Without Reservations

by J. L. Langley

  Mary dug into the box, pulled out a smaller white box and set it on the table. “I brought you guys a cake, and some towels and a fruit basket.”

  John shook his head, grinning, as Mary continued to pull things out of the box. “We figured there wasn’t likely to be a wedding. And all new couples deserve gifts, so we brought a few things. I tried to talk her out of the fruit basket.”

  Mary snorted. “Yes, he did. He said I should get a meat tray.”

  Oh wow. How cool was that? Chay chuckled. “Mary we are wolves,” he joked. “Thanks, guys. I can’t believe you did this.”

  John slapped him on the shoulder. “Your father is one of my oldest friends and my Beta. You didn’t think we’d just ignore the fact that you finally found your mate, did you?”

  Chay shrugged. “Well considering… Yeah, I guessed it would pretty much go unnoticed or unacknowledged anyway.”

  “Nonsense.” Kissing his cheek, Mary continued, “Everyone who knows you knows you’ve always wanted a mate. So what if your mate’s not quite what we all expected. He seems like a nice young man and you are obviously happy, so we are too.”

  Man. Hugging Mary back, Chay grinned. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” they chorused.

  John leaned against the table, suddenly looking serious. “I’m sorry your mother isn’t taking it well. Rest assured you’ll get no grief from the pack. This isn’t unheard of. I know of two other similar cases. A friend of mine in Texas is mated to another wolf. He’s actually married and he, his mate and his wife are all quite happy together. They have four kids between them and when I talked to Emilio last, he and Michael had two grandsons and another grandchild on the way.”

  Chay cleared his throat. “Yeah, well, I doubt seriously Bit, er, Keaton is going to let me have a wife.” He chuckled nervously. “I hope you aren’t expecting kids or anything. I mean—”

  John laughed. “No, no, not at all. I was only pointing out that there are other wolves who have male mates. That just happens to be how Emilio and Michael deal with it. They’ve been together for over forty-some-odd years. Since they were children. Sarah has been with them for over thirty. I also know of another couple, though I don’t know them as well. It’s only the two of them. Devlin is Alpha of their pack, and Laine is actually his Omega.”

  Feeling better, Chay nodded. It was nice to know they weren’t expecting him to chase after women even though he was mated. Because it wasn’t happening. He wasn’t sharing his Bit and he knew darn well how Bit would feel about sharing him, especially with a female. Even if Bit were attracted to women, he had never gotten past the “girls have cooties” stage. “Would the two of you like something to drink?”

  Mary made swishing motions with her hands. “Oh no, we aren’t staying long. We’re on our way to a dinner party. We just wanted to congratulate you and throw in our support.”

  Chay smiled. “It means a lot to me, thank you.”

  Grabbing Mary’s hand, John pulled her to his side. “You let me know if you find out anything else about who is trying to hurt Keaton. I have Jake Romero looking into it and watching Keaton while he’s at work.”

  “I appreciate that. Keaton met Jake today. He invited him to dinner tomorrow evening, so I’m going to go over some things with him and see if between the two of us we can’t get Keaton thinking. He has to know who’s doing this. I’m betting it’s someone from his old pack.”

  John nodded. “I’m betting you’re right. Is he okay? Doc Baker called us last night to let us know what was going on. I’d already decided to assign Jake to watch his back when your dad called and asked me to make the arrangements.”

  “I appreciate it, John.”

  “We take care of our own, Chay. You know that. I expect to be kept up-to-date and if you need anything, I expect to know about it.” He offered his hand and Chay shook it.

  “Yes, sir. Thank you again. For everything.”

  He saw them to the door. John stopped him again, waving Mary on to the car. Waiting till she was out of hearing, he took an envelope from of his pocket and tucked it into Chay’s hand. “Sorry about the girly towels and stuff. Here’s a gift certificate to the mall. You boys go get something you want, something fun.” He winked and strolled to the car to open his mate’s door.

  Well, son of a gun. Didn’t that beat all? Chay stood there flabbergasted as John and Mary both waved and pulled away from the curb. Chay smiled and shut the door.

  He glanced at the clock on his way to the phone. Where was Bit? He wasn’t too late, but Chay was already paranoid with the recent attempts on his life. He’d driven Keaton up the wall with his phone calls today, but that was tough. He wasn’t going to stop worrying until they found out who wanted to kill Bit. He picked up the phone and began dialing Keaton’s cell number when someone knocked on the door.

  Chay frowned and sniffed the air as he headed to the door. Whoever it was, was a wolf and didn’t smell familiar.

  Pita ran through the doggy door barking and beat Chay to the front. He immediately started growling.

  Chay blinked. Pita growled a lot, but it was usually the hey-play-with-me-aren’t-I-cute growl. This growl was mean, cute—because Pita was too little to be vicious—but mean. Chay picked him up and peeked out the peep hole. “Shh. Quit growling, pest.”

  Chay didn’t recognize the man, but he looked harmless enough. He looked like… Chay opened the door. “Hello?”

  “Hi, is Keaton here?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Wilma. I’m home!” Keaton giggled as he set the bags of food on the counter. Ha. Chay hadn’t gotten dinner. Which meant tomorrow was Chay’s turn. Yes. Keaton grinned. Why hadn’t Chay and Pita come to greet him at the back door like they usually did? Surely they’d heard his car pulling up and him opening and shutting the garage door.

  Ooh, what’s that? There was a box on the table. He breathed in. A cake? He strolled over and started going through the brown box, inside was a smaller white one—definitely a cake box—he inhaled again. Chocolate. And some towels and fruit and…had Chay gone shopping?

  “Bit, we have company.”

  Keaton turned as Chay came into the kitchen carrying Pita. He was frowning. Uh-oh. Keaton walked up to him, raised up on tiptoe and kissed his chin. He scratched Pita’s head and got puppy kisses on the hand. “Who is it?” He sniffed.

  His eyes widened. What the hell was he doing here?

  Chay wrapped an arm around him and hugged him, dropping a quick kiss on his lips. “I’ll put the food in the microwave so it will stay warm.”

  “Yeah. I’ll go and see…” Keaton rubbed his sweaty palms on his slacks. “What does he want?”

  “Says he came to see you.”

  Why? In a daze, Keaton went into the living room. He stopped in the doorway.

  Aubrey wandered around the living room, his back to Keaton. He looked a little broader through the shoulders and his golden hair was longer than the last time Keaton had seen him. Sensing his presence, Aubrey turned. One side of his mouth lifted up in a half-smile. “Hello, little brother. Looks like you’ve done okay for yourself. I have to admit, when you wadded up your trust fund statement and threw it in Dad’s face I really expected you to come running back in a matter of weeks. But it looks like I was wrong.”

  “How did you find me and what the hell do you want?”

  Aubrey’s blue eyes widened a bit, then he smiled, showing straight white teeth. “Is that any way to greet your older brother?”

  Keaton squelched the urge to scream and pull at his hair. He wasn’t going to let Aubrey get to him. It had been almost two years since Keaton had left Georgia for good and in that time no one in his family had made an effort to contact him. Of course, he hadn’t exactly told them where he was going. “I seem to remember you telling me I was dead to you. Therefore I have no brother. What do you want, Mr. Reynolds?” Yeah, it was juvenile, but what the hell? He’d just as soon make this short if not sweet and leave no room for d
oubt in Aubrey’s mind that Keaton didn’t want anything to do with him.

  Aubrey chuckled. “Still have an attitude problem I see.” He walked back to the couch and sat down. “Well, apparently you aren’t in a forgiving mood, so I’ll get right to the point. Mom and Dad want you to come home.”

  “Excuse me?” Keaton raised a brow, going for the “superior” look that Aubrey always hated.

  Aubrey’s gaze darted over his shoulder as Chay came to stand behind Keaton.

  Chay’s hand settled on the small of Keaton’s back. Pita growled.

  Keaton kept his attention on his brother but took comfort in the solid presence of his mate. “Why would Mom and Dad want me to come home? They disowned me.”

  Aubrey gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. “Not exactly.”

  Interesting. “Not exactly?”

  “They hired a private detective to find you. They want you to come home. It’s a long story but no one expected you to take off and—”

  “I’m not coming home. If they want to see me so bad, they can come to me.”

  Chay rubbed between his shoulder blades and leaned in close. Pita licked Keaton’s ear.

  Keaton sighed and stepped out of reach of the puppy’s tongue. Yes, he knew he was being a dick but that was just too bad. Damn, he was getting a headache. Keaton pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is that all you want, Aubrey?”

  “I came to offer to take you back.”

  “Ah, how sweet… But no thank you. If I decide to go back, it will be on my own terms. Now, if that’s all you wanted…piss off.”

  Glaring, Aubrey stood up. “You know you ought to follow your boyfriend’s example. He’s much more polite than you are.”

  Keaton stalked over to the door and jerked it open. “Yes, well we can’t all be perfect. But he is my mate and I love him anyway.”

  Aubrey snorted and walked out. Turning back, he looked past Keaton to Chay. “It was nice meeti—”

  Keaton slammed the door shut, strolled up to Chay and took Pita. “Come on, pup. I brought you some French fries.” His food was getting cold. Arguing with Aubrey wasn’t worth eating cold hamburgers for.

  Chay bit his bottom lip to keep from laughing. Holy shit! He’d forgotten how cold Bit could be. Damn, his mate had a temper.

  He’d been surprised to see how much Aubrey looked like Keaton. He had the same platinum curls, the same pretty blue eyes. His face was shaped the same, but he had a different nose, not near as nice as Bit’s cute little upturned one.

  He walked into the kitchen to find Bit at the table with a hamburger in one hand, feeding Pita fries with the other.

  Bit held the burger up. “Sorry. I just… Sorry, I should have waited for you to come eat. I poured you some tea.”

  Chay sat across from Bit and took a swig of his tea. “No problem. Thanks for picking up food. Everything I tried to cook, we didn’t have. We are going to have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.” He pointed at his mate and glared. “Speaking of which, you cheated. You brought food so I’d have to cook tomorrow.”

  Keaton grinned, his eyes twinkling, and ate another bite of his burger.

  Chay chuckled and unwrapped his own burger. He grabbed the ketchup and put some on the wrapper for his fries. He too had tried to cheat and make dinner, but he wasn’t going to point that out. “I’ll make you a deal. How about we both cook tomorrow?”

  “We could do take out.”

  Chay shrugged. “Yeah, I guess we could. But one of these days we are going to have to start cooking.”

  “Nah, we should just hire a cook and be done with it.”

  Wouldn’t that be the life? Chay drank some tea and watched Bit frown at his burger.

  Pita barked, wanting another fry.

  Chay rolled his eyes when Bit tossed Pita several. It was an ongoing argument. He told Bit over and over not to feed Pita from the table. The dog was going to think it was okay to beg when they ate. But he valued his life too much to correct Bit tonight.

  “What do they want, Chay?”

  He wished he knew. It was anyone’s guess as to what Bit’s family wanted. “Don’t know, Bit. Why don’t you call them and see?”

  Keaton shook his head. “I don’t get it. I mean what makes them think they can just pop back into my life after turning their backs on me?”

  “Maybe they’re sorry for the way they treated you. Maybe they’ve realized what a big mistake they made. What if they want to make amends?”

  Bit looked up at him, his blue eyes troubled. “You think I should forgive them?”

  “I don’t know, Bit. It’s not up to me. I’m not sure what I’d do in your position. I’d like to think I’d at least call and see what they wanted, but I didn’t go through what you did. I know I’m still hoping my mom will tell me she’s sorry, but she didn’t exactly abandon me. She just got pissed and yelled. She never actually disowned me or anything.”

  Keaton nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I should at least call and see what they want. But not now. I think I need to go for a run. You wanna shift and go with me, after we eat?”

  “Sure, we can drive down to the rez. It’ll be good to get away for a few hours.” There was nothing quite like running in wolf form to help clear your head.

  Returning from their nice hour-long run, they pulled up in the drive. The headlights of Chay’s truck illuminated Remi’s motorcycle parked close to the garage door. Keaton looked around but didn’t see Remi anywhere. “Okay, where is he? That is Remi’s bike, isn’t it?”

  Chay frowned. “Yeah.” He put the truck in park. “He has a key to the back door—I forgot to ask for it back—maybe he’s inside.”

  Keaton snorted and made a mental note to buy a lock for the back gate and a new lock for the back door. “What does he want?”

  Chay shrugged. “Only one way to find out. Come on.”

  As soon as Chay opened his door the coppery smell of blood hit them. Chay’s eyes widened. “Fuck.”

  That pretty much summed it up. Keaton hoped it wasn’t Remi’s blood he detected. He may not like the guy, but he didn’t want him dead. Whoever the blood belonged too it would be a miracle if they were still alive. Keaton could tell by the strength of the scent that it was a large quantity of blood. He reached for his own door but Chay’s hand stopped him. He turned, peering into those deep brown eyes. Chay didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. The look in Chay’s eyes said it all. I’m scared. I love you. Be careful.

  Which virtually mirrored Keaton’s feelings. He leaned forward, brushing his lips across Chay’s, and got out of the truck. He shut his door quietly, looked around and inhaled deeply. The shiver that trickled through him wasn’t due to the nip in the autumn air. The porch light cast shadows across the yard and the quiet made it that much more ominous. He smelled a wolf somewhere near the house. There was also a lingering scent of at least one other wolf, maybe more. It was hard to tell because the scent of blood overpowered everything else. Keaton shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and shuddered again.

  Just as Keaton realized the strongest wolf scent belonged to Jake, the man himself called out to them, “Keaton. Chay. Back here. Hurry!”

  They rushed to the back fence. Keaton hesitated a brief second, wondering if somehow Jake was who’d been trying to kill him all along, then brushed the ridiculous idea aside.

  Chay pushed open the six-foot tall wood privacy gate first. “What’s going on?”

  It was dark, but Keaton had no problem seeing Jake. He was on the back patio, naked, covered in blood, with Remi cradled in his arms. “Come on! There’s no time. We have to get him inside. He’s dying.”

  Chay’s steps stuttered when he spotted Remi.

  Remi’s clothes and leather jacket were torn to shreds, he was bleeding badly. He was also unconscious and very pale. He’d obviously been attacked by a werewolf. Keaton took a deep breath, scenting the air, as Chay fumbled with the back door keys. He groaned. The smell of blood made it difficult to smell an
ything else. He wasn’t even positive if there was more than one wolf.

  Chay shoved the door open for his friend and tried to take him from Jake. “What?”

  Keaton sniffed again. “I think I smell Aubrey.” Was his brother trying to kill him?

  Jake jerked Remi out of Chay’s reach and growled, surprising both Chay and Keaton. What the fuck?

  Chapter Eighteen

  Keaton grabbed Chay’s arm and pulled him back out of the way. He held up a hand in an I’m-no-threat gesture to Jake.

  Jake looked up at him and for the first time Keaton realized Jake’s eyes and teeth had changed to their canine equivalent.

  Chay gasped.

  Jake stood, supporting Remi’s weight easily. “Hurry up,” Jake growled as he carried Remi’s limp body past them.

  Chay took off down the hall, turning on lights as he went.

  Jake’s lupine eyes seemed haunted as he laid his burden on the couch. “Who is he?”

  “Chay’s friend. His name is Remi.”

  Jake nodded, brushing a strand of dark hair off Remi’s face.

  Chay came running back into the room with his medical bag. “Jake, you’re gonna have to let me in here.”

  Jake hesitated for a second then stepped aside.

  “Jake, call Doc Baker. Bit, get over here and help me.” Chay leaned down over Remi, using his stethoscope on him. “Find something to prop his feet up, Bit.”

  Keaton gathered all the pillows he could find and stuffed them under Remi’s feet. Pita barked his fool little head off from the laundry room where they’d left him.

  Chay shook his head. He looked up at Keaton, tears in his eyes.

  Keaton closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn’t like Remi, but he didn’t want the man to die either. The pain etched on Chay’s face at his friend’s fate brought tears to Keaton’s eyes as well. “Can we change him?” He was willing to do whatever was necessary to erase the hurt his brother had caused.

  “It’s the only way he’s going to make it. He’s barely hanging on. I want to, but we aren’t supposed to change someone against their will.”