by Marcy Jacks
Craig looked away from him, but Edward could sense that his answer pleased his mate.
Edward reached his hand up and touched the other man’s face. His skin was soft, just as he remembered it felt.
Craig looked up at him as the back of Edward’s knuckles slid down his cheek.
“It’s incredibly stupid of me, and maybe it says something a lot meaner about my intelligence, but I believe you.”
“You should not think terrible things about yourself just for believing me. You’ve seen my wolf form. You know what I am. How could you not believe after something like that?”
“Even so, how do you explain the fact that I’m pregnant? You’re the first person I’ve ever slept with, and that wasn’t even an hour ago. What if I was always this wolf you talked about, and what if someone raped me and I didn’t even know about it?”
His mate’s face actually took on a shade of green, and while that might be Edward’s color, he knew that it was not meant to be on most other creatures.
“No, that can’t be,” Edward said. He couldn’t allow himself to believe that he’d failed again, that his mate had been hurt like that while Edward was once again no longer there to protect him.
“How would you know that?” Craig asked.
How indeed? Craig was always the one telling Edward about how he needed to think things through before he acted, so how would he solve this particular mystery?
The first clue was that Craig was alive, and there was no doubt in Edward’s mind that it was him, because aside from the fact that he’d mated with the man, Craig looked and felt exactly the same as he always had. The same red-brown hair, every freckle in its place. His name was even the same.
So, Edward’s mate had been brought back to have another chance at life, and he was mysteriously pregnant.
“How old are you?” Edward said.
“What? Why?”
“I need to know, it might be important.”
“Okay. I’m twenty-one,” he said.
Edward nodded. “That was the age you were when we discovered the pup. You were damn near ready to burst when winter came, now you are nowhere near that state, and judging by the weather, winter will arrive when you are about that size.”
“So what does that mean?” Craig asked.
Edward was almost too afraid to voice it. He was terrified of the possibility that he was wrong. “I believe the pup might be mine.”
“What?” Craig deadpanned.
Edward had to quickly reach for his mate’s hand and grab on tight when it looked as though the man was about to pull away from him. “I’m not saying that I came to you in the night when you were unaware, I’m saying that, perhaps everything is happening the way it’s supposed to. Perhaps you are not the only one who is coming back to me.”
Craig was breathing heavily, and his heart was thumping loudly again. “Aside from everything else you’ve told me, that’s all kinds of impossible.”
“Impossible, yet here we are,” Edward said. “Now that this idea is in my head, I cannot get it out. You were returned to me, and so is our pup. You are the same age you were when we discovered you were carrying, and the season is the same the last time you were this size.”
Craig was shaking his head, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing. Edward watched him closely. This had to be too much for the man to bear, his gentle mate that’d had to endure so much, in his last lifetime and now in this one.
“Love, I am sorry,” Edward said.
“Don’t be sorry,” Craig said, and his heart was still beating quickly, but at least he was looking at Edward now, and making the attempt of smiling. “Just…it’s better this way, right? I would want it to be yours instead of thinking that I got slipped something that last time I went to the bar.”
Craig said the word bar, and Edward immediately knew it to mean that it was an alehouse.
He wasn’t sure how he felt about his mate going to places like that on his own, but now neither of them needed to worry about that anymore.
“I will protect you. This time nothing will happen to you that you do not want to happen. I promise you that much.”
He heard the flip in Craig’s heart when Edward made his vow, but the man said nothing else to him. Craig sank farther into Edward’s embrace, and even though Edward considered himself a warrior, Craig had taught him enough about reading the emotions of another person to know that all was not well with his mate.
There were still plenty of things that would have to be confronted before they could be together, but now the biggest question would be whether or not he could keep his promise and protect his mate, from the hunters as well as his brother's curse.
Chapter Nine
“We should go and find him,” Brishen said, the light dancing around his blond hair, as he paced back and forth in front of the fire that Alistair himself had made for him and his brothers. Night was coming, and even though men in these days seemed to have a kind of magic all their own, the kind that allowed them to stay warm without a fireplace, Alistair and his brothers still preferred the simple things.
With the exception of Edward, it seemed.
“I do not think he would want us to find him at the moment,” Alistair said.
“Because of your dream?” Rowan asked.
Rowan was the yellow wolf, and he was as calm as if nothing at all was happening.
He was barely paying attention to his brothers, Brishen, the blue wolf, or Alistair, the red. He was too caught up in a book he’d found, casually discarded on the side of the road.
It seemed that books were so common in this world, that they were thrown away as easily as though they were trash.
Alistair did not know, nor care, what his brother was so caught up in, but the man was making a habit of finding and rescuing all sorts of papers that were on the side of the road, in the trash, or in abandoned camps they came across.
“Yes, because of my dream,” Alistair said. “He’s found his mate. I’m sure of it.”
“And if you’re wrong?” Brishen asked. Brishen could be as calm as any still body of water before abruptly becoming angry and vengeful like a sudden storm at sea, like he was at the moment now that he did not know where his brother was, or if he was safe.
“Then I still doubt he would want any help from me.” Not after what he’d done all those years ago.
“You weren't responsible for that,” Rowan said.
“Yes, I was," Alistair said. "You weren’t responsible for the death of his mate. You both came to offer your help after that happened.”
“So did he,” Rowan said, and he licked his thumb and turned the page of his book.
Alistair wanted to slap it out of his hands for the comment.
They all knew that Edward had hardly been in his right of mind after the death of his mate. The man had wandered around, nearly wild for years, living entirely off the land, not like a normal man should, but like a creature who knew nothing else.
When Alistair, Brishen, and Rowan had finally found him, it had nearly been too late to do anything for him, and Edward had nearly killed the lot of them. He’d certainly wanted Alistair dead when Alistair admitted to what he’d done.
It had taken years to find his brother, and then years more before Edward could be swayed to their cause. Edward became almost like a normal man again as he fought to prevent other omega luna wolves from suffering the same fate as his lover.
It was Alistair's own fault that he’d nearly turned his brother into a wild animal, it was his fault that the three people he loved most in the world had followed him on mission that was doomed to fail from the start. If the alphas had not killed Alistair’s mate, then the curse would not have existed. Alistair was still fearful that it existed to this day, but that one pack they had found seemed to be living peacefully enough, so it was hard to tell.
It was his own fault that he and his brothers had to be put to sleep for so long. It was his fault for everything, but now, thro
ugh no good work of his own, luna werewolves were repopulating the world. There still weren’t many of them, there weren’t very many of any shifter species in the world now compared to the old days, but they were there, and by some miracle, Edward’s mate was returned to him.
Alistair would not interfere with that. He did not think he could even look the man in the eyes after what he’d done.
“We stay here. This new world is still far too dangerous for us to be putting our noses in where they don’t belong.”
“And it’s not our business what our own brother might be doing with a man who is supposedly his dead mate?” Brishen demanded.
“Not dead at all if what Edward said was true,” Rowan replied, and he still wouldn’t pull his nose from that blasted book.
“If what he said was true,” Brishen said, putting a rather large emphasis on that first word. “This could be a trick for all we know, a spell designed to trap him.”
“Who would want to trick our brother like that?” Alistair asked. “All of our enemies are long dead. The only people we have to worry about now are the hunters and their new weapons.”
His brothers were too good to mention the fact that Alistair was the one who’d started the tradition of hunting. Somehow, over the centuries, humans had started hunting other shifters as well as the luna werewolves. Something must have happened for that to occur, but he did not care to find out, nor did he believe he could anymore.
After so many centuries, so many millennia, it no longer mattered.
“We should leave him alone,” Rowan said, and for the first time, he looked up from that blasted book of his to face the rest of his brothers. “When he wants to speak with us, when he trusts us to be around his pregnant mate, he will call to us.”
“The child isn’t even his,” Brishen said.
“It might be,” Alistair replied. “I will not deny that this is wishful thinking on my part. I want my brother’s happiness, especially after what I did to him. Perhaps if his mate really was reborn into this world, what’s to say that the pup wasn’t also brought back to life as well?”
“And put inside of the man’s belly by…who? No one? That’s ridiculous,” Brishen said.
“I’ve never seen you this angry before, brother,” Alistair admitted. “Even for you, this is different.”
“Don’t give me that. You have seen me this angry before,” Brishen said.
The man was right, of course. Brishen had been completely up in arms after Alistair’s mate had been killed, and when Alistair wanted his help to go on his mission to stop more bloodshed, Brishen had been right beside him, leading the way with him without question.
Now Brishen felt that another member of his family could be under attack, and they didn’t even know where Edward was. They couldn’t protect him, just as they used to protect each other.
“The point is, we will not go for him until he wants to be found. Leave him alone with his mate. Whether or not the pup is his, if he wants to accept it as his, then he will do so, and none of us will say anything on that matter.”
Rowan nodded and went back to his book, but Brishen was the one who narrowed his eyes and approached Alistair, his blue eyes burning bright, as though he was master of fire and not Alistair.
“You’re hoping that it is true,” Brishen said. “You want that man to be his mate, because you’re hoping that your mate will come back to you as well.”
Alistair had to bite his bottom lip at that. It was true, however. His brother was right, that was Alistair’s hope.
He would die before he admitted to that, however. “Aland is dead. I watched him die before my very eyes. Nothing could come back from that.”
“Craig is back, and his death was about as bad as Aland’s was.”
It was. Ripped to pieces by a wild force so unimaginably fierce and intent on destroying. Alistair wouldn’t have wished that on his worst enemy.
“We leave them alone. That decision is final,” Alistair said.
Rowan didn’t say anything, as though he already made peace with that decision, and he continued to read his book.
Brishen’s lips thinned, and the man turned around and stalked off, but not before kicking the stool that was in his way, hard enough that it went flying up into the sky, far away, and landed with a dull thunk somewhere off in the distance.
Alistair sighed. He hoped his brother would trust him enough to want to return to him. He prayed that Edward would give him the chance to make amends.
* * * *
Craig was still trying to wrap his mind around all the things that were happening in his life now. He’d gone from thinking he was a little sick, to being kidnapped, then finding out he wasn’t human and not even really a man if he could get pregnant, and now he had a boyfriend.
Edward insisted on calling them mates, and because of the word, Craig had a pretty good idea of what that meant. Edward was thinking something a little more permanent, and it probably should have concerned him that a man he barely knew was having thoughts like that, but it was hard to be concerned about anything when Edward kissed him so deep, parting Craig’s lips with his tongue and then licking inside of his mouth.
His hand was also damn near magical as it stroked over Craig’s aching cock, and no matter how many times Edward made him come, using his mouth, his hands, or his cock, Craig always seemed to want more.
The last time, all Edward had to do was look at him a certain way before Craig practically jumped him, the two of them coming together, rubbing their cocks together, and kissing just as furiously until they were both panting and moaning, warm cum splashing over the both of their bellies as they finally came.
Craig gasped, satisfied as all hell until he looked down at himself and compared Edward’s washboard supermodel stomach to his own expanding belly. It was clear that the other man didn’t mind having sex with him, which was great, but Craig wasn’t exactly looking forward to when Edward, who was a fifteen on a scale of one to ten, looked down and realized that the man he was showering all this attention on was actually a six.
“Don’t move,” Edward said, and that hunger was back in his green eyes, which were glowing bright all of a sudden, as he leaned in close.
“Uh, what are you doing?” Craig asked, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about the fact that his mate was staring at him like he was dinner, all the while pushing him back down onto the mattress.
It had been hours already, and they hadn’t left the bed.
“I’ve been wanting to do this to you for a long time, and now I can,” Edward said.
Craig really wished he knew what the other man was talking about, and he was starting to think he was going to get a blow job out of this when Edward began to shimmy his body down, but he stopped too soon.
Soon enough that his face was right in front of the mound that was Craig’s stomach.
“Uh, maybe you shouldn’t,” Craig said, and he tried to get up, to lean down and either pull Edward back up here for some more of his excellent kisses, or to push him down so he could put Craig’s dick in his mouth. Craig wasn’t about to be picky at all.
Edward pushed his hands away. There was a smile when he looked up at Craig’s face, but then that smile faded away. “Are you ashamed of how you look?”
Craig’s face flamed right up at the question. They really must be made for each other if Edward could read him so well. “I’m a florist, but I’m still a guy. I shouldn’t look like this.”
“But you’re carrying my pup,” Edward said, and he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Craig’s belly. “Does that not give you some satisfaction?”
Craig was still a little too stunned over the fact that Edward was comfortable enough kissing Craig’s stomach to think of a real answer to that. “Uh.”
Then Edward took it a step further when he let his tongue out to slide it up the slight mound of Craig’s stomach, licking away the cum that was there.
Now his heart was really racing.
“Did you j
ust—”
“Mmm,” Edward said, and he closed his eyes, as though savoring the taste. “Now you are inside of me.”
“Some of that was yours, you know,” Craig said, but his dick was still stirring in interest as he watched Edward do that again. “Holy damn.”
Edward moaned again, like he was getting physical pleasure from doing this to Craig.
“You are handsome and beautiful at the same time. Never doubt yourself that, love.”
“I…”
“Never,” Edward said.
Craig looked down at him. Edward had a fierce expression on his face. “You are perfect, and you are not to believe anyone who would ever tell you otherwise. Am I understood?”
What could he do but nod his head? “Yeah,” Craig said, “but it would be great if you would take care of me already.”
Edward’s smile showed off one of his white fangs, and that made Craig think of the wolf story, and he couldn’t help but snicker.
“And why are you laughing, not at my expense, I hope?” Edward said, and now Craig had to tilt his head a little just to be able to properly see what was going on down there.
Edward pressed a kiss to the side of Craig’s thick cock, which was curved upward and leaning against Edward’s belly. Craig shivered.
“Never,” Craig said. “And I definitely wouldn’t be laughing at you when you’re about to put my cock in your mouth.”
“And who said I was about to do that?” Edward asked, looking up at him with some more of that playfulness in his eyes.
“Please don’t tease me,” Craig said. “I need you to do this. Put it in your mouth and suck on it, please.”
Edward smiled, but he complied, parting those pink lips of his and letting them slide down and around the head and column of Craig’s dick.
It jumped in Edward’s mouth almost immediately after his cheeks tightened around it, and Craig sighed right before he groaned. “That’s nice,” he said, and he carded his fingers through Edward’s hair.