CHAPTER TEN || HARRIS #2
He tilted his head to the side. “Is that what this is? A relationship?” Then he paused. “Is this our first fight?”
“It’s at least our third,” I shot back.
Reed grinned, unrepentant. “Yeah, I guess it is. Look, do you want me to go sleep on the couch? Because I will.” He paused. “I think that’s what human folks do when they’re ticked off, right?”
“Dude, you’re not even being crafty about it. No. Absolutely not.” Then I paused, steeling myself to let down my guard. “I want to sleep next to you tonight. That hasn’t changed. But you’re actually sleeping. Deal?”
He hesitated, his gaze sweeping my expression. Then he deflated. “Yeah, deal. I’d feel better about it if you put your gun on the nightstand next to you,” Reed said, turning more serious. “Just in case.”
My eyebrows shot up. I had been careful not to leave my gun out where he could see it. It was loaded with silver bullets, which were apparently lethal to werewolves. “You’re not worried?”
“I trust you.”
Nodding slowly, even though his words hit me square in the chest, I got out of bed and crossed the room to my jacket, which was hanging off the back of the dining room chair.
My gun holster was below it. I unclipped it and pulled the weapon free.
Already, even after only a few days away from it, it felt colder in my hand.
Heavier, somehow. Almost unfamiliar, even though I had owned it for a decade.
For a few days, being around Reed—practically glued at the hip—had made me forget who I was. I was different with him. A lighter, happier person, even given the monster lurking in the woods and the objectively bizarre nature of our circumstances.
“I trust you, too,” I told him at last, coming back to the bed. I set the gun down on the nightstand. “Mostly.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Just mostly?”
I climbed back into the bed and rolled over to face him. “Well, you seem pretty hell-bent on putting what you think are my needs first. No matter how I feel about it. I’m not sure I can trust you not to do that again.”
He let out a long breath, looking stricken. “Yeah, I deserve that. You’re right. I guess you bring that out in me.”
“And what’s that?”
“The need to protect you. To keep you safe.” He paused, dropping his eyes. “But I’m not exactly good at taking care of other people—first being alpha, and then realizing I had a mate. It’s a learning process.”
“Me too,” I replied, softening immediately. Yeah, the inability to stay properly angry with him was going to end up being really inconvenient, wasn’t it? “Look, for the record, you bring that out in me, too.”
He brightened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. Just—next time, talk to me. I want to be here for you, too. If things come up, we’ll figure it out together, right? But it starts with letting me in. That’s what real trust looks like.”
He nodded, avoiding my gaze. “Yeah. You’re right.”
I hated how dejected he looked. My words had landed and I immediately wanted to take them back, even though I was right. “We’re good, okay? On my end, at least.”
“Me too,” he said, even though I wasn’t sure I believed him.
“Turn off the light. Let’s get some sleep.”
He did as I asked, plunging the cabin into darkness. Then he rolled over onto his side and when I tentatively put my arm around him, he slid in closer to me. The sensation of his warm, bare skin against mine was bliss.
“Harris?” Reed asked several minutes later, his voice thick with sleep.
“Yeah?”
“I want to let you in. But it’s new for me. Having someone notice or care what’s going on with me. I’m not used to it.”
His words affected me. I wasn’t sure if it was anger at the people around him for not noticing how special he was—as infuriating as he could sometimes be—or an urge to protect him, to make it so he had never needed to feel that way in the first place.
“You’d better get used to it,” I told him, my voice coming out thick, even though it was just a whisper in the darkness. “Because I’m not going anywhere.”
Reed didn’t reply, but he relaxed in my arms, as if my words had driven away some lingering resistance. Before long, his breathing deepened and became more regular.
I lay awake for a long time, with Reed safe and sheltered in my arms, before finally drifting off. And when we dreamed, we dreamed together.
* * *
“Are you sure about this?” I asked the following morning as we approached Emma’s cabin, feeling more anxious than I could remember being in a long time. And given that I had been under the control of a murderous vampire for the better part of a year, that was saying something.
Reed stood next to me, ridiculously handsome in a green-and-white button-up flannel, a pair of dark jeans, and a brown jacket with matching shoes. His dark hair, still damp from the shower, was curling slightly as it dried.
He gave me an encouraging smile. “I want you to meet everyone. We get together every Sunday morning, just to hang out and have a meal together.” Then he paused. “Emma made a full spread for breakfast, like she always does. Including pancakes. The pack will be in a good mood.”
“Great. But we haven’t really talked about what happened the last time I was around your pack.”
He raised his eyebrows at that but then held up one finger to his lips and shook his head very slightly, then pointed at the door. His meaning was clear: the pack could probably hear us, even through several inches of solid wood.
Wonderful.
Reed didn’t bother knocking. Instead, he strolled through the unlocked door.
Steeling myself, I followed him.
Emma greeted me with a hug inside the threshold, before I even knew what hit me. “Welcome,” she said, flashing me a wide smile.
“Hello,” I said stiffly when Emma released me, trying to make my brain catch up. I would have expected her to be wary of me, but she was beaming with what looked like genuine enthusiasm.
“Thanks for coming,” Daniel chimed in, giving me a tiny wave from the couch.
He was sandwiched between Lacey and Sarah.
She nodded at me cooly, but I caught the way she tensed up at my presence—I wasn’t sure I blamed her.
If Sarah was cool, Lacey was the opposite.
She narrowed her gaze at me with barely concealed hostility.
Lee and a man completely identical to him—Reed had told me his name was Hunter, Lee’s twin brother—were both seated side by side on the loveseat. Lee flashed Reed and me a knowing grin. “Hiya, Reed! And Harris. Have a good night?”
“Knock it off, Lee,” Reed said, shooting him a look that managed to be amused and disapproving at the same time.
Lee winked at me.
I shook my head good-naturedly in reply.
Another of the wolves—a Black man in a cardigan, with glasses perched on his nose, a thick book in his hands—sat at the kitchen table.
Oliver, maybe. The book looked older than everyone in the room combined.
He looked up as we entered. His gaze lingered on me, and when I met it dead-on, he nodded once, a small smile crossing his lips.
“Welcome to the wolf den,” Reed said, leading the way into the kitchen. The food was laid out on the counter, buffet-style: a heaping pile of bacon, scrambled eggs, pancakes, toast, and sausage links. “We need to grab a plate. Everyone must be starving.”
“Are they all waiting for you?” I stage-whispered.
“Wolves wait for their alpha,” Emma explained, handing Reed and me each a plate. “And his—”
Then she broke off, blinked a few times in surprise, and her expression turned rueful. “Well, you know what you are to him, I suppose.”
I realized my command was still operating on her, preventing her from talking about our relationship. A wave of guilt washed through me. The fact that I hadn’t intended to magically command her didn’t seem to matter. Intentions meant very little when compared to consequences.
“Exactly,” Reed said smoothly, loading his plate with scrambled eggs. He cast me a look. “You’d better start filling your plate. Otherwise, they’ll all starve. We wouldn’t want that.”
“Right,” I replied, then started loading my own plate with food.
The rest of the pack got into line. Emma passed out plates.
“Where’s Lindsey?” Reed asked.
“She’s got an appointment at her clinic this morning, but she said she’ll stop by later,” Emma said.
“Lindsey is the only vet in town, but there’s not a whole lot of folks here to keep her busy, so her schedule is sporadic,” Reed explained. “I’ll officially introduce you two later. She’s a friend and ally to the pack, but not technically one of us.”
“But she’s a wolf, too?”
Reed nodded, then took a spot at the table. I sat down across from him. I was aware that everyone else was looking at us but trying very hard to pretend they weren’t.
“Dig in,” Reed said. His expression told me he sensed my discomfort at being watched. “They won’t start until we do.”
I nodded and took a bite of the scrambled eggs.
They were perfectly fluffy and had a nice buttery taste without being too oily.
Emma was a damn good cook. I made eye contact with her—she was still waiting for the rest of the pack to finish getting dished up—and she kept shooting furtive looks at Reed and me, as if waiting on our verdict.
I spoke first. “It’s delicious. Thanks for cooking for us. ”
Reed ate a piece of bacon and nodded in Emma’s direction. “Oh yeah, it’s really good. Thanks, Emma—you didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
Emma’s cheeks went red and she nodded back at us, flashing a smile. “It was no trouble at all.”
Everyone else in the room seemed to relax in unison. They all began eating.
Reed hadn’t been wrong—they had been waiting for us.
He kept his gaze trained on his plate and, despite his relaxed demeanor, I had the strong impression that Reed didn’t quite want to be here. He wasn’t as comfortable among his pack as he appeared.
What would that be like? To be setting the rules everyone else had to follow, even if you didn’t want to be?
After we were both done eating, Reed rose from his chair, then gestured for me to do the same.
“Harris, you’ve already met Daniel, Emma, and Sarah,” he said, pointing at each of them in turn.
He turned to the loveseat where the twins were sitting side by side, both of them studiously ignoring Daniel, seeming to look anywhere but directly at him.
“And you’ve met Lee. And this is his brother, Hunter. ”
Lee beamed at me. Hunter gave me a salute with his index finger, his mouth full of food.
I nodded back at both of them. It was remarkable how identical Hunter was to his twin. If their shirts weren’t different colors—Lee in blue and Hunter in green—I wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
“And this is Lacey, who you met in passing,” Reed said, pointing to the blonde woman on the couch beside Daniel.
“Right,” Lacey said shortly, turning to give me a hard look that was borderline furious. I could tell she wanted to say more but couldn’t make herself do it. Her eyes narrowed at me in open dislike. “Welcome.”
“Be nice,” Daniel said quietly, shooting her a look. “Everything is fine. Harris is cool.”
“He’s human,” Lacey muttered. But when she glanced at Daniel, she sighed and nodded. “I’ll behave.”
But I could still see the tension in her, the way her spine was ramrod straight.
She was protective of Daniel, I noted. Even though he wasn’t a wolf.
Interesting.
“And this is Oliver,” Reed added, pointing to the man who had been reading at the table when we’d first come in. I hadn’t noticed before, but he must have gotten up to give us the table to ourselves and had then eaten his meal standing at the far end of the room.
“Hello,” Oliver said mildly, peering at me with open curiosity.
“Everyone, this is Harris.” Reed took in a deep breath. “My mate.”
The entire room went quiet. Every single pair of eyes was trained on me.
“Ha! I knew it,” Lee said, breaking the silence.
But Lacey shot to her feet, turning to face Reed. “You might’ve forgotten, but there’s a monster on the loose. And while you’ve been playing house with your mate, we could have been hunting it.”
“Not until we know more about it,” Emma said firmly, shooting a look at Reed first before her gaze settled on Lacey. “We’ve been digging through our records, and based on what we know about it, we’ve got it narrowed down to three or four possible creatures. We just need to—”
“Jeremy wouldn’t have permitted it to live.”
Reed’s entire body stiffened as though Lacey had slapped him across the face.
“Jeremy isn’t alpha,” Reed said dangerously. “And neither are you.”
The sudden tension was palpable.
“This creature is capable of paralyzing its prey—including werewolves,” I said, before I even realized I was going to speak. “And Reed is trying to keep us all alive. That means being smart about this.” I met Lacey’s gaze. “Do you have a problem with that?”
She snorted, her eyes flashing with venom. But I watched the fight drain out of her as I stared her down.
“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve got a backbone,” Lacey said, her gaze flicking from me to Reed and then back again. The implication was pretty clear: one of us needed to.
A flash of instinctive anger tore through me. Rationally, it made very little sense. This was pack business. And I wasn’t one of them.
But Reed belonged to me. He was mine. And I might not have technically been part of their pack, but I was a part of his pack. And nothing could have been simpler than that singular truth.
“I’ve gotten enough to eat,” Lacey said flatly. “And I’m leaving now.”
She raised her eyebrows at Reed as if daring him to challenge her.
“That’s a pretty damn good idea,” Reed said evenly. Anyone looking at him would think he was perfectly calm, but I somehow knew better—in that weird, wordless way.
Reed wasn’t okay.
He wasn’t okay at all.