Chapter 30
THIRTY
Tony
COFFEE DIDN’T HELP. I was nearly to the bottom of my second cup, and my life was still in a shambles.
Gage hadn’t tried to talk to me while we sipped cheap Colombian instant, at least. Maybe he was trying to be tactful. Or maybe he just really needed the caffeine. When he set his empty mug down on the counter with purpose, though, I knew my time was up.
“I know this ain’t any of my business,” he began.
“Funny how no one ever stops the sentence right there,” I muttered, staring at the brown dregs of my coffee.
He snorted in wry amusement. “Yeah, you got a point about that. Okay. So, I guess it’s kind of my business because Heath is my packmate, and Jez is our scent match. And because Heath sent my tired ass over here to talk to you.”
I felt my walls snap into place. “Talk to me about what?”
As if I couldn’t guess.
“You and him have been sleeping together.” The words hit like a hammer. I drew breath to say something angry, but Gage shook his head and forged on. “No—before you say anything, he didn’t tell me that. He just asked me to come check on you. That’s all.”
“Then what the hell makes you think—” I cut myself off, not wanting to say the words aloud.
Gage shot me a sidelong glance. “Uh... because I’ve got eyes?
” he said. “So, I’m gonna assume I’m right.
You and him got together, and now he’s got an omega scent match who tried to kill Knox, and he mated her against both their wills, because they were drugged.
If I was in your position, I’d be asking myself where all of that left me? ”
I wanted to yell... to rant... to throw the coffee mug at the wall so I could watch it shatter, splashing hot brown liquid across the ugly wallpaper.
I didn’t do any of those things.
“Nowhere,” I told the bottom of the mug. “It leaves me nowhere, because it was just a goddamned one-night stand. He’s hot, all right? And I have a competence kink. It meant nothing to either of us. I scratched the itch, and the rest of it is nothing to do with me.”
Silence fell over us, stifling as the seconds dragged on.
“Bullshit,” Gage said.
My gaze flew up to his face as my temper flared again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.
Gage’s neutral expression didn’t waver. “It means you’re lying through your teeth.” He sighed, his voice lowering to a rumbling murmur. “I can see why you an’ Jez were friends. You’re both stubborn as mules.”
I surged up from the barstool I was sitting on. It wobbled, its legs screeching a few inches across the faded linoleum tile. “I’m not lying, goddamn it! It was a one-night stand, and I told him at the time that it didn’t mean anything! Hell, I don’t think he would have agreed to it otherwise!”
Gage made a considering noise. “Well, yeah. That part’s probably true.”
“All of it’s true!” I half-shouted.
The alpha nodded sagely. “Right. So, you’re not upset at all about him and Jez. And he’s not calling you in the middle of the night because he’s terrified that he might’ve hurt you when he was in rut.”
Gage had been there when we were trying to get Heath and Jez away from the silos—when Heath had taken a break from growling over Jez’s huddled form, in order to corner me up against the van and snuffle along my throat.
A completely unwanted spark of heat kindled in my belly; my cock twitching awake at the most fucking ridiculous possible time in response to the visceral memory.
“He’s just...” I began weakly. “He must know I have a rough background when it comes to sex. He was only trying to be decent about it.”
... And now I was defending Heath. What the hell just happened?
Gage cocked an eyebrow. “He was in full rut, and his new scent-matched mate was right there. Yet he was still plastered all over you like a cheap suit on the way to the van. I’m not sure you really understand how mate bonds are supposed to work, Tony.”
I started pacing, wishing desperately for a bigger apartment so I’d have more room.
“You said it yourself,” I told Gage. “He was in rut. Doesn’t that mean he would have gone after anything with a pulse?”
I would not think about Heath in a mating frenzy... pushing me up against a wall and grinding against my ass while his teeth gripped my shoulder...
“You’re a male beta,” Gage said evenly. “Normally, he might’ve ‘gone after’ a beta guy, all right—just not in the way you’re thinking.”
I came to an abrupt halt, looking at him in disbelief. “Wow, thanks so much for warning me about that possibility at the time!”
Gage rolled his eyes. “He wasn’t gonna go after you, dumbass. He likes you. I just didn’t expect him to try and snort your body odor like a line of coke, either. Which, once again, is my point.”
I crossed my arms, trying to look intimidating. “Oh... you had a point? I must have missed that part.”
“The point is that you two aren’t fooling anyone.” He huffed out a breath. “God, I forget how young you are sometimes. And I’m guessing Jez isn’t much older.” He shrugged. “Not sure what Heath’s excuse is, other than being a dried up, bitter old addict.”
“He’s not that old.” The words came out before I’d realized I was going to say them, in all their defensive glory.
“He’s got a full decade on you,” Gage shot back. “Anyway, I can’t make you talk to him directly, and I can’t make either of you say what you really mean. But Knox is making noises like Jez is probably going to choose to terminate the mating bond, once she’s recovered a bit.”
I stared at him. “Omega mating bonds are for life.”
“Christ,” Gage said under his breath. “Someone really needs to do something about sex-ed in the public schools.” His lips pressed together, and then he continued in a more normal tone.
“There’s a surgery to take out the mating gland.
Without a mating gland, there’s no DNA match.
No DNA match, and the bond fades over the course of a few weeks. ”
He looked sick as he said it.
I frowned. “You don’t like that. Why?”
Gage shook his head. “No, it’s good that omegas have a way to get out of unwanted bonds. But... she’s our scent match.”
He seemed really hung up on that part, and I had to accept that maybe it wasn’t something that I, as a beta, could understand.
“So... if she decides to get this surgery, she can’t mate you either?” I hazarded.
“If she gets the surgery, she can’t mate anyone,” Gage said. “That’s kind of the point.”
“And you want to mate her,” I added.
He fiddled with a napkin, and I realized that I’d actually managed to put him on the back foot for the first time.
“Not like she’d want to mate me anyhow,” he said after a slight pause.
“It’s just a fucked-up situation all around.
And it’s also not your problem. I’m here because Heath’s worried about you.
Are you sure you won’t talk to him? I mean, it kind of sounds like you two have some shit to talk about, is all I’m sayin’. ”
Heath and Jez wouldn’t have to stay mated. Did that change anything?
I swallowed and licked my lips.
“I don’t think that we do,” I said. “In fact, I’m thinking it might be best if I went somewhere else. I’m not sure Chicago really suits me anymore.”
Saying the words aloud opened up a cold pit in my stomach—one that no amount of cheap instant coffee was going to be able to fill.
Gage’s heavy brows drew together. “What is it with people around here jamming a steel bar through the spokes of their own motorcycle wheel, while they’re still trying to ride the damn thing?”
“I don’t want to talk to Heath,” I said obstinately.
I was not going to be that guy. The one who dumped feelings all over the man he’d fucked, after swearing up and down that it was casual. Especially when the man in question had just been drugged into mating someone he despised, and was dealing with that whole crock of shit.
“That’s your choice,” Gage said, in the tone of someone who thought it was a stupid choice. “But before you uproot your whole life over this, will you at least come and talk to Jez?”
“No,” I told him immediately.
“Because she’s got no one,” Gage plowed on. “She found out she tried to kill an innocent man... then she got kidnapped, thrown into an unnatural heat, and mated against her will. All in less than a week.”
I wavered.
“I know you two fell out,” Gage went on. “But you were close once. She saved you once.”
That was a low blow.
“Maybe,” I amended. “I’ll have to think about it.”
Gage nodded. “That’s all I can ask. If you decide to come to the house, I’ll let Heath know that you don’t want to talk to him. And no one’s gonna ask you to do any more crazy shit like storming a kiddie porn ring armed with a keyring pepper spray cannister. Promise.”
“You didn’t ask me to do that,” I pointed out. “I was there, and I just sort of... did it.”
“Well, regardless—Knox is home now, and he ain’t too big on doing crazy shit,” Gage said. “So, no more two-man rescues.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Is Knox—or is he not—the guy who decided to smuggle rescued omegas through your house?”
Gage waved that away. “Yeah, but he does it all planned and organized, like. I just kinda jump in with both feet.”
“Really?” I asked, deadpan. “I hadn’t noticed.”
He screwed up his nose at me, and I tried desperately not to find it endearing.
“Just... come to the house and talk to Jez,” he said. “If you decide to, I mean. I think it’d be good for both of you.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. But then I pictured Jez, scared and alone—her whole world lying shattered at her feet.
“Maybe,” I said again.