Chapter 8 #2
“And we know it’s even more difficult for you,” I added. “Since you’re human. But you get to choose where this goes from here. Dom, Linc, and I, we can’t help it, but you don’t feel what we feel. One way or another, you decide what happens going forward.”
I heard Dom on the steps outside before the door to the patio opened. When it did, Marcus jumped. Dom winked at our mate, who’d turned that way in surprise.
Dom grinned as he stepped inside. “But if a cuddle puddle is your thing, it can be arranged. Enthusiastically.”
Linc glanced up from his cooking. “You scared Marcus.”
Dom flinched. “Shit. Sorry, Marcus.”
Linc added more veggies to the pot. “Steven?”
“Headed into town rather than away.”
Next to me, Marcus stiffened. Unfortunately, I doubted it had anything to do with Dom walking in naked and not making much of an effort to hide that.
“It’s okay.” I closed my arms around Marcus, moving slowly and ready to pull away as soon as he indicated he didn’t like it. But he accepted the touch.
Dom looked at the both of us, and his lips turned up in a smile. “People know us in town. If your ex tries to cause any trouble, we’ll hear about it.”
Marcus nodded. “He doesn’t do trouble, not like you think. He’s pretty smooth.”
Dom frowned. “Meaning?”
Marcus’s hands tightened on his mug. “Meaning he isn’t likely to beat anyone up. He doesn’t do that.”
I saw Dom’s eyes go to the clothes he’d discarded earlier, then to the couch. In the end, he chose to get dressed before joining us. He left more space between himself and Marcus than I was sure he wanted to.
Linc snorted and went back to chopping things that were hopefully not his fingers.
Dom just shrugged and leaned back. His tee stretched over his chest. “Figured he’d be the talking shit kind of guy. How’d you find out he cheated on you?”
Marcus finished his tea before he answered, and I whisked the empty mug out of his hands and put it on the coffee table. He gave me a weird look, but I just shrugged.
“The guy he cheated on me with sent him a text. And a pic. You know what kind.” Marcus rubbed his right eye. “I wasn’t snooping or anything, but we were sleeping, and the incoming text woke me up. I just wanted to turn the phone off, and then I saw that.”
“You send a text back?” Dom asked.
“No! No.” Marcus shook his head. “I went back to bed. Couldn’t really sleep, but I had to think.”
Dom hummed but showed no other reaction. In the kitchen, Linc was tossing the carrots in with the onions and celery, using the sizzling to hide his low growl from our mate.
“How long did it take you to end it?” Dom asked.
Marcus looked at his tightly clasped hands in his lap, easing them open. “The next day. Which was yesterday. Or the day before yesterday? How long was I out, exactly? What time even is it?”
I pulled out my phone. “It’s five-thirty now. We found you last night. The first time you came to was this morning, and then you slept a few more hours.”
Marcus groaned. “I should take a shower. I stink.”
“You smell divine.” Dom leaned forward. “Sick, and like dried blood, but divine all the same.”
Marcus snorted, but his lips curled up a fraction. “I’ll pretend that’s not creepy at all.”
I put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder. “I want you to keep your head dry for another day, but you can take a bath if you want to after dinner. How does that sound?”
Marcus relaxed against me. “Sounds good.”
He was more likely to pass right out after dinner, and that would be for the better. What he needed most right now was rest.
Marcus looked from Dom to me. “I thought the thing about alpha wolves and beta wolves got debunked. How’re you all alphas? Does that just mean you expect everyone else to be submissive to you? Is naked wrestling out in the woods your thing?”
Dom burst out laughing.
Linc sighed, then spoke over Dom’s laughter before covering the soup to finish cooking on the stove.
“We’re not wolves. But the alpha thing is truer for werewolves than for regular wolves.
” He joined us, taking the seat on my other side.
“Most of our kind pair bond, and one person is usually the protector, the alpha. Like most things, it’s more of a sliding scale than a true binary, but it’s something you can tell about another wolf just by watching them.
It’s in how they carry themselves, how they talk. More often than not, alphas are guys.”
Linc looked at me, probably trying to get my opinion on whether to explain about female alphas and their slightly different anatomy, but I didn’t want to overwhelm Marcus, so I gave a minute shake of my head.
With his laughter ebbing, Dom was moving closer, just an inch. I locked eyes with him and held his gaze to warn him against going too fast.
“You want me to be your…what, your submissive human beta?” The panic was back in our mate’s voice.
“You’d be shit at being submissive, wouldn’t you?” Dom’s eyes were bright with humor. “Plus, you’re conflating sex stuff with how people are. That misses a lot of the important points.”
Linc sighed. “What Dom is trying to say is that an alpha isn’t out to dominate and force their mate to submit to them.
I will grant you that a lot of alphas like to posture, and they can get pretty loud in public.
But not every alpha is the stereotype. Anyway, it’s never the alpha who gets to make decisions.
It’s usually the beta who decides they’ll give the alpha a chance. Or not.”
“Although mate bonds tend to be different,” I said.
Dom snorted. “Yeah, this one is different, no shit.”
Marcus frowned. “And what does that mean?”
Dom lifted up his hand and counted on his fingers.
“One: Our mate’s human. Two: There’s three of us and one of you.
” He stopped, his eyes doing a full circle in their socket as if he were looking for the next item.
“Okay, so just those two things.” Dom put his hand back down. “But they are major things, I’d say.”
Marcus stared at him. “Wait. What you’re saying is, this mate thing never happens with more than two people? Or with humans? Then does that mean I’m a…werewolf?”
Linc shook his head, chuckling softly. “No, you’re not.
And there’s no chance of turning you. We’re all born like this.
It’s just a rare thing to happen between humans and werewolves, and it’s rare to be between more than two people.
The instances I know of don’t involve a human mate and usually it’s some configuration of male and female wolves. ”
Linc left out that same-sex mating hadn’t been heard of unless the human was an omega.
That was for the better. There was a possibility that Marcus might be related to an omega—we had heard stories about the trait showing up in families—and maybe him mating to all of us was just nature being serendipitous, similar to how thousands of years ago, blue-eyed humans had started popping up around the Black Sea.
Marcus nodded. “You’re saying this could be wrong, then. In fact, you have to be wrong, because this is cuckoo crazy.”
“No,” I said.
“Yeah, nope.” Dom dared to shift another inch closer on the couch.
Linc crossed his arms. “We’re right about this. Let’s get some food into you, and then we can talk more.”