Chapter 10
PACK
Taylor
Taylor’s brain was going into overdrive.
Objectively speaking, all was well. Amil had managed to convince the CPS to remand Sylvester for another six months. One tick in the policing box.
Isla was growing a pair of metaphorical balls, and actually seemed to be settling into her role as the sergeant. She also said she was happy with his work. Happy! Two ticks in the ‘not so shit after all’ box.
Wendy was satisfied after her hot date, which made the atmosphere in the office a lot more relaxed. A tick in the horny old beta box.
And Johnny… Johnny seemed alright. Normal. The bite had already faded to almost nothing. Big, big tick in the best friend box.
But, something was off. Taylor felt unstable again, and it resulted in him watching Tropic Thunder another three times whilst pumping weights until his arms hurt.
He’d also brought his paints downstairs so he could work at the kitchen table, but unfortunately for the merry band of ring destroyers he’d painted an entire orc army in two days, which meant they were all fucking doomed.
He heard Johnny sighing every time he found a figurine tucked in some obscure place in his bedroom.
Taylor couldn’t help it—he just had some inexplicable urge to exist in the centre of the house. He caught himself touching things he didn’t usually mess with, like the hoover and mop, and of course Johnny had taken it as a sign that he wanted to start doing household chores, which was not true.
If Taylor really thought about it, it felt like his wolf was doing the equivalent of man-spreading. Putting his scent on everything and holding up a big orange sign that said ‘This, right here, is mine. Now piss off.’
“Stay with the pack,” Johnny growled, his thoughts cracking like a whip over the bond.
Taylor blew air from the sides of his muzzle. He felt itchy. Not flea-ridden itchy, but the skin too tight, body on edge kind of itch. His legs ached too. Even in wolf form he was finding it difficult to navigate the uneven ground of the pack woods.
“I am,” he growled back, drifting between the trees and falling back in line with the kids.
Gabriella yapped, flicking him with her tail, so Taylor nipped her back leg in return. She and Clementine were getting big, all long legged and gangly, just like he and Johnny had been when they were teenagers.
Johnny trailed behind with Marty, his wolf almost twice the size of his omega brother’s.
“Let’s go!” Clementine barked, her excitement vibrating across the bond. She was faster than her sister as she sprinted off ahead.
“Wait for your brother,” Taylor replied, nipping her scruff and pulling her back.
The five of them followed the boundary of the woods, scent marking the trees to map out the perimeter of their territory. They might not live within the pack house anymore, but Maman still asked them to maintain pack lines in the summer.
They didn’t have to do it, because the UK didn’t allow large scale packs anymore, but he knew it was something Johnny used to do with his grandpa in Cameroon. He said that some of the best memories of his childhood had been running through parts of the Congolian rainforest together.
Mind you, that had been before his grandfather turned into a cunt and attacked his Aunt Chichi for wanting to pursue a career outside of the pack. That was when they’d all moved to the UK, because it seemed there were dickhead family members in every part of the world.
They crested a bank, taking a sharp right at the slow-moving brook before smashing through tufts of bell heather and sending the bright pink flowers flying up like fireworks.
The kids were breathing hard by the time they reached their usual crop of rocks that overlooked the house and surrounding fields.
It looked so tiny below them, like a house made for Borrowers, and the colourful shutters and massive sunflowers were bright against the whitewashed walls.
Johnny pulled up beside him, depositing a panting Marty against his shoulder. The young omega was damp, ears drooping, but he still looked up at Taylor with shining bright eyes.
“I’m getting faster,” Marty said, nuzzling into Taylor’s neck.
Taylor just about fucking melted as he pressed his nose between Marty’s ears and licked away the sweat gathering under his eyes. “Strong,” he replied, as Marty curled up beside him.
He slid his gaze to Johnny, lingering on him as he sat on the edge of the rocks. His sleek black tail curled around his legs as he watched over the pack, the sun setting behind him, blasting orange light through the edges of his fur and giving him a warm, glowy look.
He was every inch a pack alpha, and Taylor had no doubt he would be head of the family when Maman was gone. He’d have a mate and pups of his own, and when that time came, Taylor would just…
He tried to disguise the shudder by licking Marty’s head again.
“Hungry,” Gabriella said, settling against Taylor’s other shoulder.
“Me too,” echoed Clementine, shuffling between his front legs.
Johnny huffed, catching Taylor’s eye as he inclined his massive lupine head. He jumped down from the rocks and padded over to them. “Rest first,” he said, encouraging the kids to lie down.
Taylor lay with them, crossing his front legs and resting his muzzle across them as the kids pulled in tight to his sides. He looked up at Johnny, who was busy licking Gabriella’s head and making her fur stand up.
Gabriella wiggled onto her back and began thumping her paws against Clementine’s head. “Mutt,” she said, claws snagging in her sister’s coat. Clementine snapped her teeth around Gabriella’s leg, which led to both of them kicking and biting each other.
“Stop,” Taylor said, pressing his head over Gabriella’s legs as Clementine got up and sat next to Marty.
Johnny lay down in Clementine’s space, resting his head on his paws as he looked out over the house. Even in wolf form Taylor could see that his eyes were glassy, like he wasn’t fully with them.
Usually, Taylor would have just jumped on his back and bitten his ears, but somehow that didn’t feel right.
So, he tentatively lifted his head and pushed his nose into Johnny’s cheek.
He rocked it back and forth until Johnny’s lips parted and Taylor could feel his hot, sharp teeth against his nose.
Johnny shifted, curling his head around until their cold noses touched.
They couldn’t talk because the kids would hear, but it was enough to make Taylor close his eyes and let his mind go quiet.
“Sweetie!” Chichi called as they stepped into the house later that evening.
She and Kofi often turned up unannounced, which Taylor still found fucking wild, given that his own parents used to pull furniture in front of the door to stop people getting in.
He watched as she yanked Johnny into a hug, her face smooshing against his chest as she jiggled him back and forth. “Tu as encore grandi!”
Johnny chuckled. “I’m nearly twenty-eight, Tati. Fairly certain I’ve stopped growing.”
Chichi waved the comment away, turning her gaze to Taylor. “You too,” she said, pulling his face down to kiss his cheeks.
Although two years older, she looked so remarkably like Maman—same hairstyle, same kind eyes and endless smile—that sometimes it was hard to tell them apart. Except Chichi’s chest and wrists were riddled with burn scars, and Taylor saw the way she winced every time she raised her arms.
It still didn’t stop her from being the brightest person in the room though, and it tickled Taylor that she chose to work with the dead for a living.
“Ma chérie,” came a raspy voice from the kitchen archway. It was Kofi, Chichi’s alpha husband. “Where is my kiss?”
Chichi chuckled, running a hand over his greying locs and kissing the top of his head.
Kofi let out a sound like a balloon deflating—an unfortunate but sometimes funny side effect of the tracheostomy tube he’d had removed a few weeks before.
Having lung cancer clearly hadn’t affected his game though, because Chichi was grinning like a schoolgirl.
They chatted for a while, Taylor standing by the farmhouse sink with a beer whilst Johnny made the kids ribs.
They had some kind of chilli sauce that looked and smelled like it might incinerate Taylor’s trachea, but if someone who’d had a rubber pipe yanked from his throat could handle it, then so could he.
“Give this to young Pember, will you?” Kofi smiled, pressing an unlabelled green bottle into his hand. “The plum wine he made was pretty good, but I think I’ve come up with something even better.”
Chichi rolled her eyes. “Honestly, those two never stop texting. It’s always vaporisation this, yeast growth rate that.”
Taylor smiled, watching the whole family talk over one another with hurried excitement as he slowly faded back into the corner of the kitchen.
He liked to watch them, sometimes. The way the pack just moved around each other with ease and warmth.
The way they brushed shoulders, touched hands and showed easy affection.
It was easy to accept love when all you’d ever known was love.
It made Taylor feel warm too, most of the time.
Sometimes, he would forget all about his life in Slough with his mum and dad, and the dark, empty house he had never called a home.
His parents were not bad people. They’d tried to love him, but Taylor was just…
a nightmare. That was what his dad used to call him whenever social services rocked up, or when he overwhelmed Taylor with his alpha scent just to get him to submit.
A problem child.
He’d hear his parents arguing through the paper-thin walls of their two-bedroom flat, crying into his hands and pleading with his wolf to just ‘be good.’
The tears had turned hard when he was nine, when his mum left, and he gave up trying to control it.
He’d lived with his nan for a bit, but in the end even she couldn’t control him.
Fighting with the older kids, breaking shit.
Fuck, he’d lost his virginity at thirteen years old because he was just so fucking bored of being kicked out of the house all the time.
Where he was unlovable, the Atebas were just so damned easy to love. Johnny, especially, with his big hands that just seemed to scoop everything up and put it all back together.
Taylor looked at the floor. The warmth that had made his fingers tingle started to recede, and a cold hardness settled in his belly.
“Hey.” Someone nudged his shoulder. It was Johnny, because it was always Johnny, and he was shoving a bowl of ribs into his hand. “Eat up. Kofi wants us to take some stuff over to the restaurant.”
Taylor swallowed the thickness in his throat. “Y-yeah?”
One of Johnny’s eyebrows twitched as he held Taylor’s hand underneath the bowl. “What’s wrong?”
Taylor looked down at the ribs.
“Tay?”
“Nothing, dude.”
Johnny let out a soft breath. “Things turning dark again?”
Taylor made a wheezing sound in the back of his throat. “No…” he sighed quietly. “A bit.”
Johnny squeezed his fingers, his other hand fiddling with the hem of Taylor’s dark green T-shirt.
“Oh, wait,” Johnny said, grabbing a bottle of maple syrup from the counter and drizzling it all over the food.
He pressed his forehead to Taylor’s. It was warm, and Taylor could smell the forest on his skin.
“Know you’re a pussy when it comes to spice.
” He was looking at Taylor through his eyelashes.
Taylor pulled back, sinking his teeth into the meat, but found that for once, he wasn’t hungry.