Riley had found some clothing that would fit Gavin; he could wear some of mine, but he was bigger than I was - broader, taller. As it was, he would have to wear a coat made for a much smaller man. He made a face pulling it on, but made no complaint. I was just pushing my arms through the sleeves of my own coat when Dad cleared his throat.
“Actually, son,” he said. “I spoke with Sara while you were cleaning up. There’s no need for you both to go with us. Sara said that the stink of those alphas is probably going to linger there, and that one of them - a Jessup fellow? - had been pretty upsetting for you.”
Upsetting was an understatement. I nodded my head.
“You don’t need that right now. Let us take care of airing the place out and cleaning up. You and Gavin can stay here and…” He coughed. “Settle your bond.”
I flashed a relieved smile as my body immediately began to relax. “Are you sure?” I asked.
Dad nodded. Within a moment, Dad and the girls had left, and I was finally alone with my bondmate.
CHAPTER TEN
The quiet snick of the door falling closed echoed loud in the empty house.
I'd love to relate that we were on each other immediately, passion and feral need slamming us into doors and cabinets, playing havoc with the furnishings as we couldn’t get enough of one another.
In reality, I was far too tired for that.
"Maybe we could lie down for a little while?" I asked, and Gavin nodded, a naughty smile quirking his lips as he scooped me up into his arms.
“Gavin!” I shrieked. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a little late, but I can still carry you across a threshold,” he said, and opened the door to my bedroom, dropping me down onto the mattress with a plop.
“Could use a little work on the landing,” I quipped, but he just laughed and threw back the covers.
“I got you in bed, didn’t I?”
“That you did.”
But for all the easy-going banter, when he slipped under the covers with me, I didn't have the energy to do more than sling my arms and legs over his body like an octopus. I was too busy relishing the steep, screeching descent into an exhausted sleep.
I couldn't have been out for long, though. My mating heat was looming, and I came to with a jolt, my ass throbbing with the need to be filled. "Gavin!” I called out, and he had to have been lying awake, because he was covering me immediately. The flush across his face and the fervor of his brutal kiss were a testament to the break in his self-control as my pheromones flooded the room.
A chuckle rang low in my throat as my hands roamed across his broad shoulders, his narrow hips. "Fuck me," I demanded, and Gavin bit down lightly on my mating mark in retaliation.
The spark of lightning zinged through my body, and I threw my head back to moan as he worried the skin beneath his lips. Yes!
He slotted himself between my legs with care, his every movement controlled but furious, and I spread myself wider in anticipation. "Please," I begged, lifting my hips so that I could bring our cocks into contact with each other. "Need you, alpha!"
He slipped into me easily, and I whimpered as he moved my hands up on either side of my head, pinning them there with his own strong arms as he moved deep within me. I couldn't get enough of him. I whimpered, begged, pleaded, and his groans rose in counterpoint: the melodic symphony of our need for each other.
His knot began to form before I came; I could feel him lock within me, each circular thrust of his hips rubbing him against my prostate. I tensed, energy drawing throughout my body, pooling in my pelvis, exploding outward in a rush of come and slick.
“Gav-iiin!”
As I peaked, clenching around him, Gavin’s own orgasm began. He fell forward, his skin sticky-sweaty against mine, hot rush of seed filling me up.
My heat would continue throughout the next couple of days, a roller coaster of scorching need and brief moments of calm and clarity in which to sleep or talk to one another, the intimacy of our lovemaking promoting greater trust and communication.
I snuggled against Gavin's chest. "Tell me something about you," I said.
He opened lazy eyelids, murmuring, "What do you want to know?"
I propped myself up on one elbow. "Tell me about your family."
"Mmm.” He had to rouse himself from the drowsy stupor we had fallen into. “I had a brother. A few years older than me; he was omega. At the time I died, he’d had six children."
"Six children?" I must have made a face, because Gavin snorted out a laugh. I couldn't imagine having that many pups to look after - although, lying there with Gavin, the idea had some appeal.
He nodded. "It wasn't usual, though," he said. "He was just particularly fertile or something. He cursed every time Matthew – his alpha – had him expecting again, but then he would get this private smile on his face and I would be tasked with taking care of the pups for a few days."
“I bet you were a great uncle.”
Gavin preened, but there was a soft, sad mien about his eyes. “I tried.”
"What about your parents?"
"They were wonderful," he said. "My father was the right hand of our alpha when I was young, and my mother – he was the pack’s storyteller."
"I bet you know all sorts of amazing lore," I mumbled against his skin, and inhaled the sassafras scent of him.
He grinned. "Planning to use me as an academic resource, sweetheart?"
"You know it."
We lay in silence for a few moments, and I reflected on the events that had brought us here, to this bed. To this place. To this time. It seemed so surreal, but the ache in my limbs and the deeper, intense bonding energy that sang between us reminded me that this was truly my life.
"What about you? Tell me something about yourself."
My fingers wrote patterns over the skin of his hips, across his side, and I smirked when he swatted my hand away, a giggle forming in his throat.
"I don't know… I guess I’d always dreamed of coming back here," I confessed. "Carrying on Mam’s legacy with her roses, maybe doing a little homesteading. Before she died, Mam was planning to put up a chicken coop – she had the prettiest robin’s egg blue picked out, and she was going to special order the chickens from a small farm in Kentucky.
“When I was little… I thought that I would live here forever. I love our territory – and even though I’ve been away from it for so long, I still thought of it as home, more than the city."
"Last night you talked about school," Gavin reminded me.
"Yeah," I sighed. "I love my degree. I love learning. I'd like to go farther in the field, but I don't want to work in academia, which means that I’m kind of at a loss for specifically what I want to do next."
He nuzzled against my head. "If you could do anything in the world, what would it be?"
"I never told anyone this," I laughed a little. "But… books? I want to write books. Not like, academic ones. But mythology books made more accessible for the everyday person, or maybe doing private research into our – shifter’s, I mean – history. There's nothing comprehensive out there, no real sharing among the packs. If I could do anything? I think I'd like to change that."
He captured my lips, tongue gently nudging along the seam until I opened my mouth to him. “I think that’s a very worthwhile endeavor, my omega.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The morning after the last night of the full moon, I woke up frantic, ashamed that I’d fallen asleep. I was staring down a lifetime alone - barring the miracle that it would be if the Moon Mother listened to me again. Gavin had been convinced, but it was hard for me to stay so optimistic.
But strong hands steadied my shoulders, and I blinked furiously against the onslaught of tears. Warm, loving eyes stared back into my own.
“Gavin?” I murmured. “You’re still here?”
I was confused - and then elated. Maybe the Moon Mother had decided not to take him after all! But I could see his expression fall.
; He shook his head. “It’s almost time,” he said.
“No.” I felt my throat clench as my heart gave a pang in my chest. “No, Gavin.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, helpless, and his face was so open, so sorrowful, I knew it would be imprinted on my memory.
When he leaned forward to kiss me, I’m not ashamed to say that I clung to him. The sheets had wrapped around my legs, but I didn’t want to take the time to shake them loose. I twined my arms around his shoulders, my legs around his legs. My ass still felt wet and open. The mating mark at my neck still felt tender and fresh. And the Moon Mother would take him back now? She would save me from rape and possible death, only to serve me a life of loneliness instead?
I claimed his mouth hungrily, pouring all of my passion and fear into the kiss. When we pulled back, gasping for air, I barely took in a mouthful of it before I returned to his lips - nibbling, suckling, kissing.
He shifted his weight above me; pinned me into the bed, his mouth greedy against my neck, my throat, the ridge of my shoulder. I twined my fingers through his hair, ran them along the nearly-healed welts I’d left with my fingernails across his back.
Then something changed. A loss of energy in the air, a feeling of incompleteness.
“Close your eyes,” he muttered, covering my mouth again with his own.
I didn’t want to close my eyes. But when he kissed his way up to my ear, whispered, “I love you, Jay, mate of mine,” my eyelids fluttered shut of their own accord.
I felt him leave. It didn’t take more than a moment, and yet it didn’t happen all at once. It was like a wave receding, or a gust of wind sliding around you before hurrying away to chase the autumn leaves.
And then I was alone.
Devastation.
There aren’t any words for it. There is only darkness, pale and creeping, visible in the complexity of it’s feelings.
I felt like I must be in Hell. I didn’t even recognize the concept of the human Hell. As wolves, we are intimately connected to the Moon Mother. But I’d studied Milton at university -
The dismal situation waste and wild,
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell
Some might have thought me mad. Perhaps, you, reading this, think the same. I’d only even just begun to know him - my lover, my mate.
And yet there was no one else alive I knew more by the time he was stolen from me in the dawning hours that Tuesday. If you have never felt the touch of one soul to another, then how can you judge me?
I lay there for hours. I didn’t want to move; I could scent him in the sheets, the pillows. He was imprinted into my skin. My mind could scarcely fathom what had just happened.
And when it did, when I was able to comprehend that he wasn’t coming back, and that I was alone alone alone alone alone, I howled.
I poured every bit of despair, every impossible horror, into my song. Every anguish. Every feeling of betrayal. My grief. My anger.
Dad came bursting through the door, but I didn’t stop - I couldn’t. I snarled at him when he moved to sit on the bed. It would mar the scent.
And then I howled again.
CHAPTER TWELVE
My father had always been a blessing to me - but he was particularly helpful in the days and weeks and months that followed.
He allowed me my wallow for a day, and then he hauled my ass out of bed and sat me down at Sara and Riley’s kitchen table. “Eat,” he said, and stuck a fork into a plate of eggs.
They looked particularly unappetizing. “I’m not hungry,” I said, and pushed them away.
“I don’t care.” The eggs were pushed back in front of me. “I know you’re hurting, but we’ve still got decisions to make and things to do. Now are you going to buck up and take care of business like a man, or are you going to starve to death so you can join him in the hereafter before you even get a chance to petition the Moon Mother to get him back?”
I scowled, but took a bite. Dad was right, and I knew it. And while I didn’t begrudge myself my grief, I felt a twinge of guilt as I realized that my howls yesterday had alerted everyone in a six mile radius that something had gone terribly wrong. Given how fast word can spread, I didn’t doubt it was the talk of the pack already.
It took me forever to eat my eggs, since I kept pushing them around the plate, but it gave Dad time to catch me up as to what was going on.
They’d managed to air out most of the foreign alpha stink from the house with open windows and some judicious use of air cleansing smoke bundles. Rose Cottage was livable, and dad had promptly moved his own things back inside.
They planned to move me over that afternoon. I understood why it was necessary – and I was eager to see my own home again. It was what I’d come out there for in the first place. All the same, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to leaving my cousins’ home. True, most of my time here had been spent in mortal peril... but it also held my memories of the time spent with Gavin.
I resolved to take all of the bed linens and pillows with me.
I hadn't planned on taking the mattress – figuring that would be just a little too presumptuous – but Dad said that given the state of my lumpy, abandoned old twin bed, the girls were willing for me to take the queen that I’d been using, and we’d pay for a replacement later on. It felt like dad was holding something back about the bed issue, but I didn't press. I didn't want to discover that Jessup or his friend Brett had used my childhood bed as some sort of jerking off area.
Our conversation did call something else into relief, though. "Where are they, by the way?” I asked.
"The girls?" Dad clarified.
"Yeah. I would've thought they would be eager to get back home?"
Dad nodded and took our plates over to the sink. "They'll be along after a while. There’s a pack wide meeting at the Lodge, but given the circumstances, we've been exempt from it."
Dad didn't clarify which circumstances – our status as fringe members of the pack or my personal bereavement. I couldn't have been the only person who lost someone through this event, though. I wondered if there were others who had been excused as well.
But I didn't have time to ask anything else. Outside, a truck pulled in the drive, coming to a stop off the porch. The girls were back, pouring into the house with smiles and ready hugs for me. I accepted them gladly.
“It’s good to see you up,” Riley said warmly, but I couldn’t help but notice that there was an expression in her eyes that I’d never seen before. It crossed my mind that I still didn’t know what had happened to her during the Run.
“All credit goes to Dad,” I said easily. “He told me to quit pouting and get on with it.”
Dad raised an eyebrow.
“Well, he said it a little bit nicer than that,” I amended.
Riley looked me over critically. It was like she wanted to say something, but thought better of it? I wasn’t sure.
Our easy mood quickly turned solemn, though. "Jay…" Sarah began. "There’s something we need to discuss with you."
"I'm sorry I’ve been taking up your house for so long," I apologized.
Sarah shook her head and waved that off. "That’s not important," she said. “We know you needed the extra time.”
"They haven't caught Jessup!" Riley blurted out.
Sarah looked at her sister scathingly. "We were going to lead into it."
I sat back in my chair, stunned. The remembered feel of Jessup’s hand closed around my shoulder made me shudder. I'd been confident while Gavin was here, but now that he was gone, I uneasily recalled the threat in Jessup's voice and the possessiveness in his eyes. "No," I said. "No, I – I'm glad you told me."
There was a moment of silence while we all digested this.
I’d told dad about Jessup and his unwelcome attention, but it appeared that where I’d skimmed over some of the details, the girls had filled in the rest.
“Is there any chance he’s just… dead? I mean, Gavin tore into him pretty badly.”
Dad frowned. “No. There were witnesses who said that he’d made it back to the pack grounds. They did recover the body of an alpha, but it wasn’t Jessup - they said his name was Evan something or other.”
In the Desperation (Find You Book 1) Page 6
