The Broken Faewolf’s Mate

by Rider, Liv

  “Morning, Estelle,” he said, stepping out onto the doorstep and shutting the door behind him.

  “Morning. Got your ride here,” Estelle said, her eyebrows shooting up, and he realized the contrast he presented from his normally immaculate appearance. Parked in the driveway behind her was the Tesla.

  “There’s been a change of plans,” he told her, walking out towards the car, pretending everything was normal, that he was a calm and collected professional even though he’d never felt less in control of a situation. “I need you to leave the Tesla here with me. I’ll call you a cab.” He reached into his trouser pocket and came up empty. Of course—his phone was still sitting on his desk back in the office.

  Estelle’s eyebrows were still trying to merge with her hairline as she pulled out her own phone. “I’ll call,” she told him kindly. She handed over the car keys and called for a cab while he got out the overnight bag he always kept stashed in the trunk. Like hell was he staying in his sweat-and-mud soaked ensemble.

  Estelle hung up and gave the overnight bag and his disheveled appearance a thoughtful once-over. Dev realized she’d come to all the wrong conclusions about why he was stranded at a strange address when she broke into a sly grin. “Good night last night?”

  God, he wished that was why he ached this morning. “Thanks for driving out here for me,” he said, ignoring the remark since he didn’t have a plausible alternative explanation to offer. Estelle just grinned wider. “Sorry about the ride back. Put it on the company card.”

  She shrugged philosophically. “Hey, I’m not complaining about getting to take your baby out.” She gave the electric car a loving pat.

  The cab arrived, and Estelle gave him another knowing look as she got in and left. Dev wondered what kind of office gossip he’d accidentally created. At least it was better than the truth.

  He stared at the front door for a few moments while the wind rustled in the trees. Aidan was a wolf, and he wanted Dev to be one too—and that could never, ever happen. Dev should take the Tesla and get as far away from here as possible.

  But that would leave Aidan stuck as a wolf, and the idea of abandoning someone when they needed Dev’s help…it wasn’t in him to do that. He’d just have to make sure to stay in control of his instincts, that was all.

  Setting his jaw, he picked up the overnight bag and headed back inside.

  When he opened the front door, Aidan was sitting with his back pressed hard against the hallway wall. He was shaking as he stared down at his hands with raw, aching longing. At Dev’s entrance, he looked up, and his expression changed to crushing relief. Even if Dev hadn’t already made up his mind, that expression would’ve done it.

  “I’m not saying I need wolf lessons, but you clearly need human ones.” He swung his bag meaningfully. “There a shower somewhere here I can use?”

  Dev watched Aidan piece together his composure as he slowly rose from the floor, a hand on the wall for balance. “Don’t stay out of bloody pity.”

  “Didn’t your Alpha put you in charge of helping me?” Dev pointed out. “Think of this as an opportunity to change my mind.” There was zero chance of Dev changing his mind, but the important thing right now was getting Aidan to agree to this. Dev couldn’t abandon Aidan. The beast under his skin growled in agreement, and he tried not to worry about what that meant. “Besides, aren’t you curious why you can suddenly change to human again when I touch you? Maybe we can work out how to keep you human even without my magic fingers before lunchtime if we try.” He waggled his spare hand for emphasis.

  Aidan gave a reluctant smile and Dev became aware, all over again, of the fact that he was extremely naked. It wasn’t exactly a thing you could forget, but Aidan’s complete lack of self-consciousness made it seem almost natural that a minor deity was leaning against the wall, close enough that you could pick out every muscle. He had minimal body hair—probably due to the high fae blood—which meant there was nothing to distract from the lithe, lean lines of him.

  What would all that smooth skin feel like under his hands? It looked like it would show every mark, every teasing nibble. Blood rushed south, and Dev swallowed. Get a grip! He’s still a werewolf, remember? But Aidan didn’t look at all like a werewolf; he looked like Dev’s personal fantasy, every delicious inch of him.

  “Okay.” Aidan said, levering himself off the wall, and it took a moment for Dev to compute that he wasn’t replying to Dev’s erotic musings. “Shower’s that way. Then let’s work out how long my leash is.”

  Dev was going to need to take the coldest shower in the world.

  * * *

  One cold shower and half an hour later, he was clean and changed and they’d concluded (a) Aidan could change to wolf any time he liked but he couldn’t change to human unless he was touching Dev, and (b) any time they got more than a few hundred feet apart, Aidan snapped back to wolf form. Aidan would’ve gotten out the damn measuring tape to check exact distances, but Dev put his foot down.

  “Enough masochism. Let yourself enjoy being human for more than two minutes at a time.” Aidan tried to hide it, but every time he changed back to wolf form it clearly terrified him, as if he didn’t trust he’d be able to become human again. Why was he putting himself through this? Dev thrust the pile of clothes at him. “Get dressed. You got any coffee in this house?”

  Aidan accepted the clothes with a grin. “You just want me to put some clothes on.”

  He both did and didn’t, because half an hour wasn’t enough time to become immune to the sight of Aidan’s spectacular naked ass. There wasn’t enough time in the universe to become immune to that—even if it kept changing into definitely-not-hot furry-wolf-butt.

  Aidan’s grin widened at his beat of silence. “There’s an espresso machine in the kitchen, but you’re on your own for how it works.”

  He found the gleaming machine where Aidan had said. He should’ve been annoyed at the waste of a morning—those tender documents weren’t going to appraise themselves—but he wasn’t. Well, making coffee for a beautiful man was never really a waste of a morning. If only that same beautiful man wasn’t also a werewolf, though that fact was bothering him a lot less than it should. He knew academically that not all werewolves were vicious killers, but this was the first time he’d really believed it. It was impossible to think of Aidan as a monster, even if it didn’t change Dev’s situation. Because though Aidan might not be a monster, it wouldn’t stop Dev becoming one if he dropped his guard. He had no illusions about what lurked in his soul, waiting for the chance to escape.

  The kitchen was one of those big modern ones, all gleaming marble bench tops and chrome. Like the rest of the house, it looked as if someone had recently started adding touches of personality to what had previously been an uncluttered show home. Among the matching black mugs hung two novelty ones: ‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish’, and ‘Accio Coffee’.

  “Thanks, by the way.” Aidan came padding into the kitchen behind him, his footsteps more or less steady.

  “For what?” He turned and swallowed. Turned out Aidan’s spectacular ass looked good even in loose-fitting jeans, and there was something about his slightly rumpled appearance that bypassed Dev’s brain and sent blood rushing straight to his groin instead.

  Aidan ran a hand through his hair ruefully. “For letting me waylay you in my quest for data and completely forgetting to give you any wolf lessons.”

  That snapped him out of his daze. “I don’t need wolf lessons,” he said gruffly, turning back to the coffee machine. “Do you want coffee?”

  “Sure. But Sabas—”

  “Sabas can go screw himself. I’m not a werewolf.”

  Aidan tilted his head to the side. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Never changed, and I’m not going to. Maybe that’s why I turn you human with my super-strength human aura.” He wanted to believe that was true.

  “Maybe,” Aidan said doubtfully.

  Dev didn’t want to talk about werewolves anymore. He g
estured at the novelty coffee mugs hanging from their hooks. “Is the Irish one yours?”

  Aidan shook his head. “Nah, that’s Mahon’s—my brother. The other one belongs to his mate Oscar. A packmate got them as a housewarming gift. I didn’t exactly need my own one till now.” He looked down at his hands and frowned. “You’re changing the subject.”

  “Milk? Sugar?” Dev countered, wondering if Aidan minded that he’d been left out.

  Aidan rolled his eyes but slid gingerly onto one of the stools by the breakfast bar, gripping the bench as if he didn’t trust himself not to fall off otherwise. It was strangely adorable. “No idea. I’ve never had coffee before. But it smells nice.”

  Dev slid a coffee mug, creamer, and sugar over to him. “In that case I recommend adding sugar and milk.”

  Aidan stirred sugar into his coffee, took a hesitant sip, and immediately went into a coughing fit. He shoved the mug back across the bench, looking indignant. “Titania’s tits! How do people drink that?!”

  Dev grinned and saluted him with his espresso before taking a long, pointed sip.

  Aidan’s eyes narrowed. “Wolf lesson number two: ways to become a werewolf.”

  “I just told you I didn’t need or want—”

  “Yeah, there’s a whole river in Egypt named after it. Anyway, there’s only two-and-a-half ways to become a werewolf. You’re born one, or you’re made. But only an Alpha can make new werewolves, and as far as I know, Sabas is the only Alpha in a hundred-mile radius.” He gave Dev a teasing look. “This would be the time to confess if you’ve smuggled in another Alpha.”

  “Two and a half?” He didn’t want to be having this conversation, but he couldn’t help jumping on that lure, even though he knew Aidan was baiting him on purpose.

  “Bingo. Latent werewolves are technically born wolves, but for one reason or other their genes don’t trigger properly. Until, eventually, they do.”

  “Mine haven’t.”

  “What do you call last night then?”

  The chill memory of rain slid down his spine. He’d suffered the occasional restless impulse his whole life, the feeling of something waiting for its chance to emerge, but usually it went quiet if he pushed it down. Last night had been different though, stronger. But he could still handle it, couldn’t he? He had to handle it. If only he knew what had caused it. He cast his mind back and hit the fuzzy blankness before waking up in his office…except this time a shadowy figure lurked just out of sight.

  Whoa, whoa, what? Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to force some more details from his brain. The shadowy figure refused to solidify, but another bit of memory abruptly shook loose: a stinging pain in his calf.

  He put his mug down, coffee sloshing over the edges in his haste. He scrambled for his pant leg. There was a tiny puncture mark just below his knee, the skin around it red and inflamed. It felt tender where he prodded it.

  “Someone was in my office last night,” he said slowly. “Before I blacked out and woke up with the…urge to run. Someone shot me with some kind of dart.”

  Aidan’s easy-going manner and humor had made it easy to forget what he was, even with all the shape-shifting. But now Dev found himself eye-to-eye with a predator, gone hunting still.

  “Let’s go to your office,” Aidan said.

  Chapter 7

  For a few moments between Dev’s revelation and leaving the house, Aidan forgot that his broken shapeshifting was the only thing tying them together. It felt so natural to fall into step beside Dev, united in their drive to unravel the mystery of what had happened last night. We hunt together, his inner wolf agreed.

  That sense of calm purpose lasted until Aidan folded himself into the front seat of Dev’s car. As the car began to move, all his earlier sense of ill-fitting clumsiness returned. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in a car, and he’d never been in one like this, which was sleek and black and moved like a shark.

  “Nice car,” he said. He looked up through the roof, which was made of some kind of darkened glass that meant you could look directly at the sky even with the sun overhead.

  “It’s my baby,” Dev said, patting the steering wheel affectionately. “Electric.”

  Aidan clutched at the seat’s base as they went around a corner, the movement exacerbating his sense of being off-balance without four paws firmly on the ground. He knew tensing up was only making it worse, but his muscles weren’t buying the argument that they should relax.

  “You alright there, Grandma? Want me to roll a window down so you can hang your head out and pant?” Dev didn’t take his eyes off the road, and his tone was deadpan, but the smile twitching at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

  Aidan was startled into a laugh. He hadn’t thought Dev would be able to joke about the wolf thing, but the guy kept surprising him. Aidan liked this teasing, sly-humored edge beneath Dev’s take-charge businessman persona. He liked it a lot.

  Bloody hell. He did not need more reasons to find Dev attractive.

  “Wolves aren’t dogs,” Aidan said with dignity. Forcing himself to focus on something other than his internal balance issues, he added: “Wolf lesson three: pack hierarchy.”

  Dev’s humor faded. He grunted. “I already know Sabas is in charge of your pack.”

  Aidan shook his head. “That’s the least an Alpha does, and there’s more to pack hierarchy than Alphas. What do you know about dominance?” He half-thought Dev would wave it away as a child’s question—he seemed pretty familiar with so much of the supernatural world—but instead he frowned.

  “The sex kind?” he asked.

  Aidan blinked. “No, the werewolf kind. Dominance is”—he flailed a hand around, reaching for the right words—“a measure of personality type. It feeds into pack structure.”

  Dev looked reluctantly interested. “So, more dominant equals higher rank?”

  Aidan shook his head. “Not necessarily. A low-dominance packmate could have high rank because of other skills, but physical protection of the pack is the responsibility of martial dominants.”

  “Martial dominants?”

  How did Dev not know this, if his father had been a werewolf? Unless…. “Your father wasn’t part of a pack?” Aidan guessed.

  Dev’s shutters went down. “No. He wasn’t.”

  “Lone wolf,” Aidan mused aloud. “That can make some wolves unstable.” Especially more dominant wolves. It was a small miracle that Dev’s latent genes hadn’t caused him that kind of problem before now.

  Dev didn’t answer. His mouth was a hard line, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. Aidan shrugged and pretended to accept the unsubtle hint. Aidan could be patient, even if it went against his natural instinct to throw himself at problems front-on. It was like stalking prey. Sometimes you had to be sneaky. He’d find the way through Dev’s prickly defenses eventually. And then we pounce on him straight-on and lick him out of his foolishness, his inner wolf chimed in.

  He couldn’t help a sideways glance at Dev, at the strong, lickable column of his throat. Swallowing, he forced himself to look away. Licking didn’t seem very likely to happen, not with Dev’s anti-wolf attitude. Besides, Sabas had said to help Dev adjust, not lust after him.

  Why not do both? his wolf suggested sensibly. Aidan shushed it and pushed on with his explanation, changing tack away from the sore spot of Dev’s father. “So, the basic structure of a pack flows downwards from Alpha, Seconds, adult wolves, juveniles, to pups. Pups are a good example of how the hierarchy functions, actually—they’re supposed to obey instructions from everyone higher ranked, i.e. adults, but at the same time, that makes us responsible for them. You can guess how good they are at the ‘obeying instructions’ part.”

  “Not very?”

  “Very not very,” Aidan agreed. “Dominance is secondary to that basic hierarchy, but it affects what roles people take in the pack, and in a fight dominance acts as a kind of trump card. I’ve seen Sabas break up a fight between two hotheads just by looking at t
hem. But part of being a dominant wolf is having the drive to protect. Sometimes that drive is physical—that’s where you get martial dominants—and sometimes it leans more emotional. Den dominants, we’re called.”

  “You’re a den dominant?” Dev asked, raising an eyebrow. His mouth curved in that teasing way again. “Doesn’t sound as macho.”

  Aidan gave him a withering look. “Put on your fur then and we’ll see who wins a round between us.”

  Dev’s smile widened. “Is this you trying reverse psychology?”

  “Hey, whatever works. Is it working?” Aidan asked hopefully.

  “No.” But Dev sounded like he was amused rather than annoyed, so that was something. Maybe sharing a sense of humor with a wolf would make Dev more comfortable with the idea of being one.

  “So, how long have you and your brother been in Stormton?” Dev asked as he navigated the car through the city streets with casual ease.

  “Not long. About six months.”

  “That when you came over from Ireland?”

  Aidan shook his head. “Nah. We’ve been here a few years now. Did the whole old-school boat-across-the-Atlantic-to-New-York thing. I couldn’t exactly fly commercial. Then we traveled a bunch, doing odd jobs—Mahon’s a security consultant. Eventually ended up on the west coast, heard there was an Alpha up in Oregon who was more accepting than most. So we came here, joined BlackEdge.”

  Aidan didn’t like to dwell too much on the years before they’d found BlackEdge. America was more accepting than the old country—hardly anyone had threatened to kill them on sight—but he and his twin were still two faewolf hybrids. Not many packs would touch that, especially with Aidan’s peculiar combo of shapeshifting issues and high fae magical abilities. Oh, some packs were happy enough to take advantage of the twins’ special abilities when it suited them—outsourcing work they didn’t want to dirty their own paws with—but making them packmates? No. Aidan had lost count of the number of rejections.