Chapter Four
They failed to come up with a plan.
Malik stood with his back against the fireplace mantel, his arms crossed, and watched everyone try to find an answer that wasn’t there.
Nobody spoke for so long that the refrigerator cycling on in the kitchen became the loudest thing in the house.
For months Malik had carried this problem alone.
He’d turned it over in the dark, mapped every angle, looked for exits, and found none he trusted.
He’d told himself he was protecting his team by keeping them out of it.
Standing here now, watching the people he trusted try to find a solution and come up empty, he understood that what he’d actually been doing was protecting his pride.
Indy had returned to the armchair, looking at the middle of the room the same way everyone else was, his brows drawn together in a slight furrow, his lower lip caught between his teeth before he released it.
He’d asked the right questions. Both of them.
Malik had noticed that, even through the discomfort of standing in front of people he cared about and saying the thing he’d been unable to say for months.
The number and then the harder question underneath the number.
Whether the money had ever actually been the point.
Malik didn’t know the answer to that one. That was the truth of it, and Indy had taken the honest answer without flinching.
“There’s nothing to plan yet,” Grayson said finally. His voice was even, not dismissive, just accurate. “We need more information before we can move.”
Colton set his phone face-down on the cushion beside him. “Which means we wait for them to make another move.”
“Or we find them first,” Reese said.
“How?” Colton looked at him. “We don’t have a location. We don’t know how many there are. We don’t know if paying the debt actually ends it.”
The room went quiet again.
Malik had believed that if he could just get ahead of this, just find the right angle, he could solve it before anyone else had to know.
What he understood now, standing here with his team unable to find a path forward either, was that some problems didn’t have a clean solution waiting to be discovered.
Some problems just had to be faced head-on.
That wasn’t comforting. But it was real.
“We table it,” Grayson said. “For tonight. Everyone stays alert, we keep the perimeter watched, and tomorrow we start looking for information.” He looked at Malik. “We’ll figure it out.”
The words were simple. Grayson didn’t load them with anything extra, didn’t make a production of the forgiveness buried inside them. That was Grayson’s way, and Malik felt it land somewhere low in his ribcage.
Colton stood and stretched, his arms going overhead. “I’ll take first watch.”
“I’ll relieve you at two,” Reese said.
Everyone begun to file out, people moving toward other rooms or toward bed, the dispersal of a group that had reached the end of what could be done in one night.
Ryan disappeared into the kitchen. Sonny said something soft to Reese that Malik didn’t catch.
Grayson paused beside Malik on his way out and put one hand briefly on his shoulder, a single point of contact, and then he was gone.
Malik stayed in the living room for several minutes after the last person left.
It felt strange to finally come clean. He’d been carrying the debt and the shame and the grinding weight of secrecy for so long.
Saying it out loud in front of people who mattered hadn’t destroyed anything. The room hadn’t collapsed. Grayson hadn’t looked at him with contempt. Reese and Colton hadn’t washed their hands of him.
Nobody had said anything that felt like the end of something.
He still didn’t have a plan. The demons were still out there, and the money was still owed, and the watcher in the trees was still unidentified.
Not a damn thing was resolved.
But the weight he’d been carrying alone sat differently now. It was still there. Just wasn’t only his anymore.
Malik let out a long breath through his nose.
Then he went to find Indy, who’d slipped from the room while Grayson had been talking to Malik.
His mate was in the bedroom with the dogs, which surprised him for a moment before it didn’t. The lamp on the shelf cast a low amber light across the floor, and Indy was sitting cross-legged on the floor with his back against the wall and one of the terriers in his lap.
The dog was deeply asleep, its small body rising and falling against Indy’s thigh. The other two dogs were still breathing steadily on the blankets, undisturbed.
Indy’s head was tipped back against the wall, his eyes open, staring up at the ceiling. His auburn hair was slightly disheveled, and the shirt had slipped off one shoulder again. His blue-violet eyes caught the light when he heard Malik in the doorway, landing on him.
Malik watched his mate try to appear casual, but fail.
“Hi,” Indy said, voice a little rough.
“Hey.” Malik leaned against the doorframe. He’d gotten lucky as hell when it came to mates, his cheetah purring in agreement. The pull was strong, and the need to claim Indy rode him hard.
But for now, he simply enjoyed watching his mate.
“The terrier woke up.” Indy glanced down at the sleeping dog, his hand moving in a slow stroke along its back. “She seemed unsettled. I sat down for a minute, and she climbed up. Then she fell back asleep, and I didn’t want to move her.”
Malik looked down at his mate sitting there, holding a sleeping dog because he hadn’t wanted to disturb it, and felt something in him pull taut.
“You don’t have to stay on the floor,” he said.
“I know.” Indy tilted his head back against the wall again. “I’m comfortable.” He paused. “Also, my legs fell asleep about two minutes ago, so there’s a practical element to this as well.”
Pushing off the doorframe, Malik crossed the room.
He crouched down beside Indy and carefully lifted the terrier from his mate’s lap.
The dog stirred but didn’t wake, its paws twitching once before going still.
He set her gently on the blankets with her companions and watched all three of them resettle without opening their eyes.
When he straightened and looked at Indy, his mate was watching him with an expression that disappeared almost immediately, replaced by something neutral and faintly amused.
“Nicely done,” Indy said. “Very smooth. Do you do that for all the foxes who end up trapped on your floor or just the ones with numb legs?”
Malik extended a hand.
Indy looked at it for a beat then took it.
His fingers were cool, his grip lighter than Malik expected given how much presence Indy managed to occupy.
He pulled his mate to his feet, and Indy came up with a small exhale of effort, one hand briefly catching Malik’s forearm for balance before releasing it.
He was close. Close enough that Malik could see the faint shadows under his eyes from a day that had asked too much of him and the way his blue-violet eyes had gone a little darker in the low light, more purple than blue.
“Thank you,” Indy said. “For earlier, by the way. What you said in there.” He was looking at Malik’s chest rather than his face, which was its own kind of tell. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
For a moment, Malik didn’t say anything. The room was quiet except for the soft sounds of the dogs breathing, while the amber lamp threw warm shadows across the walls.
“It wasn’t,” he confessed.
Indy’s gaze came up then, and this time it held. “I know.”
Malik wasn’t ready to talk about it. He was old enough to know better, to have allowed an addiction to grip him by the throat.
“Come on,” he said, his voice rumbling. “You should sleep.”
He led Indy out of the room and down the hallway. His mate followed. The house was quiet now, only the small sounds of a home settling in for the night. The staircase creaked under his weight, the third step from the top protesting the way it always did.
Reaching his bedroom, Malik opened the door.
The lamp on the bedside table was still on from earlier, casting the same low light it had when Indy had been sitting in the chair.
The room was tidy, sparse in the way Malik kept most spaces.
The bed was made and the dresser surface was clear.
A jacket hung over the back of the chair.
The window was dark, the curtains open, and the yard below was quiet.
Indy stepped inside, pausing just past the threshold, his gaze moving around the room. His weight had shifted forward onto the balls of his feet, his shoulders drawn up slightly.
It was subtle, the kind of thing you’d miss if you weren’t paying attention. Malik had been paying attention since the moment he’d walked into that flower shop soaking wet, and he recognized what he was looking at.
His mate was nervous now that sleeping in the same bed was inevitable. The day had been long and frightening, and Indy was standing in Malik’s space wearing his mate’s clothes and trying very hard to look like none of that was affecting him.
Slowly so he didn’t spook his mate, Malik walked into the room. He set his hands loosely against the dresser behind him and watched blue-violet eyes track him.
“I keep thinking about the flower shop,” Indy said, his voice small. “Whether they’ll come back there. Whether I can even go back tomorrow, or if that’s…” He stopped. He looked at the window. “Sorry. I’m fine. I’m just—”
“Indy.”
His mate curled his lips in.
Fuck this. Malik closed the remaining distance between them in three steps. Indy tipped his chin up, those gorgeous eyes glued to him.
Indy’s expression had grown uncertain, humor stripped back, exposing something soft and vulnerable underneath.
Unable to hold back any longer, Malik brought one hand up and curved it against his mate’s jaw, his thumb resting along the line of his cheekbone, and he felt the small breath Indy drew in at the contact.
He gave his mate a single heartbeat.
Then he lowered his head and kissed him.
For the space of one second, Indy was completely still, and then his mouth softened under Malik’s and the sound he made was low and quiet, wrecking what little control Malik had been holding on to since meeting the small fox.
One hand still cradled Indy’s face while the other found the fabric of the guy’s shirt. Malik curled his fingers into the material at Indy’s side and pulled, drawing his mate against him.
Better.
He tasted like heaven, and Malik’s cheetah surged forward. He kissed him deeper, hungrily, the way he’d been dying to since the moment he’d looked across a room full of flowers and understood just how much this slip of a man would change his life.
Another sound escaped Indy, this one more vocal as he gripped Malik’s shirt.
Fuck yeah. Show me how much you want me.
Malik tightened his fingers in the fabric at Indy’s side, reveling in the lean and warm lines of his mate’s body against him. The contrast of their sizes made his pulse climb, turning Malik on more than he already was.
The small fox was his. Malik had been holding back all evening, giving Indy time to adjust to their new reality.
He wasn’t holding back now.
Indy leaned back a fraction of an inch, just enough to breathe, and Malik felt his mate smile against his mouth before he heard the words.
“You know,” Indy said, voice a little breathy, “for a guy who’s been very mysterious and tight-lipped all evening, that’s a very persuasive communication strategy.”
Releasing the fabric of Indy’s shirt, Malik tilted his mate’s face until their eyes met.
“Stop talking,” Malik said and kissed him again.
Indy laughed against Malik’s lips, then the sound dissolved, his mate kissing him just as hungrily.
Malik walked him back two steps until Indy’s shoulders met the wall. The small, needy sound his mate made when Malik pressed into him made Malik’s cock rock-hard.
But as much as he wanted to fuck Indy until their brains were scrambled, Malik saw exhaustion creep into his mate’s eyes. Indy’s needs came first, even though he knew his mate wouldn’t push him away.
Reluctantly, Malik pulled back. “As badly as I want you, I can see how tired you are.”
“I can go all night,” Indy declared before stifling a yawn. “See? Full of energy.”
With a smirk, Malik tugged his mate toward the bed. “You’re about to fall over.”
“Am not,” his mate protested, but was asleep before his head hit the pillow. Malik curled around him, breathing in his honey-vanilla scent. His cat purred in contentment as Malik drifted off to sleep.