11. Trent
Chapter 11
Trent
A sweet, smoky odor eased Trent out of his deep sleep. And it was deep. The exhaustion of the last couple of days had caught up to him. The sizzle of the cured meat was too tempting to resist, however. His eyes fluttered open, and he took in the sight of his temporary bedroom.
The darkness and lack of electricity had obscured much of it the night before. In the soft morning light, its welcoming coziness was more apparent. The nightstand was handmade, constructed from beautiful, knotted pine, as was the small dresser in the corner. The room was tight, but he didn’t need a ton of space. He only needed somewhere to sleep, and the bed had been comfy enough to knock him out completely.
Trent slipped on a pair of running shorts and a t-shirt, the soft fabric grazing his nipples as he pulled it on. A little shiver of involuntary pleasure sparked across his chest, making him think of Oscar.
Which…why? Why would that make remind him of the vampire?
Trent was done with this ridiculous angst. It was time to come to terms with what he was feeling and move on. Regardless of what he thought of Oscar as a person, he was attracted to him.
The physical desire was the most intense he’d ever experienced.
It didn’t make sense. Oscar was a man, a vampire , and a pain-in-the-ass. Or was he? Maybe Trent had been unfair to him. He’d certainly made a bunch of unfounded assumptions about him. He still found Oscar’s attitude infuriating much of the time, but he had to admit that Oscar had been kind to him. He’d tried to do the right thing. Did that make up for his flaws?
Regardless, Trent’s body wanted what it wanted. That didn’t mean he had to do anything about it.
A faint humming drifted in from the other side of the door. He pulled on the knob to reveal Oscar bent over a pan, his tall frame a mismatch for the squat black wood stove. His brown hair was loose, laying gently across his neck and collarbones.
Oscar wore a white tank top and a pair of terry cloth shorts that hugged his ass in an absolutely obscene way. For someone of his height, Oscar had a lot going on in the rear. As he hummed a jaunty tune, he swayed, wiggling his hips back and forth.
Trent’s cock filled. Damn. Trent always knew a vampire would kill him eventually, but he hadn’t thought it would be death by blue balls.
“Like what you see?”
Trent’s whole body froze. Of course, Oscar had heard him come in. He was a damned vampire.
“Don’t worry about it, Trent,” Oscar said, his voice low. “It’s a compliment.”
Trent forced himself to move. He was going to be in trouble if he was struck speechless every time he caught a glimpse of Oscar’s fully covered ass. It would be a hell of a long week.
“I’m surprised you’re up,” Trent said, crossing to the small kitchen table and resting his elbows on the deep red tablecloth. “You don’t seem like a morning sunshine person. You seem more like a two a.m. poppers person.”
Oscar sighed. “I can be both. Just because I like to have a good time doesn’t mean I don’t know how to get things done.”
Trent didn’t respond. He needed to stop making assumptions about this man. He was looking like a fool.
After a couple of moments, he couldn’t take the silence anymore. “Thanks for cooking breakfast. I know you don’t need it.”
“Maybe not, but I wanted it.” Oscar flipped the bacon onto a paper towel-lined plate and cracked two eggs into the hot grease.
“Sometimes getting what you want is just as important as getting what you need,” Oscar continued, his voice taking on a flirty lilt.
“Oh?”
Oscar turned, his face sporting a sly smile that was offset by a thin layer of scruff. He sauntered over to the table, leaning over so that his lips were a few inches from Trent’s. They looked plush and delicious, and Trent was struck by a desire to ravage them.
Oscar was so close, his hair falling around both of their heads, his brown eyes warm and piercing. All it would take was a slight push upward, a slight crane of the neck, and Trent could feel those lips against his own.
He was moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, but it was happening. He was getting dragged toward Oscar, his body taking over for his short-circuited brain. Oscar waited there patiently.
The loud slam of the bedroom door closing broke the moment, and they separated. Oscar snapped back to the stovetop.
“Look at you two early birds!” Justin giggled and walked over to Oscar at the stove. He wore the same pajama pants and t-shirt that he’d arrived in the day before. “Good morning.”
Justin gave Oscar a tight hug. Trent stared as Justin’s slender arms stretched across Oscar’s back, just above where Trent imagined Oscar’s butt crack began. Trent’s hands grasped at the thin kitchen tablecloth, his heart beating in his ears.
Trent berated himself even as he had the reaction. Jealousy? Is that what was happening now? It was so basic.
As Oscar broke off the hug with a stiff smile, Justin winked at Trent.
The little brat.
“Do you want breakfast?” Oscar asked Justin, and the warmth in his voice caused Trent’s stomach to sputter with rage bubbles. Luckily, Justin shook his head. Good. Oscar had made breakfast just for him.
“I’m not into food. Don’t miss it.” Justin glided over to one of the windows facing out of the front of the house, moving aside the dainty lace curtains to gaze out into the dense forest surrounding them.
“What are you looking at?” Trent asked, trying not to sound peeved.
“Nothing, really.” Justin turned back to Oscar and Trent. “But I think I should go out and patrol. We are technically on the run. And I need something to do!” Justin smiled widely and headed out the front door.
“Be back in a few hours!”
After he was gone, Trent grunted and rolled his eyes.
“What?” Oscar asked, a confused look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t like him.”
“Justin?” Oscar grabbed a brown ceramic plate and slid the two crispy eggs onto it. “He’s a good kid.”
“He’s too chipper, too cutesy. He’s hiding something.” Trent leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.
“What are you talking about?” Oscar added a few slices of bacon and placed the plate in front of Trent. Trent breathed in the smoky smell, sucking the tendrils of flavor into his lungs. He loved breakfast.
“I don’t trust him. There’s something going on there.”
“He’s my friend.” Oscar sat down across from Trent. He picked up a slice of bacon and took a bite. “He’s been through a lot.”
“He wants to be more than your friend,” Trent said through a mouthful of crispy pork.
“He does not!” Oscar’s nostrils flared as he spoke. “We just…we experienced the same shit. The old Azarian coven. It was bad. We have a connection because of it.”
“I don’t know…” Trent picked up the fork and knife lying in front of him and cut into the first fried egg.
“You can’t know how awful it was.” Oscar closed his eyes, and the morning sun cast an angelic yellow-gold glow over his pale face.
Trent said nothing. There was a melancholy underneath Oscar’s words that was unusual for the typically flippant vampire. Oscar’s eyes snapped open. He locked his gaze to Trent’s. The intensity made Trent’s breath catch.
“We were starved.” A flash of orange fire sparked in Oscar’s eyes as the words left his mouth. “They would withhold blood from the newer vampires, making us thirsty and desperate. We would do anything to be fed. The need clouded our minds, made it impossible to even understand some of the evil they forced us to enact.”
Trent’s gut stirred, filling with a protective rage. No one should treat Oscar that way. No one had the right.
“It didn’t improve when Charles Azarian died,” Oscar continued. His voice shook, and his hands were tight balls resting on the patterned tablecloth. “Not for a while. The fighting was horrific. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Justin disappeared. I think he managed to escape and live free, for a little while at least, but then something changed. He hasn’t told me about it yet.”
Oscar’s hands flattened against the table, mindlessly smoothing out the tablecloth. “A few of the younger vampires and I hid in an isolated wing of the covenhouse. I didn’t see him after that. We did our best to stay away from whichever of Azarian’s cruel henchmen had control at any given moment.”
Oscar took a deep breath, calming himself. “After a week, the noise of the fighting died down, but we didn’t dare leave. We were starving. The newest vamps desperately needed blood. I was planning to venture out when Freddie found us. I was the only one still conscious.”
“Why didn’t you get out earlier?” Trent asked, his voice soft. His chest ached with compassion for Oscar. It must have been horrible.
“It was brutal. We couldn’t chance it. The elders of the coven had always been cruel, and my ex was the cruelest of all of them, but after Charles was gone, they became ruthless. They had no regard for life, slaughtering anyone who got in the way of their mad quests for power. I hope…I can only hope they’re all dead.”
Trent’s heart caught in his throat, hearing the rawness in Oscar’s voice. There was a lot the man hadn’t dealt with. Instinctively, Trent got to his feet, positioning himself behind Oscar and wrapping his arms around his chest.
Oscar’s response was an intense, desperate grasping. He buried his face in Trent’s bicep. Pain radiated off him.
“I’m sorry,” Oscar whispered. Trent could feel his cool breath against the skin of his arm.
“For what?” Trent stayed still, strong and solid, allowing Oscar to anchor himself.
“For bringing you into this…for being so weak…I don’t know…”
“There is nothing about you that is weak,” Trent said, his mouth near Oscar’s long, silky brown hair. “We are…we are given things in life that we shouldn’t be, that we don’t deserve, and we do what we must in order to make it through. We are survivors.”
Oscar nodded, and a trickle of liquid hit Trent’s skin. He was crying. The ache in Trent’s chest turned to a stabbing pain. There was a deep wound in Oscar that had only just started to heal, and it hurt to be near it. But Trent couldn’t leave, couldn’t remove himself from it. He tightened his embrace, trying to project stability and safety. Oscar needed him.
They stayed there for several minutes, Oscar sitting, Trent’s arms wrapped around his chest. Trent listened to Oscar breathe, his mind spinning. He was not someone with a lot of close friends, close connections. This was maybe the most intimate he’d felt with someone since…since his mother died eight years ago.
Slam. Crack.
The noise pierced the quiet moment and Trent spun around, grabbing a nearby kitchen knife. He scanned the room for the source of the sound, but it wasn’t immediately apparent.
“Look.” Trent turned toward Oscar’s voice. The vampire had his claws out. His fangs had dropped, and he was pointing to one of the big front windows. There was a large crack running down it.
“What the hell did that?” Trent asked. Oscar shook his head. Trent walked forward slowly, the wood floor creaking under his steps. He was hyper aware of every sound, every movement of the air, as adrenaline pumped through him. He reached up and ran his hand over the crack in the glass. He stared past it out into the trees.
“Come on,” Trent said, going for the door, but Oscar was there with his hand out, stopping him.
“It’s too dangerous,” Oscar said, his eyes hard and fierce. “You’re human. I’ll go out and look. Get your gear from your room.”
Trent sighed. Would Oscar be a smothering nanny this whole week? He’d kept himself safe for years before they met.
“Go.” Trent gestured out the window, then opened a nearby drawer. When they had arrived, he’d stashed a wooden stake there. With a knife in one hand and a stake in the other, he was as ready as he could be.
He walked back to the window to see Oscar bent over outside on the porch. Despite Oscar’s directive, Trent’s curiosity got the better of him. He stepped out into the cool morning air.
Oscar straightened as Trent came through the door. “I told you to stay inside,” he whispered, his voice almost a hiss.
“What is it?” Trent asked, ignoring the rebuke. Oscar sighed, then gestured downward.
On the faded planks of the porch lay a bird. A crow, by the look of it, although Trent wasn’t a bird person. It wasn’t moving.
“Guess he ran into the window.” Trent glanced around the front lawn. “No other signs of anyone?”
“No.” Oscar peered into the surrounding forest. “But I don’t like it.”
“It’s just a bird. You said Freddie made sure nobody followed us.”
“He did.” Oscar pressed his lips together into a thin line.
Trent shrugged. “It was startling, but there’s a simple explanation. The crow didn’t see the window and crashed into it.”
Oscar’s face didn’t relax at Trent’s reassertion of the obvious. He squinted, peering into the trees and sniffing the air. Trent couldn’t smell anything, but maybe Oscar’s vampire senses could detect what he could not.
“The ashy smoke of a young vampire.” Oscar frowned and crossed his arms, the expression of displeasure at odds with his large, expressive eyes. “And something else. A sweet, musty smell.”
“It’s probably Justin.”
“I know what Justin smells like.”
“Or smoke from our wood stove, Oscar. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Trent walked back to the door, but Oscar headed down the steps onto the front lawn as he scanned the surrounding copse of trees. Trent followed his line of sight out into the dense woods, and at the edge the underbrush shook slightly.
Was it a rabbit? Some other animal?
A furry mass burst from the leaves, and god, it was massive . Night-black fur adorned with silver stripes covered an enormous beast. It must have been four feet tall, and its huge muscles shifted as it bounded toward them.
Trent gripped the knife in his hand. It was a wolf. A fucking wolf.
Without thinking, he was moving down the steps to Oscar. Could the vampire probably defend himself better than Trent could? Sure. Did that thought slow Trent’s powerful instinct to protect him? Absolutely not.
As he reached Oscar, the wolf stopped in its tracks. About ten feet from them, it cocked its head, observing the two. Trent opened his mouth to tell Oscar that they should back away.
The thing shifted .
Trent had never seen anything like it. With a series of pops and cracks, the bones and muscles of the wolf began to change and transform. It reared up on its hind legs as its whole body mutated, its fur thinning to reveal the face and form of a tall, muscular woman. She appeared to be in her thirties and had long, jet black hair with a single streak of silver.
She was also very naked.
“You two belong to Anthony’s coven?”
Trent found himself unable to say anything. He didn’t consider himself a prude, but somehow standing in front of this nude, intimidating wolf-person had really thrown him. Luckily, Oscar did not have that problem.
“We are,” he said. “You’re from the Scopan Lake pack?”
“Ayuh,” she said. “Sorry to surprise you on your dooryard. I’m the alpha, Rhonda. Stopped by because we’ve been picking up some unusual scents today in the surrounding woods. Wanted to let you know. We try to look out for Anthony and his people.”
“I’m Oscar.” Oscar gestured to Trent, who had relaxed slightly but was still having trouble forming words. “This is Trent. You probably picked up our third, Justin. He went out on patrol.”
Rhonda turned her head, peering back into the woods and squinting. “I’d be surprised if it was just him. I’d bet on two or three at least. There was an undercurrent of something in the scent that I didn’t like. Cruelty? I don’t know, but the animals and birds are skittish.”
“One of them flew into the bay window,” Trent said, finally finding his voice. “A crow. It scared the shit out of us.”
Rhonda grimaced and walked closer toward them. She seemed totally unperturbed by her own nakedness, and Trent did his best to respect that. If she didn’t find it strange, why should he?
“I don’t like it,” she said. “I’ll have one of my betas patrol around the cabin for the next few days.”
“That is incredibly kind,” Oscar replied. “We don’t have anything to offer in return?—”
“Nonsense.” Rhonda dismissed the idea with a roll of her eyes. “Anthony’s grandmother was good to us, even though she didn’t know what we were. Anthony has been the same. I wouldn’t feel right not keeping a look out. You two are obviously in some kind of trouble?—”
Oscar opened his mouth to answer, but Rhonda waved him off.
“—but I don’t need to know what it is. Just don’t shoot at a wolf if you see one nosing around.”
Trent nodded mutely.
“Thank you for?—”
Before Oscar could finish the sentence, she was already moving, fur sprouting once again as her bones cracked and shifted. She disappeared into the brush with surprising grace, considering the unsettling transformation her body was undergoing.
“That was a first for me,” Trent said, lowering the knife that he realized he’d held in front of him for the whole conversation with Rhonda.
“I’ve noticed wolf shifters from afar, but they tend to be very isolationist. They avoid humans and other supernaturals. Anthony must have done a significant favor for her to approach us like that.”
Trent nodded, not knowing what else to say. He had thought that he’d seen everything, but the existence of wolf shifters niggled at his brain.
“I had assumed vampires were it,” he said to Oscar, turning back toward the cabin. “If wolf shifters are a thing, what other supernatural creatures are prowling the world?”
Oscar smiled, putting his arm around Trent’s shoulder as they walked across the uneven grass.
“Trust me, you don’t want to think about it. Regardless, I’m thankful for the extra protection. I doubt anyone was able to follow from the city, but that doesn’t mean there might not be other dangers up here. I’ll sleep better knowing a wolf is out there guarding us.”