There were no new notifications on his phone from Alpha Meets Omega, but that was no surprise. He couldn’t say he wasn’t disappointed. If the pretty redhead he’d sparred with last night saw fit to see him again, he could see himself spending his extra time with her for a bit. She certainly was the oddest Omega he’d met in a while, and that was a good thing.
At the risk of coming across as overbearing or, even worse, desperate, he went to her profile and hit the message option to send her a short text before tossing the phone back down on the table.
Grabbing an old sketch pad and pack of pencils that had belonged to his mom once upon a time, he sat down at the table and began sketching out a new plan for a workshop. If he took out a few trees on the opposite side, he could go bigger and better. Perhaps there was a silver lining to this whole fiasco. He’d planned to do some work out there while he was here, so it might as well be to get started on a new building.
His phone buzzed, and he picked it up, smiling down at the message he saw there. He’d asked her to dinner, and she’d agreed. So, maybe things weren’t so bad, after all. Getting up from the table, he went out to get started on sawing down some trees, already halfway across the yard before realizing the chainsaw had, of course, been in the shop. All the tools had.
He turned around and went back into the house to change before getting into the car and driving into the small town that bordered the rural landscape his clan inhabited. There was a hardware store there. It looked like he was going to need a bit of shopping in order to even get started on his new plan.
Almost two hours later, he left with all the basics and a delivery scheduled for later in the afternoon. They would bring in the small shed he had bought to hold everything while he rebuilt. He was surprised when he pulled in to find the dumpster already delivered. They had told him it might be a few days.
“Alright, it looks like you’ve got a lot to do, Jensen,” he muttered aloud.
For the next few days, he lost himself in clearing debris, shifting into dragon form to move the larger pieces of tin and charred board. It took a lot longer than he had expected just to get it all cleaned up, and only a handful of metal tools were even close to salvageable, but he was finally able to get to the double doors embedded beneath where the floor used to be.
He'd found the key, but it didn’t seem to work. He could only assume that the heat of the fire had done some damage to the lock. He gave up trying to unlock it and pried the lock off instead, flinging the large metal doors open and turning on his flashlight. It was another disaster down there from all the water that had seeped in.
It became increasingly apparent to him that the cause of the fire, as well as the hole that had preceded, it was dragon born. The fact that they hadn’t touched the house let him know it was a warning, but why, he wasn’t sure. He assumed the original damage was the result of a dive landing, letting their powerful legs punch into the roof. They must have realized that he hadn’t gotten the message the first time and decided to finish it off with a blast of fire.
There was only one group he could think of that would lash out at him. The Black Talons had been at odds with him ever since he’d purchased Turner and Hood. The owners had not been dragons, but they were among the few humans that could only be described as dragon friendly. The reason for this was likely of a nefarious nature. The previous owners had been heavy gamblers, and the Black Talons owned a casino. No doubt they lost out when the company went under to the bank and they had failed at picking it up for themselves when he outbid them.
Of course, that was just the beginning of the Black Talon Clan’s beef with him. There had been bad blood between them and his clan for years due to a battle that had been fought well before any of them were even born. They did like to hold a grudge over there. He contemplated whether this was just about the construction company or something else. It seemed odd that they would wait nearly three years to act.
Whatever their reasons were, they had gone too far, and he was tired of their games. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, but he was going to have to look at getting his own clan involved soon to deal with them. Though he didn’t participate in the day-to-day life of his clan, he was still a member in good standing and came to their aid anytime they asked it of him. If the Black Talons were going to attack him, it was an attack on all of them.