Varian sighed and wrapped his arms around Zio, caging him in an embrace that should’ve grounded Zio even if it couldn’t soothe the terminal restlessness he’d been reborn with, but as Zio hid his face in his alpha’s chest, he felt nothing but a scraping desire to run.
He pushed back from Varian. “Sorry.”
Varian gazed at him, unblinking. “What for?”
“Dunno.”
“Then don’t be sorry, Zio. That’s not something I’ve ever asked of you, is it? To show contrition for simply being yourself?”
Zio shook his head, hating that Varian’s earnest care grated on him so much. “I don’t know what I’m sorry for, okay? I’m just really fucking tired.”
“If I let you go, will you go home and rest? Or will I wake in the night to you howling at the moon?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. For shifters, our wolf instinct is what makes us who we are, but we are still men. Sometimes we must leave the call of the beast and take care of ourselves as humans.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to. Just promise me you’ll go home, or to Danielo, or Bomber. I know you have found comfort with your brothers before.”
Zio fought the urge to roll his eyes. If Varian thought getting buzzed and hooking up with his friends would quench the fire roaring through him, there was a missing link in the mystical chain that bonded a wolf to his alpha. A short circuit. A fault. It’s you, dickhead. Isn’t it always?
“I’ll take him home.”
The new voice in the room startled Zio, but Devan’s sudden presence seemed as if it had always been there. He glanced over Varian’s shoulder. Devan was leaning in the doorway, his gaze—as it had been ever since they’d returned from the Leicester mission—trained anywhere but at Zio.
“I assumed you’d be going that way at some point.” Varian’s tone was dry. “But I’m sure Zio can manage the walk alone if you have other plans.”
“I don’t.”
The flatness lacing Devan’s words made Zio’s teeth itch. How could someone so vibrant be the grey man? This shit is so fucked up. But Zio knew a defeat when he sensed one. Varian wasn’t going to let him leave without a genuine promise to do as he’d been told, and Zio couldn’t give him one without Devan to distract him from the urge to run riot in the forest all night. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
They walked home in silence, Devan in front, Zio trailing after him like a sullen teenager.
Devan opened the door and stood back to let Zio pass.
Zio scowled. “You don’t have to act like my fucking chaperone. I’m not a child.”
Devan didn’t blink. “Then don’t act like one.”
Ouch. Zio stepped into the house and moved automatically towards his room, his bed, unslept in for so long, a siren’s call, but every pace away from Devan added lead to his already heavy legs. Fuck’s sake. Zio knocked his fist on his head again and turned to find Devan behind him. “What—”
Devan shook his head and closed his fingers around Zio’s aching wrist. The pain disappeared, gone in a whisper. “Now you can rest . . . brother.”
He released Zio and disappeared into the kitchen.
Zio followed him, naturally. “I’m not your brother.”
“Suit yourself.” Devan opened the fridge and pulled out a pizza, some green shit Zio hadn’t known was in there, and two bottles of beer. “But whatever you think I am, my place in your pack is to heal your pain.”
“I don’t have any pain. I didn’t have any before you put your weirdo hands on me.”
“You didn’t have a problem with my weirdo hands when we were foraging.”
With all that had happened since, their forest encounter seemed like a lifetime ago. “That wasn’t your hands, and I didn’t ask for that either.”
“Do you think I’m forcing myself on you, Zio?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying? That I should take care of everyone else and not you? Or that I should’ve left Bomber to be scooped up by the humans to save him from the violation of me healing him?”
“What? No.”
Devan sighed and switched on the oven. It buzzed and whirred, a clear sign as if Zio needed one that Emma had been the last to use it. “Look, I get that this is difficult for you, even without . . . this.” He gestured between them, then began the task of relocating every mushroom on the pizza to one side. Zio’s side, he presumed. “But however much I want to, I can’t make any of it go away.”
Dread churned coldly in Zio’s stomach. “Make what go away?”
“Any of it,” Devan snapped. “Gods, how dense are you?”
Zio didn’t have an answer that wasn’t a sickening rumble from his empty stomach.
Devan shook his head and showed Zio his back. “Go and rest. I’ll bring you some food when it’s ready.”
His tone was final. Zio wore belligerence like a second skin, but something—everything—about Devan’s stance warned him to back off.
He retreated to his room, leaving the door open enough that Devan would know to come in if he wanted to, but not enough that Zio would see him if he walked past.
Zio stripped his clothes and crawled into bed. The sheets smelt faintly of Emma—as she’d likely washed them last—but for once, it didn’t hurt to smell her. In a world which had become all about scents and urges he didn’t understand, her distant familiarity was an embrace he needed more than Varian’s.
There was a TV in Zio’s room. He switched it on for company and lay down. Sleep hovered at the edge of his consciousness, taunting him with sweet oblivion, but as he listened to Devan move around the kitchen, closing his eyes felt like sacrilege.
So he didn’t. He lay awake with scratchy eyes and a restless mind until Devan appeared with a plate of food and a bottle of beer.
Devan handed Zio the food without comment and turned to leave.
Zio’s healed arm shot out to stop him. “Wait.”
“What for?”
“I don’t want to eat alone. Come sit with me.”
“In your bed?”
“On my bed. Please?”
Devan sighed and walked away without answering. Zio held his breath. His shifter hearing was sharp, but Devan seemed to have feet that made no sound, so he couldn’t tell if Devan would return until he reappeared a few moments later, clutching a plate and second beer bottle. “This is a bad idea.”
Zio scooted over to make room. “Why?”
“Because I’m trying to stay away from you.”
“How does marching me home from Varian’s help with that?”
“I didn’t say I was doing a good job of it.”
Zio took a bite of his pizza and watched Devan do the same. “When did you last eat?”
“What do you care?”
It was on the tip of Zio’s tongue to claim that he didn’t, but it simply wasn’t true. Devan had been in his life for a matter of days, but the imprint he’d left on Zio was bat-shit insane. He did care about Devan, even if he didn’t have the first clue why.
He’s pack, remember?
But . . . no. It was more than that. It had to be.
Pizza disappeared. Beer too. And a comfortable, and yet somehow awkward, silence settled over them. Sleep once again threatened Zio’s consciousness, but as he slid down the bed, his nakedness in such close proximity to Devan made his skin jump.
Devan closed his eyes and banged his head on the bed frame. “Stop it.”
“What?”
“Whatever you’re thinking. I can smell it, and even if I couldn’t, I healed you, remember? I can feel what you’re feeling.”
“You don’t feel it yourself?”
“That’s beside the point.”
“It’s really not.”
Devan let out a quiet growl that came from deep within. Deep and low, it resonated through Zio’s every nerve, adding fuel to the fire he was finding harder and harder
to ignore.
“I didn’t like it when you were fighting,” Devan said. “Not just that you were in danger, but how you felt when you killed. You expect to enjoy it, but you don’t.”
“That’s what you’re telling me to stop?”
“No, I want you to stop throwing out waves that make me want to jump you so we can talk about something real.”
Real. Another kick to the gut. Was Devan seriously implying that the attraction between them wasn’t real? That it was a heady mix of booze, post-fight adrenaline, and shifter horniness? And if he was, why did Zio care?
I don’t care.
But again, it wasn’t true. “I don’t want to talk about fighting. It’s done for today, but there’ll be more tomorrow. Leave it alone.”
Devan set his plate on the bedside table, slid down the bed and onto his side so he was facing Zio. His hypnotic scent was stronger than ever. Zio swallowed thickly but held his ground, not blinking as Devan’s soft fingers grazed his cheek, his jaw, his bare shoulder. “I want to leave you alone. I wish I’d never met you.”
“That hurts.”
“I know. That’s why I wish it so.”
Zio didn’t understand and suspected he wouldn’t even if Devan explained it. He was a soldier, not a thinker or a student of the mind. He knew what he needed to know to survive, and surviving had become less important recently. Hidden away with Devan, nothing except his gentle touch seemed to matter, not even his ominous words. A contented rumble escaped Zio before he could catch it, and he gasped. Did that come from me? In all his supernatural existence, he’d never heard such a sound.
Devan chuckled. “How old are you, Zio?”
“You don’t already know? You seem to know everything else.”
“I read the cover of your file. It had vague circumstances of your change but not when you were born. I assumed your human backstory would be inside.”
“You didn’t look?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you didn’t want me to. I didn’t look at your unit at all, as it happens. I didn’t think it was fair when you were so openly hostile to me.”
“Fair to who?”
“You, obviously. Would you want someone you perceived as an enemy to know intimate details of your life?”
“There’s nothing intimate about my life. Danielo’s might make you blush, though.”
Devan laughed again. “I don’t doubt it. I can sense the . . . uh, connection he’s had with all of you, even Varian.”
It was Zio’s turn to chuckle. “Yeah, that’s Danielo. I’m pretty sure he’s in love with Michael, but he’s pretty free with, um, well, you know, the rest of it. He says love and sex aren’t always connected.”
“Interesting.”
“Is it?”
Devan shrugged. “He’s right, obviously. But if he’s in love with Michael, I think he’ll know that having sex with him is very different to experiences he’s shared with the rest of you.”
“He’s never had sex with Michael. Everyone else, but never Michael, and don’t fucking say that’s interesting too. You’re not here to dissect us or to pretend that your Shadow Clan lot don’t get up to some freaky shit.”
“Tell you what.” Devan’s ghosting fingers stilled, and he cupped Zio’s face with his warm palm. “I won’t speculate on Danielo’s sex life if you tell me how old you are.”
“In wolf terms or human?”
“Both.”
“It’s the same answer.”
Devan’s fair eyebrows ticked up. “Explain?”
“Varian found me at the scene of an accident my entire family had died in. I was badly hurt at the bottom of a ravine, no human medics or supernatural healers close enough to help, so he bit me to keep me alive.” Zio’s hand fluttered to the mark on his neck. He traced it with his thumb and shivered. “That was twenty-one years ago.”
“Wow.” Devan covered Zio’s hand with his own. “I knew you were young.”
“How?”
“The way you speak, the gaps in your knowledge old age would have filled. I didn’t know you’d been reborn of such tragedy, though. I’m sorry.”
Zio shrugged. “It’s okay. I was only a few days old—I don’t know what I lost. And Varian found good people to take care of me until I was old enough to fight.”
“You shouldn’t have to fight.”
“But I do . . . and I need it, you know? It keeps my head quiet.”
“Even if it’s the killing that made your head noisy in the first place?”
“Who says it was?”
“Not me. Just speculating. Sorry. It’s in my blood.”
Devan went back to stroking Zio’s face as though the conversation was done.
Zio leaned into his touch and pressed on. “Dash changed you, didn’t he?”
“Yes. I told you . . . I asked him to.”
“When you were eighteen?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was that?”
“What does it matter? Age isn’t important to shifters.”
“Then why did you ask me?”
A wry smile warmed Devan’s boyish face. “Because I’m terminally curious.”
“So am I.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am about you.”
“Okay . . .” Devan licked his lips, not seeming to notice or care that the tip of his tongue darting in and out quickened Zio’s pulse. “If you must know, it was thirty years ago, so technically, I’m forty-eight.”
“Technically. You look eighteen.”
“I feel it too when I shift. When I stop thinking.”
“I get that.”
“I know.”
“You know everything, eh?”
“Not at all.” Devan stretched his neck. “I have no idea how I’m going to leave your room without kissing you.”
Zio jerked his head up. “You want to kiss me?”
“Among other things.”
“What things?”
Devan rolled his eyes. “You’re worldly enough to know that without me explaining it to you.”
“I’m not. I’m young, remember?”
“Not so young you didn’t know how to jump on me in that club.”
“You jumped on me.”
“Did I?”
Zio bit his lip. The world—his world, at least—had flipped a dozen times since then. He remembered how Devan smelt, how his hands had felt, so strong and safe, but fuck if he could remember who had touched who first. “Whatever. My point is that you should probably be clear about what you’re saying. I have a habit of assuming things and losing my shit before letting people explain.”
“Shocker.”
“Fuck off.”
Devan snorted. “That might be for the best. It hasn’t worked out so well the last few times I’ve let this get out of hand.”
“You’ve let this?”
“You said it yourself, Zio. You’re young, remember?”
Zio couldn’t tell if Devan was joking, but the idea that Devan had any kind of control over the madness that had occurred between them heated his blood to boiling point.
In a fluid movement, he kicked the bed covers away and pounced, straddling Devan, hands around his neck. “You can’t control this. You can’t control me.”
Devan swallowed but otherwise appeared unfazed to find a naked Zio suddenly on top of him. “It’s not about controlling you. It’s about doing what’s best for your—for our—pack. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have time for complications right now.”
“Complications?”
“Yes.” Devan canted his hips just enough for his hard length to press against Zio. “Complications. You think Varian needs to be worrying about one of his elite soldiers getting down with the only healer in the world prepared to help his pack in a time of war?”
Every nerve in Zio’s body screamed at him to grind down on Devan’s cock. To rip his clothes away and burn the bed to ashes as their sim
mering inferno exploded around them.
But . . . Devan had a point. If Varian disapproved of them hooking up, he might feel the need to send Devan away, and despite every thought Zio had thrown up to the contrary, the pack needed Devan . . . even more than Zio did.
With a rough growl, he rolled off Devan. “Fuck this, I’m going out.”
Devan caught his arm. “Don’t. You need to rest.”
“You don’t know what I need.”
“I do.” Devan’s grip tightened, and he pulled Zio back on top of him. “And I’ve told you already that I want it too, but we can’t, Zio. We just . . . can’t.”
Pressed so tightly together, it was impossible to comprehend that Devan could have been right. Zio gave in to the primal urge to grind against Devan and moaned as pleasure ripped through him with a brand new fire. So good, so good, so good. He circled his hips again and again, found Devan’s hands, and squeezed, bending bones that would’ve broken if Devan had been human.
But Devan wasn’t human. He was a shifter with strength that matched Zio’s. Zio’s weight was his only advantage, and he took it, fighting Devan for dominance until he won. Until Devan gave in and let Zio manhandle him and tear at his clothes.
Devan’s T-shirt disappeared, his jeans and underwear gone in a swipe of Zio’s clawed hands. Bare to Zio, he glared up at him. “What do you want, huh? You want to fuck me and let the whole world know? Because they will. They’ll know it the moment we leave this house.”
Zio didn’t care. The desire to join himself to Devan in any way Devan would let him was making him dizzy. His chest heaved, his head spun, and coherent thought was long gone. “I want—”
Devan growled and moved too fast for Zio to catch him, rolling them, throwing Zio onto his back and pressing his forearm against Zio’s throat. “I know what you want. You can’t have it.”
“Why not?”
“I told you already. Because of the pack. The war. And a million other reasons.”
“Then why are you playing me?”
“I’m not—”
“You are. How else do you explain the last few days? Or have you been healing my fucked-up soul with pizza and blowjobs?”
Devan’s edible lips twitched. “You bought your own pizza last time.”
“Didn’t suck my own dick, though, did I?”
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