by Lisa Oliver
From behind Arthur, Patricia cried out, “That’s too much, Alpha. We can’t take all that.”
Slipping past Damien and Arthur, Scott sat on the couch beside the woman who was now openly crying. “We will never be able to do enough, to take away the horror your son has lived through,” he said begging the woman to understand. “But I promise you that for as long as Argon chooses to stay in this pack he will be protected, as will your other children. Even if your husband finds his true mate here, you and your children will always have a home. You have my word.”
Staring at Scott with her tear streaked face, Patricia whispered, “You’re the one, aren’t you? You’re the one who broke my boy out of that cage? The men over there, they told us it was the Alpha Mate. They told us about how bad the fire was and how you should have left him. How he told you to leave him and save yourself. But you didn’t. You saved my son.”
“Any one of us would have done the same thing, ma’am,” Scott said clearly embarrassed. “Your son is a good strong wolf and he will be an amazing man as he grows up. But I know he is a little worried about how you will receive him, being apart from you for so long, and with what has been done to him.”
“I love my son,” Patricia said fiercely, “And nothing that abuser could have done to him will change that. But you Alpha Mate, you I will be in debt to for the rest of my life. You make a mother proud.”
Damien watched as Scott gave her an awkward hug and then patted her arm. “Can I get Kane and Shawn to take you and your husband to see Argon? I know he must be worried what’s taking so long. The other boys are already with their families.”
When the four of them had left the room, Scott looked up at Damien, the pain on his face evident. Without second guessing his actions, Damien crossed the distance between them and pulled Scott into his arms. Scott reached up and lodged his face in Damien’s neck and breathed in deeply. Although his mind link was still closed off, Damien could sense the sadness and agitation running through his mate’s body.
“What is it, my lover? What’s wrong?”
Scott pulled back, tears evident in his eyes as he struggled to pull himself together.
“It’s just been so long since I’ve had a hug from my mom,” he whispered. “Or any acceptance from her. Patricia just bought it all back to me.”
“What happened with your mom?” Damien said softly as he stroked Scott’s soft blond hair.
“I told her… I told her I was gay when I left to join Troy in Cloverleah. She’d been yelling at me. Wanting to know why I would leave the pack to be with my so-called deviant brother. I couldn’t handle her running down Troy like that, so I told her I was gay and that I had just been better at hiding it than Troy. Which was the truth, even though I was the more outgoing of the two of us. But I’d just had hookups which were easy to hide and Troy, well he had relationships which weren’t so easy to disguise. She… she… she slapped me across the face and then turned her back on me. Told me she never wanted to see me again and I was welcome to my life in hell. I haven’t seen or spoken to her since. And fuck it; sometimes… sometimes I just miss her so much.”
Scott buried his face in Damien’s neck again and Damien could feel the man shaking in his arms. He petted Scott’s head and neck as he struggled to know what to say. He couldn’t remember his own mother. His memory of his life before he was found as a wolf was sketchy at the time and now, so many decades later, he had no memory of having a family at all. Rowan had become his family, but even then Damien had stayed aloof. He didn’t know what it was like to have an affectionate relationship with family members. But Scott must have had all that at sometime, to be affected so deeply by a simple hug from a virtual stranger. Damien poured all of the affection and acceptance he could into the caresses he gave his mate, trying to comfort him as best he could.
Then he had an idea, sort of.
“Where is your home pack?” He asked, because this was something Scott had never shared.
“Little place just outside Cleveland, Tennessee. Place called Wildwood Lake.”
“Is it a very big pack?” Damien had to ask, because honestly he had never heard of it.
Scott shook his head. “No,” he said. “Only about ten families - probably thirty to forty members in total. Why?”
“And what’s the Alpha like? Is he a good man?”
Scott scrunched up his face as if he was trying to remember. “Yes, I guess he’s okay. He’s a bit of a social climber, or he likes to think he is. And he’s really strong on family values, which is why he hates gays so much.”
Then Scott gave a short laugh. “I remember this one time he got a visit from some Alpha or another from a pack further north. The visiting Alpha had a fairly big pack, not as big as yours, but a decent size. And the visit wasn’t anything special, just a courtesy call by this Alpha who was passing through, nothing more. But you would have thought the Pope was visiting the way the Alpha went on. He’s always trying to get treaties and alliances with other packs because he thinks that it will make him a stronger Alpha.”
“Hmmm,” Damien said as his plan took shape in his head. “I’ve never been to Tennessee; never been to Wildwood Lake. Now that I am mated, maybe I should think about us doing a bit of a tour around some of the packs. Introduce you as the Alpha Mate of the largest pack in the States. That type of thing. It’s good for pack relations and all that.”
He looked down at Scott’s shocked face. “Maybe pop in and visit with your family. Do you think your Alpha would accept a visit from a deviant like me?”
“You, Damien. Hells teeth. You are known nationwide as the Alpha of the biggest pack in the States, and the most powerful wolf there is, apart from the Shifter Guardians. Your pack is fucking famous for its wealth and prestige. The Alpha would be so busy trying to lick your ass I wouldn’t get a look in.”
“I’d prefer it, if only you licked my ass, Alpha Mate. But if you like the idea, then we’ll stop off there on our way back from New York. Cleveland has a jetport we can use, and I’ll get Madison to arrange cars and a couple of enforcers to accompany us from there. I’ll get him to send a message to your old Alpha that we are just passing through the area, and want to call in to pay our respects. We can get a hotel in Cleveland, and when we visit the Alpha, we’ll ask for permission to visit my mate’s family while we’re there. Do you think he’ll refuse?”
“No,” Scott said, shaking his head. “Alpha Connor wouldn’t refuse you anything. He gets off on the power of others. But what if my parents don’t want to see me? It would just be a wasted trip.”
Damien took Scott’s face in his big hands and slowly stroked down the side of Scott’s cheek as he stared in those lovely blue eyes. “If they don’t want to see you, then I won’t force the issue, although I’m sure I could get Alpha Connor to compel them to come. But just think. You can show me around the area where you grew up - point out some of the places you used to hook up, where you went to school and things like that. I think it will be fun.”
“I just don’t want you to think I’m cashing in on the fact that I’m mated to you.” Scott’s whispers were so faint, Damien barely heard him, even with his wolf hearing.
Damien couldn’t believe his ears. Maybe his wolf hearing was fucked up. His first thought was to laugh. But, quickly realizing Scott was deadly serious, he squashed that natural inclination and started pecking kisses on Scott’s luscious lips as he spoke.
“You, my lover… are an idiot… what,” he said in between kisses, “is the point… of being mated… to the ‘Almighty Damien’… if you can’t use it… to your advantage.”
“Besides which,” Damien said pulling back from Scott’s shocked expression. Hmmm, the man’s lips weren’t nearly kissed enough. He would rectify that in just a minute. “You, as Alpha Mate of the San Antonio pack, outrank any pissant Alpha from Wildwood Lake. Hell, you outrank half of the Alpha’s in the country. So take the opportunity to show off a little, on me, okay? You’re not ashamed of being
my mate, are you?”
“God no.” Scott shook his head. “I love being your mate and yeah, there is that little bit inside of me that would love to see Alpha Connor fawning all over you, knowing it will have no affect on you whatsoever. He is going to spit tacks when he realizes who your mate is. He never wanted to see me or Troy on pack lands again.”
“Then we’ll invite Troy to come with us,” Damien said, pleased his lover was feeling a bit happier. “He’s my brother-in-law after all; part of my family, so he has every right to be with us if you want him to be. Now pucker up because I’m missing that I’ve-just-been-kissed look that you wear so well.”
Giving a small snort, Scott turned his lips up to meet Damien’s. Damien had never, ever thought he would be as into kissing as he was with Scott. Scott’s mouth was like a microcosm of his whole self. His deliciously full lips molded themselves to Damien’s. Scott’s mouth was warm, his tongue welcoming and the combination allowed Damien to share in the very essence of his mate. As Damien lost himself in the taste he had never been happier.
All too soon though, as always seemed to happen when Damien had his mouth on Scott, things started to get heated and Damien pulled back, pleased that Scott’s mouth tried to follow him.
“Do you feel like going for a run, mate of mine? Just the two of us? I want to show you around the pack grounds.” Damien thought he did a pretty good job of controlling his erratic breathing even though his cock was slamming into his zipper in rather an alarming way. He wanted to talk to Scott about moving onto pack lands permanently, and he knew if they went to bed together - presuming they got that far - then there would be no time for talking.
Scott’s face was wearing that blissed out expression that Damien was coming to love - especially knowing he was responsible for putting it there. When the man blatantly ran his eyes down Damien’s body and lodged firmly at the bulge in Damien’s jeans, Damien couldn’t help but adjust himself. Damn his zipper was really cutting into him.
Then Scott’s face changed and the blissed out expression disappeared. He shrugged and said, “Yeah, of course. I haven’t had a run in ages,” and he turned towards the front door of the house. For a moment Damien thought he had done something wrong again, but as he saw Scott step outside and slowly pull off his shirt, he stopped worrying and started drooling. Damn, his mate was a good looking man and Damien was having second thoughts about the run idea.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Scott was certain he had done something wrong. Damien was clearly aroused by their make out session, so when he pulled away and suggested the two of them go for a run, Scott couldn’t believe he was being turned down. Now Scott was horny, edgy and sick and tired of feeling like a girl, questioning his feelings and his relationship with his mate all of the time. Maybe something Troy had said earlier, before he left Cloverleah, was coming into fruition - he was losing himself. In Damien and their fucking convoluted relationship.
He put a bit of deliberate tease in the way he pulled off his clothes, as the two men stripped down to shift, but he figured he could be forgiven for it. Actually he didn’t care what Damien thought right now. That was part of who Scott had always been. A born flirt and natural tease. A man who went after what he wanted, especially in the sex department, and who was confident in every other area of his life. Of course he couldn’t and wouldn’t tease anyone else, now he was mated to Damien, but there was no need for his skills to get rusty when he could practice them on his unwilling mate.
If Scott was honest with himself, he was embarrassed about how he’d had that melt down after Patricia hugged him. Imagine crying because he missed his mom. No wonder Damien didn’t want to fuck him. The man must have thought he was a complete head-case and a cry-baby to boot. Well that would be the last time his mate ever saw him with tears on his face. Scott was made of sterner stuff and he would prove it.
As Damien reached out for his naked body, his hard cock proof enough he was turned on by Scott’s display, Scott shifted into his wolf form. Then he sat there, on the porch of the pack house and cocked his head, waiting for Damien to follow suit. The man wanted to run in wolf form, so they would fucking run. Hell, if he knew his way around pack grounds, he would have already jumped off the porch.
Berating his hasty decision for just a moment, because damn there was a trace of pre-come leaking from the slit on his mate’s cock and Scott could smell it, Scott kept himself in check and waited for Damien to shift. Scott never had sexual contact in wolf form. He knew some wolves did, and he figured all power to them. Wolves were like any other animals and sex was a strong animal instinct. But Scott preferred to keep anything sexual to his human form, so he definitely would not reach out with his long tongue and lick that enticing cock, no matter how much he might want to. In his human form, Damien stared down at him for a minute and then he bent down and shifted. Seconds later Scott was eye to eye with a very big, very beautiful grey wolf with silver eyes and long, thick fur.
Damien growled at him and Scott stood up and allowed Damien to smell him all over. The last time he had been in wolf form with Damien, they weren’t mated and they had been fighting bears. This ‘getting to know you’ sniff would have usually been done then, but of course both of them had other things on their minds at the time.
When Damien started to rub over him with his muzzle and neck, and then with full body swipes, Scott stood still for that as well. Damien was his mate and as such, wanted Scott’s wolf to smell like him. They hadn’t had sex in over twenty four hours, so Scott wouldn’t smell of Damien much, although his scent clearly indicated to other wolves he was mated. Damien was just letting every other wolf in the area know who he was mated to. Silly wolf was just being overly possessive, Scott thought, especially seeing as they were on Damien’s pack land.
A long wet tongue on his furry balls had him growling though, and Scott snapped at Damien, his teeth clashing in the moonlight. Damien backed off and tilted his head as though he was trying to access Scott’s thoughts, but Scott wasn’t having any of that either. Pushing past Damien, Scott jumped off the porch and headed out past the pack houses, knowing that Damien wouldn’t follow him for long. The Alpha in Damien would insist that he be the one to lead, and he would expect Scott to follow, so for a brief moment Scott enjoyed this minor victory.
Sure enough, Damien pushed past Scott and took off in front of him, setting a brisk pace. Damien’s wolf was a lot bigger than Scott, with longer legs, and Scott had to run to catch up. For about an hour, Damien led Scott around the pack grounds and, to his surprise, Scott found he was enjoying himself.
The pack land was beautiful, especially in the light of the half moon. It would seem that the pack land extended to the hills that Damien was leading Scott through, and after about ten more minutes of jogging along, they came to a clearing with beautiful tall trees, a small grassy area and a wide stream. Looking around, Scott took note of the animals he could hear, out of habit more than anything else. While his human side was darn certain that there would be no predators on pack land, it didn’t mean that the odd coyote or two hadn’t slipped through and wandered into the area by mistake. Coyotes couldn’t kill wolves unless they were damn lucky, but Scott didn’t welcome any confrontation with one.
Satisfied he was safe for the moment, Scott padded down to the waters edge and took a long drink. He felt relaxed and happy, and he knew he could grow to love this area of Texas, if he got the chance to run out here often enough. Scott hated the idea of living full time in the city. He preferred the wide open spaces, and it seemed that San Antonio had a lot to offer in terms of wild life and wilderness. Lost in his appreciation of the countrified air, Scott nearly jumped out of his fur when he heard Damien speak - he didn’t even know his mate had shifted.
“Would you mind shifting for me Scott, we have to talk.”
Shit. This can’t be good. No one who heard those words, ‘we have to talk’ was going to hear anything good. Everyone knew that those words were usually the death kn
ell of any relationship. Shit, Fuck and Bloody Hell! Scott tried to pull himself together enough to shift back to human form. He did not want to hear that Damien didn’t want him. Damien would be tied to him for the rest of their natural lives now they were mated. But Scott already knew that being mated didn’t mean that the man would ever love him and from Damien’s tone of voice, it sounded like his Alpha didn’t want him around anymore either. Shit. Shit. Shit. He shouldn’t have cried.
Forcing himself to focus and stay calm, Scott morphed from wolf to man. He was surprised to see that Damien held a bag in his hand, pulling out a pair of sweats and a shirt for Scott to put on. Refusing to ponder the implications of why Damien wouldn’t want him to be naked, Scott debated against wearing them. He’d be far more of a temptation to his mate if he was naked. But then commonsense prevailed. The air did have a definite nip in it and if Scott was going to get dumped, or whatever it was that mates did when they didn’t want each other any more, then he didn’t want to be focusing on goosebumps when it happened.
“Can you come and sit over here, by me?” Damien asked quietly, his voice barely heard over the sound of the water.
Scott emphatically didn’t want to go and sit by his mate. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the man, when he broke his heart. Reminding himself that he wasn’t going to be weak anymore, Scott mentally shook himself and went and sat down beside Damien. As always, his body reacted by being in such close proximity of his mate. Scott’s nose was filled with that unique Christmassy smell that was all Damien. His cock started to fill and Scott hurriedly wrapped his arms around his knees, pulling them to his chest, so his reaction to the man wouldn’t be obvious. Taking deep breaths, he focused on the clean night air, the sound of the water and basically anything that wasn’t Damien.
