He started the car and pulled out of the driveway, only halfway paying attention to where he was going.
Maybe giving Finley space wasn’t a bad idea. As much as he didn’t want his mate so far away—and anywhere he had to take a train to get to was far—it might be good for him. Maybe he could get some of those experiences, though Tanner prayed to anyone who’d listen that they were still nonsexual. He didn’t really think Finley would date someone else. He didn’t doubt Fin was going to stay with another wolf pack, and there were very few gay wolves. So, hopefully, the threat was an empty one.
He couldn’t imagine touching someone other than Finley. He didn’t know how he’d handle it if Finley did date someone else. Kiss someone else.
Fuck someone else.
Tanner’s stomach twisted over the simple thought. It felt like his wolf was trying to claw through his skin. His wolf didn’t think the space was a good idea, not by a long shot.
He could admit it was a little unfair. He hadn’t been a virgin when they met. But they hadn’t met yet, and he’d been very careful to keep from bonding with anyone. He’d always worn a condom, never let anyone fuck him, and had made damned sure to keep his teeth to himself. He hadn’t touched anyone else—much to his dick’s dismay—since he’d first laid eyes on Finley. And being careful to keep from bonding wouldn’t work with Finley since they’d already started and instinct would take over.
And it did bother him that he couldn’t look out for his mate. When he’d imagined Finley going to college, he’d figured it’d be at least fairly local—like down into Pittsburgh. On campus, sure, but not so far he couldn’t go see Finley regularly. Not so far he couldn’t take care of Finley if something was wrong.
Certainly not far enough to put a train ride between them.
He pulled up in front of his parents’ house, cut the engine, and sat there a little while. He dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel, working to get himself together. His father wouldn’t appreciate seeing him like this.
Alpha Noah Pearce had never given him so much as a raised eyebrow over his sexuality. He’d never questioned Tanner’s strength, never hesitated to talk about him being alpha someday. He’d always made sure Tanner knew he was proud.
He’d also never been one much for seeing tears, panic, or anything else like that, especially from his son. Tanner loved his dad, but he knew better than to show him too much emotion. His dad would tell him to get his ass together, suck it up, and fix the problem. An alpha didn’t get to cry—he had to keep it together for the pack. An alpha didn’t get to freak out or panic. He figured out the problem and fixed it because the pack needed him.
Which, really, wasn’t bad advice and Tanner knew it. He just didn’t know how to fix this. He blew out a breath and climbed out of the car, his steps heavier than he’d have liked as he approached the door.
The smell of beef roasting hit him as soon as he stepped inside.
“Hello, dear!” his mother called from the kitchen.
Sometimes it sucked when your parents could smell you from so far away.
“Hi, Mom,” Tanner greeted her as he walked into the kitchen. “Smells great. Is there enough for me?”
She snorted. “There’s never enough for you. I could roast an entire cow and you’d still be hungry.”
Tanner laughed. “Uh, right.”
“Of course there is. Now, want to tell me what’s wrong?”
Tanner rolled his eyes. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it, but he needed to. Maybe that was why he’d driven there unconsciously. He studied his mother for a long moment before answering. Carol Pearce barely reached the middle of Tanner’s chest. For a wolf, she was tiny. Her size wasn’t anything to go by, however. She had the same rich auburn hair Tanner did and the same bright blue eyes that could ice over or spit fire, depending on how mad she was. She was also one badass wolf when she was riled.
His parents were chosen mates. They’d fallen in love right out of high school, mating almost immediately. His dad, in one of the few displays of emotion allowed, had told him that with one look at her, he’d never even considered looking for anyone else. Tanner still wasn’t sure what to make of that.
“Are you positive you and dad chose each other?” he blurted. He hadn’t meant to say it, but he didn’t regret asking.
“Quite,” his mom said, peering through the oven door and sniffing. “Five more minutes,” she muttered to herself. “Get the plates out. Yes, we were chosen. Our bond didn’t start until he’d claimed me. What has Finley done?”
He snorted. “He went out to a club again last night. That wasn’t a big deal, though. Nothing different than the last several times he did. No….” He took a deep breath. “He’s left me.”
“What?” She spun around and blinked at him. “But… you’re mates!”
“Yeah, he keeps saying that.” Tanner shook his head as he took out the plates and set them on the table. “He’s gone on a trip somewhere. Said he needed space, and that unless I was coming to claim him, he’s breaking up with me and going to date someone else.”
She simply blinked at him without answering for a moment. “So, when are you leaving?”
“What? Mom! I can’t go get him. He’s not going to come back with me. Not unless I claim him.”
“So claim him,” she said, shaking her head.
Tanner pushed his plate aside and thunked his head on the kitchen table. “He’s too young, Mom.”
“Bullshit.”
Tanner’s head whipped up and he stared. “Mom?”
“Why is my wife using foul language?” his dad asked from the hallway.
“Because your son is being bull-headed,” his mom answered, turning to the oven and pulling out the roast.
“How is that different from any other time?” his dad asked, throwing pot holders onto the table and taking the roast from his mom’s hands.
Tanner got up to gather silverware.
“Finley left him.”
“I’ve told you, more times than I could count, he wasn’t going to put up with you waiting much longer,” his dad said.
Tanner shook his head. “Everyone’s lost their fucking minds,” he mumbled, knowing full well they could hear him.
“Language, boy,” his dad growled.
Tanner rolled his eyes, but said, “Sorry, Dad.” He set out the silverware and took his seat, waiting for his dad to pass out roast. “You know why I can’t claim him yet, Dad. He’s too young.”
“I don’t know any such thing. What on earth is he too young for?”
Tanner dropped his face into his palm and tried to remember how to speak calmly. “The claiming for an alpha or future alpha,” he reminded his father.
“What about it?” his dad asked, looking genuinely puzzled. “Your mother and I did it.”
Tanner closed his eyes. “Oh gods, no. I don’t want that image in my head, please.”
His mom laughed. “Honey, what is the problem? You’ve never been squeamish about that before. We’re a sexual group. You’ve grown up with that. We strip to change, naked with one another all the time. Half the couples have sex during the full moon right there on the pack grounds.” She shook her head, staring at him.
“None of them were Finley,” he grumbled, cheeks coloring. He took a bite of the roast, wishing he hadn’t come over no matter how good the food was. He didn’t know why he thought his parents would have agreed with him. They’d been telling him the same things for months. “Look, it’s not just that. He needs time to finish growing up for f—Diana’s sake.”
“He’s eighteen,” his mother reminded him, as if he needed it. “Last I looked that was adulthood. I don’t understand why you didn’t claim him two years ago.”
“He was underage!” Tanner said, shaking his head.
“According to the humans, maybe,” his dad said.
“I thought it was twenty-one for shifters?” he asked, scowling at his dad.
“Well, for legal responsibiliti
es, yes. But there’s no age on mating.” His dad gave him a look he wasn’t sure he wanted to interpret.
“Maybe he does need some space,” Tanner said rather than replying. “Maybe he’ll realize it’s good to wait.”
“It’s not good to wait,” his mom said, pointing at him with her fork. “You need to go claim him. At least go have sex with him—”
“Mom!”
“—if you need to prove you’ll claim him, since you’ll have to do the actual claiming here.”
“She’s right, son,” his dad said, shaking his head. “That boy needs you to prove to him who he belongs to.”
Tanner knew his face was bright red. He had seen and been around the sexual aspect of their pack—their species—all his life. The nakedness and the open sexuality they had with each other had never really bothered him before. But it’d never been him. Never been Finley, except to strip to shift, and even then he’d done his damnedest to keep his eyes averted. He hadn’t needed the temptation.
The claiming of an alpha’s—or future alpha’s—mate was an old tradition that most of the couples had no problem with. Because of the sexual nature of their species, most people viewed it almost like a wedding ceremony. In fact, like his mother pointed out, he’d come across many couples midcoitus during the full moon, often right in the main clearing the pack gathered in for meetings.
Having the alpha’s mate claimed in public seemed a simple extension of the openness they’d had with sex already. And in this way, they could prove everything happened as it should. The bite didn’t cause a mark or anything quite that fantastical. The puncture wounds disappeared pretty damned fast, in fact, thanks to the accelerated healing of their kind. So with a public claiming, the pack would be able to see it and know the alpha and his mate were fully bonded, a strong pair to lead them.
So, when he, the future alpha of their pack, claimed his mate, he was supposed to do it publicly. Or, at least, semipublicly. He didn’t have to have his parents there, thank Diana, but he did have to at least have his dad’s beta and the pack elders present. And it had to be the whole thing. He couldn’t just bite Finley. The bond, the claim wouldn’t take unless they were having sex at the same time. Tanner wondered if there was something more to them watching, but couldn’t bring himself to ever ask. Not yet.
The whole thing happened at the point of orgasm. Technically, Finley didn’t have to climax for it to take, but Tanner wasn’t about to have sex with his mate and not make sure his lover came. And the thought of putting Finley through that—fucking him, letting everyone else see his orgasm—just made Tanner want to punch something.
Finley shouldn’t have to go through that while he still had the word “teen” in his age.
“If you have sex with him, you can at least further the bond.”
Tanner hated that there was a bit of logic to his mother’s statement. But if they had sex, then he’d need to claim Finley shortly thereafter. He’d never seen it, but he’d heard that if you wait too long to bite after you’ve had sex the first time, the wolf half of each mate gets antsy and harder to control. And Diana help him, but he had trouble as it was controlling his wolf around his mate. Just the thought of fucking Finley had his teeth dropping and vision going gray. He took a deep breath and willed his wolf back in place.
At the same time, though not the full bond, Finley would, at least, be able to feel it. He’d be able to feel Tanner’s love for him. But would it be enough? Somehow he didn’t think so.
“So, Dad, how’s the new pack school coming along?”
TANNER TURNED the engine off and climbed out of his car, taking a deep inhale of the fresh air. Their pack mostly lived on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, to the east of the city, against the vast forests of Western Pennsylvania. They had plenty of territory in which to hunt, run, and play, and allowed the occasional sighting so the humans thought regular wolves inhabited the area. At the same time, they’d made it difficult on the tree huggers to get hard data on them so they wouldn’t give people the idea to come hunt. All in all, it made things a lot more comfortable—and safe—for them.
He pulled off his jacket—it was chilly, even in June, up in the mountains—and tossed it into the car, keeping an eye out for anyone straggling into the parking lot. The area they used was private, but they’d had the occasional camper take a wrong turn and try to set up. He divested himself of the rest of his clothes quickly, threw them in the car, then closed his eyes and greeted his wolf, letting him out to play.
He thrilled in the shift, the changes in vision, the feel of the world around him becoming something new. He lifted his nose in the air and sniffed, then let out a howl at feeling the soft ground under his paws again.
He’d been so worried about Finley lately, he hadn’t run except during the full moon. The pull then was too strong—they all shifted then, whether they wanted to or not—so if they didn’t want to risk scandalizing the neighbors, they spent as much of that time on the pack hunting grounds as they could. They had pack members who lived much closer to the city but came out each month. Tanner himself was still in an apartment, farther away from the forest than he’d like. He’d been saving money to build Finley a home when it was time for them to mate.
Not shifting for so long could start to cause problems, though. Their kind has even been known to display horrifyingly doglike behavior even when not in wolf form. He wasn’t sure he believed all the stories, but he’d seen one of the pack teenagers start chasing the mailman when he’d been stressed out over finals and hadn’t shifted all month.
He shook himself again and let go of the worries, giving his wolf control for a while. He sniffed at the ground, delighted when he picked up the trail of a rabbit. He took off at full speed, bounding off into the trees.
It gave good chase and Tanner ended up letting it go. He was having too much fun running to bother stopping. Besides, he was still full from his mother’s roast dinner. He ran faster, savoring the feel of his paws hitting soft leaves, the wind through his fur. He took long moments to stop and smell different plants, savor all the scents the forest had to offer. He took comfort in the simple things, like leaping fallen logs or snapping at a firefly.
He stopped at a stream to quench his thirst and took a long drink. The water up there was so cold, clear, and tasted so good, though he sometimes wondered if that wasn’t filtered through the wolf. He wouldn’t get sick from anything if he drank it as a human, but when on two legs, he usually carried water in a bottle.
He settled down next to the stream, letting the soft forest sounds surround him. Now that he’d proven to the local wildlife he wasn’t hunting, their chatter filled the air again. He rested his head on his paws and let himself think of his mate.
While he maintained his human intelligence in wolf form, his wolf instincts were much closer to the surface. Everything seemed simpler, easier, as a wolf. He hunted, ate, slept, played… fucked. Or would, if Finley was there. If he’d claimed Finley.
He’d seen some of the other couples mating in wolf form. He chuffed softly in his version of a wolf laugh at the memory of the first time he’d come across it. He’d been just a pup, only six years old at the time, in wolf form himself, hiding from his mother. He’d stopped and stared, trying to figure out what was going on. When he did, he’d thought, at first, it’d been natural wolves mating. He’d tilted his head and watched, nearly jumping out of his fur when they shifted, shouted—later, he’d learned they were climaxing—then started cuddling.
His father’s beta, Robert Collins, had looked up at him and grinned. He’d waved, his mate, Laura, had as well, and then they’d gone back to their cuddles. He’d later learned they couldn’t part and shift back into wolves yet because they’d been tied together with the mating knot. He’d stood there stunned for another long moment, then slowly backed away.
Tanner had gotten quite an education that night. Sure, he’d seen the couples out on the meeting ground, but he hadn’t paid a lot of attention—girls were, af
ter all, gross, and he had no reason to look closer. He’d known the mechanics of sex—the pack teachers taught them that stuff very early. Because their wolves were such an ingrained, big part of them, many of the instincts and attitudes their kind had stemmed directly from that. He’d just never realized they could and did mate while in wolf form.
Sex, for instance, was simply a natural thing. Wolves in the wild didn’t give a single damn who saw them fuck, and the shifter versions embraced that as well. Tanner had been trying to remind himself of that—the way they approached sex was natural for them. He still couldn’t seem to let go of the idea of fucking Finley in front of the pack. He’d have to eventually; he knew that. Maybe he’d just spent too much time among humans and their modesty. He didn’t know where it came from, just knew he’d have to let go of it. Especially if he wanted to keep Finley.
As a wolf, things were simpler. He focused on instinct, worried about the basics. His wolf thought the rest of him could be that simple. As far as his wolf knew, their mate was mature and ready to take him. And, in truth, if they were just wolves, Finley would have been ready to mate two years ago.
But they weren’t just wolves. They were human too. With human wants, dreams, wishes, and needs. With human jealousies.
And human fears.
What if, after all they went through, Finley did end up resenting him? How would he handle it if, after mating, bonding fully, Finley walked away? It was extremely rare for mates, even chosen mates, to split up. But that was probably because there were so few of them. The wolves didn’t exactly number in the millions.
There were forced separations, of course, when one or the other mate died. But that was almost as rare, thanks to the advanced healing and longevity their kind had. Most mates lived full, long lives and died fairly close together.
Unfortunately for Tanner, he’d known one of those deliberate splits. He’d seen it, seen the devastation it could—would—cause. He was too afraid that if he and Finley mated while Finley was so young, he would end up feeling trapped and Tanner would experience that kind of devastation for himself.
Devotion Page 4
