by Laura Taylor
His assessment was fairly accurate. Mark had always been an introvert, too reserved to make friends easily, but deeply loyal to those he did have. Luke had bridged the gap between himself and Alistair, not only able to convince Mark to be more sociable, but also skilled at getting Alistair to tone down his talkativeness a notch so they could all fit together comfortably. He’d been a fierce warrior and a fine strategist, and before his death there had been rumours that Baron had been eyeing him off as a future alpha.
“It reminded me too much of when my parents died,” Alistair went on, a subject he almost never spoke of voluntarily. “You get comfortable with life, you make plans, you depend on the people around you…” He stopped, his jaw tight, his eyes suddenly blinking rapidly. “And then they’re gone,” he finished after a moment, the pronouncement staggeringly final. “Just like that.”
Mark didn’t think the sudden burst of introspection was because Alistair was missing Luke. He’d mourned him after he died, then moved on, as was the way of things around here. And though he still grieved the loss of Aaron and Raniesha, neither of them had been particularly close friends. So then who...?
“You’re... Are you missing the Khuli?” It seemed a bizarre idea; though Alistair had admitted to seeing her a couple of times, and to sleeping with her, albeit without knowing who she was, Mark had seen him have short-term flings plenty of times before, and once things were over, he’d never dwelt on the loss. In fact, he seemed to prefer it that way.
“Lee,” Alistair said, the corner of his mouth trembling slightly. “She told me her name was Lee. I haven’t told anyone else that. She was just ‘the Khuli’. And at best, most people are just grateful she spared our lives. But she was... she was so much more than that...”
John had been sitting quietly on Baron’s bed for just under ten minutes when the man himself finally opened the door. It had been a guessing game as to when he would decide to go to bed, but after years of cohabiting with the man, John had got pretty good at figuring him out.
Predictably, Baron stopped in his tracks, looking John over, then he glanced around the room, perhaps suspecting that John had decided to trash the place in his absence. That wasn’t an entirely unfair expectation, John decided. He had been pretty angry the last time he’d been in this room.
“What are you doing here?” Baron asked. John didn’t move from his cross-legged position on the bed. Sitting still helped him keep a handle on his anger, whereas pacing the room tended to let it run wild.
“I get it now,” John said. He’d put a lot of thought into this, into how to explain his feelings and how to express himself. People always complained that he didn’t make any sense, but it was just because he didn’t know how to connect all the ideas together in a way that other people could understand. “You let Li Khuli go. Most people – most shifters – would have killed her. And you let Miller stay. And I understand why now.”
Baron was still watching him with that predatory caution that had always captivated John so much. He didn’t jump to conclusions, didn’t give away what he was thinking, didn’t make foolish assumptions about people’s motivations. “And what exactly did you conclude about this?” he asked slowly.
John opened his mouth to answer, but then hesitated, suddenly taking note of Baron’s body language. If he was pissed off or wanted John out of his room, he would have folded his arms. If he was merely annoyed or tired, he would have gone about doing whatever it was he did before bed, taking off his shirt, tidying his laundry. But he wasn’t. He was standing there, body turned slightly to the side, arms loose and relaxed, his eyes never leaving John’s. What the fuck? That was a classic defensive pose. He thought John was going to attack him? Was he really that much of an arsehole that people thought he would go around and just…
“You want to save everyone,” he blurted out, forgetting half the things he had wanted to say. “You want to believe everyone is worth saving.” He looked away, suddenly uncomfortable with the intense eye contact. “So it doesn’t seem right that I want to be angry about you saving Miller, but grateful because you saved me. ‘Cos in the end it’s all the same thing.”
Silence, and he risked glancing back at Baron. His expression was unreadable, but his body had turned towards John by a couple of degrees. His shoulders had relaxed a fraction and his breathing had quickened its pace.
“Is that an apology, then?” Baron asked, aiming for indifference, but his voice was too tight to really pull it off.
Was it a what? “I don’t know,” John admitted, his speech tossed out the window as Baron went off script. “Andre explains things better than you do. And Li Khuli saved Miller when she was supposed to kill him. So when I moved out, I thought what I thought, and now I think something different. Am I supposed to say sorry because I’ve learned something?” Damn these human rituals and customs. They’d never made any sense to him.
“No,” Baron said, a hint of a smile appearing, and it was like watching the sun break through clouds after a storm. “So you’re okay with Miller being here now?”
“I said the Chant of Forests to him. I still don’t like him, but yeah, he’s one of us.”
Baron’s hands went into his pockets then, and after spending long hours with Andre, practising meditation and learning to understand his own emotions better, John now realised it was something Baron did when he wasn’t comfortable with what he was feeling and wanted to hide it. He’d always assumed that other people had a firm handle on their emotions and that he was the odd one out, but now it seemed that everyone was a little bit lost some of the time, just like he was.
“Thank you for letting me know,” Baron said, looking at the floor. There was nothing else in his stance to give away what he was thinking, and as a result, John found himself feeling rather reticent about expressing his own emotions further. As Andre had explained, there was a time to say how you felt, but it was just as important to know when to keep things to yourself.
John slid off the bed as the silence continued, figuring he’d done a reasonable job, had said the most important bits, and Baron seemed… well, not exactly happy with the result, but not upset either.
“Was that all you came here to say?” Baron asked, as John took a step towards the door, and he immediately stopped again.
“No. But…”
“But?”
A dozen thoughts were racing through John’s mind, each clamouring for air time, and it took an effort to slow them down enough to work out which one came first. “You slept with Kajus.” Really? That was what his brain had settled on?
“Yes, I did,” Baron admitted, after the slightest of pauses. “You and I broke up a good while before that.”
“Okay. So what if we didn’t want to be broken up anymore?”
In the space of a heartbeat, Baron’s abdominal muscles contracted, his legs tensed, and his face lost that harsh, stressed look he’d carried for so long. Stepping past John, he reached out and gave the door a firm nudge, having left it open when he’d come in. It closed quietly on smooth hinges, ending on a soft click.
But John recognised the look on Baron’s face and very deliberately stepped out of his reach. “I’m not moving back in,” he said emphatically, and Baron didn’t even try to hide his shock.
“You’re not? But you just said -”
“Not yet. Maybe one day, but… I think it’s good for me to have my own space for a while. I’m learning things, about laundry, and alarm clocks, and I’ve learned to sleep on my own.” Previously, he’d never been able to sleep for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time unless Baron was in the room with him. Now, he could go for two or three hours before waking up again. “And Andre… it’s good to have somewhere to talk to Andre where we won’t be interrupted. ‘Cos he shares a room with Caroline, so we can’t go in there. So I think…” He sighed. He was officially the Den’s omega wolf now, which would have made it difficult to move back in with the alpha, but it was nice to realise that it wasn’t the best dec
ision anyway. “So I want to have sex with you. And talk to you, and watch TV with you, and exercise with you. But I don’t want to move back into your room. Not yet.”
This sudden burst of independence was clearly surprising Baron. As alpha, he was used to being in control, and his standard method for dealing with opposition was to push back even harder.
But instead, he stepped back, opened the door and stood clear of the exit. “You want to make your own decisions? That’s fine. That’s good. It’s probably a good way to do things.” Was it John’s imagination, or was there a faint reprimand in the words? For once, the inflections in Baron’s tone were too subtle for him to read.
Feeling suddenly bold, he stepped forward and took the door out of Baron’s grasp, closing it softly again. “I want you,” he said, stepping up close and looking Baron in the eye. “But I want to know who I am as well. You made a lot of concessions for me before. You put up with a lot of mess and noise and you made excuses for me. You lied for me. You broke shifter laws for me. I’m not asking for any of that. I want – I need – to look after myself, even if I get it wrong some of the time. But I still want you.”
The look of longing on Baron’s face made John’s heart beat faster. His hands came up and framed John’s face, then ran over his hair in a strangely paternal caress, his hands trembling ever so slightly. His breathing hitched on an inhale, then he leaned down and closed the distance between them, their lips meeting in a soft collision that was more tender and more passionate than anything John had experienced before. He snaked a hand around to Baron’s buttocks to pull him against him, then floundered for a moment as he waited for Baron to forcibly haul him onto the bed… and felt oddly bereft when he didn’t.
Okay, so… no problem. John could get things moving instead. Nimble fingers made quick work of the buttons on Baron’s shirt, and once that was out of the way, he turned them both around and steered Baron backwards towards the bed. He pushed him back, then followed him down, an eager hand finding Baron’s erection and stroking it through his trousers.
But Baron wasn’t touching him back, wasn’t encouraging him to strip his shirt off or trying to open the fly on his jeans, and John sat back, miffed at the sudden change. Okay, so he didn’t want to dive back into the overbearing control Baron had had over him before, but this felt a lot more like how it had been way back at the beginning of their relationship, when he’d had to coax Baron into the smallest sexual encounters and been baffled by his partner’s unwillingness to take his own pleasure.
“Do you want me here, or not?” John asked, knowing that surely the answer was yes, but also bracing himself for the unlikely but shattering possibility that he’d get a no.
“Too much,” Baron said, his voice oddly tight. He sat up, flipping John into his back, licking his lips as he undid John’s jeans. “Let me show you how much…”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Thando settled down in front of a laptop in the basement room and adjusted his headphones. Beside him, Liam did the same, and once they were both ready, Thando activated the connection to Council headquarters in Italy. Analisa was upstairs guarding their two guests, and the choice of who should attend this meeting and who should miss it had been a very deliberate one. Thando and Analisa both tended to lean towards the empathetic side of things, concerned about their captives’ quality of life and long-term prospects, while Liam maintained a far more pragmatic view of the Endless War and the goal of survival that had kept the shifters going for centuries. Both view-points would be needed for this conversation, and though Thando and Liam were rivals in many ways, they were each temperate enough to see the benefits of each other’s perspective.
After a few moments, the video feed came up on the screen and the eleven faces of the Councillors were looking back at them, stern and serious. Feng muttered a quick greeting, then continued to fiddle with his computer. More faces gradually joined the conference as their connection requests were authorised. Four diplomats and three other assassins had been invited to join them, and it was an indication of the gravity with which the Council were taking the issue that they would include so many senior advisors.
For his part, Thando was both encouraged and daunted by the faces looking back at him. For the Council to think such an audience was necessary meant they were taking the idea of a large-scale operation very seriously. But on the other hand, if the general consensus of this meeting was that the risks were too great, Thando knew he would have virtually no avenue left to appeal the decision. As such, Gianna and Kathy’s futures were far from assured, and Thando himself wasn’t looking forward to the consequences if the Council failed to look favourably on the two women. If a Den had a problem with putting one of its members down, an assassin was called in to do it for them. But if an assassin baulked at one of his orders…
“Thank you all for joining us,” Feng opened the meeting. “By now you would all have received the report on Thando, Liam and Analisa’s recent activities, and I hope you’ve all had a chance to reflect on the implications of their discoveries. This is a truly unique opportunity in shifter history. In the past, there have been defectors from the Noturatii, and we’ve made the most of those opportunities when they’ve arisen, but never before have we had access to the wealth of information we do now, the networks between different countries, the ability for so many of the Noturatii’s staff to travel long distances at short notice and the inevitable dispersion of information that occurs as a result.
“But of course, these opportunities don’t come without risks. As Thando has rightly pointed out, the more people we ‘kidnap’ from the Noturatii, the more they’re going to notice. The more people who are involved in our operations, the more opportunities there will be for someone to betray us. Some of you,” he added, “would have been privy to briefings on various other strategies we’ve been looking into when considering how to end this war, and I would ask that you keep those strategies in mind when comparing our current opportunities.” That was news to Thando. He’d been aware for several years that various Dens were becoming restless with the current status quo, with the idea that the Endless War was there to be endured, rather than won, but clearly he himself hadn’t ranked high enough to be included in the briefings that Feng spoke of.
“The practicalities and moral considerations of such an endeavour are never going to be simple, so I’d like to begin by asking Thando to recap the situation so far and to give us a few insights into the perspectives of our two new allies.”
Three hours later, Thando was feeling entirely exhausted. The meeting had been adjourned for fifteen minutes halfway through, to allow people to stretch their legs or get a drink, but then they’d dived right back in, the diplomats debating the morality of killing those who routinely tried to kill them, the assassins weighing up the statistical likelihood of success or failure, and the Council chewing over the not-insignificant difficulties of how to detect potential traitors before they brought the whole operation down.
Finally, after the situation had been examined from every possible angle, the Council had asked for a final opinion from each of their advisors; did they support the idea of launching a large-scale operation, or were they better off keeping a low profile and going after smaller targets? Opinions had been split fairly evenly, with solid arguments on both sides, and after listening to each of the advisors’ answers, the Council had finally adjourned to hold a private vote amongst themselves. With only eleven members at the moment, they were in the unusual but fortunate situation where they couldn’t reach a stalemate. One way or another, one side would hold the majority. But the wait while they closed their connections and took the vote was agonising. It wasn’t about Gianna, Thando told himself as he stared at the dim icon on the screen, waiting for the Council to resume the connection. It was about the future of the shifters, about the chance to outclass their enemies once and for all, about recognising that Sirius himself had given them this opportunity, a sly, sideways opportunity that had arisen ou
t of a long series of the most fortuitous coincidences.
The icon began blinking all of a sudden, and Thando nearly knocked the laptop off the table in his haste to answer the call. Liam cast a disparaging look his way, which Thando firmly ignored.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Feng began, once everyone was back online. “It’s not often that the Council delivers a unanimous vote about any decision, much less one that could change the course of history for the entire shifter species. But today, it seems we are all of the same mind. The concept of overthrowing our enemies is a bold one, and not without plenty of insightful ideas, but the devil, as they say, is in the detail.”
A wily, almost playful expression lit upon his face. “So let’s talk details, people. How are we going to take the Noturatii down, starting from the inside out?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura Taylor has been writing since she was a teenager, spending long hours lost in imaginary adventures as new worlds and characters spring to life. The House of Sirius is her first published work, a series of seven novels following the wolf shape shifters and their war with the Noturatii.
Laura lives on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia and has a passion for nature, animals, hiking, and of course, reading.
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