Chapter 5 Kit #2
Even after I escaped Greywatch, and later rescued Rory from the streets of Glasgow, giving him a home and job in London, I felt little better.
If anything, it made it worse. Because Rory looked at me with something dangerously close to hero worship, and I knew the truth—I was no hero.
I was the future alpha who’d abandoned his pack rather than fight for change.
The elder brother who’d let tradition and fear turn him into his father’s enforcer.
I was the bastard who’d helped break him in the first place.
And there I was, selfishly locking myself away again. Shutting down as usual rather than talking to Rory about what finding out our father was alive meant for both of us. Rather than helping him process his own trauma.
I forced myself out of my room. Caught Rory before he reached the end of the corridor, wrapped him up in a wordless hug that I hoped spoke volumes. He sagged against me, and I felt the weight of it all start to ease, for both of us.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered into his hair. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
Many hours later, after we’d talked—properly talked, for the first time ever—I casually brought up Felix giving Rory the food.
It had been labelled kimchi jjigae. I’d seen Felix eat it months ago for lunch and complimented it.
Or at least, tried to compliment it through my usual incoherent mumbling.
Rory shrugged. “Felix just said to give it to you.”
But I couldn’t stop fixating on it. He. Had. Made. Me. Food.
That night, even though it was Saturday, I’d pretended to Rory I was going to buy milk for us and headed straight to Felix’s flat. Just to see him through the window. Just to know he was okay.
It had been two weeks, and my wolf was broken. Pining. Desperate for even a glimpse of our mate. To stand guard over him, just for a few minutes.
The logical part of me knew Felix had made it twenty-three years without my interference just fine. The primal part didn’t give a damn about logic. The wolf in my head wouldn’t settle, not when my mate was out there, vulnerable and unprotected. Not when he wasn’t truly mine.
I punished myself afterwards, pushing through a running session so brutal my muscles screamed and my lungs burned. Collapsed into bed so exhausted that I couldn’t think, couldn’t dream, couldn’t obsess over dark eyes and small, soft hands…
“Kit!”
I almost jumped out of my skin.
“Kit!”
Shit. How long had I been lost in my own thoughts?
“Are you with us?”
A rush of heat shot to my face. Every pair of eyes in the room locked onto me, including Felix’s.
“Aye, boss,” I said sheepishly, wondering if Felix was looking at me with confusion or concern or something worse. “Sorry.”
“Priya just asked you if you’d go with her later, to see if the pair of you can track down this cambion?”
“Right. Aye, I heard. Sorry. Of course.” I nodded at Priya, who was watching me with that knowing look that made me want to crawl under a rock.
“I suggest you acquire a new shirt first,” Seb added dryly. “Unless your plan is to seduce the foul beast, of course.”
The team erupted in laughter. Even Theo smirked behind his coffee cup.
“I really don’t know why my shirtlessness is of so much interest today,” I snapped, “when most of you have seen Rory and me naked hundreds of times.”
“Oi!” Rory protested. “Don’t drag me into this.
I’ve never casually stripped for fun. Apart from, you know, all those times I have.
” He waggled his eyebrows at Theo, sitting next to him on a sofa.
Theo did not dignify him with even a smile.
I liked that man more and more every day. “I’ve had lots of practice at that.”
“Enough,” Seb said, though his mouth twitched. “Kit, shirt. Rory, stop being Rory. Everyone else, focus. We have monsters and criminals to catch, not a nature documentary to film.”
“Are we going to talk about Greywatch?” I found myself asking, clearly desperate to move on. Silence immediately fell, and backs stiffened.
Seb’s eyes darted down to his journal. “Yes. I do actually have news on that front, following my phone call with White last night.”
All eyes flicked to me, as they always did when Greywatch was mentioned.
The more we’d uncovered about Greywatch and their despicable acts, the more they stared at me with barely concealed curiosity.
None of them had ever pried into my experience there—they were too respectful for that—but I could feel their questions burning beneath the surface.
Questions about what I’d done, what had been done to me, how deeply I’d been complicit in their horrors.
It was all in my imagination, their disgust of me for once serving for them. I knew that. But it didn’t make it any easier to sit under their collective gaze.
“White has asked us to temporarily cease our investigation.”
Seb dropped it like a bombshell.
“What?!” Rory slammed his coffee cup down so hard that droplets flew into the air and splattered across the table. Freddy instantly dove towards the spilled liquid, his tiny grey body darting between papers as he lapped it up with enthusiasm.
Everyone else looked equally stunned. Priya’s mouth had fallen open. Felix’s eyebrows shot up into his fringe. Theo looked like someone had just told him Christmas was cancelled. Even Flynn looked shell-shocked—Seb clearly hadn’t filled his boyfriend in beforehand either.
“What on earth do you mean?” Theo snapped, his usual composure cracking. “Why would we do that?”
“Apparently, we’ve been making too many waves,” Seb said, his voice carefully neutral. “We’re impeding her own possible lines of enquiry.”
“But… she was helping us! She was giving us information to work with!” Theo’s voice climbed higher with each word.
I sat frozen, too stunned to speak. The wolf in my chest had gone deadly still, the way it always did when it sensed real danger.
Seb’s jaw tightened. A sure sign of irritation. “Well, she’s changed her mind.”
“Well, that’s not good enough!” Rory’s voice cracked with fury.
An electric pulse of anger shot through the bond I shared with him—not a proper pack bond, but our own special connection we’d somehow managed to keep.
“We do what we want anyway! She’s not here, is she? What’s she going to do about it?”
“No, Rory,” Seb said firmly. “We don’t ‘do what we want.’ That’s not how this works.”
I stared at Seb, studying his face. I’d worked with him for years—what felt like a lifetime now, the two of us building up Killigrew Street. I knew every micro-expression, every tell. And right now, he was upset about something. Holding something back. Hiding something.
“So what did you say to her, boss?” I asked quietly, wondering if he’d at least challenged White’s decision, pushed back even a little.
Seb’s shoulders sagged almost imperceptibly. “She implied she’d keep me updated if there was anything to tell.”
“But what does that mean?!” Rory’s voice rose to nearly a shout. “Our father is still out there, murdering people in their sleep, most probably! And we’re supposed to ‘hang tight and wait for information?’ Fuck that!”
Seb’s left eye twitched. I opened my mouth to snap at Rory to back down, then clamped it shut. I didn’t do that anymore—not since I’d promised him I’d stop treating him like a child in front of the others.
Theo reached across the sofa to grab Rory’s hand, pulling it onto his lap and squeezing it tightly.
I felt Rory’s anger ebb like a retreating tide as he allowed Theo to calm him.
Theo pressed a gentle kiss to the top of Rory’s head, and my heart squeezed.
I still couldn’t quite believe it. After everything Rory had been through—the rejection from our pack, sleeping on the streets of Glasgow, that disaster of a year and a half when he’d been convinced Theo was the enemy—he’d found his person.
Someone who saw past his chaos and loved him for it.
Someone who could ground him with just a touch.
Theo was exactly what Rory needed. Patient where Rory was impulsive, steady where Rory was scattered. A complete saint for forgiving him for being such a twat for so long.
The sight should have made me nothing but happy. And it absolutely did, mostly. But watching them together—watching Rory lean into that easy comfort, that certainty of being wanted—left something bright green hollowing out my chest.
“We’ll talk more about this later,” Seb said, voice measured. “Once we’ve all had time to digest it. I have full confidence in White and her resources. We need to trust her.”
White was Seb’s mysterious superior. She’d given him Killigrew Street twenty years ago, and they’d been having weekly phone calls ever since. As far as I knew, he always trusted her judgement.
But the way his eyes flicked to me suggested something more. Something he wasn’t saying in front of the others.
Seb didn’t let people close. In five centuries, he’d perfected the art of keeping everyone at arm’s length.
Yet somehow, when we’d met five years ago, we’d clicked anyway.
Maybe it was our shared tendency to brood in corners, or the fact that neither of us asked questions about the other’s past. Maybe it was just that we both understood what it meant to carry weight you couldn’t put down.
He was my best mate. The only person I trusted with my life, aside from Rory. We’d gone through thick and thin together. He’d never once judged me for the parts of myself I kept locked away.
I had to trust him.
“So for now, we follow White’s guidance on this, and I’ll pass on any information I receive.”
Rory’s face was still a picture of thunder, his jaw set in that stubborn line I knew too well, the one that meant he was about to do something spectacularly stupid. Theo’s hand moved up and down his arm in soothing strokes.
“I just want that bastard in the ground where he belongs,” Rory spat. “For real this time.”
“Rory!” I couldn’t help but exclaim.