Forty-One
FORTY-ONE
Nat
I COULDN’T CONTROL my breathing. I couldn’t control anything . Humiliation flowed through me at the thought of what I must look like. I hadn’t sobbed like this since I was tiny, before I’d learned that crying only made the beatings worse.
But Mia was here, and she was safe. Somehow it was all over, and I was still alive. She’d even kept the restaurant running while I was gone. It was too good to be true—part of me worried that I was actually passed out in the warehouse, and all of this was a dream. What if I woke up to find Byron dead of blood loss and Luca being raped? What if I never woke up, because the second goon had actually shot me and this was nothing more than the hallucination of a dying brain?
My chest constricted until I couldn’t seem to get any air between hitching sobs. Then soft arms wrapped around me, the familiar scent of summer flowers surrounding me like a comforting blanket.
“The others?” I choked out, burying my face in Mia’s neck—despite the flare of pain it brought when my bruised temple pressed against her.
“Zalen called me earlier,” came a deep voice. Emiel was here, too, and I couldn’t be happier that he was watching over Mia. “He said neither of them was listed as critical. Byron’s in surgery and Luca’s getting blood tests.”
“They... they tried to inject him with a heat stimulant,” I managed, my voice wavering so badly the words were hard to make out.
Mia stiffened against me with a gasp, and I thought I heard a low growl come from Emiel’s direction.
“He said they didn’t get it into him,” I went on. “But I don’t know if he was telling the truth. He was holding his arm like it hurt.” The words started to pour out of me, past my aching throat and sore jaw. “Byron picked the lock on the room where they were holding us, after they took Luca away. We managed to take them by surprise and overpower them. I think they might be de—”
But my throat closed up again. I couldn’t say it. Mia’s arms tightened around me.
“Do you know if they were after Luca?” Emiel asked. “Or were they after you?”
I swallowed several times, still unable to draw a proper breath without my chest jerking around tears.
“M-me, I think. Berlusconi was there. He w-wanted me to sign over the restaurant for pocket change.”
Now the growl came from Mia, higher-pitched and vibrating against me where our upper bodies were pressed together.
“That fucking asshole ,” she snarled, her tone vicious in a way I’d never heard it before.
“The police shot him,” I said, with no question at all in my mind that he , at least, was dead.
“Good!” Mia spat. “I hope he rots in hell!”
I wanted to ask so many questions. How had the police known where to find us? Were Byron and I murderers? Did I need a lawyer, and if so, how on earth was I going to pay for one?
But Mia was holding me, and I still couldn’t breathe properly, and right now all I cared about was that she never, ever let me go. We did stay that way for a long time, probably because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to stop my body’s shaking, or the tears that tracked down my cheeks.
Eventually, though, she pressed a firm kiss to my forehead and eased back.
“I don’t want to leave you, Nat,” she said. “But I need to get an update on Luca and Byron or I’m going to go mad. I promise I’ll be back as soon as I can, to let you know what they say. Emiel can stay and keep you company, okay?”
She sounded a bit teary herself, and the only thing I could do was nod. The feeling of loss as she got up hurt worse than the bruises and pulled muscles, but I’d sealed my own fate when it came to Mia months ago.
She left with a final backward glance at me, her eyes wet and red-rimmed. Somewhat to my surprise, Emiel took her place, settling his large frame gingerly on the edge of the bed.
“Sounds like you an’ Byron are proper heroes,” he rumbled. “Saving Luca like that.”
The words were so ridiculous that I scoffed. “If it hadn’t been for Byron, I’d have been locked up in that office until the police found me. And I’d also be missing a pair of kneecaps if he hadn’t dragged himself after me and shot the guy who was pointing a gun at me.”
His eyebrows went up. “Byron shot someone?”
I nodded miserably. “Think we might’ve killed two people.” My gorge rose.
“Self-defense,” Emiel said dismissively. “No prosecutor in the country is gonna try to make that charge fly.” He hesitated, looking down at me. “You’re still in love with her. Mia, I mean.”
My throat closed yet again. “Of course I’m in love with her,” I rasped. “Who in their right mind wouldn’t be in love with Mia?”
He pondered that for a long moment. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”
It was too much. I covered my face with my bandaged hand and started weeping again, knowing that this fleeting moment as the object of Mia’s worry was almost certainly the last taste of being in her embrace that I would ever get.
To my shock, a tree-trunk arm curled around my shoulder, and the towering alpha who made fun of my form on the lat-press—and occasionally bought me coffee afterward—tugged me against his side.
“You two’ve had a rough time of it lately,” he rumbled. “Guess we all have, really.”
I stiffened for an instant, knowing that I wasn’t supposed to be okay with things like this. Men shouldn’t need emotional comfort from other men. Hell, we weren’t supposed to need emotional comfort, period . But Emiel’s one-armed embrace offered a kind of unshakeable solidity that promised nothing you could do would upset it—a solid strength that Mia’s gentle arms couldn’t offer.
For the first time in my life, I leaned into the easy support of a male body for reasons that had nothing to do with sex.
“I just want a time machine so I can go back and fix everything,” I choked out, my voice breaking on the words.
“Nah,” Emiel said. “If you did that, we wouldn’t’ve met her. And then where would we be? You gotta look forward, not back. That’s what my therapist says sometimes, anyway.”
The door creaked, and a familiar, very unwelcome voice barked, “What the hell is this? Are you crying , boy?”
I froze, ice winding through my veins. Next to me, Emiel went very still.
“Who,” he said slowly, “The fuck are you?”
A feminine gasp of outrage followed... and this was it. I was going to dissolve and sink straight through the floor into the bowels of the hospital, my personhood unraveling beneath the force of one too many shocks.
“How dare you speak to us like that!” my mother said shrilly. “Who are you ? Get your hands off my son!”
My body unhelpfully failed to dissipate into mist. Bowing to the inevitable, I straightened away from the bristling alpha.
“Mother. Father. I didn’t realize the hospital had contacted you.” My voice was wet and congested from tears.
“Who else were they going to contact!” my father nearly bellowed. “We’re your next of kin!”
“I’m all right,” I said, feeling exhaustion pull at me. “You don’t need to be here. I’m sorry you had to drive out.”
“These are your parents?” Emiel asked, sounding skeptical.
“Adoptive,” I said on a sigh.
Emiel eyed them. “They always this rude?”
This drew a fresh gasp from my mother. “You still haven’t said who you are! What are you doing in my son’s hospital room?”
My headache pounded in a way that was only peripherally related to having been hit with a pistol grip. “This is Emiel Hamilton, a good friend of mine. He and Mia are here to check on me after I was kidnapped.”
“Well, Mia certainly doesn’t seem to be here now!” my father sneered. “So... what? You and your ‘ friend ’ decided to cuddle up like a couple of queers? Did I raise a faggot after all, boy?”
Emiel was on his feet, and an unpleasant dipping sensation lurched in my stomach.
“You being his adopted parents don’t give you the right to talk to him like that.” The declaration was delivered in a low monotone, and something about Emiel’s unnatural stillness raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
A hint of floral omega perfume announced Mia’s return. “No,” she said, her voice steely. “It most certainly does not . Tom, Martha, I think you should visit Nat another time. He’s just had a harrowing experience; he’s injured and he needs rest.”
A leaden sense of inevitability crept over me, and something buried deep inside my brain sighed and said fuck it .
“No,” I said. “You all deserve to know the truth, so you might as well hear it now. Yes, Father, you raised a queer son. I’m bisexual. I’m sorry. I know that must be a massive disappointment to you.”
My mother started wringing her hands, her face going pale. “Don’t be silly, Nat! You’re just confused. Mia has been putting ideas in your head, that’s all! With that sinful talk of lesbianism—”
“No, I knew it all along,” my father said, a look of deep disgust on his face. “I tried to beat it out of him, but it’s in the blood. He’s no son of mine.”
Emiel’s fists clenched. “And you’re obviously no father to him. Get the fuck out, both of you.”
“What a good idea,” Mia said, still in that stony tone. “I’ll just go see about getting hospital security up here to escort you.” Without another word, she pivoted and walked out the door.
“Well, I never!” my mother gasped. “I have never been spoken to in such a way!”
“Funny, that,” Emiel said. “Because I’m pretty sure your son has heard worse from you two in the last five minutes.”
I was still frozen in place, an odd shivery sensation shuddering along my nerves.
“Hmph! It’s clear we’re not wanted here,” my mother sniffed. “Tom, let’s go.”
My father shot me another look of pure disdain. “Maybe you’re right. Nothing here worth staying for, is there?”
And with that, they left—my mother peering up and down the hallway outside the room, as though on the lookout for approaching security guards.
Speaking of guards, Emiel stayed standing in front of my bed with his fists clenched until Mia returned a minute later.
“I saw them go as I was talking to the duty nurse,” she said. “I’ll make sure they’re struck from your visitor list. Nat... are you okay?”
“Not really,” I rasped, knowing that I had to get everything out in the open before my courage fled. “Mia, I have a confession to make. I slept with one of your alphas. Byron. We were together three times, and I swear it was before I knew you were involved with him. I only found out when I came to the house to meet with you and the others about the gang trying to sabotage the restaurant.”
I closed my eyes, waiting for the explosion. There wasn’t one.
“I know,” she said simply, sitting down on the edge of my bed in the space Emiel had recently vacated.
I opened my eyes. “You... do?” Had Byron told her after all?
“You dropped your phone in the alley when you and the others were taken.” She hesitated. “I... um... I was pretty desperate for any kind of clue to what had happened, so I unlocked it. I saw your texts.”
“Oh.” There didn’t seem to be much else to say to that.
She wrapped her arms around her chest. “It doesn’t matter, Nat. I mean, I’ll admit I was upset when I found out. But it happened before Byron and I ever got together, and if you didn’t know who he was to me, and he didn’t know who you were, it’s not like anyone really did anything wrong.”
“But we purposely hid it from you, once we realized,” I said helplessly.
She shrugged. “Yeah, that part kind of sucks. But the thing is, I was terrified you might both be dead, and Luca stuck somewhere worse than death. I care about you, and I care about Byron, and Emiel, and Luca, and Zalen, too. That’s why it doesn’t matter. Why would I be upset if the people I care about also care about each other?”
I gaped at her, not able to believe what I was hearing.
Emiel, who’d apparently decided that my parents weren’t about to sneak back into the room, turned toward the bed, looking down at us.
“You live alone, right?” he began. “You should come stay with us, after they let you out of here. It only makes sense—if you’ve been with Mia, and you’ve been with Byron, it kind of seems like you’re an honorary part of the pack anyway, right?”
“I... what?” I asked, looking at Mia helplessly.
She huffed, her expression softening. “You know, I think you might be onto something there, Emiel. Especially if the alternative involves going to your parents’ place to recover, Nat.”
I couldn’t help it. I shuddered in revulsion at the very idea.
Was this a real thing that was really happening? If it was a dream or hallucination, I was damn well running with it until I woke up.
“Okay,” I whispered. “But only if Byron and the others agree as well.”