Alpha Heat

by Leta Blake

  He was the heir. He had rights. But so what? Perhaps he didn’t even want them.

  Xan stared his father down. “If you want Janus to inherit, give it all to him. But you know what you have to do in order to see to that. You’ll have to proclaim the reasons in front of a judge and gain permission from the church. You’ll have to say aloud, in front of everyone, what you’ve spent all these years pretending you don’t know, pretending you can fix.” Spittle flew from his mouth at the last word, and Xan wiped it away with the back of his hand. He stepped closer to his father. “So if you want to do that, declare me unmanned or otherwise incompetent in front of wolf-god and all your business partners and friends, go right ahead.” He sneered. “I dare you to do it.”

  “I will,” his father hissed. “You don’t want to push me.”

  “Don’t I? Don’t I want to push you and push you and push you?” He took a step forward, arms outstretched, a nearly uncontrollable urge to shove his father held back by willpower alone.

  His father jolted a step back, nearly tripping over the hearth.

  “Because I’m not afraid of you, Father. Not in the least. If you disinherit me, who loses the most? You. You’ll lose face and standing with everyone you know. And, worst of all, you’ll lose Pater’s respect.” He raised a brow. “You heard Pater tonight. He loves me, even if you don’t, and anything you do to harm me will hurt him. And then…” He shook his head and whispered, “Wolf-god help you.”

  His father sniffed and took another swallow of his liquor, but he looked a little rattled. He ran a hand into his salt-and-pepper hair. “You’re disturbed,” he said quietly.

  “You know what I think?” Xan stepped close again. “I think you still want me to inherit. You just want me to be someone else entirely when I do it. You believe you can bully me in to being that person. And that’s not going to happen.”

  His father stared at him.

  “Janus is the sword you dangle over my head hoping that the threat of it falling will change my fundamental nature, make me more like Ray. Make me more like Jordan, the son you’ve made up in your mind because you can, because he’s dead, and you’ll never get to know what he was really like.”

  His father raised a hand to strike, but Xan ducked it and moved around to the other side of the sofa, as much to prevent himself from punching his father as to prevent his father from hitting him.

  “You resent how Pater loves me. You’re a selfish alpha who can’t let his omega love even his own child. You see me as a threat to your relationship.”

  “Your pater is soft when it comes to you.”

  “He’s just a good man who loves his child unconditionally.” Xan sneered. “Something you don’t understand.”

  “What have you done to earn my love?”

  “That’s just it. I shouldn’t have to earn it. You should give it.”

  His father’s nostrils quivered. “You’re unmanned and you’ll ruin us as a family.”

  “I’m unmanned,” Xan agreed. “Nothing will change it. Not you hating me. Not you beating me with a belt. Not you keeping me from Pater. Not you disinheriting me and announcing my predilections to the world. Nothing will make me different than who I am.” Xan took a deep breath, his heart pounding so hard it hurt. “If that’s not something you can stomach, then go before the judge and the church. Speak the truth of me and get your estate out of my perverted hands. Leave it all to Janus. I’ll survive. I’m a scrappy one and I’m tougher than I look.”

  His father’s eyes blazed, and he tossed the rest of his liquor down before putting the glass on a nearby table with a clatter. He looked at Xan and smirked darkly. “Let’s see about that.”

  And then he came at Xan with all the force of his powerful, tall body. He grappled Xan into a tight hold and clenched his hand around Xan’s throat painfully. “Not so very tough!”

  Xan elbowed him hard and swung around, bringing his hands up and guarding his face like Urho had taught him. “I don’t want to hurt you, Father.”

  “I’m the one who’s going to hurt you,” his father hissed, coming at him again.

  Punches landed and Xan grunted, his breath coming in gasping bursts. The floodgates of aggression opened, and they hurtled at each other, fists and feet, even teeth came into play as they grappled.

  In the end, he pushed his father to the carpet, foot to his throat. His chest heaved, but he’d done it. Gazing into his father’s outraged blue eyes, he whispered, “Do what you have to do, Father. Because no matter what you choose, I’m still the son who bested you. The one who lived his truth. I’m unmanned and in love, and I’m proud of it. But I’m not proud of you.”

  He grabbed his father by the collar and dragged him up from the floor. It was awkward because Xan was much shorter, but his father had apparently gone slack in shock. “Make sure Pater and Ray get the rest of that medication.”

  Stumbling, his father ripped away from Xan and stared at him. “You’re mad. Violent. Unreachable.”

  “I am,” Xan agreed. “Do what you have to do, Father.”

  He turned his back and marched from the library toward the front door. He opened it and paused, hearing his father’s steps behind him. He turned around, shocked to see the father he’d been so afraid of his whole life as a beaten, old, shell of a man.

  “Thank you for the medicine. I’ll make sure your pater and Ray get all they need of it,” his father said gruffly. He limped slightly, and Xan felt a stab of regret that he’d hurt him. “As for you, don’t come back. You’re not welcome in this house. Your pater can come to you if he wants to spend time with his lunatic, unmanned son.”

  Xan gritted his teeth, but said nothing.

  “And don’t think Joon won’t face the music for allowing you in at all.”

  “It wasn’t his doing. I broke in through the garage. But Joon can have a place with me. And you’ll be left to care for Ray and Pater alone.”

  His father’s haughty face seemed to crumple slightly as he gazed around him at the empty house echoing silently, too vast to even hold in the sounds of their argument.

  “Goodbye, Father,” Xan said. “Give Ray and Pater my love.”

  Then he slammed the door and stalked down the street, refusing to look back at the house he’d once called home. He had a new home now. And an alpha who was somehow in love with him. This, tonight with his father, was good. Hurtful. Horribly hurtful. But necessary and good.

  Wiping at his damp eyes, he straightened his shoulders and started the walk to the Calitan district. His body ached where his father had gotten in a few solid thumps, but there was one more thing he needed to do for Ray before he could go back to his house in the city.

  And then he’d go home to and beg Urho to stay. It might not be fair, and it might not be right, but he was going to ask him to walk away from the youthful blue ocean of his room with Riki and stay forever in Virona’s gray-green ocean with Xan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Rosen is sicker than I am,” Yosef said to Urho, his tired voice somewhat sibilant with congestion over the phone. “So far neither of us are too bad off, though. And even though his fever is higher, I don’t think he’ll get much worse.”

  “Has a doctor been in to see him?” Urho asked, rubbing at his eyes and trying to figure out if there was a way for him to take a day trip down to the city to check on Rosen for himself.

  “Yes, but only on the first day to confirm the flu diagnosis. He left us with some medication—not the elderberry you mentioned, but some yarrow syrup and a few other tablets.”

  “If he’s fighting off the infection on his own, that should be good enough. Do you have plenty of fruit?”

  “I haven’t been able to make it out to the market.”

  “I’ll send you something from here on the train. Fresh vegetables and some citrus fruit.”

  Yosef sounded exhausted as he allowed that he could use the provisions and listed the items he and Rosen could benefit from the most.

  Ur
ho didn’t like the idea of not being able to do more, or of leaving his friends to fend for themselves, but he knew he couldn’t break away. “I wish I could come check on Rosen myself, but we have one very sick with it here at the house. We have him in isolation and the village doctor comes up once a day, but I don’t feel comfortable leaving Caleb alone right now with Xan gone into the city. He’s in a vulnerable position at the moment. And then there’s Vale. He could go into labor any day now.”

  “It’s not a problem. I promise we are both going to get better. Keep Vale safe and let us know when he’s delivered.”

  “Absolutely.”

  They wound up their phone conversation with good wishes for each other, and Urho muttered wolf-god’s blessing for the sick before disconnecting. He leaned back at Xan’s desk in the office he’d made for himself in Virona and took a long, slow breath. The air of the room was already losing the scent of Xan, and he wondered how many more days his lover would be gone.

  The clock above the mantel gave an hour suitable for bed, but he was restless. He grabbed his coat and headed out to the ocean instead, finding the nighttime stroll along the beach less enjoyable without Xan there to sneak kisses and hold close as the cold water lapped at their feet.

  The moon shone bright and uncaring. The winter in Virona was milder than the city, but chilly all the same. Urho wrapped his coat around tighter and stared up at the moon, the eye of wolf, and considered the wisdom of having let Xan go into the city with the contagion raging so strongly. He missed him viscerally, like a fist in his gut where ease should be.

  He hadn’t heard from Xan since he’d given the instructions for the medication, and he didn’t know if that was good news or bad. He wasn’t even sure how to get in touch with him, or if he’d be staying with his parents or in his own home. Their conversation had been short and to the point.

  Urho strode down the beach, feeling hemmed in by the ocean in front of him and the house at his back. He resented feeling so hamstringed by his commitments. He wanted to follow the man who was, inch by steady inch, making an impossibly deep claim on his heart.

  By the time he’d walked back up to the house, he’d resolved to call Xan’s place if he hadn’t heard from him by midnight and his parents’ house if he hadn’t heard from him by morning.

  Just to be sure he was safe.

  Because something in Urho’s bones didn’t feel right.

  He didn’t know how or why, but he was certain that Xan needed him. And that made him nervous. He’d come to know Xan better over the last few weeks, but there were still many things about the man that were a mystery.

  Like what might prompt him to hurt himself with a visit to his monster.

  And that thought alone made Urho sick to his stomach with worry and pain. Instead of heading up to bed, he went to Xan’s office in the back of the library and sat by the phone, listlessly turning the pages of a book in in his hand, waiting for a reason to believe his worry was unfounded.

  Xan kept his eye out for a taxi, but the roads of the Calitan District were virtually empty. His hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat, he shivered in the darkness. It was a long walk home, but he didn’t mind. It gave him time to think about all that had happened since he’d arrived from Virona.

  Prostitutes lingered up and down the street outside the Lincoln Deli. He thought about branching off, but the other roads looked dim and seedy, and altogether vacant of human life. It seemed safer to stroll with the “’tutes”, as Vince had called them, than to walk entirely alone.

  Ray’s lover hadn’t been like any omega Xan had ever met. Big and beefy with a thick beard, he’d looked far more like a beta. He’d wept with joy when Xan had told him Ray lived, and had shared a bottle of brandy with Xan, refusing to take any money from him.

  Xan’s head swam now with too much alcohol as he walked. He had so many questions about his brother’s relationship with Vince, but he supposed it was Ray’s mess to figure out. Still, perhaps he’d let Xan help once he recovered from the flu. Because he would recover—there was no question.

  Xan was near the shipping district now, and the prostitutes who’d been his companions thus far were thinning out. He glanced at the road that led toward more roads that eventually wound home. It was dark and eerily silent. He pulled up his coat collar and contemplated asking one of the streetwalkers where he could find a place to sleep for the night. Alone.

  A new, top-of-the-line Sabel car pulled up alongside him, its engine purring in the quiet. He frowned, tightening his coat around him as the driver rolled the window down.

  “Selling yourself now? That’s a new low.”

  Xan stopped in his tracks, turning to stare at the handsome, sneering face framed by the darkness of the car’s interior. The man inside wore an expensive but wrinkled suit, and an air of desperate cruelty. “Buying prostitutes now, Monhundy? What would your omega think of that?”

  “My omega can rot is what I think,” Monhundy barked, eyes catching fire with that old hate that Xan knew so well.

  “Trouble in paradise?”

  Monhundy laughed. “You’d know about that, wouldn’t you? Unmanned alpha with his frigid omega.”

  Xan gritted his teeth.

  “Get in,” Monhundy said. “You’re a long way from home.”

  Xan swallowed hard and fisted his hands in his pockets. “Why should I?”

  “Because I told you to, and you’re a good boy who does what I say, aren’t you?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Get in the car, Xan,” Monhundy said, rolling his eyes and gunning the engine. “Hurry up. I don’t have all night.”

  At that moment, it began to rain. Xan stared up at the clouds in the sky, the wet, cold water pelting his face, and he laughed. Maybe it was Vince’s brandy rushing in his blood, but the humor gripped him hard, rocking him with how incredibly terrible—how perfect it was—that in this dark place, on this fucked up night, after everything he’d said to his father, and what he’d learned about Ray’s sad love affair, that Wilbet Mon-fucking-hundy would pull up next to him on a dark, abandoned street and demand he get in his car.

  “I won’t tell you again,” Monhundy spit out.

  In the rain, Xan’s curls plastered against the side of his head. His chest ached. His feet hurt. He was still drunk enough that as he walked around the front of the car, opened the passenger side door, and climbed in that his tongue felt a little numb.

  “You planning to fuck me, Monhundy?” Xan asked, slamming the car door behind him. He was soaked through, and still the rain came down. The windshield wipers waved desperately across the glass—like a warning, like they were begging Xan to get out of the car.

  Monhundy looked at Xan, up and down, and then grinned an ugly, violent smile. “The betas complain when I hurt them. But you don’t.”

  Xan’s heart galloped hard. “You like how I take it, don’t you?”

  “I like when you cry.”

  “Take me home then. Make me cry.”

  Monhundy stared at him. “My omega’s home.”

  Xan shrugged. “My place. Mine’s not.”

  “You’re sick, aren’t you, Xan? And you need my cock.”

  Xan choked, but whispered, “Just make it hurt.”

  “Oh, I’ll hurt you,” Monhundy growled. “I’ll hurt you so good.” He put his hand on Xan’s thigh, squeezing hard enough to bruise.

  The car pulled away from the curb. The rain came down even harder.

  By the time they reached Xan’s dark and silent house, Monhundy was breathing heavily and his pants were distorted by his large erection.

  Xan sat very still in the passenger seat, his blood pumping wildly and a kind of giddy terror flooding him. Was he really going to do this? Was he out of his mind?

  It was the middle of the night. The rain hadn’t eased, still the torrent that had burst over Xan’s head in the Calitan District. The tapping of it on the roof and hood of the car rattled Xan’s nerves, and he clenched his fists, try
ing to calm himself.

  “Surprised to admit it, but I missed your tight ass,” Monhundy bit out, like he loathed the words and himself for saying it. “Saw you that night in Virona. Shot right to my dick. I got hard as a rock.”

  “That was awkward for your opponent during your match, I’m sure,” Xan said tightly, holding onto his sanity by a thread. He shook all over from the wet, cold rain and his adrenaline rush.

  “Fuck you.” Monhundy lifted his hand from where he still gripped Xan’s thigh when he didn’t need it to change gears. “Fuck. You.” He pounded Xan’s chest with his fist, knocking a gasp out of him and leaving a new, aching place on his body to match the ones he’d gathered from his father.

  Nothing to lose. Not a damned thing to lose.

  Except his life. And he had to admit he didn’t want to lose that. Not anymore.

  The car idled by the curb. Monhundy huffed and ripped open his pants. “Suck me.”

  Xan stared down at Monhundy’s giant cock, the head wet with pre-come and his foreskin drawn back tightly beneath the exposed head. There was a time when he wouldn’t have needed to be told twice. A time when he’d have sucked Monhundy down and been grateful for it.

  “Inside,” Xan said, shaking his head. “The neighbors will see.”

  Monhundy grimaced. “Let them.” He cuffed Xan’s cheek. “Mouth open, slut.”

  Xan shook his head. “Inside.”

  Monhundy snarled, grabbed Xan’s curls, and pulled him toward his lap.

  “Do you want me to bite it off?” Xan growled.

  Monhundy let go of him, eyes going narrow and cruel. “Inside, you say? Fine. We’ll go inside. Where you’ll pay for that threat.”

  Xan nodded, and the two of them exited the car. Monhundy didn’t bother zipping up his pants. His cock swung in the open air, and he stroked it at Xan menacingly on the empty, nighttime street in front of Xan’s house.