He searched the ceiling, hoping for a sprinkler system. Thankfully, the building wasn't that old. He made his way through the bar, throwing a few punches here and there when someone came at him. He wasn't perfect.
Grabbing a pack of matches from the bar, he hopped up on the counter and lit the entire pack before blowing it out and holding it up to the smoke sensor. The sprinklers opened up, dousing everyone and everything in water.
Derrick hadn't expected the water to pour down and then for everyone to shriek, "Ah! Water!" and immediately stop. He waited as people started slipping, punches and kicks stopped landing as solidly and people paused, their collective shoulders heaving as they worked to regain their breath.
"Great, now that you can all hear me," Derrick boomed over the crowd, water trickling down his nose. "Can someone tell me what the fuck is going on?"
"Who the hell are you?" a guy leaning against the busted up jukebox yelled. His accent was southern, but it wasn't Louisiana Southern.
"That's the prince of the bayou, you idiot!" a different man said.
Derrick really hated that nickname.
All at once, every person in the bar started talking. The bar door opened, and Christian poked his head in. The worst of the fight was over, so Christian hadn't disobeyed him, but Derrick still didn't want him there. The situation was not resolved, and the whole group could go off like a rocket without any warning. He knew that to order Christian back out would mean an argument, or at the least, a discussion. He couldn't afford to have either of those in front of this group of people.
Christian found his gaze and Derrick gestured for him to come to him. The rest of the bar still argued over each other and didn't notice or pay Christian any mind as he navigated the crowd. Once Christian was safe beside him, Derrick told him to cover his ears and then slipped his thumb and pointer finger into his mouth and whistled.
He waited for the room to quiet. "Can one person tell me what this is about so I can get the hell out of here?"
Christian cleared his throat.
"What?" Derrick hissed.
Christian leaned forward and cupped his hand blocking his lips from the crowd. "You should at least pretend you care. These people are mad about something, my money is on a miscommunication."
Derrick wanted to roll his eyes but wouldn't because Christian was probably right.
"I know we can resolve this," he said, trying to sound diplomatic. He spotted an older shifter that he actually recognized. He was from the Babineaux pack so he didn't trust him, but he respected him as a shifter who had aged. "Can you tell me what happened here?"
The grisly man puffed with pride. "I sure can. These punks," he pointed to the other side of the room where the clientele did, in fact, look younger, "Came in here, mouths yapping, slinging their dope. This isn't their territory."
So that was it. Not that they shouldn't be selling their drugs but that this wasn't their territory. Derrick bit back his response. He would talk to his father about how the Babineaux pack brought in their money. Drug money was unstable and useless. "Okay, and you," he pointed out the person on the other side who stood in front, the leader's position. "What do you have to say?"
The guy looked not much older than a kid. He had a white baseball hat on that sat sideways on his head. "We were told to come here," he said, almost belligerently. It was the almost that saved him from Derrick's wolf.
"By who?" Derrick asked.
"I don't know his name. He's been our large supplier for the last year. Told us he needed us to sling here."
"And you just did it?"
The kid stared at him. "He's our supplier," he said slowly like Derrick was stupid. From the way the other kid kept scratching at his arms, Derrick knew he wasn't the stupid one. However, Christian was right. There was a third factor going on here.
Someone had set the young, ambitious pack up, directing them to a known Babineaux establishment.
Derrick doubted he'd get a name from anyone in the young pack so he'd have to resolve this by just sending them back where they came from.
He started to tell them to do just that when movement at his side distracted him. Christian had left his side, walking towards the back of the bar like he'd seen someone he knew. Damn it. Didn't Christian know Derrick was stuck? He couldn't follow him now, it would undermine his authority. Derrick made a mental note of the door Christian walked through, hoping he just had to use the restroom and then turned his attention back to the pack members in front of him.
Chapter 11
Christian spotted the guy from the night before at the pub. With everything that had happened since then, the young man's wise, but youthful face had taken a backseat. Christian was glad to see him now, though. There had been something haunted in his expression. Christian held no attraction towards him. More of a supposed kinship. There'd been something in the guy's face that Christian recognized from looking in the mirror as he grew up. He'd tried to be brave, and if he couldn't be brave, Christian had tried to be solid.
He was sure that Derrick had the bar fight situation handled so he'd felt comfortable slipping away.
As he followed the guy with the curly black hair to the back of the bar, Christian thought the guy had tried to be those things as well, and that was probably when he'd earned the severe black eye and split lip he sported. The bruising was worse than even the day before.
"Hey," Christian called out while trying to keep his voice friendly. "Wait up."
The guy's pace quickened. They were in the kitchen now. Empty. Probably because the workers were all out in the brawl.
"I'm not trying to hurt you," Christian said.
The guy stopped then. "Like you could," he said. "You aren't a wolf." He sniffed the air. "You aren't even a shifter."
Christian decided not to take offense. "True. So why are you running from me?"
"I'm not," he said, sounding drained.
Christian had kept walking when the other guy had stopped. "Okay, you aren't running. How about, why are you walking quickly in the opposite direction from me?"
They were in the very back of the building now, at the dishwashing station. "I'm trying to get out of here before it gets worse. You just happened to be behind me. Not that I don't feel confident in a bar fight. But that alpha of yours. I don't trust a shifter like that."
"You mean Derrick?"
"Is he the prince of the bayou?"
"I guess."
"Then yes. He reminds me of my brother. I don't trust my brother."
Christian was an only child. "Fair enough. He did save your friends from getting hurt any worse in there, though." A quiet moment passed between them. He didn't want the other guy to leave just yet. There was something too familiar about him, like helping him would be like helping himself as a kid. But he could tell the young shifter was proud. "I can tell life hasn't been kittens for you."
The other guy raised his chin up. "Life isn't easy for anyone."
Christian nodded. "That's true. But it doesn't suck balls for a lot of people."
The young shifter smirked. "You should stamp that on a shirt."
Christian's lips quirked up in the corners. "It would fly off the shelves."
"I'd buy one."
Christian swayed back on his heels. "Would it make you more comfortable if we talked outside?"
The other guy just stared at him. Christian got the idea that not many people had asked him what would make him comfortable. What had happened in this guy's life to put him in such a spot so early?
The other guy nodded and led the way out the back door of the kitchens. It wasn't an alley like it would have been in Christian's neighborhood, just the backside of the bar where they kept the dumpster, a small smoking area and then a fence that separated the bar from the neighborhood behind it. "My name is Sorell, by the way."
"Nice to meet you, I'm Christian." Christian sat down on a stool in the smoking circle. "So what are you doing around here and who gave you that face decoration?"
Apparently, stepping out of the kitchen wasn't enough to make Sorell comfortable. "You wanna get out of here? I think I saw a cafe up the street."
"Would your alpha allow you?"
There was a thrill followed by annoyance at hearing Derrick referred to that way. His alpha. If alpha meant boss, then yeah, he could call Derrick that. Despite their physicality, though, he couldn't call him his alpha if he was using any other meaning for the term. That required a submission from Christian that he wasn't prepared to offer. He'd let Derrick know where he was but didn't want to tell Sorell that. So, he responded in the most adult way he could think of: "I do what I want."
#
Christian sat back, eyeing the last bite of cheesecake. Sorell did the same. He was pale, and a little thin for a shifter and he probably needed the extra calories to heal. "You have it," Christian said.
Sorell laughed out loud. It made his face look younger. "I knew you were going to say that."
"Why? Because I am too nice?"
"It was all over your face. The struggle. The longing. Like when you look at your alpha."
"Ugh, don't call him that."
Sorell popped the last bite of cheesecake into his mouth and savored it. "Why not?" he said with his mouth full. "If you are going to belong to someone, might as well be the strongest."
Sorell's face was a testament to why he would think something like that was true. Christian didn't believe in just aligning himself with the biggest bully in the schoolyard. Often, that bully just needed a friend. The people that were bullied always did.
Christian didn't think of Derrick as a purposeful bully. He had seen too much spontaneous kindness from the man to believe that.
Sometimes, though he left people in his wake, that needed to be befriended. "I can take care of myself," Christian said.
Sorell set his water glass down. "Uh huh, that's what I tell myself, too."
Christian looked out onto the street. He'd texted Derrick telling him that he was going down to the cafe and judging from the way he hadn't gotten a response he assumed the bar argument was taking longer to sort out than he thought. That was good that he was taking the necessary time. "Well, I'm way older than you."
Sorell curled his lip in a very Elvis type way, winced and uncurled. "You aren't much older. I'm twenty-two you know. Twenty-three in two months."
"I've got more than three years on you, kid," Christian tried to sound like a wise old man but ended up sounding like he was doing a John Wayne impersonation.
Sorell smiled but stopped and brought his water glass up to his lip, setting the cold side of the glass against his cut.
Christian hated Sorell's regular acceptance of his injuries. As if it was somehow okay that someone had hurt him like that. "I'm telling you this as a friend you just met, you need to get out of there. Out of that pack."
Sorell scowled. "Yeah? And go where?"
If he knew it was safe, he would've just sent him back to his apartment. But, Christian had no way of knowing if the heat had come and gone. He didn't think it had.
He couldn't send Sorell just anywhere. Not with him being a shifter. Christian didn't want to put him in another bad situation.
The idea hit him like an obvious ton of bricks. "I know just the guy."
Ten minutes later, Christian was waving to Sorell as he walked back to where his pack was staying while in the area. He had most of Christian's money, not that Christian had told him that. But the kid—no not a kid, the guy—couldn't get across the country on no money, and Christian would rather if Sorell didn't take any of his pack's drug or prostitution money. Christian shuddered. He was glad to have never grown up in that sort of world and was endlessly worried that Sorell was going back to his pack before escaping. But, Sorell had wanted to speak with some of his few, trusted friends first. He'd mentioned wanting to try to convince one of his friends to go with him.
Christian understood. Picking up everything you had—even if all you had was the backpack on your back--and moving to an entirely unfamiliar landscape was scary. There was the possibility that Sorell would never leave his pack and that Christian had just given away all of his money to a stranger, but it was a risk he felt comfortable taking.
Christian looked down at his phone. Seeing nothing, he headed back towards the bar, walking along the side of the street. In the distance, tires squealed.
#
Derrick took the corner so sharply he smelled burning rubber after hearing the shriek of his tires against the pavement. His phone rang again, and he looked at it, cursing when he saw 'Unknown.' His father, again. He swiped the screen, sending it to voicemail. Derrick had talked to that old Babineaux shifter for much too long. He'd resolved the situation—sending the young pack off—and had even relayed to his father already that the issue had been dealt with.
He'd gone looking for Christian in the back of the bar and couldn't find him. As the minutes ticked on he became more panicked, more scenarios flashed through his head.
The quietest, sanest part of him told him Christian was a grown man who could exist for an hour without him. Every other part—and the only parts he currently listened to—berated him for letting Christian out of his sight. Derrick had brought him here. Christian wasn't familiar with the land and didn't realize he was traipsing around what had been considered enemy territory as little as six months ago.
Had he run into trouble? Was he hurt? Or maybe he'd ran. Decided he was sick of it all, hopping on the first bus out of there. None of those options were acceptable. Christian belonged near Derrick, of that he was sure. And he'd already said he would stay until the jubilee.
As Derrick drove, his wolf inched closer and closer toward the surface. His wolf wanted Derrick to shift and put its paws on the ground, nose in the air. He'd be able to search for Christian easier that way. He'd find his scent quickly, find Christian and then shift back before making absolutely clear to Christian that he was never to wander away from him like that again.
He was about to pull over and do just that when he finally spotted Christian's familiar form in the distance, walking alone on the side of the road. Relief and anger swamped him. Relief that he was not hurt and that he was alone. Anger that Christian had left him in the first place. Derrick sped up, careful to stay on the other side of the road away from him, but unwilling to go the speed limit while getting to him. He slammed on his brakes so that he was level with a very startled-looking Christian.
"What's wrong?" Christian asked real concern laced each word.
Derrick leaped out of the car, grabbed Christian by the hip and yanked him against his body. He couldn't stop the growl that tore through him just as he kissed the other man. The kiss was a raging fire, red hot and all-consuming. Christian responded immediately. At first, with slow, confused movements that quickened to match Derrick's frantic pace. Derrick's hands gripped Christian's ass. He lifted him up and pressed his backside to the side of the car, anchoring his body in place.
Christian wrapped his legs around Derrick's waist, pressing his cock against Derrick's middle. Derrick wanted to grind against him, but his anger won at that moment.
He tore his lips away, keeping Christian pinned. "Where the fuck did you go?"
"What?" Christian asked, dazed. "I texted you. Derrick, what's wrong? Did something happen?"
"What's wrong? What's wrong? You just left. I didn't get a text." Christian unwound his legs and Derrick set him down, walking him to his side of the car.
"This area hasn't always been safe for me, for us. When you disappeared…." He shut the passenger side door once Christian was inside, trying not to slam it and failing. When he slid in the driver's seat Christian had his phone out and was scrolling through the texts.
Derrick started the car. He'd feel better in Robichaud territory. His father's words filled his head: "Soon, it will all be Robichaud terr
itory, if you don't screw this up, son." He gripped the steering wheel tightly. He would have to tell Christian at some point. He didn't want him blindsided, but right now he and his wolf needed Christian in more familiar surroundings.
The moment Derrick turned south, he felt a little better. Slightly more able to breathe. The road narrowed. The foliage on the sides grew more densely. He waited until they'd firmly crossed the border before trying to talk again. "You can't just run away like that around here, Christian."
Christian sighed. "I get that you were worried. But I was all right. I wasn't even alone."
Most of Derrick's control vanished. He had the presence of mind to at least pull the car to the side of the road. "Who were you with?" he asked quietly.
Christian made a frustrated noise and shoved his cell phone in Derrick's face. "Look, right there. I texted you, 'Going down the street with Sorell.'"
Derrick snapped, grabbing the cell phone and tossing it out the other direction. He didn't think about how that direction was outside the window and into the muddy ditch.
"What the hell? You're acting like a possessive boyfriend, and I don't like it." Christian opened his door and got out of the car. Probably trying to find his phone.
Derrick's wolf howled. Christian was trying to go away from him, again.
Didn't Christian feel the same pull as Derrick did? Didn't he experience the same tugging sensation that consistently pulled, demanding Derrick be near to him? Derrick had tried to ignore it from the moment they'd met, and now, it was impossible.
Christian kept trying to go away from him. It made him even angrier that Christian wasn't suffering as he was. Derrick wasn't used to being the attached one. He definitely wasn't used to being the jealous one.
Derrick got out of the car. "And what if I am? I brought you here. You're only here because of me. For the time that you're here, you are mine."
Wolf's Mate Mpreg Romance Box Set Page 24
