Chapter Seven
MATT
Matt stared unseeingly through the window. This wasn’t—it couldn’t be—but things were slotting into place with a sick inevitability. Didn’t stop him trying to prevent it.
Then he glanced around at Jesse, and his wolf surged inside him.
Oh, fuck, no. This couldn’t be happening. Not to him, not now, not ever.
Matt clenched his jaw. He’d been doing it so often around Jesse Turner that he was going to send him the dental bill.
His wolf could be reacting for any number of reasons—Jesse was stubborn, disrespectful, half-feral.
Any alpha would react to that. But add in the way he’d burrowed into Matt’s dreams like he belonged there, and what had just happened when their fingers touched…
Matt hadn’t been immune to Jesse’s come-on. He’d forced himself to ignore it, to pretend he wasn’t tempted. Sleeping with Jesse would be a complication too far.
But when their fingers brushed, it was like a spark jumped between them and lit something.
Heat and raw need exploded through him, violent enough to steal his breath.
It wasn’t just arousal. It was everything—a pressure in his chest, a dizzying rush of longing—and it all came from that single touch.
He’d heard the stories. When someone touched their fated mate, something inside them woke up. Sometimes it was just a whisper, an awareness that slowly grew and built. Other times, it hit like lightning. And either way, whatever they were feeling in that moment got amplified.
In Matt’s case, it had been arousal, temptation, and something he hadn’t even realized was there—longing. For connection, for someone who didn’t just see the alpha but saw him.
No. Fuck, no. That was the very last thing he wanted. And they were not mates. Matt wouldn’t allow it. He just hadn’t touched a guy he was attracted to in too damn long, that was all.
He choked down the truth his body was screaming, sick panic twisting through him. Everything about Jesse was calling to him, from that rasp in his voice to his refusal to submit, even when alone with a strange alpha. But Matt refused to acknowledge it.
He’d promised to equip Jesse with the knowledge he needed to survive as a shifter.
That was all it was between them. Jesse was damn lucky it was Matt’s pack he’d blundered into—there were plenty of other packs that would have simply punished him, not taking the time to find out his offense was due to ignorance.
Or maybe it wasn’t just luck, something inside him suggested.
His damn wolf. Who’d better shut up, right the fuck now.
He forced himself to sit across from Jesse, whose gaze kept flicking toward the doorway—looking for an escape route, probably. His wolf surged again, demanding he claim what was his. Matt forced it back.
“We need to talk,” he said, and didn’t recognize his voice. He cleared his throat, steadying himself.
“We already did,” Jesse pointed out.
“Not about things that’ll keep you alive.”
“You really think I need Shifter 101?” Contempt licked through Jesse’s voice.
“I think it’s a damn miracle you haven’t gotten yourself killed before now, and you’re going to listen to this, whether you want to or not.”
Maybe it came out a bit more forcefully than Matt had intended, but it was the only way he could stop himself thinking about what had just happened. He had to concentrate on the next second, and the one after that, and not think beyond them.
Jesse’s eyes flared at his tone, inconveniently reminding Matt of how he’d looked earlier—his lips parted, his eyes dark as they’d roved so intently over his body.
Damn it, Jesse Turner was a bundle of problems because Matt wanted nothing more than to haul him up from his chair, press him against the nearest surface and kiss him.
Kiss wasn’t the word—he wanted to fuck his mouth, to make Jesse understand he was Matt’s.
His stomach turned over as he realized—yet another witness to the prosecution for the case they were mates.
He wrenched his mind back to the problem at hand. “You say you haven’t been around other shifters.” Matt somehow believed Jesse, improbable as his story was. “What do you know about being a shifter?”
Jesse looked like Matt used to feel back in school—sulkily indulging the teacher, purely because the teacher had the authority to dole out punishment. “Know I can change into a big, hairy wolf,” he said. “And I guess now I know scent markers are a thing.”
This was even worse than Matt had thought. “You must have looked stuff up.” No one would accept they could turn into a wolf and not be a little surprised by that.
“I did, a bit, but I didn’t much like what I read—living in packs, alphas throwing their weight around, and some fairy-tale soulmate shit.” He shrugged. “I’ve been doing fine on my own, so I don’t need to know any of that.”
For a frozen instant, Matt couldn’t breathe.
He tried, but his lungs wouldn’t work, panic spiraling through him when Jesse said the word soulmate.
He’d been so intent on denying what he knew, it hadn’t occurred to him that Jesse would also have experienced that touch.
That Jesse, too, would realize what lay between them.
And then he frowned, because fairy-tale shit? He breathed at last, determined not to give away the hope surging inside him, battering his heart against his ribs. If Jesse didn’t know, if that touch hadn’t meant anything to him, then Matt could still bury this. He could still get out unscathed.
Jesse was furrowing his own brow as he stared at Matt. Apparently the silence had gone on a little too long.
Matt pushed away the discomfort that had settled in his chest. He had to focus. He couldn’t get distracted by the pull between them, not when Jesse still didn’t understand what it meant to be a shifter.
“You need to understand that equal rights for shifters haven’t been in place long, only since the Recognition Accords,” Matt continued, his voice firm again as he grasped for a neutral topic, one to distract him.
“Some non-shifters are scared of us, and none of them understand our lives. Our rights could be taken away again if we don’t play by the rules non-shifters have set for us. ”
“Non-shifters” might be more of a mouthful than “humans,” but Matt refused to call non-shifters human. That would mean shifters weren’t, and he was plenty human. He just had a few more tricks under the hood.
“One of those rules is that all shifters must belong to an officially recognized pack. Unless they’re serving in the military, when, for the most anti-shifter reasoning I’ve heard, they’re not allowed to be part of one.”
Jesse narrowed his eyes. “Sure you’re not making that up just cause you want to keep me here? Cause it smells like bull.”
Matt was going to wring Jesse Turner’s neck before either of them were very much older. “I do not want to keep you here,” he shot back, the words ringing oddly hollow. His wolf protested the lie, and he shoved it down hard. “Damn it, Turner—I’m trying to save your hide.”
Jesse sighed, rolling his eyes like this was the biggest inconvenience of his life. “Fine,” he said. “Guess I’ll listen.”
Matt took a steadying breath, trying for the calm that had eluded him since Jesse’s arrival.
“I’m not saying we obey all the non-shifter rules, but you have to know what they are in order to work around them.
And they change. The National Council—oh, God, you won’t know about that either, will you? ”
Jesse just looked at him, but his expression practically screamed No shit.
“Okay, so each of the bigger packs has representation on their state’s shifter council. Those councils report to the Shifter National Council, which handles things at the national level, sort of like the federal government. But everything’s still subject to non-shifter federal law.”
Jesse was frowning. “But if we all have to obey the same laws anyway, what’s the National Council actually do?”
Good question. At least he was paying attention.
“Mostly, they just draw salaries and argue over procedure.” Matt forced down his contempt and set out to answer Jesse’s question more fully.
“They lobby Congress on our behalf, and they deal with shifter-related issues that we don’t want non-shifters to know about.
Say a couple of packs get into a territorial dispute.
Non-shifters wouldn’t understand our way of settling it, with claw and fang, so it’s easier all around if they don’t know.
And once the National Council recognizes the outcome, it’s official. ”
Jesse scoffed. “Sounds like a bunch of guys in suits thinking they’re important.”
“Pretty much,” Matt agreed, as he ran through his mental checklist of what else Jesse should know in case he spent time with other shifters in future.
He shoved his chair back and poured himself more coffee, bitterness in his mouth as he realized what he had to do. If he were an alpha worthy of the role—and that was doubtful enough—he had to give Jesse the knowledge to protect himself. Which meant, he’d have to tell him about mates.
If Jesse ended up in a pack and didn’t know about them, he could get himself killed just by saying the wrong thing, looking at someone’s mate wrong. And Matt couldn’t live with another death on his conscience.
He sipped the coffee. It was too hot, but he needed that almost-pain to ground him as he sank back down on his chair.
“Mates are real,” he said abruptly, and again, it didn’t sound like his voice. Too tight. “Christian and Dave are mates, which is why, right now, Christian would love nothing better than to gut you. You hurt Dave.”
Jesse shrugged, looking sublimely unconcerned. “Mates, boyfriends. Don’t matter what words you use, means the same thing.”
Oh, God, the temptation just to shrug it off along with Jesse. But he couldn’t. He had a responsibility.
“It’s not the same,” he said. “Every shifter comes into this world keyed to another person. Someone who completes—”