by Odessa Lynne
“You should eat.” Kem stuck another piece of bread in Devon’s mouth.
Devon chewed slower this time, eyes flickering contemplatively over Kem’s smooth brow and straight nose. Those eyes had to be the most brightly colored green Devon had ever seen, especially when they were staring back at him like that.
“Am I going to have to spend the rest of my life letting you feed me?” he asked.
“It’s a ritual we practice only during heat.”
“Thank God.”
“Does that make it easier for you to accept?”
“No,” Devon said. “But knowing that makes it easier for me to keep my temper under control when you do shit like this—you’re taking too goddamn long. Put the next piece of bread in my mouth so we can get this goddamn feeding done.”
Kem stuck another piece of bread between Devon’s lips. “Your submission is annoyingly aggressive.”
Devon grunted and kept chewing. “I should be an alpha. I’d be good at it.”
“You would get a lot of people killed because you have no sense of judgment and take too many risks.”
“My judgment is just fine. Look at you. You saying I made a bad decision coming back?”
Kem sighed and the corner of his mouth twitched. “Very few people make bad decisions all the time, although humans do it more often than most and you seem to be especially susceptible.”
“Sounds to me like you’re being too goddamn selective. The risks I take almost always pay off, so I don’t see how that can be a bad thing. Hell, we even took a risk agreeing to let you make a home on Earth—although now that I’m saying that, maybe you’re right about most people.”
“There are many humans who would have died who didn’t because of our arrival with our medical technologies. Including you.”
“And a hell of a lot of people who died that wouldn’t have if that first heat season had never happened.”
“Some rewards come with their own risk. We didn’t know. If we had, we would never have invested so many of our resources in Earth that we couldn’t leave. But fate is what it is, and the prophesy the universe has sent to us through the Diviners says this was meant to be.”
A shiver raced over Devon’s skin. “What’s Brendan have to do with the prophesy?” he asked quietly.
Kem’s eyes flickered to the wall behind him. “I don’t know.”
“But you think he does have something to do with it?”
Kem turned his gaze back to Devon. “When we came, I had just reached my coming of age. We found Earth and it was beautiful, so many trees, so much forest. That first heat season, my mother had arranged for several possible heat mates for me so I could start breeding right away. Traesikeille agreed with her choices and he sent me to Alpha Craeigoer because they were former pack. I was so lost in my first heat that I didn’t even realize anything had gone wrong until a few days after the full onset of heat season. Then the stories started to spread.”
“Everybody thought you were attacking us,” Devon said. “The world was ending.”
“We were all scared. Nothing like that had ever happened before. My people, going crazy—and we had no way to know if it was temporary until our scientists—those not around humans at the time—were able to study those affected.”
“I was seventeen,” Devon said. “Scared shitless. Me and Ian and Brendan and his parents holed up and watched while the world seemed to fall apart around us. Wolves fighting and killing, tearing each other apart right there where we could see it all. Until then, you guys had seemed so…so…hell, I don’t know. Harmless? All that technology, those claws and teeth and yet you acted like goddamn aliens from one of those old veo shows or something, not wanting to hurt anybody, wanting to share everything. What a joke that turned out to be. No offense, I mean.”
Devon shut up for a second, but Kem just stared at him, waiting.
“Anyway, heat came and you wanted to fuck everybody and kill everyone and yeah, I thought the world was coming to an end. I think everybody did. When it was over, we went out and got too drunk to think and somehow I ended up with this.” He pointed at his crotch and Kem’s eyes followed the motion. “Ian was so pissed when he woke up the next day with a tattoo running all the way down his rib cage. Then he saw mine and he got over the tattoos pretty quick after that. And Brendan—uh—”
“You were mates.”
“Yeah. At the time. Then we weren’t.” Devon leaned forward and rested his hands on Kem’s knees. “But I don’t want him to die, Kem. I don’t know what you guys have planned, but—” His voice cracked on the last word and he had to stop to clear his throat. “I don’t want Brendan to die.”
Kem covered his hands with his own and Devon could see the tips of Kem’s claws against the skin at the back of his hands and wrists, a faint prickle at the points of contact.
“He’s the one I would have to fight for you and yet…I can’t.” Kem’s accent had thickened and when he raised his eyes from the sight of their hands to meet Devon’s gaze, the pain in that gaze made Devon’s throat close up tight.
“No,” he said, and he couldn’t have stopped himself if he’d wanted to, but he didn’t want to. Some bets were worth it no matter what the odds. “I don’t love him. I haven’t loved him in years. Swear to God.”
“Sometimes we think we know things but those things aren’t true,” Kem said. “You’ve said you don’t love him more than once, but your actions, your care for him in these other ways, they say you still care for him more than you want to admit even to yourself.”
“No.”
Kem clenched his fingers around Devon’s. “We can’t always hide from the truth.”
How to make Kem understand? Devon squeezed Kem’s hands and scooted forward, dropping to his knees in front of Kem. “What’s important here—” He cleared his throat and started again. “What’s important here is to understand that I don’t belong to him. I never belonged to him, goddammit. But—but I belong to you. I do. I belong to you, Kem. I submit. Even though I run my mouth all the time and I act like an asshole most of the rest of the time, I submit. I belong to you and nobody else.”
Kem’s fingers tightened almost painfully tight. “You are my life,” Kem said, and then he hugged Devon to him, so hard that Devon’s knees came up off the floor and he scrambled to get his feet under him.
Then Kem dragged him to the bed and let him submit some more.
Devon’s face smashed into the bedding, his fingers digging into the sheets, and his teeth clenched tight, he took every thrust and grind with a hoarse groan, until Kem lightly traced the bumps of Devon’s spine with one of his claws and demanded, “Submit,” in a quiet but implacable tone of voice that made Devon’s back arch.
“Submit!” he said again when Devon just gasped at a particularly hard thrust of cock deep into his ass.
Kem’s arm wrapped under Devon and he closed his hand around the front of Devon’s throat, lifting Devon’s chest off the bed. Kem’s dick buried itself a little deeper and sent sparks of fire flashing through Devon.
He gasped. “I submit, goddammit. I submit.”
“Submit!” Kem growled.
Devon shuddered under him, spurting thick stripes of hot semen across the sheets and his stomach, his dick so sensitive that every slide of fabric against him made him want to cry out.
He gasped instead and felt the warmth of Kem’s own release flow into his ass.
Devon’s arms shook and he would’ve collapsed if not for Kem’s hold on his throat, his arm taking most of Devon’s weight as he stretched over Devon and continued to rock in and out of Devon’s body, his rutting continuing for several minutes.
“I love you,” Devon said, softly, not too loud. He wasn’t sure he wanted Kem to hear him, but he was equally sure Kem probably would. “Goddammit. I really do.”
Kem responded by roaring and driving Devon down into the bed. Devon went with the motion and tried to imagine what sex might be like once heat season ended. God, he h
oped he’d still get Kem like this sometimes, desperate and aggressive. Nobody had ever made him come as hard as Kem did.
Teeth scraped across the back of his neck and Kem licked a warm, wet stripe across the top of Devon’s spine.
“I love you,” Kem said. “You are my life.”
Devon closed his eyes and savored the words. It had been a long time since anyone had said those words to him. A very long time.
Chapter 28
“How in the hell did this happen?” Devon asked, staring at the large screen on the wall that showed a room that looked a lot like an interrogation room of stark walls and floor, a cot, and a single table and two chairs inside.
And Gran.
Heat season was almost over but that only meant that Kem stayed glassy-eyed more often, so goddamn temperamental that Devon was ready to lock him up in a room and leave him there.
He would’ve too if he didn’t assume Kem would just break down the door and come find him. He’d actually locked himself in the bathroom last night just for a moment’s peace. Kem’s heat cycle had hit again, after barely enough time to get a bite to eat and take a piss and give himself an extra application of that goddamn miracle lube. Kem had almost broken the door trying to get in while Devon was trying to get his pants pulled up.
Talk about a lack of goddamn privacy. He was starting to think he’d be more than happy to see the backend of heat season even if it did mean plain old boring sex for the next three years.
He raked his hand through his hair and gave Kem a look before turning his attention back to the screen.
Stout, round, and about five feet tall and graying, Gran had a wrinkled look about her that made her look frail in the face. Old.
Older than she’d looked the last time Devon had seen her, but that’d been a few years ago, so he shouldn’t have been surprised.
“I got rights!” she yelled, thumping the chair against the floor. Her cheeks had a splotchy red look to them and she acted like she was getting ready to pick up the chair by the back and start throwing it, even though she hardly looked capable of the task. “Goddamn American protectorate government! Who do you think you are, bringing me here like this? I’ll have my goddamn lawyers all over you people!”
Her strident yelling hadn’t stopped once since Kem had brought Devon down the long hallway in the largest of the buildings Devon had seen in the den complex and into a multi-screened viewing room that contained a mix of both human and alien technology.
“I don’t understand,” Devon said. “The government just went in and grabbed her and stuck her in that place?”
“You’re my mate. We listed her crimes against you and demanded she be delivered to us for judgment. Your president agreed to the request. As soon as heat season ends, she’ll be transferred to us.”
“The government’s going to give up one of our people, just like that?”
“Traesikeille has warned your governments that we’re ready to go to war if the renegade attacks do not stop. We’re done accepting the murder of our people out of guilt for what we’ve done to your world. If we war with you, we will win and humans will submit to Traesikeille’s rule. There’s no question of this. We will win. Not only does our technology promise victory, but the prophesy foretells it. Earth is yours to lose and ours to take.”
The prophesy again. Every time he heard it mentioned Devon couldn’t stop a coil of dread in the pit of his stomach. He had a bad feeling about that and Brendan’s part in it and he had no idea why. He didn’t usually believe that kind of crazy shit.
Kem glanced at him. The drugs were working for the moment but Kem had warned Devon earlier that this couldn’t last long.
“If anyone hears about this, it’s going to cause a goddamn panic. You shouldn’t have done this. People are going to think—”
“People are going to think you wanted this Gran to come visit you now that you’ve found a new home. She’s your family. That’s the agreement your government made.”
Devon looked at Kem and frowned. “You sure as hell can’t trust them. Somebody’ll say something, just you wait.”
Gran’s voice rose in the background, drawing Devon’s gaze back to the screen. She thumped the chair furiously on the floor again. “I want my goddamn lawyer, you assholes! I got business to take care of!”
“What the hell are you going to do with her?”
Kem’s lips pulled back from his teeth, and Devon wasn’t quite sure what the look meant. “She’ll face the Diviners and they’ll tell her her fate.”
“How the hell is that supposed to take care of my problems with her?”
“She’ll pay for her crimes.”
Devon hated the worry that constricted his chest. The bitch didn’t deserve his sympathy, but it was there anyway goddammit.
“You can’t hurt her,” he said, voice tight.
“Of course not. We’re peaceful people. Our punishments aren’t cruel, certainly not by human standards.”
“You fight just to mate each other. You guys tear each other apart!”
“Just because we fight for the right to mate doesn’t mean we were in the habit of killing each other. The killing only started after contact with humans. We lost the ability to control our instincts around humans because of the way human scent affects us.”
Kem curved his hand around Devon’s shoulder, standing closer to him, and his fingers flexed gently, reminding Devon of how much strength Kem held back every time he touched him.
“Humans are delicate, breakable, in a way we aren’t. Death wasn’t a regular occurrence during our heat before we arrived in Earth’s orbit and faced our first heat season with humans around.”
He hadn’t seen Ian again, but his phone had been returned to him. Without a signal, he hadn’t gotten any use out of it. The wolves were determined to keep the location of this particular den a secret for as long as possible. Kem had explained to him that there was a scatter shield surrounding the entire area. Devon had found the idea fascinating and asked so many questions that Kem had gotten frustrated with him and finally told Devon that his technical knowledge might become useful later but that during heat season, there were many better uses for Devon’s brain—such as figuring out how to submit more graciously.
Devon had laughed in his face. Kem’s attempts at humor were happening more frequently but Devon couldn’t say he was having an easier time figuring out when Kem was joking, and when he wasn’t.
Apparently Kem hadn’t been joking and he’d gone to great lengths to show Devon how much more creative he could be if he put his brain power to use thinking up new ways he could submit.
His balls still tingled every time he thought about some of the things he’d submitted to.
He reached down and adjusted his dick in his pants. Kem’s gaze immediately dropped to Devon’s hand at his crotch. He had an unhealthy surge of lust at the idea of taking Kem’s dick right here in front of Gran and her never knowing it.
“Anybody watching what goes on in here?” he asked, glancing around.
Kem eyed him, his nostrils flaring as he took a subtle sniff of the air. His eyes flared in reaction to whatever it was he smelled in Devon’s scent.
“Yes,” Kem said. “Many people.”
“Shit. Won’t be doing that then.”
“Only Alpha can enter if I lock the room.” Kem’s voice had an edge of heat to it.
“No thanks,” Devon said. “It’s bad enough you want me to flop my dick out and show it to the alpha after heat season. I’m not fucking for the benefit of a bunch of wolves so they can sit around and critique my inability to submit properly.”
“They would be too jealous of how lucky I am to have mated someone as strong willed as you. If you weren’t human, we would have fought. When heat season ends, we may yet.” Said as if fighting was the ultimate—
“God Almighty. You guys get off on the fighting, don’t you? Like it’s a goddamn aphrodisiac.”
Kem took Devon’s chin in hand. “A vigo
rous fight adds to the excitement of mating,” Kem said. “We can’t control our instincts enough not to hurt you when heat sets in. Our people would understand how to react, what to do, when to submit, but you don’t. And your scent steals every thought from our heads and releases all our inhibitions. What we’re left with is an uncontrolled lust to mate and an instinct that’s been with us for as long as we’ve existed. We’re dangerous to you. And you’re too fragile and easily damaged. Too easy to kill. The only way to stop the fight before it starts is for you to submit at the first opportunity.”
“A goddamn mating dance.”
“A mating dance, if you want to call it that. What does it matter how vigorously we fight and fuck when we heal easily from our wounds?”
Devon tried to control his breathing. He started to say something but he had to clear the tightness from his throat first. “After heat season, you wouldn’t have to worry about human scent stealing your control. But you’d want to get rough anyway. Because that’s how you do it. You fight for the right to mate.”
Kem leaned close enough to kiss Devon. His breath feathered across Devon’s nose and his warm thumb traced the smooth line of Devon’s jaw, the point of his claw dragging along Devon’s skin to stop at the center of Devon’s chin. “Yes.”
Kem sniffed deeply at Devon’s throat, his lips and teeth and nose trailing across Devon’s skin in that way that sent shivers down his spine. “I smell your excitement at the idea.”
“That—” Devon licked his bottom lip. “That would be crazy.”
“Nevertheless…”
Kem dragged his hand over Devon’s crotch and Devon almost whimpered.
“It excites you.”
Devon could hardly breathe. His dick was so hard and his balls so tight that he couldn’t think. He wanted to get rough with Kem. He wanted to know just how far he could push him, without having to worry if he was about to get his throat ripped out or his spine clawed. He wanted Kem to make him submit.
“Goddamn,” he said, feeling the heat rise up in his face. He was a goddamn pervert.
“We may be sterile outside of heat but we still fuck—and fight—for pleasure.”