by Lisa Oliver
“That baby lived,” Rex said again. “And guess what Bovis?”
Bovis met his eyes squarely. “I did what your father told me to do.”
“You keep telling yourself that.” Rex dug his claws further into Bovis’s neck. Blood trickled down his fingers. “That boy grew up. He’s a gorgeous omega who makes a ton of money for his crafts now he’s all man. He has his own shop, his own house. Shit, he even has his own accountant.”
“How do you know all that?” Bovis’s voice was croaking and both men knew he didn’t have long to live.
“Because that baby you left to perish grew up to be my fated mate. Despite the actions of my father and scum like you, I found him. I claimed him. The knowledge that you failed your alpha is the last thing you’ll know as you get pushed into the afterlife.”
Bovis opened his mouth, the “no” almost formed. But the word never had a chance to materialize. With a wrench, Rex ripped his claws from Bovis’s flesh, stepping back to allow the body to fall to the floor. My first kill, he thought, swallowing back the bile that suddenly filled the back of his throat.
I want Devyn. Fuck, I want my mate. But Rex knew it would be a few hours more before he could see his precious omega again. Disposing of a body wasn’t as easy as crime shows made out. Pulling his phone from his pant’s pocket, Rex texted his brother and told him to clear out and close the bar. Tell Gregor we need those shovels, he added, before putting his phone away. Having a bear along would certainly make digging a grave a bit easier.
Chapter Sixteen
“I should be with him.” Devyn wrung his hands, looking at the door and the huge bear blocking it. In typical fashion, Gregor didn’t give any reason for turning up as he did. He simply started closing up the shop, wheeled Devyn to his truck and brought them both back to Devyn’s house. It wasn’t until they were inside, with the doors and windows bolted tight, that Gregor explained why it was him with Devyn when it was Rex he wanted to see. Because the asshole beta who’d left him to die all those years ago, had turned up at Rex’s and Tony’s bar with a message for Rex from his father.
“Your alpha has enough on his plate. He’s going to be worried enough about you as it is. You’ll distract him.”
“A mate’s place is by his partner’s side. You told me that,” Devyn shot back, stung at the implied insult. “Aren’t you worried about your mate?”
“This wasn’t easy for me.” As per usual, Gregor’s tone gave nothing away. “But when it came down to it, I wasn’t going to make Tony choose between me and his brother, so I told him I was needed here and that was that.”
“You’re going to be in the dog box with him when you get back.” Devyn changed tact. “We should both be there, you know, in case….”
“Trust your alpha.” Talking to Gregor was like talking to a brick wall sometimes.
“I do, it’s just…. We’ve barely been mated a week.” Everything had been going so well, at least in Devyn’s opinion. They didn’t have a chance to talk much at home. Rex seemed to enjoy teaching him the ins and outs of sex when they weren’t at a place of business. In the shop, Rex charmed the customers while Devyn worked his magic in the workshop. At the bar, Rex was often busy helping Tony, working in the office, or chatting to his customers. They might not have the romance of the century, not yet at least, but Devyn consoled himself that they had time – a lot of time together.
Or they did, until some schmuck called Bovis threatened their peaceful existence. Usually one for avoiding conflict of all kinds, every part of Devyn, wolf and man, wanted to find his mate and make sure he was all right.
“You haven’t walked on your hands for a while.”
Devyn shook his head and tapped his ear. “Say again? I’m sure you didn’t say what I thought you said.”
“I was talking to Tony the other night and he commented on how he’d never seen you out of your chair.”
“I’m sure you mentioned I don’t have any feet.” Devyn looked across at the kitchen, the door was so near and yet so far. Fuck, what if Rex has to fight him. Any of the stories he’d read in Gregor’s library went on about the viciousness of alpha’s fighting to the death, but this Bovis wasn’t an alpha. He was a beta, born to fight and protect his pack. That’s what confused Devyn most of all. Why would Bovis be a threat to Rex if they were from the same pack?
I was born in that pack too. Yeah, that didn’t help. A shiver of foreboding shimmied its way down Devyn’s spine.
“Boy, are you even listening to me?”
Devyn closed his eyes and counted to ten before he opened them. “No, no I’m not. I’m worried about my mate. I’m worried about yours. And you’re standing there like a tank in front of my door spouting off shit about the last time I walked on my hands. If you recall, the last time I did that I was eight years old. That kid at the park you took me to, dared me to do it, so I did. I was bloody good at it too. You got pissed off. ‘I won’t have you acting out like a circus-trained monkey for other’s amusement,’ you said as you hauled me over your shoulder and took me home.”
“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?” Gregor chuckled. “I can’t believe you haven’t done it since though. I must have really made an impression on you back then.”
Fuck. “You’ve always made an impression on me,” Devyn said, his heart aching. “You’ve been the best damn father a boy could have. And I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to distract me, but you know as well as I do, a mate’s place is with his partner – good times and bad. I can’t believe your bear doesn’t want to come out and kill that Bovis shit for going anywhere near your mate.”
“That’s one of the reasons I’m here,” Gregor said gruffly. “Damn bear wanted out as soon as I smelled that shit face walk into the bar. But Tony had customers.”
“Don’t you want to be with him, protect him?” Devyn knew he was being unfair, but his logic was sound, at least in his head. If Gregor wouldn’t let him stay alone, but he really needed to be with his mate, then Devyn could hopefully tag along and make sure his own mate was in one piece.
Gregor held up a finger as his phone howled. “Tony,” he said shortly, as he scanned the screen. “They need shovels. Guess that means your alpha did what he had to do after all.”
“Rex killed Bovis?” Devyn’s heart raced faster, and his lungs started working overtime. He might have thrown the word kill into the conversation a few times, and he knew Rex was alpha born and killing anyone was probably not a big deal. But now, faced with the reality – Rex killed a living breathing person – Devyn wasn’t so sure he could handle it.
“Devyn. Devyn!” Gregor was crouched in front of him, waving his hand in front of his face. “Are you okay? It’s like you blanked out there for a minute.”
“Yeah.” Devyn swallowed. “Yes. I’m fine. Is Rex….?” Damn, he couldn’t even bring himself to ask.
“Tony just said to grab some shovels. It means Bovis is dead, because you’d better believe if anything happened to Rex, Tony wouldn’t be texting me. He’d go down fighting the bastard too.”
“How can you… How come….” Devyn waved his hand. “Fuck. Forget it. You’ll want to get back to Tony.”
“But don’t you want to come and make sure Rex is all right for yourself?” Gregor sounded confused. He wasn’t the only one. Devyn wasn’t sure where his thinking had changed, but the word “kill” might have had something to do with it.
“I’ll wait here,” he said, as brightly as he could. “I imagine body disposal has to be done in the woods somewhere, and I can hardly come with you for that. I’ll get some food cooking, tend the home fires, you know how it is. You get back to Tony and make sure he’s all right.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“The big bad Bovis is dead – I’ve got nothing to worry about.” But as Gregor hurried out of the house, leaving Devyn alone with his thoughts, Devyn was starting to think he had an awful lot to worry about. Like, what the hell was Rex’s father going to do when he found
out his beta was dead, and it was his son who killed him? And how was Devyn going to face his mate with a smile when he knew Rex had blood on his hands?
Chapter Seventeen
“I still don’t see why Devyn couldn’t have come with you.” Rex drove the shovel into the soft earth, more pissed off than he probably had a right to be. Gregor’s help was appreciated – actually, and Rex would never admit this to a living soul, seeing the unflappable bear take over the situation from the moment he arrived, including soothing Tony and waving the bleach about to get the blood stains off Rex’s wooden floors, was a blessing.
But there was no sign of Devyn. Somehow, in Rex’s mind, his omega should have been with him. Maybe it was something triggered by the stories his mom used to tell him as a small child of victorious alphas and grateful pack members, but in Rex’s head, Devyn should’ve flown from Gregor’s car, into his arms, kissing him madly and praising his alpha skills and abilities to keep them all safe. Rex would have been stoic, staunch, never letting on how much Devyn’s caresses meant to him, but lapping them up all the same.
It didn’t happen. Instead, Rex, Tony, and Gregor were two hours drive from home, in a bloody forest getting rid of a piece of shit who should never have left his home pack, which was about another thirty minutes’ drive from where they were digging now. Gregor’s logic made sense. It was better to bury Bovis’s body close to his home pack territory, in the hopes that if he was found, his pack would believe he’d never made it to Rex’s territory.
For all intents and purposes, Bovis had had an unfortunate run in with a bear. Gregor even added his scent and a few gauge marks of his own, so Bovis would appear, at first glance to have tangled with an animal bigger than him. Bovis’s lack of car and nothing but a small pack for his clothes, led the men to believe Bovis had run to Rex’s on four feet, which made sense. Rex’s home pack had no time for ‘newfangled machines’ like cars.
With any luck, nature would take care of Bovis’s body before anyone missed him. Rex had been keen on just dumping the man’s body – his point being that if a bear killed the beta, he wouldn’t stick around and bury him. But when Gregor explained things like scent’s traveling in the wind, blah, blah, blah, Rex picked up a shovel and shut up.
But he was still pissed at Devyn’s absence and the deeper he dug, the more pissed off Rex got. “You know, you were a pretty shit dad,” he said, jealous that Tony and Gregor got to fondle each other between bouts of digging. “If you’d arranged for Devyn to have prosthetics when he was a boy, he could be with us now, rubbing my aching muscles and making me feel better about this shit. Standing beside me the way a good mate should be.”
“Watch what you’re saying, alpha.”
Gregor’s rumbling tone did nothing to quell Rex’s anger. “You always think you know what’s best, just because you’re older and bigger than us. But you didn’t think about Devyn, did you? Instead of giving him the power to walk unaided, you kept him confined to a chair, so he’d always be dependent on your sorry ass. You didn’t care… Oomph.” Rex went flying back, his spine hitting the dirt, Gregor snarling in his face.
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, you bastard.” Gregor’s breath wafted over Rex’s face. “I spent ten fucking years trying to find a shifter doctor so Devyn could walk. You think we could just saunter into any hospital and demand they give Devyn feet?”
“Why not?” I will not be intimidated. “It’s not as though they have to take blood or any such shit to give him a pair of feet. He looks human enough.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Gregor’s hand engulfed Rex’s throat and Rex swallowed instinctively.
“G, please, don’t hurt him,” Tony implored, hovering at the edge of Rex’s vision. “Rex didn’t know, he’s just frustrated. It can’t be easy having a mate who can’t do the things other wolves can do.”
“Shit, do you think that too, Tony? I thought I explained all this. I thought you of all people understood.” The pressure on Rex’s chest and legs disappeared as Gregor scrambled off him, his fists clenched as he glared at the pair of wolves. “Did you ever stop and think what it did to my heart, when Devyn came to me at twelve with a pair of feet he’d carved himself, asking me how he could attach them to his legs because he wanted to be like all the other boys? Do you have any idea what that did to me, or to him when I had to tell him I couldn’t do it? I tried, okay. I searched everywhere to try and find a way for him to walk, but there’s one thing the pair of you forgot when you were busy making assumptions about me and my care for that boy. His right fucking knee isn’t straight. In fact, none of the bones in his right leg are straight at all.”
“Yeah, so?” Rex pushed himself up, so he was sitting. He didn’t think it’d be a good idea to stand just yet. Gregor’s whole body was bristling with anger and Tony looked as though he wanted to cry, torn between his mate and his brother.
“You’re a fucking moron,” Gregor spat. “Devyn was born with a deformed knee, hip and leg bones; his right leg will never support his weight, because his bones don’t line up. A very charming and oh so helpful fucking specialist explained to both of us when Devyn was fifteen, that without surgery on his leg, to correct that problem, there was no point in Devyn having prosthetics. You can’t walk on just one good leg.”
“Surgeries involve blood tests. His accelerated healing would be obvious in a human hospital,” Rex whispered as he realized how stupid and selfish he’d been. Unfortunately, Gregor wasn’t privy to his realization.
“I fucking tried, and when we found out Devyn would never walk unless the unthinkable happened and the paranormal world was accepted fully by humans, or I could find a shifter hospital and do you know what a fucking laugh that is, I did the best I could. Instead of whinging and whining because of the things that omega can’t do, I spent my time praising him and building up his confidence in the things he could. Not like you two. Fuck, I thought you were different.”
Gregor’s face mirrored his disgust, something Rex felt down to the pit of his soul. “There is nothing wrong with Devyn the way he is. He might not walk, but he’s got the heart of a lion, and a pure soul. He’s clever, talented, and he cares about people. Even the shits like you who think that he needs to be fixed in some way. For fuck’s sake, what is there to fix? So, he has a few twisted bones. He gets around in a chair. He still made a career for himself, and has done a damn sight more with his life than you two have. He doesn’t need fixing, he should be accepted and loved exactly the way he is.”
“G, please…,” Tony cried as Rex was stunned by Gregor’s anger. Is that what I’ve secretly wanted to do? Fix something that’s unfixable?
“You’re just the same as this slab of meat I kindly offered to help bury for you. I should’ve saved my breath and my time.” Kicking the lump of tarp covering Bovis’s body, Gregor walked away, his fists still clenched.
“G, babe, where are you going?” Tony dithered, clearly wanting to go after his mate but his beta genetics wouldn’t let him leave Rex alone.
“Fuck off and leave me alone,” Gregor roared, still walking back towards the truck. “I should have my head examined for wanting to get mixed up with a pair of wolves like you two. You’re no better than fucking Bovis.”
“Fuck, Rex, he’s real mad. What am I going to do?” Tony looked at the retreating figure, and then back at Rex who was still trying to work out when exactly the day had gone to hell. When I left my precious omega, he realized, scrambling to his feet.
“There’s nothing we can do about it now. The hole’s half dug, and we’ve got to get this thug buried.”
“But my mate’s leaving without us,” Tony whined.
“I can’t blame him.” Rex was pretty disgusted with himself. He wasn’t sure when he’d become a self-entitled asshole, but he didn’t like that aspect of himself. “I’m guessing this isn’t the first argument you two have had about Devyn?” Picking up the shovel that had gone flying when Gregor attacked him, Rex focus
ed on the hole and making it bigger.
A few minutes later, he felt his brother working beside him. “All Gregor’s memories seem to involve Devyn in some way,” Tony said quietly as the two men dug. “It’s like, he’s a hundred and fifty years old or some shit, but he didn’t seem to have a life before he found Devyn as a baby.”
“Maybe, he didn’t.” Rex let his muscles warm up to the rhythm of his digging motions, his mind still focused on Gregor’s words. “Bears are solitary creatures, and he was hanging around our pack territory when Devyn was born. It’s not as though there were a lot of amenities or night life out there.”
“You’d think he’d have something to talk to me about apart from Devyn.”
Rex wasn’t sure he liked his brother’s tone, and that was saying something because Tony was one of the most laid back guys he knew. “Please tell me you’re not jealous of your mate’s father/son relationship with my mate.”
“Well, just how fatherly was it?” Tony yelled. “Devyn’s a good looking guy, even without his feet. G talks about all the things he used to do for him. I mean, don’t you think it’s weird someone of G’s age, still dressing and bathing a twenty six year old omega? Aren’t you even a little bit jealous?”
“What the fuck have you been smoking?” Rex leaned on his shovel, staring at his brother in shock. “Honestly, tell me. Where the hell do you come up with this stuff?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? The guy’s a cripple.” Tony mumbled, his face bright red. “I mean, it might be fun if you have to do those things for him, seeing as he’s your mate, but you can’t tell me….”
“What things?” Maybe Gregor was right, and we are both a few sandwiches short of a picnic. “Bro, Devyn is quite capable of bathing himself, dressing himself, cooking for himself, and wiping his own ass. If I go to the bathroom with him when we’re at the bar, it’s because I’m hoping I can get my mate to suck my dick while we’re in there, because he’s getting fucking good at it. If I take a shower with him, it’s because my mate has sexy smooth skin that I love to rub my bare skin up against when it’s wet. Devyn was living independently from Gregor, on his own for over a year, before I came along. You should know that already.”
