CHAPTER NINE || REED
“I’m fine. Seriously,” Harris scowled at me, after I asked him for the sixth time how he was feeling.
It was only half an hour later and he was already well enough to stand.
To pace, even. He was going back and forth, seemingly without realizing he was doing it, and if he kept it up, he’d probably start creating a permanent track in the wooden floor.
To be fair, he did seem okay. Even though he shouldn’t have been.
No human should have been able to channel the power of an alpha and be up pacing less than an hour later, no matter how many cups of tea he’d been served.
There was something extraordinary about him.
But I was starting to learn that maybe there were lots of extraordinary things about Harris.
Like the fact he was halfway hard—I could tell through his jeans—and his size was… quite nice. A lesser man might’ve been intimidated.
“Yes, I can see that,” I said mildly. “You actually seem… pent up.”
Harris paused long enough to give me a strange, searching look. “We’re going to need to go slow.”
“Not entirely what I meant, but it’s nice to know where your mind is.”
Who the hell was this strange human man who fought monsters with silver bullets, befriended vampires, ducked out of barrier spells, channeled the power of an alpha, and then seemed fine less than an hour later?
And, to top it all off, he had traveled a thousand miles to storm into the wolf’s den—well, okay, the bar owned by wolves, but still—to tell me off to my face for what had been, admittedly, bad behavior on my part.
It was laughable I had ever entertained, even for a moment, that there was anything weak about him.
Harris snorted, obviously not convinced but apparently willing to let it go, because he said, “So, I somehow… channeled your wolfy powers? And that’s not a thing that has ever happened before?”
“Fated mates are rare. I have no idea what a mate bond is capable of.”
“And ‘fated mate’ was the first thing Emma jumped to?”
“It’s the simplest explanation for why I brought a human to the commune.
Because of what happened with Jeremy and Thierry, we knew it was likely that the fated mate summoning spell would impact the pack as well.
” I paused. “By the way, none of the people in that room—except Daniel—will be able to talk about us being fated mates with anyone else now. Not until they have permission.”
“Shit,” Harris said, with a shake of his head. “This feels fucked up. I wasn’t trying to control anyone. I got pissed, because I sensed how Emma had just made you feel—”
“Wait.” I held up a hand. “How was she making me feel?”
“Like you were a kid again. She robbed you of your ability to decide how to share this information.” He paused, frowning at me. “She took away your authority. It pissed me off. Who even does that?”
“Emma has been around for two hundred years. She’s been with a dozen alphas. She’s definitely not afraid of the consequences.”
I said it automatically, but the emotions I felt at his words were hard to quantify. He had read my emotions perfectly. And no one had ever seen me like that. Not Jeremy, not Lindsey, not even Ian, Jeremy’s former mate, who I had grown up with too.
Warily, I asked, “What am I feeling now?”
Harris’s head tilted to the side as he considered me. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. You do, don’t you?”
“Let’s not play that game.” Harris sighed, rubbing his temples. “Look, I don’t really give a crap about any of this mystical stuff. It’s not really something I’m into.”
“Yet you came here anyway. Knowing you’d be walking headfirst into ‘mystical stuff.’”
“I came for you!” he snapped, exasperated. Then his eyes widened, as if he hadn’t meant to say that.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Harris, you have to tell me.”
His gaze searched mine. Then he deflated slightly. “Christ, that’s effective. You do realize you can’t whip out your literal puppy-dog eyes whenever you want to get your way with me, don’t you?”
“Can’t I? You just said it works on you.”
Harris gave me a sour look. “That doesn’t make it fair.”
“Harris, tell me.”
His gaze dropped to the floor. “The last night we shared a dream together, I heard you whimper in that alleyway. And it broke my fucking heart, Reed. I saw the pain you were in.” He raised his eyes to meet mine.
“How much it was costing you to hide yourself from me. And yeah, I was angry. I was furious. I still might be—I haven’t decided yet.
” He paused. “But that wasn’t why I came here. Not really.”
I realized, suddenly, that I had bitten off way more than I could chew by insisting he explain himself. But I felt rooted to the spot, the wolf in my chest transfixed by Harris’s words every bit as much as I was. And I couldn’t make myself even want to stop him.
“I came for you,” Harris said. There was a naked vulnerability in his expression that made me want to swear to nature, to the moon, to pack and bond, to anything that would listen, that I would never, ever hurt him.
He finished with, “I came here because I heard the pain you were in, and I couldn’t stand it.
And once I knew it was real—when Cole put it together for me that it had all really happened, it meant your pain was real, too…
” He swallowed hard. “I couldn’t not come. ”
At his words, I found myself moving toward him without realizing what I was doing. Both sides of me—wolf and man—were in perfect unison.
Harris watched my approach, his lips parted. And I knew, through the connection thrumming between us, soul-deep, that he wanted this too.
I got close to him, breathing in his scent—bourbon and new growth in the forest, full of mystery and possibility—and his breath was warm on my lips.
He was trembling again, but this time I knew it wasn’t from anything mystical.
It was the simple mix of fear and anticipation that came from real closeness to another person.
Not mere physical proximity, but something running deeper than that.
And I was trembling, too. Suddenly, I wasn’t Reed, the alpha of the Crescent Springs wolf pack. I was just a guy realizing he was probably about to plunge head over heels for another man—and that I was about to risk everything by kissing him.
But I still paused, searching his gaze. “Can I?”
His voice was even and steady. “Yes.”
I pressed my lips to his. They were firm and a little rough, but when he parted his mouth and I did the same, he deepened the kiss, making it more intimate, almost forceful. His strong arms circled me and he pressed me to him. My cock stirred and a wave of bliss rolled through me at his touch.
Somehow, being close to Harris was like coming home. With him, I didn’t give a shit about power or dominance. I submitted to him easily, because I instinctively understood I didn’t need to be in control with him. He could be in charge for a little while and that was okay. It was more than okay.
It was… freeing.
I had been in charge for far too long, without even a moment’s release from it. I needed this. I needed him. That was the bald, naked truth.
And his kiss—because even though I had initiated it, he had firmly taken over—was healing in a way I hadn’t even known I craved.
When he pulled back, breathless, I let out a strangled noise and reached for him. “Harris—”
“Soon,” he said. He hesitated. “But we need to go slow, okay? I’ve never—with a guy. I’ve never done anything. And I don’t want to screw this up by going too fast.”
I took a deep breath, reorienting myself. It wasn’t just about my needs. It was about his, as well. My inner wolf seemed to agree—temporarily sated by the contact and ready to give him exactly what he said he needed.
I nodded. “I understand. We can go at your pace.” Then I paused. “But that was… really nice.”
Harris grinned at me, his eyes filling with light and mischief. There was a too-sweet pang in my chest, as if Cupid had gone and shot me point-blank through the heart.
“It was better than nice, Reed,” he assured me. “It was goddamn perfect.”
* * *
“So, this is the best burger spot in town,” I told Harris an hour later, gesturing to the interior of the restaurant. “Their beer is okay, too. Ours is better.”
“It’s the same beer,” Sally said with her sharp British accent, giving me a good-natured eye roll as she approached us.
She was a matronly woman with gray streaks in her dark hair and glasses perched on her nose.
Dressed all in black, she looked almost like a witch, even though she was mundane as far as anyone knew.
“That’s true,” I said, chuckling.
Sally was the owner of the Crescent Springs Bar & Grill, the only other bar in town besides The Crescent Moon, not counting the ski lodge, which was only open a few months out of the year. And she was right. We used the exact same vendors.
“Table for two?” she asked, already collecting the menus.
I nodded and we followed her to a booth in the back.
The interior was brown leather, brass studs, exposed dark wood everywhere, and incandescent lighting kept low.
It reminded me of photos I had seen of English pubs, even though I had never been to the United Kingdom—or even out of the country at all.
“This is actually a pretty nice place,” Harris said, taking a seat across from me. “Reminds me of a cozy pub in Westminster or something.”
Sally gave him a once-over, setting the menus down on the table. “Oh, have you been to London?”
He turned sheepish. “No, my exposure to pretty much anywhere that isn’t the United States is only from movies and television shows.” He paused. “But I’ve always wanted to take a vacation there.”
“Well, it’s not as glamorous as the movies,” she said with a chuckle. “But make sure you do. Life is short, after all.” She paused. “Can I get you boys some drinks?”
“Just water.”
“It’s past five in London,” Sally countered.
Harris laughed. “Alright. I’ll try the beer.”
“Lovely! I’m pegging you as an ale man. Am I wrong?”