by Sam Hall
Anyone but me. I got to my feet as the teasing of the happy couple began, nodding to them when they saw me. As I walked out, following Brandon’s path, that glow faded, replaced by a confusing mix of emotions. Love, frustration, anger, betrayal—they were all tied up in a messy knot, and tugging on one made the others tighten. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go after Brandon, just some nagging instinct made me put one foot in front of the other. What did I think about this? What did I want to do about our relationship? We weren’t tied together for eternity, the bond could be broken in the absence of love, but that wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t lack of emotion, it was too much.
I frowned as I walked out of the mess doors, pausing for a moment to look up at an alien sky. Several moons hung there at various heights and levels of brightness with strange patterns of stars around them. It was all so unreal, the trip through the portal, but the mining camp was startlingly prosaic. It had buildings, cars, furniture just like Earth, so it was tempting to think it was home. I shook my head, then sniffed the air, searching for a sign of my mate.
This way, my instincts told me, so I turned right and followed the path.
Trees looked different here, many having these weird kite-shaped leaves and twisty branches, though the lavender coloured foliage was the first thing that drew my eye when we got here. All that was muted now into shades of black and grey as I walked farther. I stopped when what I assumed was a lizard skittered across my path. It was tiny, yet it paused mid scramble, then looked up at me with glowing yellow eyes before running away. I glanced around, realising there could be all sorts of alien creatures out here and I’d have no idea. I shook my head and moved forward.
I found him crouched on a low hanging branch, the cherry red tip of his cigarette a beacon luring me closer. “Hey,” I said as I placed a hand on the eerily smooth bark, the light of one of the moon’s hitting us as I peered closer.
“What are you doing here, Jules?”
“Brandon, you’re obviously miserable.”
“Of course, I am. Only a complete psychopath wouldn’t be.”
“Well, no matter what’s happened, you’re my mate. I do care about you.”
Even in the low light, those pale grey eyes managed to glow when they were turned on me. He crushed the cigarette out on the bark, releasing a weird astringent smell, before he dropped down from the branch right next to me.
“But that’s not all, is it, Jules?” He was a dark figure now, the shadow of the tree engulfing him as he moved closer. “I played you, didn’t I? All of you, moving you around, making sure the connections were made, making sure they flourished. I advised and suggested, I pushed and manipulated, until you were right where I wanted.”
His words sent icy fingers up my spine, not because they were foreign, but because they reflected exactly the doubts that had been plaguing me since the big reveal. Don’t hate me. That refrain of his, the last time we had sex… I blinked, my vision suddenly blurring. I’m trying so damn hard not to.
“How do you do that? How do you fucking know everything?” I said.
“Because I felt it all, that great streaming spiral of doubt, fear, and anger when you stroked my hair. It was my mating day, we’d just bonded.” His voice began to crack, and I reached for him, but he shied away. Of course, he did. He wasn’t about to subject himself to another round of my swirling emotions. They were a net he would get caught in, dragging him further down. “I asked you, begged you not to hate me.”
“I don’t hate you! I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care about you.”
“Care?” The mealy-mouthed word seemed to twist on his lips, becoming something foul and unworthy. “Have you read the book?”
“No, you just gave it to me. I was—”
“Have you even opened it?”
“I planned to tonight when we went to bed. Brandon, I—”
“Fuck it,” he said with a shake of his head, then his arms shot out. Strong fingers wrapped themselves around my bare biceps, his skin searing into mine. And then I was gone.
I was yanked from standing on an alien planet under the light of several moons, to another more familiar place. We stood on the banks of the great black lake that seemed to always be present when our pack melded. Brandon stood there, the one point of illumination in all the gloom, his expression a terrible one. “See it,” he said. “See it, and read it.”
The light inside him flared as soon as he touched me, taking me from this subterranean landscape to someone’s home.
“What have you got there?” a woman said. Janice, it was Brandon’s mum, I realised. She bent down and inspected the childish drawing the little boy with Brandon’s eyes was working on. “Is this Mummy?” She pointed to the stick figure sporting a triangular-shaped dress.
“No, dat Jools,” he replied, his mouth struggling to form the words.
“Ohh, is she your friend?”
“No, she my mate.”
“Mate? You mean like Mummy and your daddies?” He nodded his head earnestly. “That won’t happen for a long time, love. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Adam.” Janice turned to call over her shoulder to someone we couldn’t see. “Have you heard of anyone having a daughter named Jewels?”
The light burned brightly, washing away the scene, only to replace it with a slightly older Brandon, playing with several dolls and action figures. Ophelia stood with Janice as they watched the boy play.
“It’s this, over and over. I’ve checked, and there’s no little girls called Jewels. No nicknames, nothing. I even checked the boys’ names. He just spends the whole day making up these incredibly convoluted stories about him, Jewels, and their pack. There’re details in them that no kid should know. He keeps talking about Grace’s boy and Cheryl’s, Slade, but they’re not even friends. I’ve never had that much to do with either of their mums. I’m worried, alpha.”
Ophelia didn’t get to reply, the scene quickly dissolving before another appeared.
“You can’t waste your life waiting around for some fantasy woman,” Brandy, Brandon’s sister, said. By the unfinished, coltish look of her body, they were teenagers now. “Have you ever had sex?”
“You expect me to answer that? You’re my fucking sister.”
“So that’s a no. Go out with Sharon. She likes you, thinks you’re hot for some bloody reason. No one’s saying bond her, but just take her out on a date or something.”
“I can’t.”
“For fuck’s sake, Brandon.”
“I can’t, so butt the fuck out of my life, OK?”
Brandy’s stung expression faded away, only to be replaced by the darkened doorway of one of the Sanctuary sheds. A big burly guy just wearing a tight pair of faded jeans stood by it, his brows jerking down when he saw Brandon.
“What are you doing here, kid?”
“I…” I could feel it now, the pulse of heat fever in Brandon’s veins. He’d jerked his cock raw, but the need had not abated. Revel, Helen’s daughter, was in the midst of her mating run, and half the single men in town were off after her. He wasn’t. He was too young anyway, but he resisted the siren call of the other woman’s scent with everything he had. He couldn’t run after her, though some of the boys his age would, damn the rules. Never another woman. “I need to get off.”
The words were bald, unvarnished, and the man at the door smiled at them. “Kid, I understand completely, but this isn’t the place for you. It’s a fucking zoo in there, and impulse control is at an all-time low. Go and find a couple of your mates for a nice safe circle jerk.”
Brandon could hear the muffled groans, smell the scent of too many men crammed into one space. He wasn’t sure if that’s what he wanted, but he needed to find out. He shifted, the ache in his balls growing by the minute.
“No,” he said. “I need this.”
The guy sighed, pushing himself off the wall and broaching the gap between them as he came closer and closer, until Brandon’s nose was f
ull of his masculine musk.
“You need this?” His hand went to his zipper, slowly opening the front of his jeans. The man popped the button, and the fabric parted almost with a sigh, revealing a rigid cock. He palmed it, giving it a few long, swirling tugs. “How about you show me how much you need it.”
Brandon’s heart pounded in his ears as he watched the man’s hand work, his chuckle sending shivers down his spine. This was it. He was about to jump off a point of no return. Would he think of teenage Jules? Of all those visions of her fumbling clumsy lovers helping themselves to her body with little regard for the treasure they had and no idea how to pluck the delicate sensations she needed to give her pleasure?
“Come on, don’t be shy. I’ll be a fuck load gentler than those arseholes. Just open your mouth and—”
“No. You open your mouth, and suck my dick.”
The ring in his voice resonated throughout the darkened courtyard. It was a small, hard part of himself that he’d kept so carefully locked away, thanks to the advice and admonishments of his mum and the former alpha, but it felt so damn good to be out. Just as it felt good to see the man fall to his knees in front of him, his cock still twitching from the effects of Brandon’s command. He watched the man undo Brandon’s fly and release his aching cock with cold eyes, almost as if this was happening to someone else. That composure was shattered as the man swallowed him down to the root. It’d be much later when he’d come to appreciate Warwick—because that was the man’s name—and his total lack of gag reflex. But right now, as the other man’s throat convulsed around his dick, all he could do was rely on instinct and thrust. His fingers scored the close crop of the man’s head as Brandon shoved his dick into Warwick’s mouth.
“Jules…” he whimpered as he felt his balls boil. “Jules…”
The memory jumped forward a moment, Warwick now standing, his dick limp and a considerable cum stain across his jeans. He seemed to eye Brandon with a newfound respect. “I’m getting Mick for you. I reckon he’s the best person to get you started. But, kid, you want that,” Warwick glanced down at Brandon’s crotch, “on the regular, you just come to House 12. I’m on my own, got plenty of space for you—”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Brandon said. “Now, can you get me Mick?”
The shed faded away to a brightly lit room. Rain pattered against the window, and Brandon sat naked on a bed, staring at the drops as they fell.
“No one touches you.”
He looked over his shoulder where Mick and Warwick lay. Mick was stroking the other man’s back, obviously ready for round twenty or whatever they were up to. Lily and Sharon were in heat, and the single men were in an uproar. Two women coming into season cloaked the unmarried quarters in a miasma of lust, and any work needing done had either crawled to a standstill or fell on the shoulders of the mated.
“Pretty sure I touched you a whole lot,” Brandon replied, looking at the long pink marks still adorning Warwick’s back and buttocks.
“That’s not what I mean. You fuck like the devil, but nothing gets you inside.”
“Warwick…” Mick growled.
“No, I need to say this. You take the ‘keep this just physical’ thing the women tell us to follow to a whole other level.”
“Bend over,” Brandon said, rolling away from the window and moving across the bed, picking up the lube before working it up and down his hard cock until it was slick. For all his protestations, Warwick’s gaze was trained on his hand, following every movement. “I want to fuck you.”
Warwick shook his head, jerking his eyes upwards. “You can’t keep doing this. You can’t just use me as a hole to get off. I need to know if there’s anything here beyond sex.”
Mick met his gaze, a warning within it. Mick had taken him under his wing, introduced him to safe, sane, and consensual kink, helped him become the kind of lover he wanted to be. They often played together, but Mick knew this all had an expiry date. He didn’t understand Brandon’s visions, understood little about his prescient powers, but he knew this was not a long-term lifestyle for Brandon. Warwick didn’t.
“I can’t give you anything more than my dick. If that’s not enough for you, I’ll leave. I’m sorry, you deserve more, but I’m not the one to give it to you. So, what do you want?”
Brandon watched the war rage within the other man’s head. If he touched him, he’d get the blow by blows, but he didn’t need that. He waited for Warwick to choose to surrender or to put up appropriate boundaries.
It was no surprise to Brandon when the other man got onto his hands and knees in front of him, presenting the very hole Warwick accused him of reducing him down to. Some men liked to be beaten and marked, or tied up and forced to do humiliating things, but Warwick seemed to thrive on a more subtle form of abuse.
“I’m thinking of her when I push myself inside you,” he said as he fitted his slick cock against the other man’s arse, rubbing the sphincter there until it began to relax.
Mick shook his head as Brandon very carefully, very considerately, started to arse fuck the guy. Because in his mind, it wasn’t Warwick under him.
“Put it in,” her voice rasped, sounding like scored silk.
He loved that sound, her voice breaking with desire and need, the desperation he’d managed to make her feel, wanting, begging him to push past her limits before she was ready. When he surged forward, it was the hot tight clasp of her around him, not some guy. He couldn’t do this with a woman, the overlay of her over the other jarred somehow. But on a sub like Warwick, he fell away, a meaningless substitute, and Brandon felt the other man’s dick ache that much harder from being treated as such. He thrust inside her, holding back somewhat. He only really let loose, slamming into someone, when he was consciously with a guy. Now, he was gentle and considerate, pulling pleasure from her body, edging her closer and closer.
“Oh god, Brandon, yes!”
He smiled at her exultant cries, speeding up, feeling his cock throb, her groans growing louder as a result. They were tied together in this endless feedback of pleasure that spun and spun until—
Brandon’s hands were snatched back from where they gripped me, the visions, the dark lake, all disappearing until it was just him, me, and the moons.
“It’s always been you, Jules, always. I think I learned your name before mum-mum or da-da. I was flooded with visions of you—being born, growing up. Your tantrums were my tantrums, your joys were my joys. I saw every milestone, every growth spurt. I saw the awkwardness of teenagehood, I saw those fucking boys who seemed to have no idea what they held. I saw that bloody brother of yours just leave you in Melville with barely a cent to rub together, telling you he’d ‘invest’ the money made from selling your parents’ house. I saw the dickheads who hassled you at work, the first time your heart was broken, when you finished your degree. I am saturated in you.”
I took a step backwards, shaking my head, unable to get my mind around what he said.
“I saw Buddy when he was a puppy. I saw you when your parents died. Jules, I saw you.” Tears shone in his eyes, his face a mask of pain. “I saw us. I saw everything we could become, if you chose me. But, Jules, I could have used all this to my advantage, made sure it was me you met first, slept with first. I could have hovered around your head like a bloody bee, seeking that sweet nectar, but I didn’t. I know you’re terrified, anyone would be. But, Jules, I’ve never used this information to try to coerce you. You had to choose, I saw that in all of my visions. That choice is the most important thing for anyone, and you did. You chose me.” He tugged down his shirt to show me the pinkish scar on his neck. “You chose me, and it's only now you’re learning what that means. You have to decide, love, if this is something you can live with, because I can’t take it away.” He held out a hand, and I saw the tremble in his fingers. “I’ve never seen past this point. My visions are done now, apparently. I have no idea what you’ll choose.”
I don’t know how to describe how I felt. I’d just
seen palpable evidence that Brandon had been watching me my whole life. Was he some kind of insane psychic stalker or as much a victim as I was? He was so young when the visions started. No one seemed to give him any advice on how to stop. But that wasn’t what I felt. That was the understandable mental chatter going a mile a minute, my conscious brain trying to work as fast as it could to make the right decision, weigh up all my options to stop me from making a stupid one. But my head couldn’t make these choices.
Love makes you incredibly vulnerable, can destroy you so completely you never get up again. No rational person would choose to make such a bond. I grabbed his hand because he was Brandon and he was my mate and I loved him. I couldn’t hope to understand what he’d been through, but right now, I was willing to trust the gentle, loving side he’d always shown me was him and not some façade. I heard the hitch of his breath, felt the claw of his fingers on my back as he held me close, and then I was in.
He hummed around me, Brandon—an amorphous cloud of his feelings. It rumbled with doubt and anxiety, frustration and loathing, but they were on the fringe. As I delved deeper, it was all there—his love. I bathed in that love for a moment, such a complete feeling of radical acceptance, filling cracks inside me I’d come to ignore. And of course, in the face of such a gift, an answering emotion swelled within me. His and my love for each other grew, edging out everything else, until that’s all there was.
I blinked to find myself hovering again, held in Brandon’s arms as we looked down at the mining camp. “You chose me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Of course, I did.”
“I promise it’ll all be on the up and up from now on. I’ll share everything.”