who weren't absolute gentlemen and who would keep their paws completely off and away from her. Which partly defeated the purpose of letting Sang have a chance to experience a one-on-one relationship, but Sean had never claimed to be rational when it came to her.