by J L Aarne
“You don’t have to do this,” Sam said softly. He was a little embarrassed. It amazed him that sometimes he still could be. “Owen—”
“Tell me who it was,” Owen said.
Sam put his head down and said nothing.
“Then be quiet,” Owen said.
He went back to licking him and Sam gradually forgot to be embarrassed by it and relaxed. It wasn’t that Owen’s tongue was there, they had done that before, what he found humiliating was that he knew what Owen had found while doing it. The cuts and tears and bruising that couldn’t be explained by sex alone. Instead of recoiling from him in revulsion Owen did what came to him instinctively; he took care of him and licked to soothe it. Another time it would have been arousing, but Sam wasn’t capable of arousal at the moment.
When Owen was satisfied, he nuzzled his way back up Sam’s back and snuffled into the side of his neck. “Tell me.”
“No,” Sam said. He cracked his eyes open to look at him. “It doesn’t matter. Lay down with me. Let’s go to sleep. In the morning, I’ll be better, and you can have the first go at me.”
Owen made a soft sound of disgust and flopped down on the bed beside him. “Gee, how can I refuse that?” he said dryly. “It’s just so romantic when you put it that way.”
Sam grinned and closed his eyes again. “Oh, yeah. I’m a poet at heart, baby. I should write you a sonnet.”
3
Desmond Merrill had been the alpha of the Hellgate pack for thirty-five years before Owen Burgh had succeeded him four years earlier. Desmond had been a littermate born into the pack the same year as Sam’s father, Grant, and they had remained close friends. Sam had memories from when he’d been a little boy of Desmond and his mate, Lillian, over at their house for dinner. Of Desmond with his father discussing business while his mother and Lillian drank coffee in the kitchen. Later, when Sam started to ascend above his peers and demonstrated himself to be a leader, Desmond had been a mentor to him. Like Sam’s own father, Desmond had been proud of him and encouraged it. Desmond hadn’t been ready yet to stand aside and pass leadership off to someone younger, but it hadn’t been a secret that when he did, Sam was likely to take his place.
Desmond had taken Sam’s fall from grace nearly as badly as Grant had.
Then Lillian died and everything in Desmond that had made him their alpha collapsed. He withdrew from them all; he became quiet, angry and apathetic. When Owen challenged him that year at the winter gathering, Desmond fought like hell, but he’d almost seemed glad to lose.
Desmond still lived on the property, though the pack didn’t see much of him anymore. His cabin was far into the trees away from the other family homes and the main house. Owen visited him occasionally, but Sam saw more of him than anyone. Every week he took him supplies and things he had requested from the store, and sometimes Desmond asked him for the news; what was going on around the property that he wasn’t there to see and hear for himself.
Sam enjoyed doing it. It got him away from everyone for a few hours and Desmond, when he paid much attention to him, was kind enough. He offered Sam coffee, breakfast or lunch depending on when he arrived, and occasionally he’d speak. Not much, just a few words here and there, but he never struck Sam and he never took any sexual liberties with him, though it was well within his right to. Sam sometimes caught Desmond looking at him with deep sadness though.
After he left Owen that morning, Sam packed up the supplies that had been bought in the city earlier in the week for Desmond and headed out in that direction. The property was over 800 acres of fields, rocky hills and timber, and Desmond’s little house was near the farthest corner, in the trees where the Hellgate lands bordered a large piece of state land. It wasn’t a short walk for a person with two good legs, let alone someone with a limp like Sam.
As he entered the shade of the trees, Sam looked around for and spotted a thick branch, which he picked up and used as a walking stick. It was cool in the mornings, though it would get hotter; almost a hundred degrees by noon most days in the summer. Sam enjoyed the walk, the exercise and the cool air on his skin, the birds in the trees singing, and the occasional crash and crackle in the trees as a deer or some other creature ran away from him. He expected to enjoy it a whole lot less when he made the return trip.
Before he saw the cabin, Sam heard the distinct, rhythmic Sock! Sock! sound of wood being chopped on the block. Desmond was outside chopping wood and Sam saw him as he came over the top of the little incline path leading through the trees. His shirt was tossed over a sawhorse, his dark grey and brown hair was pulled back from his face with an elastic band, but some of it had come loose around his face while he worked and hung in lank, sweaty strands in his eyes. He was tall and tanned, whipcord lean and powerful, his skin shiny with sweat. The years had changed him on the inside, but on the outside, he still looked every inch the master of his domain.
Sam remembered the night Desmond had lost the pack to Owen and still sometimes couldn’t believe he hadn’t won that fight.
He sensed Sam there and glanced around. Then he went calmly back to his work without a word. Sam took his cue from him and didn’t say anything, just went by him into the cabin with the box of supplies he had brought.
They called it the cabin, but it wasn’t a small, ramshackle little place that such a word usually described; it was a sprawling, twenty-five hundred square foot, three bedroom house Desmond had built shortly after he was mated to Lillian so that they could, on rare occasions, get away. He hadn’t done it often, but once in a while Desmond had left his lieutenant beta, Sam’s father, in charge of things for a day or two while they snuck away. After his defeat at the gathering, he had quietly packed up his things and retreated to this place.
He seemed happier the past few years, or at least he never said otherwise to Sam.
Sam put the few groceries he’d brought away and left the other things out on the counter for Desmond to do with as he chose. Then he poured himself a glass of water and sat down on a barstool at the counter to wait for him.
Desmond had a liquor cabinet just off the kitchen and Sam eyed it, considering. He had told Sam before to make himself at home, that he could have whatever he wanted, but Sam had very rarely taken advantage of the offer. He wasn’t used to having what he wanted, not for a long time, certainly not little luxuries like whiskey, and never without it being given to him. He didn’t trust such hospitality anymore.
He drank his water. Outside, the sledge went Sock! Sock! and somewhere nearby a rooster crowed. Sam enjoyed the chance to sit alone with his thoughts, unbothered. No one would threaten him in this place, no one would demand anything from him. Desmond had never looked at him like he was something to be scraped off the bottom of his shoe, or like he was an object to focus his rage and lust on, not even after it had become clear that Sam was not going to live up to his great potential. He could sit there and drink his water and listen to the birds outside and the cracking of wood and not be afraid for just a little while.
Desmond couldn’t possibly know how much that meant to him.
The sound of wood splitting stopped and a little while later the glass door onto the porch opened and Desmond walked in mopping sweat off the back of his neck with his T-shirt. He picked up the carton of cigarettes Sam had brought for him with his groceries, opened it, took out a pack and removed one.
“You get my coffee?” Desmond asked. “Ran out yesterday. Got some instant shit in the cupboard Lily got, God knows why, but it’s not the same.”
“It’s in the cupboard,” Sam said.
Desmond nodded and took a glass down, filled it with water and gulped it standing at the sink. When he lowered the glass, his grey eyes settled on Sam thoughtfully. “Owen get back yet?”
“Yesterday,” Sam said. “Last night.”
Desmond nodded.
“Are you…?” Sam hesitated and Desmond raised his eyebrows in question as he lit his cigarette with a match from a book of them on the counter. “You’re
excited about it? The gathering?”
“Can’t say much excites me these days,” Desmond said. “Looking forward to it, I suppose. I’d like to see my niece.”
Desmond’s niece, Mandara Kelman, was the alpha to the Fairfox pack out of Bozeman, the only alpha female in the entire state of Montana who ruled without a mate at her side. Sam was a year younger than Mandara and they had been friends growing up, though not very close. He liked her though, and respected her, for what that was worth these days.
“She was named for the Mandar tree, you know,” Desmond said. He leaned on the counter on his elbows and gazed past Sam out the windows along the wall of the living room behind him which looked out onto the trees and, distantly, the mountains. “It’s a good name for her, though I don’t think my sister had such big plans for her daughter when she chose it.”
The Mandar tree was one of their race’s oldest stories. Every child born to a pack knew it. In the beginning when the world was young, there had been man and there had been nature—the plants, animals, earth, rivers, and sky—and they were constantly at war. The wolf was the wisest of the animals and the Earth made him Her ambassador. She tasked him with a mission; to find a solution to the problem, something to bring peace between man and the forces of nature. The wolf went to the Mandar tree and asked for its advice and the Mandar gave to the wolf the power of creation for a single day so that he might make a creature, a being, of both worlds; one part wolf and one part man. A creature caught between who could speak to both, be heard and bring peace. The old name for this original wolf-man was lost to time as the language the people spoke changed, but in the story he was still called “the better demon.”
Now, the Mandar tree was a symbol to wolves all over the world of hope, sometimes, often even a symbol of futile hope. More ironically, of hopelessness. Because there were other stories they told their children; how man in his great and overpowering fear had hunted the wolf, maimed and murdered them, how their ancestors were flayed and burned alive, their heads mounted on pikes for the crows to eat out their eyes. Man was still at war with the earth. No single species on the planet besides man could ever have done what he had done and come so close to completely destroying it. When placed beside these stories, that oldest story, the one of hope, seemed naïve. It was right that it should be a story for little children.
“I don’t imagine you’re looking forward to it,” Desmond said. “The gathering.”
He didn’t say it to be mean, the comment was made in an off-hand way, but Sam still thought he heard something else in his voice.
“I don’t really… mind it,” Sam said.
Desmond smiled and flicked ash from his cigarette into an ashtray by his elbow. “Now, that’s a damn lie,” he said. He pointed at Sam with the end of his cigarette before he put it back in his mouth. “I know you. You forget that sometimes, but I do. I’m gonna make a pot of coffee. You can stay if you want and I’ll fix us some eggs to go with it.”
“I—” Sam’s knee-jerk response was to argue the point and say again that he didn’t hate the gathering, but Desmond was right; he did know him. He would know it was a lie. “I would like that. Thank you. Would you like me to help with anything?”
“Nah, but you can pass me a couple of those eggs out of the fridge over there,” Desmond said, taking a pan down from a hook over the counter. “Then why don’t you grab that bottle of Johnny Walker I got in the cabinet and pour us a couple drinks.”
Sam nearly dropped one of the eggs in his surprise.
Desmond saw him do it and just laughed. “Like I said,” he said, “I know you, boy.”
Desmond fried them both a couple of eggs and made toast. Sam didn’t get many hot meals, he was the last to eat and it was almost always cold. He was used to congealed eggs and cold toast, but being used to it didn’t mean he liked it. Desmond didn’t make an issue out of it, didn’t even mention it, but he sat down to eat with him and Sam was embarrassed to feel his eyes well up with tears.
He brushed them away and ate his food and neither of them said anything about it. When their breakfast was gone, they went on sitting there and Desmond refilled Sam’s glass a few times until he had to reluctantly refuse more; he didn’t want to go back drunk.
And eventually he had to go back. There was nothing for it. Desmond wouldn’t throw him out, but they both knew what Sam was now and where that meant he needed to be.
It was overcast and not quite a hundred degrees outside when Sam headed back down the road through the trees. The birds had quieted down, and the grasshoppers and other insects buzzed and chirred him on his way. Sam passed cows grazing and a couple of men on horses and they both watched him go without a lot of interest.
He was walking down the steep hillside to the flatland where the main house sat when he noticed a girl he knew running toward the gravel driveway that went around the back of it. Her name was Kiera and she was Slade’s cousin. Her blond hair flew back behind her like a flag and her face was drawn in an expression of intense fear. She didn’t scream or call for anyone, but her behavior put Sam on alert. He picked up his pace and hurried down the hill.
Sam stepped out into the wide parking area at back of the house and froze. Owen had Slade by the throat and held him off the ground against one of the large corner support timbers on the back porch. His lips drawn back in a snarl, Owen was shaking, either from squeezing Slade’s throat or from the control it took for him not to break his neck, Sam couldn’t tell.
“Slade!” Kiera cried, but she kept her distance.
A few others paused in what they were doing to watch, but no one dared to interfere.
“Please,” Slade managed. It was barely a word, merely the forming of its shape on his lips.
Owen’s sharp canines flashed as he snapped his teeth, gnashing them, a roar of anger in his throat. He released Slade and he dropped to the grass at Owen’s feet, wheezing and gasping, his hand to his already purpling throat.
“Stay the fuck out of my way,” Owen spat. “And watch your mouth. I’m not your friend, Slade. I hear my given name pass your lips again, I’ll rip them off your face.”
Owen looked around and caught sight of Sam just as Sam ducked his head and cast his gaze down to the dirt. Sam felt a smile play around his mouth and forced it back.
He hadn’t told him a thing, but Owen wasn’t stupid. He saw things and he heard things and he’d always been really good at guessing games. He might not know what Slade had done or even that it had been Slade, but he suspected it. He would not harshly discipline a member of his pack, even a low ranking one, for the minor infraction of addressing him casually and calling him by his first name. It was an excuse to hurt Slade, to pay him back and to warn him without speaking Sam’s name. It spared Owen the possible discontent from his people that might be aroused by punishing Slade in defense of an omega, and it spared Sam from appearing to be a whining little tattletale.
Owen glanced at Sam and his eyes passed over him and away. Then he put the heel of his boot on Slade’s shoulder and shoved him down. Slade hit the bottom of the porch with a “Oomph” and didn’t try to rise again until Owen was gone.
Sam stayed behind long enough to watch Keira help Slade up, then he hurried away, too. The last thing he needed was for Slade to see him standing there, a witness to his shame.
4
He got to work on the house chores and while he cleaned furniture and vacuumed the carpet and rugs, he remembered it and played it over in his head.
Owen could kill him for you, you know. I think he might even want to.
Sam shook his head at the thought, but he wondered. Owen wasn’t a killer, but he had looked capable of it. For an instant, his gleaming eyes narrowed and his teeth bared, he had looked positively wicked. His big, strong hand squeezing Slade’s throat, the dense tips of his fingernails pushing dimples into Slade’s flesh, his arm shaking all the way up to the shoulder. He had looked capable of practically anything.
He would do it.
“That’s stupid. I’m not… I can’t ask him to kill for me when I’m…”
All he needs is your permission.
That stopped Sam cold and he stood there with the vacuum cleaner running, not pushing it, while he tried to figure out where that had come from.
Was it true?
After a second’s hesitation, he had to admit that it might be.
He put the thought away for later examination and went back to work. By the time it was late enough that he needed to begin making dinner, Sam had finished vacuuming the top three floors of the massive house and cleaned and oiled all the wood furniture. The main house was technically more of a ranch-style mansion. On four floors, it had sixteen bedrooms, not including the master suite on the ground floor where the alpha lived, and the basement apartment set aside for the omega. There were seven bathrooms, countless closets, an expansive living room, large kitchen with a dining area, formal dining room and a great room with a big fireplace. There were a few bedrooms with locked doors that Sam left alone, but he would get to them the next day or later in the week when their occupants were out of the house. He was tired and sweaty when he went down to begin fixing dinner, but he didn’t expect to get a chance to rest yet for several more hours.
He made spaghetti and meatballs that night for twenty-five people. Vanessa helped, though she did what Sam said when assisting in the kitchen. Something that everyone seemed to agree was a very good idea, especially in light of Vanessa’s cordon bleu disaster. She boiled the pasta, which was something Sam figured she would be hard-pressed to screw up, and he made meatballs, marinara sauce and five loaves of parmesan garlic bread. He let Vanessa wield the can opener and dice tomatoes and she followed his directions well, but Sam didn’t dare hope she would retain any of the information for later. He wasn’t going to be able to leave it in her hands again, at least not for a long time, or he was going to start catching hell for it.
