by Marcy Jacks
This was going to be a disaster, and had Chris’ mom not been there to smooth things over, Chris was pretty sure everything would have gone to hell as two alpha-type males went head to head.
His father was no shifter, but the man was as tough as could be, and he didn’t enjoy it when he felt his family was being threatened.
His mom invited them in. For a hair of a second, it looked as though his dad would stand in the doorway and not let Declan pass, but Chris wasn't having it.
"Dad!"
His dad looked back over his shoulder, not too happy with Chris.
"Are you serious? Come on!"
His dad looked back at Declan then stepped out of the way.
They were both very close in height, though Declan was a touch taller and broader in the shoulders. In that moment, Chris got the impression his father didn't appreciate that at all. As though he hated that the guy he wanted to protect his son from was not only a shifter but physically looked as though he could snap a man in half, as well.
There were skinny-as-hell shifters out there who could bench press hundreds of pounds. Chris had seen them on TV.
So to have a guy who was a powerful shifter and looked as though he could overpower someone, too, had to be a shot to the ego for his father, especially as Declan entered his home.
"I'm just happy you're all right." His mom put her hands on Chris' cheeks, stroked his hair, and brought him closer for a hug. He was a little taller than his mom, but she still treated him as though he were three feet tall and wanted to lick the stirring spoon she’d made her cookies with.
Declan looked at him, and his mouth quirked.
Right, this was about as amused as he was going to be in here. The setting was a little too awkward.
"I'm fine, Mom. Declan brought me over here as fast as possible."
"The police were here," his dad said. "Asking questions. Wanting to know more about whether or not my permits were up to date than if you were all right."
Chris winced at that. "Well, I'm sure they were just doing their jobs."
"They said they would come back. I have to call them now to let them know you're here."
They didn't live out in the middle of nowhere anymore. There were neighbors on either side of their house. Not exactly a fancy suburb but still a decent neighborhood. There were people around. It would be harder for someone to come on over to start trouble, but it wasn't as though it was unheard of for a murderous group to show up and kill someone in one house while the neighbors all around them slept like babies.
Hell, murders happened in busy apartments. Chris felt safe, weirdly enough, but now that he and Declan were here, he felt more relieved for his mom and dad.
His dad was a tough man, strong and resilient, but he was still just a human. If he couldn't get to his guns before an attacker did, then he would still end up getting killed trying to defend his wife.
"Have you seen anything suspicious around here lately?" Declan asked. "No signs of anyone snooping around or checking in on you or the property?"
His dad snorted, crossing his arms and leaning against the kitchen wall. "There's two houses on this street for sale and another three on the streets surrounding us. Of course we've seen people snooping around. People have been driving by for days to check out the neighborhood and look at the houses."
Declan growled.
The feeling was mutual for Chris.
"Did any of them look or seem like shifters?" Chris knew it was a stupid question to even ask.
It was rare for a person to be able to tell who was and was not a shifter. Not unless there was a flash of teeth or eyes started to glow. Then it was all up in the air how to tell when someone was or was not a shifter.
"We’ve got a room prepared for you," Chris mom said.
"They don't need that right now. We can all sit down, have some dinner, and discuss what's going on."
Chris got the embarrassing notion that his dad was worried he and Declan would be alone in the house for about a minute before starting to have sex.
Well, he did want to have sex with his mate, but he didn't want to do it in his parents' house when they were still awake. That was a whole other kettle of fish.
"It's okay, Dad. I'm just going to drop off my bag and be right back."
His father looked at him, then at Declan, before he pointed a finger at Chris' nose. "Be right back."
Chris nodded, quickly rushing down the hall to his old bedroom.
Declan followed him, closing the door behind him as Chris set his bag down.
"I'm sorry."
Chris looked at him, getting his charger out for his phone. "For what? My dad's the one acting like an asshole."
"Between both of our fathers, yours is an asshole for good reason. Mine is just an asshole."
"He'll get over it." But then Chris stopped before he could do anything else. "You're not seriously thinking he's right about you, are you?"
Declan didn't answer. His face gave nothing away. It rarely did, but this was one of those examples where Chris didn't need to see something on Declan's face to know the pain he was in.
And he was clearly in a lot of pain.
"Jesus, Declan, come here."
Chris went to the other man, despite his command for Declan to do the marching. Declan stepped into Chris' arms, and Chris wished there was so much more he could do for the other man than just hold him.
Declan held him tight, which was enough for now. It was something. It meant that the little Chris could do for him was helping at least a little.
"I shouldn't have let this happen." Declan clenched his arms tighter around Chris.
Chris didn't mind. He liked being squeezed like this. He and Declan barely had the chance to be together, to learn about how they both worked in a relationship with each other, and now this was happening.
Maybe his dad was right to be worried, because now that Chris was in Declan's arms, all he could think about was last night and how much he wanted a repeat of it.
"We can't have sex."
"I know." Declan nodded, but then Chris heard the smile in his voice. "Not yet."
Chris shivered, and he knew the other man was right. In his parents' house or not, this was probably going to happen.
Chris was going to find out how quiet he could be later tonight, he supposed, because just then, there was a sudden knock at the door, more like a pounding, and his father's voice sounded annoyed on the other side.
"All right you two, get on out there. The police are back, and they want a statement."
* * * *
It didn't take as long to make a statement as Chris thought it would. He was kind of disappointed with that and, with the questions he was asked, had started to think the police were more or less blaming this on Declan, the same as his dad was.
Declan gave his credentials, made his statement, and gave the names of the people he remembered to be in his pack, with a focus on the fact that he knew his father was involved with one or two other shifters he didn't know.
When the police asked him what Chris did to protect himself as a wolf soul on a more regular basis, Chris pointedly looked at his parents.
"I just went to and from work and hung out with friends at a bar. I guess being with other people was enough to keep them away for a while."
His mother blushed. His father kept his arms crossed, face as stoic as Declan's could be.
They might actually end up getting along after this was over.
Maybe.
The police asked him a few more questions, checked with him to make sure he would be able to take time off work, suggested that he stick around with his parents and his mate if being in groups had helped so much before, and promised to take a look at his apartment.
Chris didn't need to give them the keys since his door was still fucked. They would be able to just walk right in if that was what they wanted.
They were around to take their notes for maybe a half an hour. Chris wished they'd stuck a
round for a little while longer. He wanted them to park outside his parents' house with their weapons still on them.
Chris hoped their presence could be enough to scare away the shifters who were out there.
Mr. Ziegler’s words were coming back to bite Chris in the ass in a bad way. He didn’t want his parents to have to put up with any of this stuff. He didn’t want there to be people after him or his family.
And he didn’t want Declan to have to suffer because he’d been born into the wrong pack.
The interrogation that came after the police left was almost worse than the one that came from the cops themselves.
Chris had a lot of questions to ask, about what he was, when his mom and dad figured it out, and why they hadn’t bothered to tell him about it.
And the more questions he asked, the more pissed off he became.
This was his life. He could have been hurt. He wasn’t suddenly safe from having this affect him the moment he became an adult, and that seemed to be the direction his mother had been leading him to.
Chris wasn’t having it.
“You should have told me.”
“We were trying to keep you safe. That’s why we moved,” his dad said, grimly picking up a beer.
The rest of his words didn’t need to be said.
Declan had disappeared, and his parents didn’t think they would ever meet up again.
Chris wasn’t too pleased to know that they were shocked and disappointed to find out Chris had met up with Declan again when they were still students in college.
“So many years went by, and nothing happened,” his mother explained, her hands around a mug of warm tea. “Then when you and Declan met again, and still nothing happened…” She looked pointedly at Declan. “I suppose we just hoped this…thing you had inside you…maybe you’d grow out of it. That it wasn’t there anymore.”
“Wasn’t there anymore?”
“Well, yes, you know? That maybe it had gone away, that whatever this was had decided you weren’t meant to be a wolf soul.”
That sounded a little too far-reaching and hopeful. Chris wanted to say something to that, but he didn’t know what there was to say, other than he thought his mother had been getting her hopes up way too much.
He kept that to himself. This was still his mother, and misguided or not, it smelled of desperation.
His father on the other hand…
“Why didn’t you say anything to me?”
He would have known this wasn’t something that just went away.
He shrugged in his chair. “We weren’t living in wolf county anymore. There weren’t so many shifters, and your mother wanted to let you have a normal life.”
“Dad, I could have been jumped and killed at any point during this. Some shifter could have walked up to me and decided to make me…”
He trailed off, not wanting to get too graphic in front of his mother.
“That’s not common. Wolf souls walk around all the time, and some of them never know it. Your friend here had restraint. It was just that one pack.”
“And they’re back now.”
“Sweetie…” His mother reached across the table, grabbing Chris by the hand. It was a struggle not to pull away from her. “We didn’t want to hurt you. We thought it was for the best.”
Their idea of what was the best for him made no sense, and Chris was angry with them, and with Declan. Declan had been back in his life for a little over five years. College was over by a long shot. At any point he could have said that Chris was a wolf soul and that he wanted Chris for it.
He never did, and now this was happening.
Chris leaned back, pulling his hand out of his mother’s grasp, ignoring the hurt look in her eyes.
“What would you both say if I told you Declan isn’t just here as a friend?”
They both looked at each other. His mother was the first to speak. “What do you mean, sweetie?”
“He’s saying he and Declan are together, Marie.”
His mother’s eyes flew wide. She looked at Chris, then Declan, and then back again.
Chris crossed his arms. He waited for his parents to tell him how they wished he’d done better, how they wished this hadn’t happened.
He waited for them to reveal just how little they actually cared for Declan.
They both looked at each other.
His father was the first to speak. “I think you already suspected that I knew. Not sure what you want me to say about it now.”
Chris swallowed. He nodded, but he didn’t expect his mother to have the same the response. Basically.
“I always thought something like this might happen, back when you were both kids. You were so good to Christopher, watching out for him the way you did.” His mother looked at Declan, for the first time with the eyes of someone who was grateful rather than concerned.
“I always appreciated that you did that. That you let us know when there were adults out there who wanted to hurt my boy. We were able to keep him safe because of that.”
“You know he also called the police on his own pack, right? That was why his pack up and left so suddenly. They had to get out of there before the police could get involved. They shipped him off to military school.”
“It’s all right, Chris.”
“No it’s not!” Chris was furious. He didn’t know why Declan wasn’t furious either. He wanted the man to be angry with them, but Declan, as always, kept everything behind a thick wall of concrete.
“They almost didn’t let you into the house. My dad wanted to keep you outside, and you did all of that for me. They knew you were my mate!”
“And that’s perfectly fine.” Declan nodded, as though confirming his thoughts. “This is their house. I am a guest here. That’s the way this works.”
Chris felt the tiny muscle beneath his eye twitch. He wasn’t sure if this was a military sort of thing or if it was just Declan’s way, but he didn’t know what to do with it.
“Declan, come on, after everything you had to do—”
“I would do it all again. You were my mate. It was my job to protect you, even from the people I cared about long before I knew what being a mate meant. This is now my job. These are your parents. This is their home.”
Chris opened and closed his mouth like a fish out of water. One quick glance in his father’s direction and he knew his dad suddenly had a bit more respect for Declan.
“You still serving?”
Declan nodded. “Yes, sir.”
And Chris was shocked to hell when his father reached across the table. Declan seemed to know what he wanted as he reached back. They shook hands, and his father actually thanked Declan for his service.
Which made Chris feel like a huge asshole because all of a sudden he couldn’t remember ever doing that to Declan.
Great.
There was a lot more talking that night. Mostly to ease his mother’s mind. Declan and Chris’ father opted to go outside. Declan to sniff around and make sure there was no one slinking in the shadows, and his father brought his gun with him in case there was trouble.
“I think they’ll get along just fine,” his mother said.
Chris couldn’t believe how much he was starting to think that might be true.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing that there were shifters out there who wanted a piece of him.
It seemed to bring his mate and his parents together, after all.
Chapter Eight
They were up well past midnight.
Chris had been done talking about all of this a while ago. He didn't want his mother to look at him with that guilty expression on her face, and he didn't want to feel guilty for putting it there.
He didn't want her apologies, and he knew he wasn't going to get any from his father.
When he was finally able, Chris yanked himself away from his parents, taking Declan by the hand and bringing the man to his bedroom with barely a goodnight.
His parents didn't try to sto
p him or ask that Declan spend the night on the couch.
That was a bit of a shock, but a welcome one.
"You should try taking it a little easier on your parents."
Chris snorted, pulling himself out of his shirt. "Whatever. They were the ones who kept this from me."
"So did I."
Chris threw his shirt in the corner then looked at his mate. He cleared his throat. "Yeah, well, that's different."
"I don't see how it is."
Chris just wanted it to be different, and he didn't want this man to argue with him.
Not on this. Not right now.
"Can we just go to bed? I'm really tired, and I want this day to be over."
Declan nodded. "You can, but can I ask how you plan on having me fit in that bed with you?"
"Uh…" Chris looked at his old bed.
It was a double, and Declan was right to be worried, but Chris smiled.
"You can just snuggle me, and it will be more than enough for us both."
Declan's eyes slowly melted into that red color Chris was becoming used to.
"That might not be the best idea right now."
"Sure it is."
Chris reached for his belt, pulling the other man closer. He yanked Declan's body closer still until they were chest to chest.
As chest to chest as they could be with the height difference.
"We're in your parents' house."
"I know. We can be quiet." Chris worked on undoing Declan's belt. Declan leaned in, his nose touching and inhaling the scent of Chris' hair.
Chris didn't know what he was smelling. He didn't exactly use anything scented in his products, few that he had, but he hoped whatever Declan was inhaling was good because he wanted to get Declan onto his line of thinking. "I need you."
Declan groaned, pressing his face into Chris' hair, and when his hands wound around Chris' waist, he knew he was getting what he wanted.
And he did want it. He hadn't been lying. He did need this. He needed his mate. Chris needed to be fucked. Knowing there was someone, a few someones, out there who wanted to hurt him to get back at Declan brought something out in him that he couldn't entirely explain.
As Declan hurriedly undressed him, pulling at Chris' belt, he groaned.