Patience

by Grace R. Duncan

  Chad chuckled. “You should have brought a cup of coffee.”

  Jamie grinned. “I’m sure he would appreciate it.” He looked all around. “I’ll want to make an offering before we go.”

  “Of course, baby.”

  Jamie took one more look around, bowed his head to Diana and Mars, then left. “Now, let’s see what we can find out.”

  Chapter 15

  THE ENTRANCE room to the library looked much like the rest of the villa, with the exception of a long wooden desk opposite the double doors leading in. To the right, another set of double doors opened into a downward-sloping, marble-lined hallway that Jamie couldn’t see the end of from there.

  Two men with silver streaking through their black hair argued behind the desk. Both of them waved their hands wildly as they attempted to make their points—whatever they were. Jamie didn’t know because they weren’t speaking in English. It took Jamie a moment to figure out what the language was.

  “Is that…. Latin?” Chad asked in his ear.

  Jamie nodded. “I think so.”

  “I thought that was dead?”

  At that, both men turned to look at them.

  Jamie heard Chad gulp. He squeezed Chad’s hand when one of the men spoke.

  “May I help you?”

  Jamie took a breath. “Good… uh….” He glanced at the clock. “Afternoon. We’re from America.”

  “Welcome,” the one on the right said, smiling. “I am Mario. This is Luigi.”

  “You’re kidding,” Chad blurted.

  The one speaking grinned and his companion laughed. “I am, in fact. I am Anthony; this is my brother, Raphael. Welcome to Italy. What can we do for you?”

  Jamie laughed, relaxing a little. “I’m Jamie. This is my mate, Chad. Nice to meet you. We’re here to find information on human mates.”

  “Does your calator not have that information?” Raphael asked, blinking.

  Jamie shook his head. “No. He says we don’t have it in our library.”

  “I wonder,” Anthony said, frowning and glancing at Raphael. “There are rumors here that the American Alpha Prime does not like to mix the species. Some say he has become… eh… xenophobic?” He looked at his brother, who nodded. “Yes. Outside of wolves—and American ones, at that—he is not friendly. It is possible he has refused to allow that information in an attempt to keep his wolves ‘pure.’” He shrugged. “I cannot prove it, of course, but that would be my guess.”

  Jamie scowled. “But… if Chad is my destined mate, how many other destined mates has he consigned to loneliness because of his ridiculous fear?”

  Raphael shrugged helplessly. “I do not know. We may be wrong—this is all based on rumor.”

  “But… what else would explain it? He’s been our Prime for—” He paused to think. “Nearly two hundred years now, almost since the beginning. If he’s really that way…” Jamie shook his head, glancing at Chad. “I don’t think Alpha Noah’s going to like that.”

  Chad nodded. “No, no he’s not.”

  “I am sorry to be the one to tell you that. And please, remember we are only passing on rumor.” Anthony sighed. “So, what sort of information can we help you find?”

  “We need to know about the claiming bite. Isn’t it fatal to humans?” Jamie asked, squinching at Anthony.

  “Sometimes, yes. I cannot help you more with that, though. I do not understand physiology. Well, let me take you to the stacks. You can read more for yourself, yes?”

  Jamie nodded as Anthony stepped out from behind the desk. He turned to his brother and glared. “We will finish that when I get back.”

  “What were you arguing about, if I may ask?” Jamie asked as they started down the hallway.

  “Oh, we were arguing over where Jesus is buried. There is still discussion over it, though I am convinced there is something to that book—The DaVinci Code? Raphael insists it is not possible.”

  Jamie blinked at him. “Do you believe in that stuff?”

  Anthony shook his head. “Not that he was divine or anything, no. But a man did live at that time period, and he was credited with miracles. We have many of the texts from the time in our sealed vaults.”

  “Sealed?” Chad asked.

  Anthony nodded. “Indeed. Climate- and temperature-controlled, just like the Vatican’s. Most of those texts are so old that more than a few minutes’ contact with the air and they would disintegrate. The problem is, neither of us is willing to go through the clean process to go into those vaults and find the proper scrolls. It is much more fun to argue.”

  Jamie laughed.

  “Exactly,” Anthony said. He stopped at a cross hallway and pointed to a brass sign on the wall. “When you have finished, simply follow the signs that say uscita. Every intersection will have one. Now,” he said, turning right and leading them farther. “Are you planning to change him before or after the claiming?”

  Jamie blinked. “I’m sorry…. Change?” He glanced at Chad. “I… I love him as he is. Why would I want to change him?”

  Anthony looked amused. “I meant, are you planning to make him a wolf.”

  Jamie stopped dead and stared at him, mouth agape. “Make him a wolf?”

  “That can be done?” Chad asked.

  Anthony blinked at them. “Let me guess: the American wolves do not know that is possible?”

  Jamie shook his head numbly. “Not that I know of.” He glanced at Chad and could tell he was thinking the same thing: that it was the Alpha Prime suppressing the information again.

  Anthony’s sigh was full of exasperation. “Really! Americans!” He threw his hands up in the air. “And they say we are backwards! They are so—” He went off into a string of Latin so long and fast, Jamie couldn’t even make out separate syllables.

  “Uh…. Anthony?” Jamie asked.

  “I am sorry. Ignorance frustrates me. Deliberate ignorance, even more so. Please. Follow me.” He walked much more quickly, and Jamie and Chad had to hurry to keep up. A left, a right, another left, and then he opened a door. He stepped in, reaching to his right as he did so. A few seconds later, the room flooded with light.

  Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined the walls, crammed with books, some looking so old, Jamie was afraid to touch them.

  “This is our room on mating.”

  “Oh dear,” Jamie murmured, looking around. He did a quick count of some ten bookshelves on each wall, along with another set of waist-high shelves in the middle. On either end of the room, they had two long conference-type tables with chairs. In the middle sat two armchairs with a low table between them. Rich red carpet covered the floor.

  “We ask that you only have bottled water in here. The temperature must be kept low to protect the volumes. Many of these are current printings. However, there are some original copies and we would prefer to keep them in the best possible condition. We have a refreshment room by the desk if you need coffee.”

  “Of course,” Jamie said automatically.

  “Now, if you would like information on human changes, that is here,” Anthony said, pointing to the wall on the left. “There are different accounts and how it affects mates. The first shelf is mostly on changing. Information regarding human mates—including accounts, histories, and the like—are over there.” He pointed this time to the wall directly opposite of them. “The second and third sets of shelves should serve as a starting point.”

  Jamie blinked, but it was Chad who spoke. “Starting point?”

  Anthony smiled. “As I said, this entire room is dedicated to mating.”

  “Oh my,” Jamie whispered, then cleared his throat. “Well, I am not afraid of some research.”

  Anthony grinned at him. “Just do not forget to eat. Dinner is at eight.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “If you wish to leave books on the table, simply let me know when you leave and we will leave them alone.” With a wave, Anthony left.

  Jamie and Chad stared at each other for a long momen
t.

  “I can be a wolf?” was the first thing Chad said.

  Jamie blinked. “It seems that way. Do you want to look at that first?”

  Chad pursed his lips. “I don’t know, to be honest. I want you to be able to claim me, more than anything. But… what if it makes claiming me easier?”

  Jamie frowned. “I didn’t think of that. How about we split up? You start here,” he said, pointing at the changing shelf. “Pick a few volumes and I’ll pick a few from over there.” He pointed at the human mates shelf. “And we’ll go from there. Let’s set up on this table.” He waved at the table closest to them.

  “That sounds good.” Chad kissed him, then pulled back. “No matter what we find, remember something?”

  “What’s that?”

  “It doesn’t matter what we find here. I love you. No caveats. No dependencies.”

  Jamie swallowed. “Thank you. That does me good to hear.”

  Chad kissed him again, then crossed over to the table and set his bag down. “I think we ought to ask them for jewelry store recommendations,” he said as he pulled his laptop out. “Oh good, power,” he murmured, pointing at the sockets in the middle of the table.

  “Good,” Jamie said, setting his bag next to Chad’s. “Wait, jewelry? You were serious about that?”

  Chad raised his eyebrows. “Of course, baby.”

  “Oh.” With nothing else to say to that, he went to collect his books.

  JAMIE HEARD a throat clearing and looked up, rubbing his bleary eyes. Raphael stood in the doorway, an amused smile on his face. “Oh, uh, hi,” Jamie said, looking around.

  “Dinner will be served in the dining room shortly, if you are hungry.”

  Jamie started to say he wasn’t—he wanted to keep reading—but his stomach growled.

  Chad smirked at him, then looked over at Raphael. “We’ll be there soon. Can we come back?”

  Raphael nodded. “That is fine. The library is not staffed all hours. So if you need help, it will need to wait, but if you wish to keep working, we do not mind.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said, standing and frowning down at the pile of things. “May we leave our things?”

  Again, Raphael nodded. “No one will bother them.”

  Jamie sighed. “I’m not even sure what all I found yet. Apparently a lot of human mates choose to become wolves.”

  “That makes sense,” Chad said, taking his hand and pulling him toward the door. “I’m not entirely sure why they wouldn’t choose to become wolves.”

  “Being a wolf isn’t the end-all, be-all,” Jamie pointed out.

  “I don’t know. I think it’s pretty damned cool, myself. If for no other reason….”

  Jamie raised his eyebrows.

  “You can lick your own balls,” Chad said, completely deadpan.

  Jamie burst out laughing. “It doesn’t feel as good as someone else licking them,” he said with a smirk.

  Chad grinned. “I didn’t think it would, but still. You have to admit, that’s cool.”

  “True,” Jamie agreed.

  “Seriously, though, why wouldn’t a mate choose it?”

  “Well, there are, apparently, advantages to being a human mate. I mean, benefits to mating without bringing the change into it. Human mates, once claimed, gain the shifter’s life span.”

  “Really? So, even if I’m not a wolf, I’ll live as long as you?”

  Jamie shrugged. “More or less. All I’ve read so far is anecdotal. I don’t understand the physiology stuff. I wish Miles were here for that.” He winced when a spike of jealousy came across their link.

  “Sorry,” Chad mumbled. “Still can’t control that.”

  “It’ll be better if I can claim you.”

  Chad nodded. “I know. Doesn’t mean I like it.”

  “It’s okay, really. I just… he’s a doctor, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know. Okay, so, don’t understand the physiology stuff. Can you, like, send notes to him and get his opinion?”

  Jamie considered it. “I’m not sure. I’m making a lot of notes, but I’m going to ask Anthony or Raphael if there are copies of some of these texts we can get to take back.”

  “That would make it easier,” Chad agreed.

  “I’m thinking if I can find a good one on mating physiology and maybe one on changing, those could help a lot.”

  They stepped through the doorway and out into the courtyard. “Well, food first, then we need to find the right books. What else did you find?”

  “Okay, so, you gain my life span, and apparently it’s not a given that our bites are lethal. There are ways to make sure it’s not, though I haven’t found them yet. I had to get through a lot of accounts of finding human mates just to find that out.”

  “They seriously need someone to actually put this stuff together into real, readable textbooks.”

  “We’ve been saying that for decades,” Raphael said, stepping up to them.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to sound insulting,” Chad said, but Raphael shook his head.

  “No, it is true. The information is still so scattered. More than two thousand years of documented, written works on history, mating, medicine, religion, and law, and it’s still put together by bits and pieces most often.” Raphael waved a hand. “My brother has a table if you would like to join us.”

  “Thank you,” Jamie said, after seeing Chad nod.

  The dining room—decorated like the rest of the villa, with sand-colored walls, exposed beams, and tile floors—had a few large tables for eight and many smaller tables for four. Double glass doors opened to a patio that looked out over the lake, and Anthony sat at a table for four in the corner outside.

  They stopped to get plates from the dining room first. Jamie was glad he didn’t have any sort of food allergies or even real preferences—aside from raisins—because he had no idea what was in half the dishes on the buffet.

  The smells made his stomach rumble again, though, so he loaded up what looked like a beef dish in wine sauce, another with chicken, some pasta that looked suspiciously like spaghetti, and a couple of rolls. He took the seat between Chad and Anthony and sighed.

  “Did you learn a lot?” Raphael asked.

  Jamie pondered it as he took a bite of the beef. He moaned. “Oh, this is good.”

  Anthony smiled. “Our cooks are amazing. You should know the food here at the villa is a bit more meat-heavy than most Italian food.”

  “Since we’re a bit more… meat-focused than most.” Raphael smirked.

  Chad laughed. “I’d say so. I haven’t seen him hunt, but I have seen him decimate a steak.” Jamie blushed, but Chad reached over and squeezed his hand. “Then there’s the bacon stealing,” Chad said, grinning.

  Jamie rolled his eyes.

  “Would you tell us how you met?” Anthony asked.

  Jamie glanced at Chad. “I pretended to be a dog.”

  Anthony and Raphael both laughed. “Oh, this must be good.”

  “It is,” Chad said. “So, I was coming out of a donut shop on Saturday morning….”

  TWO DAYS later, Jamie and Chad both had a metric fuck-ton of notes and data, but hadn’t come to any absolute conclusions. There were conflicting accounts of mating bites, most saying it didn’t hurt the mate, but others saying it killed them. Once Jamie compiled that information, the percentages did not sit well with him.

  The problem was, all of it was anecdotal. None of the information was the product of any kind of studies. There was no control, nothing to be sure it was all destined or not. For those he knew were destined—and there were at least a few—the chance of survival was much higher. But even that wasn’t solid evidence.

  It was driving him nuts.

  Chad had a bit better luck on his end, though not much. It seemed the accounts he’d read all pointed to the same process. He’d need to be bitten by someone in wolf form. The stronger the wolf, the better his chance of survival. If he survived the bite, he’d go through what would essential
ly be his DNA being rewritten. Everything he’d told Jamie about sounded like it was excruciatingly painful for at least part of the process, which Jamie was not happy with.

  If Chad got past that part, next was learning to control his wolf, making sure his human side was dominant. After that, it was simply a matter of getting used to the ability to shift, learning to deal with the new senses, that sort of thing. It would take time, but it was, really, the easiest part of the whole thing.

  Jamie was still having trouble getting past the initial thing: biting him.

  It bothered him a little, but he thought he would ask Tanner and Finley if Tanner could be the one to bite him. Aside from Noah, Tanner was the strongest wolf Jamie knew. He didn’t like the idea of anyone but him biting Chad, but it wouldn’t be during sex, at least, and if it increased Chad’s chances of living through it, he’d deal.

  Still, there were a lot of ifs and maybes and I don’t knows. Jamie needed to talk to Miles, even if it meant dealing with the jealousy Chad still couldn’t control. He also wanted to talk to Anthony and Raphael and see if they couldn’t help him pick out the best information to take back with him to the pack.

  It was that thought that had him standing out at the desk now, sipping a latte and watching them argue in Latin. It seriously amused him to see their hands flailing as they argued. Anthony had told him at dinner one night they both had learned Latin at an early age and were almost as fluent in it as they were Italian, and much more so than English, so they liked speaking in it when they could.

  When Anthony took a breath, Jamie jumped in. “Anthony?”

  He stopped and looked over, smiling when he saw Jamie. “Hello, Jamie. How may I help you?”