by Odessa Lynne
“What’s going to happen to me? Gonna fix me up and lock me in a room again?”
“Just rest,” the wolf said, followed by what sounded like one of their names, and then, “He’ll make it safe to transport you away from here.”
“I won’t submit,” Brendan said. “So don’t be surprised when Trey has to kill me.”
The wolf stared at him, a strange look on his face. “You’re First Alpha’s mate. You protected him from his enemies. He’ll never intentionally hurt you.”
“Ah,” Brendan said. He breathed through the tightness in his chest. “That’s the thing, ain’t it? Intent. I never intended to hurt anyone and look where that got me.”
The wolf raised his eyebrows. “The drugs are making you speak things you should save for Traesikeille.”
“But I might not want to talk about this then.”
“The prophecy speaks of a peacemaker who is the First Alpha’s mate—”
Brendan remembered that. “True alpha,” he said. “Not ‘first.’”
“First Alpha,” the wolf repeated, emphatically, “and his true mate—”
“Yeah.” The word came out thick with sarcasm. “Whatever the hell that means.”
The wolf snorted out a breath, his exasperation easy to read. “You’re the peacemaker,” he said, and his tone brooked no argument. “You’ll do whatever’s necessary when the time comes.”
Brendan pursed his lips. The funny thing was, he’d said something almost exactly like that to Trey’s enemy when he’d been distracting him from his intention to bring down a shitload of concrete on top of him.
Movement behind the wolf leaning over him drew Brendan’s attention. “They’re coming for me,” he said.
“Yes, and you should fortify yourself. The next few minutes are probably going to be very painful for you despite the drugs.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Brendan took a deep breath and let it out as slowly as he could manage with his heart picking up speed.
Half an hour later, he’d screamed himself hoarse again.
Getting out of the building had been an ordeal, even with the strength of the wolves and help from their medical technology. He lay flat on his back for only a few moments staring up at the overcast sky, a cold drizzle misting his face, before he blinked and Trey was there.
He might have passed out. He wasn’t really sure.
“God,” he said with a croak in his voice, “you don’t look so good.”
Trey didn’t sound much better than he looked when he spoke and Brendan didn’t understand the first word out of his mouth. “—repaired my bones and some tissue so I’ll heal faster. He’ll do the same for you.”
“Where’m I going?”
“Onto one of my ships.”
Brendan thought about that while Trey’s clawed hand scratched through his hair. “You set up that escape. Why’d you let me go?”
“Now’s not the time for this conversation.”
“I want to talk about it now.”
“No, Brendan.” Trey’s vibrant green eyes stared down at him, his mouth a solemn line, the outside walls of the old factory in the distance behind him. “Not now.”
“I still hate you,” Brendan said. “I hate you so much for what you’ve done to me.”
Trey’s eyes narrowed but the corner of his mouth quirked up. His fingers curled against Brendan’s scalp, and the faint prick of claws was a strange comfort.
A nervous quiver started up inside Brendan and he knew it wouldn’t go away until this was settled. “I’m not some different person now,” he said. “I’m still me. This is who I am.”
“I’m starting to see that.” Trey leaned forward, but then winced and straightened. Obviously his injuries were still painful. He breathed slowly for a few moments, before he spoke again. “But what you say isn’t as important as what you do. You saved my life and almost sacrificed yours in return. You’re—” Trey hesitated. “You’re complicated in a way I didn’t expect, but you have a strong will and an enduring loyalty to those you care about.”
Trey gently traced Brendan’s jaw, his gaze fixated on the wounds on Brendan’s neck. Or that’s what Brendan figured. He was probably a bloody mess, although now that he wasn’t moving again and the drugs were fresh, he wasn’t feeling that bad.
Trey said, “You don’t give up easily, do you?”
Brendan cleared his throat. “Stubborn as hell.”
“Your answers to our questions didn’t show more than a hint of the truth in your heart. But it was enough. The Diviners were right. You deserved a second chance at a better fate, despite the mistakes you’ve made. I’m ashamed that I felt even a moment of doubt that you did.”
Brendan closed his eyes, tired and anxious as a slow burn started up in his hip again. “Don’t be. I’m still going to fuck up. Trust me. This isn’t done.”
He heard Trey’s sigh. “First you have to heal. Then we’ll finish this.”
When Trey started to walk away, Brendan reached out and grabbed his hand.
Neither spoke.
Trey stayed for another moment, before more wolves came and took Brendan away.
Chapter 30
“This is bullshit,” Brendan said to Trey, limping across the length of the room he’d been stuck in for two weeks.
He had every comfort he could’ve wanted—except a fucking sofa—but what he hadn’t had were any visitors besides Trey, who came once a day and never stayed longer than a few minutes—as if he wanted to be sure he didn’t give Brendan time to start a real conversation, and Quint, a wolf with a name so unpronounceable that Brendan couldn’t even recognize it when he heard it. So she became Quint, a name she had suggested the first day she’d come last week to work on his leg.
She’d had him walking again that very day, and Brendan still wasn’t sure how. She’d used some kind of device on him and he had the unsettled feeling that the secret he carried about the wolves’ technology might not be meant to stay secret for much longer.
He had no way of knowing if they’d used it on him, and there was a part of him that didn’t want to know, but he was healing much too fast for the kinds of injuries he’d had. It wasn’t natural.
The worst part was that he was unbelievably grateful he could walk, because if he’d been depending on human doctors and technology, he’d probably be missing his leg—and with the economy like it was, the chance of him getting a working replacement anytime soon was a joke.
He limped the rest of the way across the room to the pile of pillows that should’ve been a sofa but wasn’t and awkwardly dropped down to rest. He was tired, and he was pissed. He raked his hands through his hair and stared up at the bright ceiling that bathed them in a light more similar to sunlight than anything he’d ever seen on Earth.
He had to blink his eyes to stop them from watering, and after a few seconds, he returned his gaze to Trey. “For God’s sake, I’d take anything right now to cut through the boredom. I’m dying here. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing.”
“You’re healing and you need time to adjust. It’s important—”
“I’m bored out of my mind!” Brendan winced and twisted on one of the pillows. He still wasn’t sure how these guys found all the loose pillows so comfortable. “Let me talk to my friends, or Matthew, or—”
“I’m not stopping your friends from visiting you, Brendan.”
Well, that was bullshit. Obviously.
Or maybe—
“Are you telling me they don’t even want to see me for five minutes?” The thought burned through him, but he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. So they’d had some tough times lately. Ian—or at least Devon and Matthew—wouldn’t have just abandoned him. Ian? Ian maybe he could understand. But he’d fix that, eventually, somehow. They had too many years between them for their friendship to be gone forever.
Brendan pursed his lips and stared, getting the feeling he was missing something. Because, Matthew—Matthew would’ve wanted t
o see him, at the very least.
“If you’re not lying to me, then you’re deliberately leaving something out.”
Trey’s nostrils flared, and an interesting flush colored his cheekbones. Brendan’s gaze flickered toward Trey’s hands. No claws, only a slight curl to his fingers.
Trey noticed where Brendan’s gaze had wandered. His hands flexed abruptly and he said, “Instinct would have encouraged my alphas to keep their mates away from you.”
“Why?”
“Because of your history with them.”
“So they’re … jealous?” Brendan laughed, a short, sharp sound of disbelief. “Oh, the irony.”
“You are mine,” Trey said, a growl to the words, “and they are protective of their mates, the same as I am protective of you.”
“What the hell are they protecting them from? Ian would kick my ass if I tried anything with him—assuming I’d even want to try anymore, and Devon’s the one dumped me years ago. He even told me—well, fuck what he told me. He was just making a point, but he’s got what he wants now, and that ain’t me.”
Brendan wasn’t going to forget Devon’s pointed insult of his sexual performance any time soon, that was for sure.
That brought up another thought, one that Brendan had been trying to push aside for the majority of the two weeks he’d been stuck here. Late at night, he failed more often than not, and just this week, when his leg and hip had stopped hurting so bad when he lay in bed, he’d taken to jerking off to the memory of claws pricking his skin and the sting of Trey’s hand on his ass.
But he’d finally come to terms with what he was going to do—what had to be done—and when he had, the memories of his time with Trey had flooded every part of his brain, nearly overwhelming him with their intensity and his own desperate need to relive them.
He had wanted to hate Trey, but the truth was far different. Until his memories had been blocked, he hadn’t even known Trey. He’d hated the First Alpha, based on the vague notion that he was out there leading the wolves in their secret efforts to undermine humanity’s claim to Earth. But he had never hated Trey as an individual. And he couldn’t now; it was already too late for that and had been since the moment his memories had been unblocked.
He’d only admitted that to himself last night while he was in bed, still breathing hard, semen cooling on his stomach, cock softening in his hand as he stared across the room at the broken view of the moon through the ship’s narrow window.
He still wasn’t sure it made sense that he’d fallen in love while he didn’t have the memories that made him who he was. But he had, of that he had no doubt anymore.
He loved Trey.
He remembered how broken he’d felt, waking up with access to his memories again. Betrayed—not by Trey, but by his own heart.
“You have too many unresolved feelings between you,” Trey said, and the words snapped Brendan’s attention back to their unfinished conversation. “Craig won’t want Ian hurt if you don’t accept your role as my mate. And Kem has his own concerns about your influence over Devon.”
Brendan cleared his throat and tried to sit up straighter on the pillows.
Trey stared at him thoughtfully and Brendan watched him take an unsubtle sniff of the air, nostrils flaring wide.
Fuck. Brendan’s face burned.
Trey’s gaze fixed on Brendan. His gaze trailed down Brendan’s body, to land on Brendan’s crotch, where Brendan’s thickening cock rubbed uncomfortably against the inside seam of the loose pants he wore, a garment Quint had given him to wear when she was working on his leg. He should’ve been wearing underwear but he’d just had a shower earlier and he hadn’t bothered.
“You want sex.” Trey hadn’t taken his eyes off the bulge of Brendan’s cock.
Brendan stilled, gazing up through his lashes at Trey across the room. He licked his bottom lip, his mouth suddenly dry. His eyes flickered toward the bed in the far corner of the room, near a wall of greenery that scented the room with the crisp smell of the outdoors. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s just sex. Why not?”
“We’re mated. It won’t be just sex.”
Brendan wasn’t ready to admit to his recent decision just yet, so he scoffed and then reared back when his leg slipped and one of the pillows slid to the side. His ass smacked the floor. “Goddammit!”
He threw the first pillow he got his hands on and it landed with a soft whump a few feet away.
Trey covered the distance between them in a few swift strides, then hauled Brendan to his feet with remarkably little effort. Brendan wobbled, but Trey had him in an embrace before his leg could give out.
“Your frustration needs an outlet.”
“And you know just the—” Brendan’s cocky words ended abruptly when Trey smushed his finger against Brendan’s lips.
“If you truly believe you’ve healed enough to fuck, then you’re healed enough to submit. Your actions have told me you care about me.” Trey bit lightly at Brendan’s throat, a delicate pinch of sharp teeth and hot tongue that sent a shiver racing down Brendan’s spine. “Why can’t you admit this?”
“Because—” Brendan dug his fingers into the warmth of Trey’s back, hard. Trey jerked him closer, their lower bodies aligning in a way that made Brendan suck in his breath at the pressure against his cock.
“Why?” Trey bit harder.
Brendan tilted his head back, realized what he was doing, and tried to lower his chin, but it was too late. Trey’s mouth opened wide and his teeth set around the column of Brendan’s throat.
Brendan breathed harshly and squeezed his eyes shut. He still wasn’t sure he believed in fate anymore, but he wanted to believe, because that meant being with Trey was the right thing. That maybe—maybe Trey was the one. Maybe Trey could love him despite everything.
Brendan’s voice came out hoarse when he finally answered, “Because what happens after? As soon as I submit, I’m just someone to use until you get tired of me. You said it yourself, in the woods. And I don’t want to be some kind of goddamn sex slave.”
He’d rather die, but he couldn’t condemn the rest of the world to that fate just because he didn’t want to accept his own. That was what scared him.
He had ally with Trey.
He needed to.
He wanted to. But—
Trey released him. When Brendan opened his eyes, it was to see Trey eyeing him with a look of confusion, possibly concern. Brendan couldn’t decide which.
“Mates aren’t slaves, Brendan. Why do you continue to believe your submission means so little? Submission deserves respect.”
Brendan backed away. “I don’t understand,” he finally admitted, staring at Trey with brow furrowed.
“You’re my true mate,” Trey said, speaking in the wolves’ language, “and that bond is the most treasured bond mates can share.”
Brendan struggled to understand what Trey was saying, because “mate” didn’t always mean the same thing. The wolves’ spoken language had nuances that most humans couldn’t differentiate, so a lot of their words didn’t translate exactly. He remembered less confusion when he didn’t have his memories, but that had probably been because he wasn’t looking for those nuances. He hadn’t known to pay attention to context or connotation. Now he knew, but his knowledge seemed to actually make it harder to understand Trey, not easier.
A memory flitted through his mind. He raised his chin and decided to hell with it. If he was going to do this, he needed something in return. “And you know what? Someone should probably tell you, and I’m going to have to be the one to do it I guess, but your learning technology is a piece of shit. Half the time your words still don’t make sense and I’ve used the fucking thing twice, trying to understand your language better.”
Trey’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “We’ve had this discussion before.”
“Yeah but that was before I knew what the hell I was talking about. Trust me when I say the problem isn’t with my brain. If you can’t find words to use
for translation, you fucking make up new ones so that at least we don’t get so confused over stupid translations.”
Trey stared at him in silence for a moment, but then gave him a grave nod. “Okay. I’ll have some of my people work on the translations. We don’t have as many varied languages as humans do, so our efforts might have fallen short.”
Brendan looked askance at Trey, not sure what to say. He hadn’t expected Trey to just … yield like that. “Okay.”
Trey looked back at him calmly, his eyes so clear and direct that Brendan had to glance away.
“Okay,” he said again. Then, before he could second guess the timing, “I submit. I don’t know how I’m supposed to do this, but I submit.”
Trey grabbed Brendan and hugged him close, tight and hard, and Brendan had to work to get air into his lungs. He hadn’t expected quite that response—although he really didn’t know what he’d expected.
“I will be your life,” Trey said, burying his nose and mouth against Brendan’s throat.
“O—kay,” Brendan croaked out. Trey’s hold immediately eased, and Brendan sucked in a deep breath.
“You are mine,” Trey said in the wolves’ language, and Brendan had no trouble reading the dark satisfaction in Trey’s voice as Trey released him. “You’ll submit to me in front of my alphas tonight.”
Brendan nodded and took another deep breath. He understood why he had to do what Trey was asking of him. “Okay.”
“You’ll see the respect you have as my mate. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
Brendan crossed his arms. “I’m not afraid.”
Trey’s eyes narrowed on him and his head tilted.
“God, you’re such a prick,” Brendan muttered, because of course he was afraid, but hell if he wanted Trey to know it. But it seemed obvious that Trey knew exactly how the thought of submitting to him in front of other people set his stomach to roiling.
“If you need more time—”
“Fuck you,” Brendan said, uncrossing his arms abruptly and standing straighter. “I can do it.”