Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Flat Above Dough Knot Bakery, Haven
“ L incoln,” I whisper in shock.
Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln.
It’s like seeing a ghost.
The most perfect vision that I’ve seen in my dreams every night for three years.
I pale and forget how to breathe.
My gaze locks with the man’s gray eyes that shine like sharpened steel.
He’s crouched on the thick branch outside my window. When he saw me, he froze. Now, he’s as still as I am.
He looks like the beautiful gargoyle that I remember. My nickname for him because he’s as strong as a stone protector.
Our gazes are locked.
I can see the shadow of the boy who went missing weeks before his eighteenth birthday in his face. But he’s grown into the hottest Beta who I’ve ever seen.
Lincoln’s warm black skin makes the wicked glint in his silver flecked eyes even brighter.
That wickedness is new.
So is the silver piercing that looks like a coiled snake. It winds from the bottom of his right ear to the top.
Did he get that to remind him of me, or does it represent something else?
Something more sinister?
I’m sick with nerves.
Lincoln’s shoulders are broad and muscled. He was always tall but now, he is fit and powerful.
His suit is opened roguishly at the neck. His midnight hair falls over his strikingly large eyes in sleek waves.
I can’t look away from him.
I can’t move.
Can’t think.
Finally, I force myself to draw desperate gasps of oxygen into my lungs. I’m trembling, but it seems to reboot my mind and body at the same time because I find myself running toward the window and throwing up the sash.
“Link!” I cry.
Lincoln’s eyes darken with desperate longing, before he leaps through the window.
He grabs me, slamming me into the wall. I let out an oomph but I’ve never been so happy to be manhandled in my life.
Lincoln’s breathing as hard as I am.
Only now, do I fully realize how tall and muscled Lincoln has become.
He’s not the same boy who I once knew.
I nuzzle against Lincoln’s neck, as he cages me. Yet I feel safe in his shadow.
He was always my protector.
Lincoln’s scent of fresh summer raspberries cocoon me. I take deep breaths, for once not caring about the headache that it’ll cause. I want his scent to block out all the others.
My eyes smart with tears.
They’re tears of joy.
Lincoln kisses my hair, head, and face…anywhere that he can.
I purr, loving his touch.
I’ve been terrified that I’d never feel it again.
Lincoln rests his strong hands on my shoulders, and I wrap my arms around his waist.
“My fated.” Lincoln’s voice is deep and rumbling.
My fated.
Lincoln believes that we’re fated mates.
Amongst certain poor packs on the fringes of society like Lincoln comes from, before the Snakes took them in as servants, there’s still the ancient belief in superstitions and myths like fated mates being real.
Fated bonds.
He convinced me as kids that the fact I loved raspberries best like his scent, while his favorite food was blueberry muffins like mine, meant that we were fated. We did spend a lot of time nuzzling and licking each other’s necks in comfort.
We were in the same class at school.
When the school scents became overwhelming to me, only by burrowing my nose against Lincoln’s scent gland — and losing myself in his singular scent of raspberries — could I survive.
Without him, I’d probably have been forced to drop out because of my condition.
Yet the teachers were outraged, dragging us apart as much as they could.
They knew that Lincoln had no right to such closeness to me, since I was a mafia princess and he was only a Beta servant’s son.
Yet Lincoln braved our pack and teacher’s punishments because he called our connection fate .
I call it friendship and love .
I’ve loved Lincoln as long as I can remember.
But loving each other must be why three years ago something bad happened to him.
Because I can feel in my guts that it did.
I stiffen.
Lincoln notices the change in me and that I’ve stopped purring.
His gaze becomes guarded. “Are you still my fated?”
He lowers his hand to grasp mine at his waist. The matching Promise Bond Ring on his thumb glistens next to mine.
He hasn’t taken his off!
Lincoln raises his eyebrow, and I know that he’s thinking the same about me.
“Always, my gargoyle,” I reply.
He believes the fated myth. It’s important to him. So, why deny it?
Lincoln breaks into a smile. “And I’m still your gargoyle…?”
My gaze becomes troubled. “Link, what the hell happened? I thought that you were…”
Dead.
Except, I can’t even say it now.
“Let’s sit down, before you fall down,” Lincoln deflects. “You look flushed. Is it your pre-heats?”
Suddenly, I’m aware of what a hot mess I am.
And why.
I can’t tell him that I’m flushed because of the vibrator that I’ve just been holding between my splayed thighs.
I glance at the bed. I can’t see the magic wand, which is hidden underneath the cushions.
Thank goodness.
Lincoln and I have kissed, touched, and he’s got a tongue on him that can draw life changing orgasms from me, but we’re both still virgins.
At least, I know that I am.
I’ve no idea if Lincoln is.
I know nothing about him, do I?
I can’t judge him, however, because I’m about to sleep with an Alpha to help me through my heat.
Casual sex doesn’t mean anything. Matching and bonding do.
If I were to bond with an Alpha, then they’d need to understand that Lincoln would have to choose them too.
Lincoln has spent his life having as few choices as an Omega. Yet one choice that he has made is to promise to bond with me.
We’ve broken taboos by creating an Omega and Beta pack.
If an Alpha wants to join our relationship, then they need to want both of us.
Yet what Alpha would take a Rej Omega with the additional baggage of a Beta?
“I’m close to pre-heats,” I hedge. “I was more taking some quality time to myself.”
Lincoln’s eyes become half-hooded, and his smirk deepens. “Good for you. Anything that I can help with, fated?”
His thumb plays suggestively across the back of my hand.
With serious self-control, I shake my head. “I simply want to know where you’ve been. I’ve missed you so fucking much. Vito has too. We went crazy for the first few weeks. We didn’t let up searching for you for months. I’m certain that Dad paid for Vito’s culinary school just to get him sent away. I never gave up hope.”
“It’s a long story. Actually, a short story but a shit one. Let’s get comfy.” Lincoln drags me to sit down on the floor in his lap. “When have I passed up a chance to have you sit close like this? I’ve been dreaming about this every night. You smell fucking edible.”
He winds his arms around me.
Hell, this feels amazing cuddling on Lincoln’s powerful legs. I rest my head on his chest.
I’m never letting him out of my sight again.
But what if I don’t have a choice? He’s not part of my pack.
Is he bonded to someone else?
I sneakily peer up at his neck.
No bond bite.
I let out a relieved sigh.
I don’t have control of him and I understand that his family could have forced him into a bond.
I’d have understood. But inside, it would have killed me.
Yet there’s no bond mark or scar, just as there isn’t on my neck.
We’re both still free, right?
“You got your ear pierced. It looks fucking badass, but won’t your Dad go crazy?”
“Badass, huh?” When Lincoln grins, my heart pangs because I realize how much I’ve missed that look.
He turns his ear, so that I can inspect the intricate snake earring, which is coiling beautifully up his ear more easily.
“This isn’t a mark of my family owning you or something, right?” I ask, tentatively.
My family have done worse.
Certain mafia families make every pack member who work for them get tattoos that show their loyalty.
Lincoln wrinkles his nose in disgust. “I’d rather cut off my own ear. Actually, pretend I didn’t say that. I’d rather cut off the hand of whoever tried to get near me to mark me.”
Vito once described Lincoln as a golden retriever who’d been bitten by a werewolf.
I get it now.
Lincoln’s my best friend. He brings the sun into my shadowy world.
Yet for anyone outside his found family, which so far is Vito and me (and strangely, at high school also included Thomas, despite Thomas appearing unaware of Lincoln’s devotion), he’s as likely to savage them as smile at them.
Dad has a different word for him: unhinged .
That’s not the reason that I suspect Lincoln was made to vanish.
I am.
“Plus, Dad won’t go crazy about my piercings because I’m never going to see him again, after what he did to me.” Lincoln waggles his eyebrows, before adding in a lowered voice, “Did you notice that I said piercings , as in plural? As in, more than one? Want to guess where they are?”
I swallow, as my throat dries.
I can’t help it.
My gaze slides down the front of Lincoln’s tight, silk shirt and then I squirm around, imagining that it could be his cock that’s pierced.
Knowing Lincoln, it is.
Except, then it strikes me that it’s not only Lincoln who’s changed, for example, by bulking up with muscle and gaining an even more dangerous glint in his eyes.
It’s his clothes.
In the past, Lincoln wore worn-out jeans and cheap t-shirts. But now, he’s dressed in a sharp black suit with a silk threaded waistcoat.
It’s expensive.
Where the hell has he got the money for a suit like that?
“I know where they are in my fantasies,” I reply, still trying to put together the puzzle pieces of Lincoln’s changed appearance.
He chuckles.
“I can’t wait to show you the reality. But this one,” he touches his snake earring, “is the most special. It’s the first one that I got. It’s a symbol not of ownership but rather, freedom. Don’t you recognize yourself?”
I stare at the earring in shock. “That’s me?”
“When I was sent away, I wasn’t allowed to take anything with me, even photographs. I was forbidden, on pain of flogging, to mention your name. This was the only way that I could think to have Vito and you with me always. My Snakes. So I wouldn’t be alone.”
My vision is blurry with tears. “I’m sorry. No one would tell us anything, gargoyle. We begged your parents, but they wouldn’t say a word to us. When we kept asking, they told us that they didn’t have a son.”
Lincoln winces. “Ouch. Although, it’d hurt more, if they hadn’t already said it to my face. Your dad found out about our fate bond. Well, one of the triplets overheard us talking about it. Gia, I think. You know that your dad hated how close we’d been for years. He put up with it because I looked out for you at school and he thought that I’d grow up to work at your side as a servant. He reckoned all the talk about bonding was only a teenage phase. But once I stepped above my station enough to talk about fated mates, he did that psycho thing he does.”
“I knew it.” My hands clench into fists.
Suddenly, my chest feels hollow.
How many times did I beg Dad to find out what had happened to Lincoln? To check the local hospitals? To put a report in with the cops?
Yet Dad had known exactly where Lincoln was all along.
“I know that he’s your dad, but Cesare is a special type of Alphahole.” Lincoln pushes his hair out of his eyes. “He gave my parents two choices: Either I knelt and died with a bullet in my head there and then. Neat and tidy. Or they signed me over for a three year program in the Alaskan Beta Bodyguard Training Academy. I didn’t get input on the decision.”
“Shit.”
“Double shit, since for a long moment, I wasn’t sure what they were going to choose. Sometimes, during those three years, I wasn’t sure that they’d picked right either.” Lincoln’s large, silvery-gray eyes become agonized with remembered pain, before he shakes his head. “It’s known as the most brutal program for bodyguards. It lives up to its reputation. You’re broken down to become a tool, a machine, a weapon for the protection of the new pack who employs you. Then you’re taken in to belong to that pack: An unloved servant who is brainwashed to die for them. I exercised in the freezing cold at dawn, survived the harsh conditions, pretended to be broken and rebuilt. All that time, I had you with me, however, in my ring, snake earring, and heart. When you’re fated, you’re never lost. When you’re fated, you’ll always be found again. May I kiss you?”
“You’d better.”
Then Lincoln kisses me for the first time in three years, and I feel found again in the press of his plush lips.
Lincoln’s tongue swipes across the seam of my lips, and I open my mouth to twine his tongue with mine.
I groan, as our tongues wind like a snake mating dance.
He slides his hand into my hair, dragging me impossibly closer into the kiss.
I’ve never forgotten the feel of Lincoln’s lips and the taste of him: our first kiss beneath the blossom of the cherry tree in the schoolyard, anxious and unsure of how our mouths should slot together, only knowing that they did, the one stolen in the darkness of the corridors, where the Beta servants worked on Christmas Day, and the sleepy ones, when we lay side by side in the summer park.
The kiss is powerful with our first love’s memories, and the last three year’s sadness.
It heals me, filling me with an intense joy.
Finally, Lincoln pulls back. We’re both breathing hard.
He gently cups my cheeks. “I missed you every day.”
My eyes are wet with tears. “I missed you too, Link. You know that Vito’s going to be bouncing off the walls with happiness that you’re okay. He may not show it in the same way as me…”
“Well, I hope that he doesn’t kiss me,” Lincoln deadpans.
I laugh. “He may do. I make no promises. He’s downstairs serving in the shop but he’ll be up here to get me soon.”
“Wow, a bakery. This was always the dream. You’re a serious inspiration. I hope you know that I’m expecting you to feed me your best sugary treats for lunch. Do you have blueberry muffins?”
“For you, I may even have two.”
Lincoln would sneak into the pack kitchen, when he was elementary age, to watch Mom and me bake. The pack Betas would chase him out when they could, but Mom was kind and allowed him to stay and watch. Sometimes, she’d let him lick the cake mixture off the spoons with me or eat a muffin warm from the oven with milk.
Often, she’d put bandaids on the cuts on his face and kiss his bruises better.
At that age, I never understood why she took such care fussing over his hurts or why he ate the food ravenously.
As I got older and saw how cruelly the servant Betas were treated in my pack by the Alphas, I did.
I swore that I’d make sure that I joined a pack who treated Betas as equals because I’d never allow Lincoln to be hurt or hungry again.
Suddenly, panic grips me. “You are staying after lunch, right?”
Lincoln shifts, uncomfortable. “For the weekend.”
“No, no, no.” I scrabble off Lincoln’s lap and stare at him, furiously. “I’ve only just got you back. You can’t go again.”
Lincoln’s shoulders slump. “With this Alaskan bodyguard thing that I was signed up for, the fees are paid, but only if you agree to work for the new employee’s pack for a minimum of seven years or until you’re freed from the contract by an agreed bond. I don’t have a choice. My work starts on Monday. This is my first weekend to myself in three years, and I had to spend it with Vito and you.”
I hug my arms around my legs, struggling not to break down into the sobs that are caught in my chest. “Seven years, huh?”
I don’t have seven years left.
To survive, I must bond with a pack before that.
What’s happened to my dream of being bonded with a pack together with Lincoln?
We’re fucked.
I’ve only just been reunited with Lincoln. I can’t ruin this moment by telling him how severe my OHS has become. He thinks that this is our fairy tale come true at last.
He’s clearly suffered but held on to get here. I can’t take this hope away from him.
He’s watching me guardedly like he can read my thoughts. “I know that it’s a long time. If you think that it’s too long to wait for me… I mean, I can see that there’s no bond mark on your neck, but if you’re in love with an Alpha who won’t want me as well, then I’ll feel like tearing out his throat and burning off his knot but I wouldn’t…” He coughs. “That wasn’t convincing, was it?”
I shake my head.
“I want what makes you happy.” This time, Lincoln does sound convincing. “So, tell me: Link, we’re now in the friendzone . It’ll hurt like a bitch, but—”
“I love you.” I edge closer. “I’m not in love with anyone else. I can’t imagine anything better than us finding an Alpha and a cute male Omega who we can both cherish. But my concern is the seven years.”
He clenches his jaw. “Both Cesare and my Dad signed the contract. They’re Head Alphas. It’s watertight. On the other hand, to be an optimist, I can prove to your family that I’m valuable and successful. Perhaps, they’ll see me differently. What do you think? I can save up my earnings. So, if we need to run, I’ll have enough to support us. It could be a good thing.”
Only, it’s not.
I pale, as a thought strikes me that makes my guts churn with dread. “You shouldn’t be here. Dad’s in town. The triplets are .”
Lincoln rolls dramatically onto his back, throwing out his arms, until he looks like fallen star.
It’s a move that’s so him that I’m no longer in doubt this is still my Link .
Within minutes, it’s like we were never apart, despite the fact that I can see both our scars.
“Not the triplets,” Lincoln gasps in mock terror. I scowl, but he’s not intimidated. “Don’t tell me that those psychopaths are still tripping up Betas in games of tag, bullying Omegas as if that’s a way of romantically courting them, basically still getting off on causing pain and fear with manipulations, while not giving a single fuck?”
“Worse, and you’ll be the Beta who they’re causing pain and fear, if they find you around me. Hasn’t Dad sending you to Alaska at the barrel of a gun been enough of a warning?”
“I don’t learn lessons easily. I’m stubborn like that. I have learned some tricks, however, since the triplets last saw me.” Lincoln’s expression becomes hard. I believe him. “They won’t find me so easy to push around — or push down the basement steps like they did that one time, remember? I came top of my class in the hardest bodyguard program in the country. So, they may be Alphas. But this Beta has badass skills.”
“Skills, huh?” I’m wearing a smirk of my own, as I crawl across to him, sprawling to lie over his chest. I rest my head on his shoulder, kissing his shoulder blade. “I like the sound of that.”
He smiles down at me. “I can show you those along with my piercings.”
My cheeks pink. “Yes, please.”
“First though, I’m enjoying showing off this suit.” Lincoln’s expression becomes shy. He lowers his arm to run his fingers along the fine material of his glimmering waistcoat. “Pretty fancy, huh?”
I can see the hope in his eyes.
I never cared how he dressed.
Yet I know that it hurt Lincoln to wear stained jeans and sweaters with holes in them, while being surrounded by one the wealthiest and best dressed packs in the state.
“It’s a great suit. You look handsome.” I kiss him, gently. “Do all bodyguards get to dress like this?”
Bodyguards are better paid than I thought. They definitely earn more than bakers.
I’m in the wrong business.
Lincoln snorts. “Nope, only the lucky ones. This suit costs more than six month’s pay. To be fair, I probably shouldn’t be rolling around on the floor in it with a snuggly Omega, but damn, you smell too good. Once I was offered the job, a dozen of these babies arrived just as fine as this one, before I left Alaska. I guess that the Alpha wants me to look good, while I work for him. Here, touch it.”
Lincoln offers his suit jacket out to me in excitement.
I smile, softly.
I love that he forgets I’ve grown up around men in suits like this one.
I also love that I get to share his joy at finally being able to wear one too. Except, he’s earned this suit. He’s sacrificed and suffered for it.
He wasn’t simply born into the role.
I respect the hell out of him.
I slide the material between my fingers. “Fuck, that is soft.”
Lincoln nods. “The Alpha who I’m working for didn’t need to think of me and have these ordered in time. He didn’t need to buy me anything at all. It’s weird, you know, that someone who’s grown up to be so bad, can at the same time be thoughtful and kind. The devil is also a fallen angel and good at seduction, right? Or, I guess, a saint.”
My brow furrows in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“You won’t like it.” Lincoln drags me up to sit on the floor next to him. He looks serious all of a sudden, which makes my pulse roar in my ears. “We weren’t friends with him at school. Well, he was beautiful, fucking beautiful like a cold angel, but he’s the Snakes’ enemy. It didn’t seem to matter, when we were all in class together. Now that we’re adults, and I know what it feels like to have your dad’s pistol at my temple, while he’s the deputy mayor, it really matters. I’m going to be a member of the Saint pack, working for Thomas St Clair.”