The outraged protest Dean and Luke had expected from town when humans realized two lycan mutts—Luke and Jeremy—had hidden among them never materialized. In the following days, Luke’s cell rang with the usual calls from clients adjusting the week’s payroll. Luke had hedged his bets against human backlash once he revealed his lycan parentage by acquiring as many accounts as he could from the few businesses willing to hire lycans or whose management supported lycan rights. Jeremy hadn’t been as strategic. He trudged home early from his first shift after the move to the pack house, fired from his job at the mall. Jeremy had worked his way up to night manager at a sporting goods store, a low-level position that shouldn’t have incited human resentment even had the townspeople known Jeremy’s lycan heritage... if Jeremy’s boss hadn’t spearheaded the local Human Purity chapter, that is. Federal mandates required inventing the fiction of firing Jeremy for lying on his employment application, but the truth couldn’t be clearer.
“It’s up to you to keep me in the manner to which we have become accustomed,” Jeremy said with a careless grin when he shared the bad news. “Besides, being unemployed will give me more time for tutoring.” He squeezed Luke’s sagging shoulder. “Chin up. I hated my job. I worked there only because you would never suspect a lycan to endure that bigot. It was part of my cover.”
Aside from Jeremy’s lost job, life in the pack house proceeded as normal—or as normally as possible with the addition of a pair of humans. Nate and Vince worked construction. Dean and the others cared for the rabbits, chickens, and a pair of goats from which the pack produced cheese, and otherwise prepped the farm for winter. Luke rushed to complete the week’s checks in the home office Dean had provided in Luke’s den.
Dean also fucked Luke every chance he could.
Surprisingly, the stress and worries of mating with Dean lessened. Dean wanted Luke. Frequently. Forced to acknowledge the merit of his mother’s embarrassing advice, Luke pushed a pre-slicked plug into his ass after his first day mated to Dean and regularly refreshed the lubricant absorbed by his body. Always stretched and ready, Luke adapted to vigorous lycan sex with fewer aches and physical difficulties than he might’ve otherwise, and Dean’s lust reassured him.
The hours they spent in their mating bed, lolling in each other’s arms, comforted Luke too. Post-coital snuggling hadn’t appealed to Neil, and Luke had trained himself not to need or miss it in New York, but Neil had been a lover, not a potential bondmate. Dean wallowed in caressing and stroking Luke, especially once Luke admitted how touch-starved his years hiding among humans had left him. Other confessions followed. Somehow, telling Dean about the regrets of his last failed affair and his bafflement over lycan instincts that contradicted his human ones didn’t rattle him as much after Dean had learned Luke liked to beg during sex and a stinging swat on his ass rocked Luke’s world. The secrets of physical intimacy bled into more personal revelations—and not for Luke alone. Dean opened up too. Dean shared his dreams, likes, and fears first.
Although Luke couldn’t claim an iota of faith a bonding would outlast Dean’s heat, Luke grew increasingly optimistic Dean wouldn’t force him to leave the pack when their lusts had spent. Luke wouldn’t be able to keep him. Serendipity had never been that kind to him. But he might be permitted to stay. If his heart hurt after Dean finished with him, if Luke’s days were emptier, at least Dean would still be his as pack patriarch. Luke would lose the best of Dean, his attentiveness, the knowing smile that curved Dean’s very kissable and talented mouth when Luke’s lycan instincts sparked to life, but Luke would learn to accept it.
Somehow.
“Package from town,” Jeremy said, a fat white box wedged under his arm. He hung his keys on a hook by the front door before walking to Luke, who had dragged the plastic carrying case in which he transported payroll records to the meeting room downstairs after the walls of his den had started closing in on him. Jeremy hadn’t been adopted into Dean’s family. He wasn’t obligated to offer his Sentra for pack use, and as near as Luke could tell, the sedan uniformly horrified the lycans anyway. Big and bulky, lycans required extra roominess in their homes and their vehicles. The pack preferred trucks or Nate’s jeep when traveling on two legs rather than four. That didn’t stop Jeremy from issuing overtures to share what he had. “Care package from your parents.”
Nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose, Luke swept the meeting room to ensure no one had joined him while he’d been distracted with work. Coast clear, he placed his laptop safely next to him on the floor. “Thanks for collecting my mail,” he said, accepting the bundle of bills and sales flyers Jeremy passed to him.
“No problem.” Jeremy shrugged. “Until your heat ends, Dean won’t risk you around humans in town unless absolutely necessary, and I have to fetch my mail too.” He frowned when Luke spared a few seconds to flip through letters and envelopes. “Can you hurry it up? This is heavy.”
Care packages from his mother were still a luxurious treat to Luke, one he liked to savor at his leisure. When he left Portland, he hadn’t told his parents where he’d gone. They spoke on the phone often. Luke had also stayed connected with his brothers and cousins via text. Luke had kept the address to his shitty efficiency apartment in Atlanta to himself, though. To refer to the first place he’d lived on his own as a dump would’ve been too generous. The roof had leaked, hot water had been a chancy proposition, and three bullet holes marred a window ledge in the wall facing the street. His birth pack would’ve had kittens if they’d known Luke walked by posturing drug dealers on his way to his bus stop every day. He loved his family, but they would’ve interfered. Interceded. Luke’s dreams of passing for a human would’ve crashed and burned under his family’s overprotectiveness. Ergo, Luke had kept his yap shut. Until Luke had left Atlanta for Orlando, his parents hadn’t realized Luke had settled on the other coast.
Mom hadn’t been happy, but Uncle Ty and Dad understood—his best chance at remaining undiscovered hinged on cutting the ties to his old life. Luke had to go where no one knew the Warren pack, where he couldn’t be remotely connected to any lycans. No visits. No cards and letters. Anonymity was the safest option.
His mom never backed down, though.
By the time Luke had landed in New York—with Neil warming his bed—his mother had worn him down. For once, Luke had risked a visit from his parents... who had disapproved. Neil hadn’t been hitting him much at that stage of their affair and not at all during the week his folks had stayed in Luke’s spare bedroom, but Leanne Warren’s nose for trouble was twice as sensitive as any lycan’s. She’d begged Luke to be careful. The care packages started coming once his parents had returned to Portland. Mom’s homemade jerky. Books she recommended, from biographies of famous lycans to self-help tomes for human allies—including a few of the fated mate romance novels Luke and his mother shared a fondness for, though they both knew the fantasy was a bunch of hooey. Mom made sure he had thick socks when it snowed, decorative binder clips to cheer up his office, and had once ordered the delivery of a box of copy paper when Luke mentioned his supply running low.
Then Luke had fucked it all up. A dislocated shoulder, three broken ribs, and humiliating questions in an emergency room had finally pushed him to act. To Luke, the injuries were a sign from God to get the hell away from Neil and New York, preferably before his lover killed him. Or worse.
Running—again—meant curtailing mail from home, though. Luke had liked to believe shooting Neil with silver would’ve dissuaded his abusive shit of an ex-lover from any attempts to track Luke down, but Luke could be as wily and sly as any lycan. He didn’t take chances.
The treat of his mother’s care packages didn’t resume until Luke settled in Maryland to spy on Dean. Jeremy’s fault. He’d suggested renting post office boxes at the UPS Store on the corner of their block after the second time vandals had broken into the apartment complex’s central mail hub.
“Just think, no one will ever have to know our street address,” Jeremy had said, clapping his hands together with glee.
Traitor.
With Jeremy spying on him, Luke’s folks must have known Luke’s address at least as along as he and Jeremy had been neighbors. Luke wouldn’t be surprised if Jeremy had arranged the vandalism, then nudged Luke to consider a post office box Luke would feel safer giving to his mom. She’d been ecstatic to resume sending surprise goodies to her wayward son.
Glaring at Jeremy, Luke didn’t know whether to punch or thank him.
Oblivious, Jeremy grunted while he anchored the package on his hip. “C’mon, bud. No joke. This sucker is heavy, and my mom won’t send me a stingy birthday card. Business later, yeah?”
With a harrumph, Luke stopped flipping through his mail and placed the stack on his laptop keyboard. “Okay, put it down and we’ll open it,” he said and stifled a chuckle at Jeremy’s happy yip. “Your mom is lycan, right?” he asked as Jeremy lowered the package to the floor, gently in case anything inside was fragile. The void of family attention or notice of Jeremy finally struck Luke as odd, no matter that lycans weren’t exactly sentimental about birthdays or anniversaries.
“Nah, both my folks are mixed humans and third-generation human dominants at that.” Jeremy retrieved a pocketknife from his blue jeans. “They just don’t like me. Here,” he said, handing the knife, blade pointed safely at him, to Luke.
Luke stared. No hurt shone in Jeremy’s gaze, but family meant everything to lycans—including the humans who only claimed skimpy traces of lycan heritage in their bloodline. Lycan society revolved around pack and family. The idea parents might not adore their whelps and shower them in attention into adulthood shocked Luke.
“Your family is worse than mine! They didn’t want you out of their sight.”
“They didn’t want a genetic throwback reminding their human friends too much of their lycan ancestry. The pack accepted my freakish mix of DNA, but I endlessly embarrassed my parents. Keeping an eye on you on the other side of the country? Problem solved.” When Luke failed to accept the knife, Jeremy scowled. He reached for the box himself. “I hope your mom made jerky.” He sliced tape holding the package shut. “I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times my mom made jerky, and my mom’s recipe isn’t half as tasty.”
Shaking off overdue sympathy for his friend, Luke helped peel tape off the top flap of cardboard to loosen it. “You can have my share,” he said, tugging to open the box. “Since I don’t like jerky, Mom must have been sending it for you all—oh my fucking lord, what is that?” he shouted, jumping back and landing on his butt as surprise jolted through him.
Jeremy’s eyes rounded. He surveyed the inside of the box judiciously, angling his head this way and that, as though changing his perspective might alter the contents. “A set of practice mating knots.” Jeremy squinted. “I think. I’ve seen them in graduated sizes before, but I’ve never known any to be made from colored glass.” He blinked. “Wouldn’t glass be too cold?”
Hysteria quickened Luke’s pulse. His heart beat like thunder in his ears. He scooted a few shaky inches from the evil box. “Holy shit,” he mumbled through numb lips. “Sweet baby Jesus.”
Jeremy’s arcing eyebrows disappeared under his hair, but he reached a steady hand into the package, retrieving the biggest bottle of lube Luke had ever laid eyes on. Bottle? No, that son of a bitch was a vat. No wonder the care package had been heavy; postage must have cost the earth. Luke tamped down a bubble of wild laughter when he spotted the fragrance-free stamp on the lube’s packaging.
“Huh,” Jeremy said, examining the vat... bottle... whatever. He beamed at Luke, mischief glinting in his gaze. “This is a gold standard product. Expensive. Your mother is serious about her lubricants.”
“Please don’t repeat that.” Luke gulped, finally mustering the courage to inch forward despite his trembling trepidation. “Ever.”
“Is that for me?” Dean asked, strolling into the meeting room from the kitchen.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it.” Jeremy waggled his eyebrows. “Nate can be extremely energetic.”
Dean laughed.
Helplessly drawn to the care package, Luke braced himself and peered over the box flaps. He gawped at the neatly packed assortment of dildos, plugs—a squeak escaped his lips, and he lifted both hands to cover his pecs when he spotted nipple clamps. He jumped, his heart seizing, when a heavy grip settled on his shoulder.
“Your mother is...” Dean bent over the package, gaze sweeping the toy extravaganza. He snickered.
That asshole.
“...an interesting woman,” Dean finished.
“I know, right? You’re going to love her. She’s awesome.” Jeremy crowded the opposite side of the box and raked through the contents with an eager hand. “Makes the best venison jerky.”
“Squeezing my shoulder the way I like doesn’t mean I’ll ever forgive you,” Luke said to Dean, his face as hot as molten rock. The tips of his ears burned. Mortified to his marrow, he stared in transfixed horror at the packaging of a vibrator boasting its features as a three-point prostate massager. Ergonomic, no less. His embarrassment rocketed, encompassing every part of him down to the cellular level. Even his mitochondrial DNA was abashed. When Dean stretched a hand into the package to slide an interested finger down the length of a dildo complete with balls as well as the swollen bulge of a nascent lycan knock, Luke slapped him away. “Don’t touch. It has Mom cooties.”
“Lycan enough to sink into heat, but too human to enjoy it, must be hell,” Jeremy said, his chuckle joining Dean’s. “She must have high expectations of Luke settling down with a bondmate to have sent this much. Don’t worry. I won’t let him throw out any of it.” He had the audacity to wink at Luke. “He’ll be grateful for his mother’s generosity later.”
Dean choked on a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Luke gazed up, shivering at Dean bending over him to peer into the box. “What are you doing in the house, anyway? I thought you were headed into the woods this morning to release rabbits for the ferals to hunt.”
“We did.”
“Any sign of them?”
“Fresh scat.” Dean nodded. “They haven’t run away. They’re just shy of strangers.”
Luke frowned. “Especially human strangers.” For the past two afternoons, Luke had hiked with Dean into the pack’s territory in search of Dean’s ferals, in hopes Luke could cobble together enough Spanish to ask them a few questions, but the ferals stayed hidden.
“You’re more lycan than you believe.” Dean nudged Luke’s chin with his fingers. “They’ll come around.”
“Jerky,” Jeremy shouted in triumph as he pulled a transparent freezer bag stuffed with strips of lean dry meat from the sex toy extravaganza.
Next to his laptop, Luke’s phone vibrated, his dad’s picture filling the screen. His mom, who shared a phone with his dad, must have been auto-refreshing the tracking number for the exact nanosecond someone had signed for the package. Luke swallowed, throat as parched as sandpaper.
“Save me,” he begged Dean.
“I only ducked inside to check in with my mate, need to get back to putting bucks into doe hutches to breed more rabbits.” Dean stooped to brush a kiss across Luke’s lips. “Convey my thanks to your mother.”
Fridays were the busiest times of Luke’s workweek. He calculated taxes and printed checks as well as paystubs the day before, which took hours, but delivering pay to businesses dotted across town sucked up Luke’s entire morning and afternoon.
This week, it sucked up the whole morning and afternoon for Nate and Jeremy too.
“No, I will not detour to buy you another mocha,” Nate said behind the steering wheel as they crawled by another Starbucks. Traffic was predictably horrible. “You’ve had too much caffeine already, and chocolate is bad for you.”
“Chocolate isn’t healthy for lycans.” Jeremy sniffed his disgust. “I can bathe in it if I want.” Riding shotgun in the front passenger seat of his Sentra, Jeremy lurched around to appeal to Luke. “Tell him.”
With his human side dominant, Luke could withstand a mocha IV drip too, but digging into expandable files for a check missing from the payroll packet in his lap, his patience snapped.
“The sugar will shoot him into orbit.”
Affronted, Jeremy gasped.
Nate chuckled. “An excitable, frenetic, super-energized Jeremy?” He made a left, turning into the shopping center with the coffee shop. “Why didn’t you say so?”
Luke smothered his annoyance at yet another delay while Jeremy happily streaked inside for his drink. First, Nate’s hunger had obliged them to hit a drive-thru after Luke’s stop at Shady Lanes Dry Cleaning, although Nate had wolfed down a mountain of eggs topped with gooey cheese and thick slabs of ham for breakfast before they’d trooped out to start the workday. Jeremy had predictably turned up his nose at fast-food coffee, necessitating another stop for his venti mocha. Delivering payroll to Harvey’s Pizza had resulted in waiting half an hour while the kitchen prepared hot steak subs to go because, according to Nate, Jeremy looked peaked. More coffee, a gas fill-up that had expanded into searching for rentals at a movie kiosk, and donuts—for the love of Christ—had punctuated other payroll deliveries. Instead of Luke’s standard peanut butter on whole wheat, their midday meal had been a spectacle of gluttonous excess when Nate and Jeremy outvoted Luke’s bagged lunch in favor of Peking Palace’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
Luke gritted his teeth while Nate drummed his fingers on the steering wheel.
He hadn’t killed Jeremy and Nate only because Dean had insisted on the escort. Without a car, Luke had taken the bus and hopped an occasional Uber from client to client every Friday and had never run into problems. Delivering payroll tended to be inconvenient and taxing for him, but cheaper public transportation trumped his old car payments and insurance—hanging his shingle as an independent accountant had demanded sacrifice. He’d ruthlessly cut every financial corner to become his own boss. He’d coped.
Not enough to meet Dean’s standards, however.
“Humans realize you aren’t one of them now,” his mate had argued over a tense breakfast. “You could be stranded by your ride if the driver recognizes you. Robbed. They could hurt you.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’ll borrow Jeremy’s Sentra, but I know how to fight. Human isn’t a synonym for helpless.” Glowering, Luke had fidgeted with his fork. “Uncle Ty would’ve never permitted me to leave Portland if I couldn’t survive a scrape with humans.” Luke faced difficulties only from physically stronger and faster lycans.
“I believe you. I’m not objecting because I think you’re weak.” Dean had shamelessly played his trump card. “My birth pack thought they could survive a brawl with humans too. Lycan or human, no one leaves pack territory without a buddy. Because someone watching your back is safer. The human town is dangerous. I’ll worry if you go alone.”
Luke had gracelessly accepted a chaperone, Nate, who had begged off work for the occasion, and also Jeremy.
“Wither thou goest, remember?” his friend/betrayer had said. “Even if the places thou goest sound dead boring. Besides, Nate says this will force us to spend time together without fucking.” Jeremy’s brow furrowed. “This mating business is complicated stuff.”
“Heats are simple, just sex and lots of it,” Dean had agreed. “Bonding requires more finesse and effort.”
Carrying a tall disposable cup, Jeremy raced back to the car. “Thanks,” he said to Nate. Buckling up, he grinned at Luke. “The hardware store on Euclid is next, right?”
“Yes. On the corner with Elm, next to the Gas and Go,” Luke reminded Nate as the lycan backed out of the parking space and steered the Sentra from the lot and toward the street. At least Luke had located the paycheck missing from that payroll packet while they’d waited for Jeremy. “We’ll finish with the construction crew Nate and Vince work for after.”
“Too bad we can’t give Vince a ride home,” Jeremy said, blowing on his steaming coffee.
Dean had been a man of his word—Nate took the day off so Vince had stayed home from work too. The Yeager buddy system wasn’t limited to humans.
“Next week, Dean won’t be as anxious.” Nate focused his attention on negotiating city traffic. “Once his heat starts leveling and his protective instincts aren’t rampaging, he’ll accept Jeremy chauffeuring you.”
Jeremy groaned after a tentative sip of his drink. “Fuck, this is delicious. You can pay me in mochas, all right? Mocha and massive quantities of General Tso’s.”
Only Dean, Nate, and apparently Jeremy believed this morning’s compromise could succeed long-term. Luke certainly hadn’t. Unemployed for now, Jeremy had made a running head start at filling his suddenly free hours with tutoring, but that wouldn’t last. Jeremy had been socially gregarious when he’d pretended to be an ordinary human, constantly dragging Luke to parties, community events, and countless pickup basketball games at the Y. Luke had seen no indications that had been part of Jeremy’s ruse. Liar or not, part lycan or not, the man relished the trappings of the human world. No one could fake his eager glee at their long lunch in the crowded Chinese restaurant or Jeremy’s enjoyment of his frippy dippy coffees. He seemed to enjoy teaching lycans in the pack—Luke had caught Jeremy smiling more than once. Still, his friend twitched, restless and antsy at the isolation of the farm already. Jeremy would search for a part-time job in town in conjunction with his tutoring soon, if for no other reason than to rub shoulders with the humans who endlessly fascinated and entertained him.
Where would Luke, with Dean’s demands for a weekly escort, be then?
The solution had occurred to Luke at his first delivery of the day, while Nate and Jeremy had cooled their jets with the receptionist. Angie Wannamaker had looked over the 941 form Luke had prepared for this quarter’s tax payment in the privacy of her office and, smiling, had asked Luke if she would have the pleasure of the pair of handsome specimens outside her office every Friday.
“If those two will be regular visitors here, you deserve a raise,” she’d said on a chuckle.
“I’m afraid not,” Luke had said, his mind whirring. “In fact, you’ll need to pick up your payroll next week or appoint someone to do it for you. No more deliveries.” He tried for a bashful grin when Angie had arched a curious eyebrow. “Dean is paranoid.”
“He has reason,” Angie said with a sigh.
They’d agreed to meet at a diner near Yeager land, bright and early the next Friday morning, and he’d made the same arrangement with every client after her. Instead of balking at the added inconvenience, as Luke feared, several businesses welcomed the change since their pay would be available earlier in the day. So far, no one had complained, but Luke had gone to extraordinary lengths to cultivate clients he’d believed most friendly to lycans. When Luke had explained Dean claiming him to mate, they’d understood.
Nate parked in the back lot of the hardware store, as Luke directed. Since the store had hired him to balance their books alongside payroll, Luke grabbed his bulky plastic tote and lugged it, accompanied by Jeremy and Nate, to the rear delivery door. He hadn’t fully navigated the labyrinth of stacked inventory to reach the office yet when his client met him, the human’s arms crossed over his chest.
“You can stop right there,” his client said with a glare.
Usually, Marvin Beechum was a nice guy. Angie, Luke’s first client of the day, had recommended him to Marvin, and Luke had expended a considerable number of hours unsnarling the mess of Marvin’s books. While he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed when it came to organizing his receivables, Marvin had a shrewd knack for anticipating his customer’s needs and treated his employees fairly, resulting in minimal turnover. Luke’s misgivings over taking on one of Angie’s favorite customers had melted under Marvin’s charm.
New contempt glittered in Marvin’s brown eyes. “Drop the box,” he ordered, mouth twisting into a sneer, “then you can go.”
Half-expecting rancor from a client Luke hadn’t personally confirmed as lycan friendly didn’t make the slap of hostility less shocking. Today’s payroll delivery had been going too smoothly. But part of Luke had hoped.
“I’ve got your quarterlies,” he said. Stupidly. Luke had busted his ass to prepare each of his client’s tax forms before the deadline next week, just in case Luke’s attempt to ally with the Yeager pack had gone awry. Which it definitely had.
“I hired Tim Simmons to take over my books yesterday,” Marvin said, jaw clenched. “Leave what you have and get out. Don’t make me call the police.”
“You can’t fire him for associating with a lycan,” Nate said on a growl, muscles rigid next to Luke. “Or for having a lycan in his bloodline if his human side is dominant.”
Beside him, Jeremy clasped Luke’s bicep in a show of support. “We know our rights.”
“Like this country has such a stellar track record of respecting government mandates for human dominants?” Marvin snorted, arms separating as he shifted his weight. Despite the nervous tells, Marvin seemed to stand taller, his anger more menacing. “I don’t give a fruity shit about lycan this or human that, though, never have. I don’t blame a man for who or what his grandfather might have been. Hell, according to family gossip, my great-great-great-granny mated a lycan. You ought to know me better, boy.”
Confusion washed over Luke, along with mystified relief. If Marvin wasn’t firing him for joining Dean’s pack... “Then why?” he asked.
“A man doesn’t have a choice about the DNA he inherits,” Marvin said with a grimace, “but a man does choose who he sleeps with.”
Nate’s eyes rounded.
“Oh my God,” Jeremy gasped, fingers tightening on Luke’s arm.
Pole-axed, Luke could only gape at the man he’d vaguely considered a friend... and had never truly known at all.
“I won’t do business with a queer,” Marvin said, his mouth curving to a malevolent bow, “and no fag laws or equal rights protections say I have to.”