Liam was soaked from top to bottom, and he's waist deep in sea water. His blue eyes scanned the waves, looking around for anything black in the vast expanse of light blue and white.
"Gotcha!" A pair of arms pulled him from behind, and he lost his footing in the sand.
Water filled his nostrils, but he was tall enough to push himself back up to the surface. His attacker laughed as he turned around. Blue eyes met a pair of purple, and the platinum blond alpha couldn't help but grin.
Jet black hair sticks together on his forehead, and his eyes crinkled as he laughed. Liam felt an urge to just pull Mar into a kiss, and he gave into the urge this time.
His hands held his best friend's face on each side, and Mar immediately stopped laughing. Purple eyes widened, thinking that Liam was coming for revenge, but the platinum blond alpha slammed their lips together.
Liam tasted sea salt, but if he focused enough, he could smell vetiver and alpha pheromones in the water. Plush lips moved against his own, and slender fingers began sneaking up his back underneath his T-shirt.
The platinum blond alpha grinned into the kiss, and Mar didn't stop running his lips down the alpha's neck.
"You smell like heaven." The black haired alpha's lips stopped on Liam's collar bone. "Paradise."
Shivers ran down the taller alpha's spine from just that raspy voice, so he tried to keep himself from getting a boner. Liam put his arms around Mar's neck and ran his fingers through wet black hair. His blue eyes faced the sea, and he could see a few islands in the distance. Behind those islands laid the vast oceans—
"Ooof—" Suddenly, Liam was pushed away, but his feet didn't give up on him this time.
"Someone's here!" Mar whispered before taking a hold of the taller alpha's shoulders and forcefully turned him around to look at the shore.
Liam would love Mar to manhandle him like this, but not when a pair of deep brown eyes are looking at their belongings on the beach. More specifically, their phones. Mar left his phone underneath a palm tree, and Liam dropped his stuff right there too. Now a nosy fucker is bending down and touching their phones.
"HEY!" Mar shouted at the top of his lungs. "WE SEE YOU! LEAVE OUR STUFF ALONE!"
"DO YOU NEED ME TO THROW IT AT YOU?" Rex's booming voice replied after he picked something up from the sand. "I'M LOOKING FOR A CYPRAEA VITELLUS, NOT TRASH!"
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?" Liam shouted back. Cypraea Vitellus? Must be a scientific name of some poor sea creature Rex decided to seek out today.
"I DON'T TRUST YOU!" Mar screamed as he jumped into the water. In a blink of an eye, the black haired alpha was seen at shore, marching towards his older brother.
The platinum blond alpha stood in the sea for a moment before he ran towards shore. By the time he arrived, Mar was already looking at something in Rex's hand, their phones once again forgotten on the sand.
"Whatcha got there?" Liam leaned over Mar's shoulder to see the commotion. "Ooh..."
A tiny sea snail, barely the size of his finger nail, was wiggling around in the middle of Rex's palm. Its shell is very shiny even though it's brown with cute little white freckles dusted on top. The snail itself is black, and the poor creature is horribly confused as it's making its way around the confinement of Rex's collosal hand.
"It's so cute..." Mar cooed, gently poking the sea snail's shell, his eyes shining with childish delight.
"Cypraea Vitellus, more commonly known as deer cowrie." The pilot lifted his hand up out of the two's reach. "Time to send the little guy back into the ocean where it belongs. I thought it's dead."
"And what were you gonna do if it's dead?" Liam asked out of curiosity.
"Clean the shell and take it home." Rex didn't take off his shoes as he walked towards the incoming waves. His dumbass will get those sweet leathers ruined, but who is Liam to talk?
When Rex reached a few feet away from water, he tossed the sea snail into the waves, where it was washed away from shore.
Blue eyes moved from the pilot down to his phone on the ground. Liam shook his arm to get rid of some water before picking up both his and Mar's phone off the sand. The taller alpha wordlessly handed the phone to his best friend, who shook some moisture off his hand before receiving it.
"Mar." Rex's baritone voice snapped both of their heads to him. "We need to talk. Liam, leave."
"Liam stays." Mar immediately opposed him. "He stays or we won't talk."
Deep brown eyes looked at the platinum blond alpha for a few seconds before they diverted back to his younger brother.
"This is a matter concerning Marbella." The pilot's tone had an edge of harshness to it as he addressed Liam. "Do you still want him to listen to our conversation, Mar?"
The black haired alpha's mood dropped at the mention of his mother. Liam stood by his best friend's side and glared at the pilot.
"Is that what you really wanna talk about?" Liam asked back, and Rex's glaze moved to him.
The pilot didn't move, and his expression is in his default resting bitch face. Huh... Guess he's serious then. Mar's mother is a sensitive topic no one dared to touch for years since her death almost a decade ago. Marbella was very ill when Liam first met Mar, and the platinum blond alpha had the chance to talk to her once before she died. Even when she's bedridden and could barely talk, she was a gorgeous woman with fair skin and long black hair. Mar fortunately resembles her more than his father, and the black haired alpha even got her eyes. She's one of Mr. Aster's long line of mistresses. Liam never knew Marbella's secondary gender; obviously she's a woman, but he doesn't know whether she's an alpha, beta or omega. When he met her, she was too sick to display her pheromones, and Mar never talked about his mother after her death.
A search on the Internet yielded nothing about Marbella because all records of her were wiped off the face of the Earth, and the only place where they can find her name is on her tombstone.
"He stays." His best friend's word was final, and Rex sighed.
"Fine." The pilot reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet and a single sheet of tissue paper.
His hands skillfully took out something small hidden in the compartments of his wallet. The tiny mental rectangle gleamed in the afternoon sun, and Rex gently wrapped it inside the tissue paper.
"I don't trust both of you idiots to not get this thing wet—"
Before Rex could finish his sentence, Mar snatched the object out of his hand. "It's a flash drive." The black haired alpha mumbled as he deposited the mental into the pocket of his phone case. "I'll open it after we cleaned up. Let's go, Liam."
"That's not all." The pilot's face softened, making the two younger alphas stopped in their tracks. "Mar... Marbella was murdered. Her death wasn't natural."
"I figured." Mar snarled back.
"I have a list of people responsible." Rex's tone didn't change his tone as he continued, "It's not in the flash drive, if you're wondering. The flash drive is a compilation of her work before and after she gave birth to you."
"Why don't you give me the list?" The black haired alpha hissed. "Afraid that it'll become a hit list?"
"Hah..." The pilot snorted and rubbed his forehead like he's having a headache. "The more you endorse yourself in her work, you'll see who wanted her dead, and they achieved their goal."
"If you knew what's gonna happen to her, why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you try? She loved you like her own son, and you just let people slowly poison her to death!" Mar's tone was becoming venomous, and Liam put his hand on his best friend's shoulder to calm him down. It kinda works since Mar stopped shouting.
Rex didn't back down nor change his expressions. "How old were you when she died?"
"Eleven?" The black haired alpha answered through gritted teeth.
"And how old was I?" Rex took in a deep breath and looked at the sea. "I was fourteen, Mar. I was fourteen... I did the best I could to save her work which they're trying to erase. You were eleven, and they were gaslighting you that your stupid childish delusions made you think she's dying of a poison. They even got you a friend to forget about it."
Liam clenched his jaw at the last statement. It's fucked up, but it's the truth. Mr. Aster paid Liam to be around his youngest son whose mother was dying of an illness. However, Liam got attached to Mar, and fortunately, Mar's father let him stay.
"What killed her wasn't cancer, and you know that." Rex turned around and began walking towards the dock that's connected to the mansion's living room balcony.