Sharpened Claws: A Gay Werewolf Romance

by Peyton Bogue

  “Well, how am I supposed to know that, Rhys? You didn’t even tell me,” Sage replies, trying and failing to hide the slight anger that bubbles up inside of him.

  “You think I didn’t want to tell you? You think I haven’t been driving myself out of my mind so completely that I couldn’t even sleep because I was too busy wondering if I should just tell you, or wait—or maybe convince myself that it would be enough for me to take whatever pieces that you offered me and be happy with it? Or that maybe I should stop being so goddamn selfish with you and just let you go so that I don’t continue to put you in danger—”

  “Don't change the subject, Rhys," Sage cuts him off. “I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to hear you explain how you assumed that you couldn't tell me this, that you wanted to keep something this important from me—”

  “Sage—” Rhys tries, desperate.

  “You decided not to tell me about our bond while Kai knew, Rhys. While you both decided what you thought was best for me without even asking me—”

  “Sage, I didn’t want to take your choice away.”

  “You already did that when you decided not to tell me about our bond, Rhys,” Sage says, his anger rising. “We’ve had talks like these before. We’ve talked about marriage and stuff like that before. How is what you’re talking about any different than that?”

  “I’m not talking about marriage, Sage. It’s a bond. It can’t be broken. Marriage can end. If we did this, if we completed our bond, you and I would be tied together completely forever.”

  “I understand that, Rhys,” Sage says, frowning again.

  “No, you don’t, Sage,” Rhys says, his voice agonized. “A mating bond is permanent. It literally cannot be undone. What if you decide that you don’t want to be with me in five years? In ten years? Did you miss the part where I said forever?”

  “Rhys, I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” Sage says, frustrated. “You already know that. You’ve made up your mind, without even consulting me, that you’re not going to be what I want for the rest of my life. I know what forever means, Rhys. Don’t make decisions for me. I know what I want.”

  “Sage. . .” Rhys says, shaking his head. “I’m not trying to make decisions for you, baby.”

  The pain and sorrow in his eyes are so heavy that the weight of it threatened to crush Sage. Rhys’s face is full of agony as he takes a deep breath.

  “I want you to know that you have a choice. Our connection doesn’t affect you in the ways that it affects me. If we did this, I would tie myself to you forever. You are my mate, Sage. I will never be able to care for anyone like the way that I care about you. I will never want anyone else the way that I want you. I will never be able to love anyone the way that I love you. You are it for me. The love of my life. It’s not the same way for you because you’re human. You could be with someone else. You could love someone else. I can’t. . .I can’t complete our bond and trap you into this, into something that you never even wanted. That’s not fair to you at all. I won’t take that choice from you. You have a choice, Sage, but I don’t.”

  “Yes, Rhys, it’s my choice. Please don’t make it for me. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I know what I want, Rhys, and what I want is you. For the rest of my life. For the rest of our lives. I’m in love with you. I will never want anyone but you. You’re right,” he says, his breaths beginning to come faster. “A mating bond isn’t something that I’ve ever wanted.” Rhys flinches slightly at his words, but Sage continues, “But I didn’t even know that it was something that I could want. And I do, Rhys.”

  “Sage—” Rhys starts, pained, but Sage cuts him off.

  “I choose you, Rhys. And I'll keep choosing you over and over again. Without pause. Without doubt. In a heartbeat. I will never stop choosing you. How could you think that I wouldn't choose you, regardless of our bond, of everything? I have always felt more for you than I have for anyone else. Love doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel about you. The connection we have is so. . .” he trails off, shaking his head. “I don’t even know how I could put into words how deep I know it is. You—” Sage takes a breath, feeling lightheaded again. “You consume me, Rhys. Your touch, your kiss—everything about you just completely makes me fall apart. I want forever with you, but forever isn’t even enough. No amount of time would ever be enough for me to spend with you, because I want endless time—to make you happy, to make you laugh, to see you smile. I will love you until the day I die, Rhys. For as long as my heart beats in my chest, it’s yours. You have me, all of me, completely. How could you ever think that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with you? Or that I could live a single day without you?”

  Rhys stares at him, his eyes bright as they begin to water. He looks so. . .vulnerable. Sage could see it, then. He could see how Rhys had convinced himself that their mating bond would never be something that Sage would want. How Rhys had resigned himself to ignore how he’d felt, to avoid telling Sage because he was so afraid of losing him.

  How Rhys hadn't let himself hope.

  The hope in his expression is staggering. Rhys’s eyes are full of longing, an anxiousness and yearning that Sage can feel deep in his bones. Rhys hadn’t expected to be allowed to want, and now that Sage is letting him. . .

  Sage doesn’t think before he moves. He lifts himself up, feeling that wave of lightheadedness wash over him again, and, aware of every movement, of every breath, he slowly climbs into Rhys’s lap. His movements are slow and a bit clumsy, but Rhys’s hands automatically move to grasp his hips, so gentle and loving, to brace him as Sage straddles his waist. Sage brings his good hand up to gently caress Rhys’s cheekbone and looks into his eyes.

  “I love you, Rhys. Every piece of my heart is yours. Forever. There will never be anyone that I love more than you.”

  Rhys’s arms wrap around him tightly as he leans to press his forehead against Sage’s, his body shaking. Sage removes his hand from Rhys’s face to run his fingers through Rhys’s hair, entwining his fingers through Rhys’s dark locks.

  “I love you so much,” Rhys whispers against his lips, and Sage watches as a tear escapes his eye. Rhys sniffles, clearing his throat. “How could I ever convince myself that I could live without you?”

  Sage inhales deeply, overwhelmed. “You can’t get rid of me, Ree. Now you’re really stuck with me.”

  Rhys chuckles, a wet sound deep in his throat. His entire body shudders on what might have been a sob before his lips find Sage’s, and Sage’s heart beats rapidly against his ribcage as Rhys’s hands grip his waist.

  Rhys’s lips are soft, gentle. So soothing and grounding, so tender as Sage opens his mouth, letting Rhys’s tongue slip in, caressing his own. Sage can feel the heat behind their kiss, as if the air around them has become stiflingly hot, charged from where they’re pressed against each other tightly.

  Rhys pulls back slowly, his breath hot against Sage’s lips as he works to rein himself back in. Sage looks up at him, at Rhys’s gleaming face, and gently moves his good hand out of Rhys’s hair to wipe his tears away.

  “This is still your choice, Sage,” Rhys says quietly, his voice still rough. “If you decide that you don’t want this, we don’t have to do anything. We could spend the rest of our lives together without completing our bond at all, and that would be completely fine with me.”

  “Is it—” Sage cuts himself off, needing to take a deep breath again to clear his head. “Is this something you can control?”

  “What do you mean?” Rhys asks softly, rubbing soft circles into Sage’s hips.

  Sage tries not to blush. “You said that you don’t really have a choice in this,” he says, flushing in embarrassment despite himself. “You’re not being forced to be with me, are you?”

  “No, baby,” Rhys says, immediately understanding what Sage is trying to ask. “It’s not like that at all. I’m not really sure how everything works exactly,” he admits, “but you and I could both be with other
people if we chose to.” He winces slightly. “It just wouldn’t. . .it wouldn’t feel right, at least not to me. I would never be able to feel complete. It would always feel like half of me is missing. But you—you could probably be with someone else and be completely fine. I’m not really sure how it works for humans.”

  “So, you didn’t choose me to be your mate?” Sage asks confusedly.

  “It’s more like my wolf did,” Rhys says hesitantly. “At some point in our relationship, probably around the same time that I realized that I was in love with you, my wolf decided that you were the one person it could completely give itself over to. You’re the only person in the world that my wolf trusts and loves entirely. And that extends to me, too. A mating connection is all based upon love. Our bond only started to form like that once I fell in love with you.”

  “Is a mating bond something that happens for all werewolves? I mean. . .does every werewolf eventually find their mate?”

  Rhys shakes his head. “No. It typically involves realizing that you love that one person more than you will ever love anyone else. It’s a really big deal when a connection like that forms between werewolves. Not all werewolves are ever able to experience it. It’s not easy for a wolf to love someone, or to trust someone, that extensively or that deeply. A mating bond between a werewolf and a human is also incredibly rare, and even more so for a bond like ours.”

  “Why is ours rare?” Sage asks.

  “It’s. . .a really powerful connection. And ours is even stronger because I’m an Alpha. It’s not unheard of for an Alpha’s mate to be a human, it just. . .doesn’t happen very often,” Rhys finishes.

  “So, you won’t ever feel this way about anyone else?”

  “No,” Rhys says. “Only you. If you decided you didn’t want to be with me, I don’t think I would ever even consider starting another relationship. I don’t know if I could.”

  “Why?”

  “You would be out there with someone else,” Rhys says, his face twisting up as he tenses. “I don’t think I would ever be able to stop thinking about you, about someone who isn't me touching you, or kissing you—” he cuts himself off with a low growl. “To know that someone else gets to have you like that, to know that someone else gets to make you laugh, gets to make you smile. . .it would kill me. I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else, much less about starting a relationship with anyone who wasn’t you, who wasn’t my mate. I don’t think I could ever love anyone else now that I know what it’s like to love and be loved by you.”

  Rhys shifts, taking a deep breath.

  “The thought of you being with anyone else completely tears me up inside,” he admits, inhaling sharply. “I don’t like thinking about it because it makes me so crazy. But if that’s what you wanted. . .if being with someone else was going to make you happy, I’d let you go. I wouldn’t stand in your way. The only thing I want more in this world than you is for you to be happy.”

  “No one else makes me as happy as you do, Ree,” Sage says, leaning forward and pressing another kiss to Rhys’s lips. “I don’t like thinking about you with someone else, either. I was just asking because I want to make sure that this is something that you want, too.”

  “It is,” Rhys replies. “It’s all I’ve been thinking about, sweetheart. I’ve wanted to tell you so bad. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you until now. You’re still healing and everything and I just. . .didn’t want to distract you from getting better, baby. I was terrified that you would run away from me. The only reason I told Kai was because it was killing me to keep everything bottled up like that. I had to tell someone, but I was terrified to tell you.”

  Sage nods, leaning forward and catching Rhys’s lips with his own again. He doesn’t need for Rhys to keep apologizing. He gets it.

  “God, you can be so thick sometimes, you know that?” Sage asks him when he pulls back, and Rhys chuckles weakly. “You and Kai are the only two people I would never run away from. I’m so gone on you, you jerk. I can’t believe you thought that I would ever run away from you.”

  Rhys chuckles again, his cheeks flushing in embarrassment.

  “Why did you think that I would run away?” Sage asks him quietly, letting Rhys gently pull him closer so that Sage isn’t putting any weight on his bad arm.

  Rhys sighs softly, his lips curling into a frown. “I didn’t know how you would react to it. Finding out that we’re mates is. . .I don’t know what it’s like from your perspective. It’s so normal to me. But to someone who doesn’t know anything about it. . .” he trails off, furrowing his eyebrows. “It’s not got to be easy to understand. And I’m not. . .very good at explaining things. I thought you might feel like I was forcing you into it. I was afraid you’d feel trapped. And I guess. . .maybe a small part of me was afraid that you might have thought that I wasn’t worth all of this. That our bond wasn’t worth all of the pain that I’ve caused you.”

  “Rhys,” Sage says, shaking his head, “you haven’t caused me any pain, baby. If anything, all of this kind of makes a lot of sense to me, even if I still don’t completely understand it, yet. I’ve never felt this way before. You make me feel things I didn’t know that I could feel. I think a part of me has always known that my love for you was deeper than anything I’d ever felt before. Our bond. . .our mating bond,” he pauses, his cheeks coloring slightly. “I think I could always feel it, like it was a tether that bound me to you and you only. I never knew what that feeling meant before, or why I was feeling it. But our bond is worth it, Rhys.” He leans his head forward, pressing their foreheads together. “I would go through everything—the accident, Steele, all of that pain, everything—if it meant that it brought me back to you again. You’re worth it.”

  Rhys surges forward and brings their lips back together again, and Sage feels his blood sing in his veins at the feel of Rhys against him. He arches into the kiss wantonly, his pulse thrumming loudly in his ears.

  They kiss for a moment, but Rhys doesn’t move to deepen it. His lips are light on Sage’s, cautious, even as Sage presses into him. Rhys pulls back after a moment, his breathing heavy once more.

  Sage looks away for a second, tearing his eyes away from Rhys’s cherry red mouth. He has to take another steadying breath before he can look back again.

  “How does this work?” Sage asks as Rhys gazes into his eyes and runs his hands over Sage’s thighs in a motion that Sage thinks is supposed to be reassuring. It doesn’t really do much besides make his skin feel flushed at the contact.

  “How does what work?” Rhys asks.

  “This,” Sage replies, motioning between them with his head. “Us. Our,” he clears his throat, trying not to blush. “Our bond. Do you have to turn me for it to. . .take?”

  “No,” Rhys says immediately, shaking his head.

  “I don’t know what the rules are to this, Ree. You’re going to have to explain all of it to me.”

  “There aren’t really rules to it, baby,” Rhys says slowly, and Sage feels his cheeks flush in embarrassment.

  “Don’t make fun of me,” Sage says, feeling a little mortified.

  “I’m not,” Rhys says soothingly, shaking his head. He runs both of his hands over Sage’s thighs soothingly. “I promise. I’m sorry. I guess I just don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean,” Sage says, swallowing around his embarrassment. “What do we do now? How do we. . .proceed? Do we need to like—get married or something?”

  Rhys shakes his head. “No. It’s. . .if you’re sure you want to do this. . .” he trails off, and when Sage nods, he continues, “we have to complete our bond.”

  Oh, Sage thinks. Rhys has to bite him.

  “We don’t need to get married or anything. That’s—we don’t need to do that,” Rhys continues.

  Sage feels himself frown slightly. “Do werewolves not. . .get married?” he asks slowly. He doesn’t really want to acknowledge how his stomach twists up at that thought.

  Rhys is quiet for a second, thinking,
before he shakes his head again. “Werewolves mostly marry. But if they do find their mate. . .it’s different. Some werewolves wed without the mating bond, but if a werewolf finds their mate, and if that bond develops between them, the bond is so deep and binding that marriage just mostly seems. . .” he trails off, searching for the words. “Insignificant—I guess—in comparison.”

  Insignificant, Sage thinks. He never thought that marriage could be insignificant.

  “Okay,” Sage says tentatively, swallowing. “So, completing our bond. . .”

  Rhys gives him an encouraging nod, lightly running his hands down over Sage’s thighs soothingly.

  “Are you going to bite me?” Sage asks him quietly, feeling a little nervous at the thought even as he blushes.

  Sage doesn’t expect the noise that Rhys makes deep in his throat. Not quite a growl, almost involuntary, but something heavy and wanton, as if just the thought of biting Sage is enough to make his blood heat. His hands tighten on Sage’s thighs, and when Sage glances into his eyes, a little shocked, he sees that Rhys’s pupils are dilated.

  “Not—” Rhys breathes out, his voice heavy. “Not yet,” he says slowly, almost to himself, as if he’s trying to convince himself as much as he’s trying to convince Sage.

  “Why?” Sage asks, swallowing again.

  “Um. . .” Rhys says slightly unintelligibly, shaking his head. He takes a deep breath, sounding a little unsteady. “In order for me to. . .do that,” he continues, flushing, “we need to be. . .intimate.”

  “Oh,” Sage breathes out, heat flaring across his neck. He feels his stomach coil.

  “You’re still hurt,” Rhys says, again quietly, as if he’s trying to convince himself. “I don’t want to injure you further. I’m still not really in control of myself, Sage.”

  “And you won’t be until you bite me?” Sage finishes for him. Rhys shuts his eyes tightly, his cheeks darkening. He nods as he opens his eyes again.

  “That’s part of it,” he admits. “But it’s. . .very hard for me to concentrate when we’re together like that. I—I can’t think straight. You’re too much of a distraction for me. Mating like that, when I’m going to. . .bite you. . .can sometimes be. . .vigorous,” he averts his eyes slightly, his face a bright scarlet. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to control myself. I could accidentally crush you if I’m not careful enough, baby. You’re already hurt, Sage. I don’t want to injure you further.”