Brendan's Fate (Wolves' Heat)

by Odessa Lynne

  “You know,” Brendan said, “if you did that when we were fucking I bet I’d come so hard I wouldn’t be able to see straight afterward.”

  “Of course you would admit to your desires when I can’t—” Trey cut off what he’d been going to say and Brendan gave a short growl of his own.

  “What?” he demanded. He wiggled his hips and realized how good it felt to grind his cock against Trey’s shoulder. He did it again.

  He wasn’t imagining the deepening vibration working its way up through Trey’s chest.

  Someone moved to the side as they passed. Brendan raised his head to watch the wolf as they continued down the corridor.

  “She thinks this is funny,” Brendan said.

  “She would not dare laugh at her First Alpha and his mate.”

  “Yeah. Keep telling yourself that. Don’t think it’ll make it true though.”

  Trey huffed, his exhale sounding almost like a laugh.

  “She’s looking at your ass.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “I don’t. You have a sexy ass, Trey. Have I told you that before? I—” He closed his eyes and dropped his head down to rest against Trey’s back, his neck already feeling strained from the angle. “I wish you were mine the way you say I’m yours.”

  “Brendan…” Trey trailed off. “You have no idea what fate I’ve chosen to accept just to have you as my mate. If you did, you would never doubt that when I say you belong to me, that means I’m more yours than you’ll ever be mine.”

  Trey sounded troubled, and Brendan found he didn’t like that. He didn’t want Trey to be uncertain. He preferred Trey as the overbearing Alpha—that was the way Brendan was used to thinking of him and that’s how he wanted it to stay. Vulnerability didn’t suit Trey.

  Trey wasn’t weak.

  “You’ve got to be strong,” Brendan said. “I don’t think I’m strong. I let you do whatever just to keep from having to go off on my own. I think I’m a coward.”

  God. He really did.

  Brendan let himself go limp over Trey’s shoulder, the fight leaving him in a sudden wave of sadness. “I don’t deserve a second chance. I don’t know why you gave me one. I don’t want to face what I’ve done. I don’t ever want to know.”

  They had made it back to Trey’s home and Brendan hadn’t even noticed.

  The air jolted out of him as Trey flipped him over his shoulder and tossed him heavily onto the bed.

  Brendan’s back hit the soft mattress and pillows, his ass too close to the edge and his legs the only thing keeping him from sliding right off the side of the bed.

  Brendan shook his head. He could feel the overwhelming giddiness starting to fade. His body burned with a pleasant warmth, and his dick was still hard and aching, but he could think. He licked his bottom lip and stared up at Trey standing there at the foot of the bed between Brendan’s spread knees.

  “Fuck,” Brendan muttered. He raked his hands through his hair, his mind clearing with a startling speed. “What the hell happened?”

  “Ah. I see you’re regaining your sense.”

  “Why the hell did you drug me?”

  “It’s time for me to explain the heat to you,” Trey said.

  He stood straight and imposing there, while Brendan felt uncomfortably exposed with his shirt rucked halfway up his torso and his dick still so hard he wanted nothing more than to pull it out and start jerking off just to relieve a little of the pressure.

  Brendan scooted back awkwardly and then sat up. He had to adjust his dick before he could get comfortable.

  “So tell me,” he said. “Because that was a shit thing to do. God. I can remember everything.” Brendan’s face started to go hot.

  “That particular drink has an aphrodisiac affect on us, mild, but extremely pleasant. I’m still feeling the effects from my own glass, but I haven’t lost control, and I won’t. But humans react differently.”

  “So why the hell—”

  “The heat,” Trey said sharply. He came down on the bed on his knee and leaned over Brendan, until Brendan had to either give way or butt heads with him.

  Brendan gave way. Trey smelled so crisp and good and Brendan’s nerves still tingled with the desire for Trey to touch him. He didn’t want to resist.

  Trey’s arms locked as he trapped Brendan against the bed. “The heat feels like a fire in your blood, like a burn that won’t stop until you fuck, and then fuck some more. You want. You want so bad you can’t imagine how you’re going to survive if you can’t have what you want.

  “The strength of the feeling ebbs and flows, but at the height of the season, the control we have over our instincts is tenuous at best. But it’s part of who we are. Humans have no way of knowing what this experience is like for us.”

  “So you wanted me to know what you feel like during your heat,” Brendan said, and he knew he still sounded pissed. He didn’t care. “What’d you think you were doing? Teaching me some kind of lesson?”

  “That’s exactly what I was doing.” Trey leaned ever closer to Brendan until they were nose to nose. Trey’s thigh pressed tight against Brendan’s crotch.

  “Still think it was a shit thing to do.” Brendan’s voice came out shaky. He cleared his throat and clutched at the bedding to keep from grabbing Trey’s hips and grinding against him.

  He wasn’t going to be able to hold out for long and it didn’t matter how pissed he was about the drink. His blood still flowed warm and heavy through his veins and his thoughts kept wandering back to his hard cock and the sweet ache in his balls.

  “It’s a lesson you’ll need to remember later, when you have your memories again.”

  “Why? How’s that going to help me? I barely understand anything that’s going on here.”

  “You’ll know why later.”

  “Oh, fuck you.” Brendan shoved at Trey’s chest but Trey didn’t budge. “It was a chance for you to humiliate me in front of your wolves, wasn’t it? Show them my fucking submission, you said.”

  “You’re overreacting. I didn’t mean for the effects to last so long, but I obviously underestimated how much you should drink and how quickly you would drink it.”

  “I’m not overreacting! You don’t drug people and then act like it’s some kind of damn life lesson, for their own good.”

  Trey growled at him, the snap of his teeth a clear threat so close to Brendan’s face. “It had to be done.”

  Brendan narrowed his eyes. “What the hell? You trying to intimidate me?”

  Trey actually glared at Brendan. Brendan grinned with a show of teeth, suddenly feeling a hell of a lot better.

  “Son of a bitch. That’s exactly what you’re doing. You’re wasting your time. I’m not going to let you intimidate me.” Half-bravado, half-truth.

  Then again, his thudding heart and sweaty underarms said half-truth might be a stretch.

  Trey made a sudden move toward Brendan.

  Brendan flinched. “Son of a—”

  Trey laughed at him.

  “You fucking asshole,” Brendan said. “That wasn’t funny.”

  But then Trey’s nostrils flared, as if he’d caught a scent, and Brendan watched as Trey’s eyes took on a glassy sheen. Trey lowered himself over Brendan and sniffed hard against the tender inside of Brendan’s arm all the way up into the damp fabric at his armpit.

  Brendan tried to shy away, but Trey grabbed his wrists and held him tight to the bed.

  “I said I wouldn’t hurt you,” Trey said, sounding strangely breathless, “but you don’t believe me. Your lack of trust in me hurts my heart.”

  Brendan choked out a laugh. “God. I just don’t understand you people. You’re crazy. All of you.”

  Trey raised his head and let out an exasperated sigh. “No, but maybe I should have cautioned you about how easy to injure you are compared to us. How hard we have to work to hold back just to keep from damaging you, how different we have to behave with you to keep from hurting any of you.”

 
Brendan studied Trey’s expression, seeing the hint of truth there, the concern. “I know you’re stronger. I figured that out already. And that you heal really quick.”

  “Bite me,” Trey said and he stuck his thickly veined forearm in front of Brendan’s face.

  “What?”

  “Bite me, break the skin.”

  Brendan was already shaking his head. “No. That’s stupid. I’m not—”

  “Submit!” Trey growled roughly and every hair on Brendan’s body felt like it stood on end at the vibration coming from Trey’s chest.

  “Shit.” He bit down, hard, and tasted the tang of blood on his tongue.

  Trey hissed and pulled his arm back.

  Teeth marks cut into the flesh, visible beneath the fine hair covering Trey’s skin. Blood welled, but not nearly as much as Brendan might have expected. A few drops fell onto the center of Brendan’s chest to soak through his t-shirt. But then the blood stopped flowing and Trey knelt up in front of Brendan.

  “The pain is almost entirely gone already,” Trey said. He jabbed one of his claws into the open wound.

  Brendan winced but Trey barely seemed to notice any pain at all.

  “Can your kind do this? Do you know how easy it is to shrug off an injury when the pain fades so quickly and your body’s already healing the wounds?”

  Brendan wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, leaving behind a red smear that he swiped across the bottom of his t-shirt. His stomach churned and he wasn’t sure if it was from the blood in his mouth or the implications of what Trey was telling him.

  “We don’t have a chance if you decide you don’t want to share Earth, do we?”

  “None. Not against us or our technology. But that’s not our way. We’ve never intended to steal away your planet from you. But you’ve already agreed to share and I can’t allow your renegades to keep killing my people.” Trey’s mouth thinned. “Regardless of the cause of our conflict or the outcome, I have to protect my people.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Brendan said. “I’m confused and—and this is fucking with my head.” He shoved his hands up under Trey’s shirt, dragging his fingernails over Trey’s muscled abdomen. “I’d rather fuck and—and not think about it anymore for a while, okay?”

  Trey’s gaze flickered over Brendan’s face. He pulled off his shirt and reached for the fastening of his pants. “If that’s what you truly want, then that’s what we will do.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I want. I want you to fuck me.”

  Brendan quickly shucked his jeans and his underwear as far down his thighs as they’d go with Trey still kneeling between his knees. The air cooled the sweat at his groin and he shivered a little at the pleasant sensation.

  Trey left the bed long enough to take off his clothes.

  Brendan watched and wondered how he could have gotten so attached to someone who had admitted more than once that Brendan might die at his hand if Brendan didn’t choose to submit to him when the time came.

  The problem was that the more he learned, the more certain he was that even though he might have gone about it the wrong way—and made some really fucked up decisions—he had probably felt completely justified in what he’d done.

  And if that was true, getting his memories back wasn’t going to do anything but get him killed.

  Chapter 18

  Trey stayed with him most of the night, but sometime after Brendan fell asleep, Trey left and Brendan woke up to an empty bed for the first time since Trey had brought him there.

  He got up, pulled on last night’s jeans, took care of his morning piss and washed his face, and then found food waiting for him on the table in the main room.

  He ate. The morning passed slowly, and every creak and groan of the ship unsettled him. He should’ve been used to the sounds by now—Trey had told him the ship was old—but he didn’t think he’d ever get used to them. He liked having his feet on solid earth and this—this was a long way from Earth.

  He felt the first stirrings of the panic that tried to well up inside him when he thought too long about how trapped he was. He distracted himself by going through more of Trey’s things. The drawers opened with a soft swish of sound as he made his way through one after another.

  Trey hadn’t told him to stop the one time he’d caught him two days back, so Brendan figured that was as good as getting permission.

  Some of the devices he discovered might as well be bricks for all they responded to his efforts to figure them out. He found what looked like another hair remover, a thin silver square that fit easily in the palm of his hand, like the one Trey had shown him before his first shower.

  He found the place where he was supposed to press to turn it on.

  “Ow! Son of a bitch!” He dropped the slim device to clatter on the floor while he shook his hand vigorously. His fingers still tingled from the sharp stab of current and a light flickered between blue and yellow on the edge of the silver casing. The light faded as he watched.

  He hesitated and then toed the device, jerking his foot back quickly in case it shocked him again. But nothing happened; the device seemed to have shut down.

  He leaned over and picked it up, carefully, with the hand that wasn’t still sending small jolts of pain up into his shoulder. He was just tossing it back into the drawer he’d found it in when the door opened.

  “Thank God.” He turned around, still talking. “I’m so bored I think I accidentally just tried to kill…” He trailed off.

  Trey wasn’t alone.

  Three wolves stood behind him, one male, two female, each wearing a garment that was distinctly not the jeans and t-shirts Brendan has gotten used to seeing Trey and his wolves wearing. They wore dull green trousers and gray shirts with skintight sleeves that ended at their elbows. Glimmering silver and green stripes wound around the fabric at the midpoint of their upper arms.

  The two females had eyes like nothing Brendan had ever seen before, so deep and dark he thought for a moment he was looking at the vastness of the universe through the window behind him, while the male had fairly ordinary—for the wolves anyway—brilliant blue eyes.

  “Uh, something going on?” he asked.

  “It’s time,” Trey said.

  “Time for—” What he was going to ask, but then he knew. He thought his chest was going to squeeze the air right out of his lungs it got so tight. “No. I’m not ready yet.”

  The female on the right put her hand on the male’s shoulder and closed her eyes. The male wolf’s eyes turned black as night.

  “Your fate will find you under a broken moon,” he said in the wolves’ language. “The night won’t end when the sun rises, but the day will come anyway.”

  She removed her hand and the black faded from the wolf’s blue eyes.

  “I don’t believe in fate,” Brendan snapped out.

  Trey crossed the room. When he started to put his hands on Brendan’s shoulders, Brendan knocked them away.

  “No,” Brendan said again. “I don’t want them back.”

  Trey glanced over his shoulder at the others. “I’ll bring him. You can wait for me there.”

  “Yes,” the male wolf said.

  Brendan didn’t watch them leave. He looked at Trey and swallowed. “Please. I don’t want to do this.”

  “It’s time,” Trey said, and his accent sounded oddly thick. Brendan had gotten used to the way Trey talked, but this was almost like that first day, when he’d noticed Trey’s accent with every word he spoke.

  Brendan turned around and kicked the cabinet behind him so hard the drawer dented inward. His heart wouldn’t drop out of his throat and his muscles felt so tight he hurt with it. He turned around and faced Trey.

  “I don’t want them back. Don’t you get it? I don’t want to be him again. I don’t want to be him. I want to be me. I’m not him.”

  “Brendan.”

  “No,” Brendan said, slashing his arm through the air. “No. You’ve violated everything abo
ut me already, all the way down to my core. You don’t get to tell me who I am.”

  “And you don’t get to run away from the things you’ve done. But you do get to face them with the part of you that’s true to this core you say I’ve violated. You get a second chance to discover your true nature. You can choose your fate.”

  “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to!”

  “It’s my obligation to care for you, as your mate, but this is the one thing I can’t do for you. I can’t choose your fate. You have to choose.”

  “I should hate you for this. I should and—and I don’t. But … but … what if—what if afterward, what if I do?” His voice broke too many times to count but he didn’t give a fuck.

  He stared at Trey, taking in the arch of his brow and the bright green eyes and the lips that he’d kissed just last night. “What if I can’t stand the sight of you?”

  Trey’s gaze didn’t leave his, but there was something there—something Brendan couldn’t decipher. Fear, maybe. Worry.

  God. He wished he could read Trey’s expressions better, but he couldn’t, so he didn’t know. He wanted—needed—to know that he wasn’t alone in the way his heart ached right then.

  He reached up and rubbed the underside of his nose. “I don’t want to choose.”

  “It’s not my right to choose your fate, Brendan.”

  “I don’t want to choose!” He dropped his head back against the cabinet and stared up at the softly glowing ceiling lights. “What if—what if I hate you so much I choose death?”

  Trey wrapped his hands around Brendan’s upper arms and drew him forward away from the cabinet and stared at him, his green-eyed gaze intent.

  “Then you will die,” Trey said, “and I’ll have lost the only true mate I will ever have.”

  Then he hugged Brendan to him, his arms so tight Brendan wouldn’t have been surprised to feel a rib creak, and Brendan closed his eyes and sank into the embrace. He wasn’t sure he was ready for what Trey seemed to be saying but he took comfort in the words anyway.

  And later, when he closed his eyes, lying on a table in a cool room with a bright light blinding him, he thought would’ve given anything to stay in Trey’s arms right then.