Standing at one of the long sets of shelves in the library, Miller’s brow furrowed as he flipped through the book in his hand. It was a psychology book, part of the extensive selection the Den owned, and he’d come down here hoping to find information about a number of issues that were likely to crop up as a result of Skip’s childhood. Their relationship was going strong, small but positive steps being taken as they ventured into a physical relationship and a slow building of trust between them as they each worked through their respective pasts. But despite the steps forward, there were some lingering issues he felt he needed to understand better in order to be a supportive partner.
The book in his hand didn’t seem to have the information he was looking for, so he put it back and took the next one. He flipped to the contents page, skimming down the list to see if this one might be more helpful. As he did so, the library door opened, and Miller automatically glanced around to see who -
Oh. Shit.
Another hasty glance around the rest of the room merely confirmed what he already knew; aside from John, he was the only person here.
Miller looked back at the shelf, immediately deciding the book in his hand was fine for now. Mark’s grave warning that he never let himself get stuck in a room alone with John was vivid in his mind, and he watched the boy out of the corner of his eye, waiting until he moved away from the door...
And waited...
Left with little other choice, he finally looked up. John was staring straight at him. He was also standing directly between himself and the door. Miller centred his stance, wondering whether he should try to bluff his way out of this one, or put the book down and get ready to fight.
“A lot’s happened lately,” John said, not moving out of the doorway.
“That it has,” Miller agreed. A faint thread of hope flickered through his mind. John had just been caged for three days for breaking shifter law, and he surely knew that killing Miller would earn him another prison sentence, at the very least. Would he be prepared to risk that in order to get his revenge?
“And you… you’re a conundrum. I don’t like you.” Not exactly the newsflash of the century. But then, out of the blue, John began to speak in another language, words that seemed somehow familiar, but Miller couldn’t remember where he’d heard them before. It wasn’t until John reached the last line, ‘Lun visha lim, miela hesta dun casta don Sirius’, that the pieces suddenly clicked into place. It was the Chant of Forests, spoken, rather than sung, but from the look on John’s face, it was clear that he meant every word with the utmost seriousness.
What the hell? He’d come in here, all but cornered Miller and told him he didn’t like him, then pledged his eternal loyalty to him? This kid was nuts!
But apparently, he wasn’t done yet. “Li Khuli thinks you’re worth saving.” Miller’s eyebrows rose at that. John would listen to the opinion of their most brutal enemy rather than the opinions of his own Den mates? “And I think Li Khuli is worth saving,” John went on, his words not really explaining anything as far as Miller was concerned. “So I figured I should cut you some slack.”
“Thank you,” Miller said. He didn’t understand how John’s mind worked, but this was clearly a big decision. “I appreciate it.”
“That’s great,” John said with a scowl, “but I don’t care what you think.” With that, he was gone, ghosting out the door without so much as a ‘see you later’.
Miller turned back to the shelf, glancing over the titles of the psychology books again. Was there one on the shelf here, he wondered, that could explain what had just breezed out the door?
Mark found Alistair sitting beside the memorial wall on the back patio. The collection of plaques over the years had become quite extensive, each one a reminder of another life the Noturatii had taken from them. But despite the most recent losses to their Den, Mark wasn’t surprised to find it was neither Raniesha nor Aaron’s plaque that was the focus of Alistair’s attention. The one he was looking at was older, though still recent enough that the metal was shiny and the writing clear.
Luke Adams. Fallen in battle. Walk with Sirius.
“Am I disturbing you?” Mark asked, hoping Alistair would say no. He’d been missing for most of the day, though Mark knew he hadn’t left the estate, and for someone as sociable as Alistair to be keeping to himself was unusual enough to justify a level of concern.
“It’s fine,” Alistair said. He glanced over at Mark, then shuffled his chair sideways a little. “Pull a chair over.”
Mark did, but then, being naturally reticent, said nothing more to break the silence.
“I know I wasn’t a particularly good friend to you when he died,” Alistair said at length. “I mean, you were always the quiet one, but Luke used to pull you out of your shell, and then Luke wasn’t there anymore, and you kind of shut the world out, and somehow I managed to blame you for that.”
His assessment was fairly accurate. Mark had always been an introvert, too reserved to make friends easily, but deeply loyal to those he did have. Luke had bridged the gap between himself and Alistair, not only able to convince Mark to be more sociable, but also skilled at getting Alistair to tone down his talkativeness a notch so they could all fit together comfortably. He’d been a fierce warrior and a fine strategist, and before his death there had been rumours that Baron had been eyeing him off as a future alpha.
“It reminded me too much of when my parents died,” Alistair went on, a subject he almost never spoke of voluntarily. “You get comfortable with life, you make plans, you depend on the people around you…” He stopped, his jaw tight, his eyes suddenly blinking rapidly. “And then they’re gone,” he finished after a moment, the pronouncement staggeringly final. “Just like that.”
Mark didn’t think the sudden burst of introspection was because Alistair was missing Luke. He’d mourned him after he died, then moved on, as was the way of things around here. And though he still grieved the loss of Aaron and Raniesha, neither of them had been particularly close friends. So then who...?
“You’re... Are you missing the Khuli?” It seemed a bizarre idea; though Alistair had admitted to seeing her a couple of times, and to sleeping with her, albeit without knowing who she was, Mark had seen him have short-term flings plenty of times before, and once things were over, he’d never dwelt on the loss. In fact, he seemed to prefer it that way.
“Lee,” Alistair said, the corner of his mouth trembling slightly. “She told me her name was Lee. I haven’t told anyone else that. She was just ‘the Khuli’. And at best, most people are just grateful she spared our lives. But she was... she was so much more than that...”
John had been sitting quietly on Baron’s bed for just under ten minutes when the man himself finally opened the door. It had been a guessing game as to when he would decide to go to bed, but after years of cohabiting with the man, John had got pretty good at figuring him out.
Predictably, Baron stopped in his tracks, looking John over, then he glanced around the room, perhaps suspecting that John had decided to trash the place in his absence. That wasn’t an entirely unfair expectation, John decided. He had been pretty angry the last time he’d been in this room.
“What are you doing here?” Baron asked. John didn’t move from his cross-legged position on the bed. Sitting still helped him keep a handle on his anger, whereas pacing the room tended to let it run wild.
“I get it now,” John said. He’d put a lot of thought into this, into how to explain his feelings and how to express himself. People always complained that he didn’t make any sense, but it was just because he didn’t know how to connect all the ideas together in a way that other people could understand. “You let Li Khuli go. Most people – most shifters – would have killed her. And you let Miller stay. And I understand why now.”
Baron was still watching him with that predatory caution that had always captivated John so much. He didn’t jump to conclusions, didn’t give away what he was thinking, didn’t make foolish assumptions about people’s motivations. “And what exactly did you conclude about this?” he asked slowly.
John opened his mouth to answer, but then hesitated, suddenly taking note of Baron’s body language. If he was pissed off or wanted John out of his room, he would have folded his arms. If he was merely annoyed or tired, he would have gone about doing whatever it was he did before bed, taking off his shirt, tidying his laundry. But he wasn’t. He was standing there, body turned slightly to the side, arms loose and relaxed, his eyes never leaving John’s. What the fuck? That was a classic defensive pose. He thought John was going to attack him? Was he really that much of an arsehole that people thought he would go around and just…
“You want to save everyone,” he blurted out, forgetting half the things he had wanted to say. “You want to believe everyone is worth saving.” He looked away, suddenly uncomfortable with the intense eye contact. “So it doesn’t seem right that I want to be angry about you saving Miller, but grateful because you saved me. ‘Cos in the end it’s all the same thing.”
Silence, and he risked glancing back at Baron. His expression was unreadable, but his body had turned towards John by a couple of degrees. His shoulders had relaxed a fraction and his breathing had quickened its pace.
“Is that an apology, then?” Baron asked, aiming for indifference, but his voice was too tight to really pull it off.
Was it a what? “I don’t know,” John admitted, his speech tossed out the window as Baron went off script. “Andre explains things better than you do. And Li Khuli saved Miller when she was supposed to kill him. So when I moved out, I thought what I thought, and now I think something different. Am I supposed to say sorry because I’ve learned something?” Damn these human rituals and customs. They’d never made any sense to him.
“No,” Baron said, a hint of a smile appearing, and it was like watching the sun break through clouds after a storm. “So you’re okay with Miller being here now?”
“I said the Chant of Forests to him. I still don’t like him, but yeah, he’s one of us.”
Baron’s hands went into his pockets then, and after spending long hours with Andre, practising meditation and learning to understand his own emotions better, John now realised it was something Baron did when he wasn’t comfortable with what he was feeling and wanted to hide it. He’d always assumed that other people had a firm handle on their emotions and that he was the odd one out, but now it seemed that everyone was a little bit lost some of the time, just like he was.
“Thank you for letting me know,” Baron said, looking at the floor. There was nothing else in his stance to give away what he was thinking, and as a result, John found himself feeling rather reticent about expressing his own emotions further. As Andre had explained, there was a time to say how you felt, but it was just as important to know when to keep things to yourself.
John slid off the bed as the silence continued, figuring he’d done a reasonable job, had said the most important bits, and Baron seemed… well, not exactly happy with the result, but not upset either.
“Was that all you came here to say?” Baron asked, as John took a step towards the door, and he immediately stopped again.
“No. But…”
“But?”
A dozen thoughts were racing through John’s mind, each clamouring for air time, and it took an effort to slow them down enough to work out which one came first. “You slept with Kajus.” Really? That was what his brain had settled on?
“Yes, I did,” Baron admitted, after the slightest of pauses. “You and I broke up a good while before that.”
“Okay. So what if we didn’t want to be broken up anymore?”
In the space of a heartbeat, Baron’s abdominal muscles contracted, his legs tensed, and his face lost that harsh, stressed look he’d carried for so long. Stepping past John, he reached out and gave the door a firm nudge, having left it open when he’d come in. It closed quietly on smooth hinges, ending on a soft click.
But John recognised the look on Baron’s face and very deliberately stepped out of his reach. “I’m not moving back in,” he said emphatically, and Baron didn’t even try to hide his shock.
“You’re not? But you just said -”
“Not yet. Maybe one day, but… I think it’s good for me to have my own space for a while. I’m learning things, about laundry, and alarm clocks, and I’ve learned to sleep on my own.” Previously, he’d never been able to sleep for more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time unless Baron was in the room with him. Now, he could go for two or three hours before waking up again. “And Andre… it’s good to have somewhere to talk to Andre where we won’t be interrupted. ‘Cos he shares a room with Caroline, so we can’t go in there. So I think…” He sighed. He was officially the Den’s omega wolf now, which would have made it difficult to move back in with the alpha, but it was nice to realise that it wasn’t the best decision anyway. “So I want to have sex with you. And talk to you, and watch TV with you, and exercise with you. But I don’t want to move back into your room. Not yet.”
This sudden burst of independence was clearly surprising Baron. As alpha, he was used to being in control, and his standard method for dealing with opposition was to push back even harder.
But instead, he stepped back, opened the door and stood clear of the exit. “You want to make your own decisions? That’s fine. That’s good. It’s probably a good way to do things.” Was it John’s imagination, or was there a faint reprimand in the words? For once, the inflections in Baron’s tone were too subtle for him to read.
Feeling suddenly bold, he stepped forward and took the door out of Baron’s grasp, closing it softly again. “I want you,” he said, stepping up close and looking Baron in the eye. “But I want to know who I am as well. You made a lot of concessions for me before. You put up with a lot of mess and noise and you made excuses for me. You lied for me. You broke shifter laws for me. I’m not asking for any of that. I want – I need – to look after myself, even if I get it wrong some of the time. But I still want you.”
The look of longing on Baron’s face made John’s heart beat faster. His hands came up and framed John’s face, then ran over his hair in a strangely paternal caress, his hands trembling ever so slightly. His breathing hitched on an inhale, then he leaned down and closed the distance between them, their lips meeting in a soft collision that was more tender and more passionate than anything John had experienced before. He snaked a hand around to Baron’s buttocks to pull him against him, then floundered for a moment as he waited for Baron to forcibly haul him onto the bed… and felt oddly bereft when he didn’t.
Okay, so… no problem. John could get things moving instead. Nimble fingers made quick work of the buttons on Baron’s shirt, and once that was out of the way, he turned them both around and steered Baron backwards towards the bed. He pushed him back, then followed him down, an eager hand finding Baron’s erection and stroking it through his trousers.
But Baron wasn’t touching him back, wasn’t encouraging him to strip his shirt off or trying to open the fly on his jeans, and John sat back, miffed at the sudden change. Okay, so he didn’t want to dive back into the overbearing control Baron had had over him before, but this felt a lot more like how it had been way back at the beginning of their relationship, when he’d had to coax Baron into the smallest sexual encounters and been baffled by his partner’s unwillingness to take his own pleasure.
“Do you want me here, or not?” John asked, knowing that surely the answer was yes, but also bracing himself for the unlikely but shattering possibility that he’d get a no.
“Too much,” Baron said, his voice oddly tight. He sat up, flipping John into his back, licking his lips as he undid John’s jeans. “Let me show you how much…”