14. Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fourteen
“ T hat’ll be twenty-two ninety-nine,” Mrs Thomas said.
I tapped my card against the machine to pay for the bottle of red wine and then left the shop, the bell above the door ringing as it closed behind me.
Every November since the law passed in 1998, Miss B has been hosting a celebratory meal in honour of equal rights for omegas. Now that Abbie was in charge of the actual meal part, it was something I looked forward to every year.
I finished making the final den of the season last week, and I was almost beginning to feel human again after a couple of day’s rest.
Dylan had agreed to stay on at the pub until the new year at least. It gets busy during the lead-up to Christmas, and it would mean all three of us actually got some days off each week. I was looking forward to the following weekend when Milly was off, and I’d get to work my first proper shift alone with Dylan.
I hadn’t been alone with him since the night we’d spent together. I’d had the best night’s sleep of my life wrapped around him. Settled in a way I’d never felt before. Then I’d woken up to a note from him saying he’d left for his morning run. I knew it had been an excuse, a reason not to address the elephant in the room.
I’d known Dylan for most of my life, and our relationship had never included cuddling… especially not with my boner pressing into his back.
That night had changed something between us. When we’d brush past each other behind the bar, it was like being electrocuted, and there were times I worried we might choke on the tension that stole the oxygen from the air around us. I’d catch Dylan glancing at me when he thought my attention was elsewhere, and his gaze burned holes into me. I couldn’t help but wonder if we were one spark off an ember away from going up in flames.
As I crossed the field to get to the Bailey house, the frosted grass crunched under my feet. It was my favourite time of year. Seeing your breath lingering in the air, a sea of orange, brown and yellow leaves lining the pavements like an autumnal collage.
Cooper answered when I knocked on the front door. He must have arrived not long before me because his nose was still pink from the cold.
“Come on in,” he said, a big smile on his face. Cooper was never happier than when he was surrounded by his people. I used to joke that he was a collie at heart, always trying to herd people and keep them all close by. He had never appreciated the comparison.
I followed him into the open-plan kitchen/dining room, expecting to find only Abbie, Miss B and Dylan, but finding an additional two strange faces there.
Dylan talked animatedly to them both with his arms gesticulating wildly. He paused mid-sentence when he spotted me.
“Oh hey, Ax. This is my friend, George, and his alpha, Ivan. George was one of my housemates during second and third year. Guys, this is Axel; he’s Cooper’s best friend and currently my boss.” He grinned. Dylan looked cosy in one of his knitted blue jumpers that complemented his pale complexion.
Dylan’s cheeks were flushed, indicating that he’d had at least two glasses of wine. It didn’t take much for him to get a little bit tipsy. I smiled at his friends, relaxed almost, knowing they were only friends and unlikely to be an ex since they were here together.
“Nice to meet you both. You’ve come at a good time. Abbie goes all out for this meal,” I explained.
“I can tell. It smells amazing,” George replied.
George gave me an assessing once-over that left me feeling momentarily flayed. Thankfully, his attention was immediately snapped towards his boyfriend, who had gently squeezed the back of his neck. They were an unusual-looking couple; Ivan had some of the palest blonde hair I’d seen on an adult with a sharp-angled face that belonged on a catwalk model. George, on the other hand, was pink-cheeked and almost cherubic-looking with dark auburn hair.
With two extra guests joining us, Dylan ended up sitting next to me, opposite his friends. Although I missed getting to stare at him without it being weird, it was nice having his warmth and scent right next to me.
“How was interrailing? I saw some of the photos you posted and was super jealous,” Dylan said between mouthfuls of delicious chicken.
His question percolated in my mind and made me feel guilty. I shouldn’t have trapped Dylan behind the bar of my pub when he was only twenty-one and should be off gallivanting around the world with people like George and Ivan.
“It was great. It’s actually a shame we have to, like, return to real life and get jobs and stuff.” George pouted. “Oh but, oh! I forgot to tell you, guess who we bumped into in Prague, of all places?”
“I’m definitely not guessing; who was it?” Dylan replied.
“Remy! And let me tell you, the guy somehow looked even hotter under the summer sun. I will never understand why you didn’t lock that down when you had the chance,” George prattled on, and my food turned to ash in my mouth.
“Is that the guy you wouldn’t tell me the name of but just nicknamed ‘Adonis’?” Cooper asked.
Dylan rolled his eyes before mumbling a “maybe.”
Great. Dylan had an ex who was an Adonis—and apparently discarded him afterwards. If this poor Remy guy didn’t make the cut, what chance did I ever really have?
“Oh my god! I forgot you called him that,” George said, confirming for him.
“Why didn’t I ever hear about this boyfriend?” Miss B asked.
“Ugh. He wasn’t my boyfriend. It was just a casual sort of thing,” Dylan explained, crimson blush dotting his cheekbones in a way that I usually adored but certainly did not right now.
“Well, I hope you used protection,” Miss B replied.
“Good god, Mom. We’re eating here,” Dylan said, exasperated.
“There’s never a wrong time to talk about safe sex practices.”
“I’m with Dyl on this, Mom. I don’t need to be thinking about Dylan having any type of sex, safe or not, with an Adonis while I try to eat chicken,” Cooper interjected, of course catapulting that exact image into my mind until I thought I might be sick.
“Bullshit, you could probably eat with a rotting corpse next to you,” Dylan said.
“I was on your side!”
This devolved into continuous bickering between the two of them.
I sat between them in silence, trying to robotically chew through mouthfuls of food as I attempted to think of an excuse to get out of there.
How were Dylan and I supposed to be friends when I couldn’t even handle the mention of someone he used to sleep with?
Once the plates had been cleared of our mains, I managed to sneak off to the bathroom and send a text to Milly asking her to call me in ten minutes with some kind of emergency.
With my phone on loud, I returned to the table, having barely said a word to anyone the entire meal. I knew I was being rude, but I couldn’t bring myself to make small talk when I was so irrationally devastated by images of Dylan having sex with this Remy guy.
Almost fifteen minutes later, when I was beginning to worry that Milly hadn’t seen my text, my phone rang. I apologised and got up to answer.
“I have a really terrible gas leak. My whole place might blow up imminently,” Milly delivered in a dry, monotonous tone.
“Oh god. Get out of there. I’ll be right over.” I tried to inject a little theatrics into my response in case anyone was listening.
“I’m really sorry, Miss B, Abbie, I have to shoot. That was Milly; there’s a gas leak in her apartment,” I explained.
“Oh gosh, no way. Of course. We have Cooper’s old room free if she needs somewhere to stay while it gets sorted,” Miss B offered.
Guilt churned in my stomach, turning the contents to ash over lying to the people who were kindest to me. I didn’t deserve their love one bit.
I thanked them before grabbing my coat from by the door and legging it outside. It wasn’t until I was halfway across the field that the heavy sheets of rain pouring from the skies above even registered.
“Axel!” A voice shouted from the direction I’d run from.
No, no, no, no, no. Not right now. Please.
“Axel!” Dylan yelled again.
I spun around to find a soaking wet Dylan jogging towards me without even a coat on.
“What are you doing? You’re gonna get sick. Go back inside,” I shouted. A vibrating thunderclap rumbled angrily overhead.
“Why are you running away? What’s wrong?”
“I told you. Milly—“
”—Don’t bullshit me. Milly lives in a flat with only electric heating. She doesn’t have a gas supply, so don’t lie to me.”
Well fuck. Who would even notice something like that? Weird little nerd.
“I just needed to leave. Go back inside.” I grabbed his shoulders and manually turned him around like he would return home if he were facing in the right direction.
“No. Tell me why,” he demanded, shrugging my hands off his shoulders.
Another thunderclap reverberated through the grey clouds, followed by a flash of lightning that lit up Dylan’s face like a beacon, and I was merely a moth to his flame.
“I couldn’t sit there and hear about you with someone else, okay? I know it’s a me problem. But I just couldn’t do it. Now go home, Dylan,” I begged.
“You sound like a jealous alpha! You’ve always pulled this fucking shit, Axel, and it isn’t fair!” he yelled.
“Pulled what shit?”
“This!” He pointed wildly back and forth between the two of us. “This hot and cold alpha bullshit. Everyone always acted like I was this dumb kid with hearts in his eyes, but you’d shove people for touching me and then scarper. You’d threaten Adam like I was yours but then go home with Lauren. It’s fucking confusing, and I thought it was in the past, but you’re doing it again right now! If we’re going to be friends, Axel, you don’t get to spend your life making sure I never belong to anyone else when you’ll never see me as anything other than a… than a kid brother!“ His chest heaved like he’d been running.
Despite the rain, I could tell he was crying. His eyes were red, and he looked so sad I wanted to take all his pain away. Undo everything I’d ever done to put that look in his soulful, wide green eyes.
“I don’t see you that way,” I confessed, pulling the words from a deeply buried space inside my chest. A space I’d kept locked for the last five years.
“What?” he asked, understandably confused.
“I don’t see you as a little brother, or any kind of brother for that matter.”
“But… What? Since when?”
“Fuck, Dylan. I haven’t seen you that way since you invited me to see your nest, and I nearly fucking died on the spot. I didn’t see you as a brother when I walked in on you dry-humping Adam in Lei’s living room, and I wanted to rip his hands clean off for touching you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you as a little brother, in fact.” I scrunched my eyes closed as the words tumbled from my lips in a freefall.
“No. That’s not right. That can’t be right. You were with Lauren. You didn’t see me that way.” He shook his head from side to side like he could recalibrate the information and get it to make sense. “Why are you saying this? It can’t be true; it just can’t.”
“I’m a dick, okay? You’re right. I was with Lauren. I had no right to be jealous and possessive over you, but I was . You were my best friend’s little brother, and I couldn’t have you.”
“Were?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Still are. But I can’t fight this anymore. I can’t cope. I feel like I’m going to peel my own skin off when I’m next to you and can’t touch you. It’s not normal. I know it isn’t normal. But—“
”—What can’t you fight anymore?”
“That you’re fucking mine, Dylan. And I think I’ll die if you really don’t want me anymore,” I choked out the last part, and before the words had barely left my lips, Dylan had shot forward.
His arms wrapped around my neck, and he jumped, his legs circling my waist. I caught him on instinct, and then my vision was filled with Dylan.
Wide, determined eyes peered into my soul and then soft, wet lips were pressed against mine as he kissed me with a ferocity I should have expected from Dylan but hadn’t. He commanded me with his mouth, his tongue parting my lips and seeking out mine. His long fingers gripped the roots of my hair and tugged like he wanted to merge our faces into one. I would have obliged him if I could.
We must have been freezing, but I couldn’t feel it. Dylan, solid little Dylan, was in my arms. I wrapped them tightly around his back, scared that if I didn’t cling to him, he’d slip through my fingers like quicksand once more.
His lips tasted even better than he smelled; I hadn’t thought that had even been a possibility.
With every kiss and point of contact where our bodies met, my brain chanted.
Mate. Mine. Keep safe.
Mate. Mine. Keep safe.
Mate. Mine. Keep safe.
Dylan bit and sucked on my lips like a rabid animal, and I loved every minute of it. Looked forward to the sting and bruised sensation he’d leave behind. I’d welcome it, even.
We kissed violently almost, the years of pent-up frustration being taken out on our abused mouths until we were panting, gasping for breaths and trying to steal each other’s air.
Have mine, Dylan. Have my last breath if you want it. It’s yours.
Dylan was shivering in my arms, and I could feel his hard length pressed against my stomach.
I wondered if it ached like mine did. My knot throbbed like I was in rut even though it wasn’t due for a few more weeks. My balls were heavy and full, desperate to paint Dylan’s skin until he smelled just right. So covered in my seed that another alpha wouldn’t even dare to look at him. A growl rumbled out of my chest involuntarily at the thought.
“Take me home?” he whispered into my parted lips.
I nodded and stepped back in the direction of his house.
“No, Ax. Take me to your home.”