Chapter Thirty-eight
KARL
They lay tangled together in the fading light, sweat cooling between them, the scent of sex heavy in the air.
Karl couldn’t stop touching him. Not in a sexual way—though God knew he wanted him again that way soon enough—but grounding himself in the reality of Leon’s body beside him.
His hand moved lazily across Leon’s chest, brushing the sheen of sweat there, ghosting over the smooth curve of his ribs, then up to trace the sharp line of his jaw.
He pressed a kiss against his shoulder. Because he could, because he wanted to.
But through the glow of being here with Leon like this, Karl could feel a tension start to build.
His damn brain had forgotten how to relax for more than a few moments at a time, and it was gearing up, reminding him of all the things that were still unsettled.
His life was about to change—had already changed.
They needed a plan of action, and while no plan survived contact with the enemy, having one would enable them to measure progress.
He pressed another kiss to the smooth skin of Leon’s shoulder, and smiled to himself at the way Leon stretched under his attentions, satisfied and taking them as his due.
“We should probably talk,” Karl said.
His words caused an instant change in Leon. With a slight lift of his chin and the deliberate set of his mouth, a wall slotted into place, sleek and feline and unbreachable.
Karl watched it all happen and felt… not hurt, not exactly. Just a pang of sorrow for how hard it must have been to learn to do that so well.
“You’re doing the thing,” he said quietly.
Leon blinked at him. “What thing?”
“The disappearing act. Not physically, but the emotional one.” He tapped his fingers lightly over Leon’s heart. “You’re pulling back.”
Leon’s smile was slow, lazy, and utterly fake. “Darling, I just let you rail me into the mattress. Surely I’m allowed some mystery.”
Karl huffed a soft laugh, but didn’t allow himself to be deflected. “You don’t need mystery with me,” he said softly. “Not unless you want to.”
That earned him silence for a long moment. Leon turned his head toward the ceiling, eyes distant, and Karl let him have it. Pushed his hand up into Leon’s hair instead, brushing it gently back from his face. It was slightly damp at his temples, and Karl marveled again at how soft it was.
“What is it you want to talk about?” Leon asked at last. Still guarded, with that subtle tension threaded through him, but more open than he had been.
“What we do now,” Karl said, and then he hesitated. Because he didn’t want to leave the pack. God, he didn’t want to, but at the same time, he wasn’t letting Leon leave him behind.
Karl didn’t need anyone besides his pack. He was perfectly capable of living his life alone. But then there’d been Leon, who’d taught him how to want, to feel. To know he was alive.
He cleared his throat. “Your sister probably won’t stay more than a few days. I figured I’d go back with you.”
Leon snapped his head round, his gaze pinning Karl like he wasn’t sure he’d heard right.
Karl shrugged. “It makes sense. You’ve got work. A life.” He hesitated. “I’ll need to give Matt notice, obviously, and sort some things out here, but—”
He stopped, confused by the look Leon was giving him.
“You’d leave the ranch? Your pack?” Leon asked, voice strained. “For me?”
Karl frowned faintly. “Of course.”
Leon was still looking at him like he’d just rewritten the laws of physics.
Karl ran his hand up the length of Leon’s arm. “What?”
“You’d leave here,” Leon said slowly, “just like that.”
Karl shook his head. “Not just like that,” he said. Because leaving here would be a wound he’d always carry. “This is my pack, my family. But…” Without conscious volition, he stilled his hand from its stroking, until it was resting against Leon’s skin. Feeling his warmth. “You’re my future.”
Leon’s gaze flicked away, then back again.
Less like a cat ready to pounce and more like one caught off guard and covering that fact.
And yeah, there it was again—that soft wall going up behind his eyes.
Not rejection, not even uncertainty, just…
retreat. A reflexive recoil from something that was too close.
Karl let out a slow breath and adjusted his position slightly so he could prop himself on one elbow beside Leon. He didn’t push. Just watched him, and waited. Eventually, Leon held his gaze, but he still said nothing.
So Karl changed the subject to give him space. He touched the small ring on a chain around Leon’s neck that he’d noticed earlier but had been too intent on other things to ask about.
“What’s this?”
Leon’s hand came up to cover Karl’s, fingers warm and firm. But he didn’t pull away. He just held them both there, over the chain resting on his chest.
“It’s from Luna,” Leon said after a moment. “She gave it to me when…” He stopped. Swallowed. “When they sent me away.”
Karl didn’t move. Just waited, feeling tension pulsing through Leon’s arm where they touched.
“I didn’t even know what was happening,” Leon continued, voice quiet now.
“I came home from school and there was a bag packed. No explanation, no warning. Just—‘you’re going to live with Grandpa for a while.’” His laugh was short and sharp.
“Except ‘a while’ turned out to be the rest of my damn childhood.
“They never said it outright, but it was obvious—everyone else in the pride was a cougar. And then there was me. You don’t get much more of a reminder of my mom’s affair than that, both for my parents and the whole damn pride.”
His voice was flat, but Karl could hear the echoes beneath it—the disbelief, the betrayal, the bone-deep ache.
“It’s why I—why I started grooming so carefully. If I had to be different, I’d be better. If I was going to be an outsider, I’d be an icon.”
He laughed, bitter and low. And Karl saw it, then—how the preening and deliberate style weren’t just vanity, but armor. Leon wore pride to smother shame.
Karl’s heart broke a little. “You already were an icon.”
That pulled Leon’s gaze back to him—startled, almost angry. “You didn’t even like me when I got here.”
“I didn’t know you.”
“And now you do?”
Karl nodded. “Enough to know when you’re deflecting.”
“Rude,” Leon said, but his usual bite was missing. He let out a small sigh. “Maybe not completely wrong, though. You know, I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Luna properly. She ran out to the car before they drove me away and shoved this into my hand.”
He drew the ring slowly from Karl’s hand and held up the chain, letting the ring dangle so he could look at it.
Small and plain, just polished silver, worn smooth with years.
He swallowed, and when he spoke again, his voice was strained.
“I guess she understood more than me what was really happening, that it wasn’t just a vacation.
She said it was so I’d remember she still loved me. That I was loved.”
Karl looked at it, then at him. “Do you still need that reminder?”
Leon’s lips parted like he meant to deflect again. Some sharp-edged tease, some mocking evasion. But it didn’t come.
His voice was quiet. “Some days.”
Karl leaned in and kissed him. Not with heat or hunger this time, but a softness that was filled with his feelings for this contrary cat. A soft press of lips that said love.
LEON
Karl’s kiss lingered, soft, unhurried. Like Leon was something precious. He wasn’t used to that. Stillness after sex wasn’t his style. Usually, he was out of the bed and pulling on his pants before the sweat had even cooled. He loved the game, the chase, but once the thrill was over, he moved on.
But lying here with Karl like they had nowhere else to be? It was like some animal part of him had finally stopped pacing. His cat was still and heavy with satisfaction, deep inside, and his bones didn’t want to move.
He studied the strong line of Karl’s jaw, the quiet patience in his eyes. And he said, without really planning to, “You meant it. About leaving here.”
Karl didn’t blink. “Yeah. I don’t say shit I don’t mean.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
Karl raised an eyebrow, but Leon didn’t give him the chance to ask.
Rolling onto his side to face him fully, he said, “Cats don’t really do the whole mate thing, not like wolves.
For us, it’s not destiny, it’s more of an option.
A pull you can follow or ignore. And I was happy with that.
But then my cat saw you and said mine. And suddenly all that opt-out stuff felt like bullshit. ”
Karl’s eyes didn’t leave his face.
“I’ve never trusted fate,” Leon admitted. “I trust you. And that’s a lot scarier.”
He waited for the pushback, but Karl just kept watching him, quiet and accepting.
Leon breathed out slowly, his gaze drifting to the ceiling. “I used to go to clubs just to feel wanted. To be the one in control. I’d prowl around, choose someone who couldn’t take their eyes off me, and either make them beg or let them think they were winning. Sometimes both. It was a game.”
He paused for a long time. He’d never been this open, not even with Luna.
Maybe especially not with Luna—he couldn’t risk her rejection.
But if this was going to work with Karl, he was going to have to learn to let him in, to allow him to see the bits of himself Leon kept hidden.
And Leon was self-aware enough to know what he did and why he did it, why it was beyond a cat’s need for sensation, for luxury to dress the attention-grabbing way he did.
“It was a way to feel something good without letting anyone know me,” he confessed at last. “Tonight, with you… I didn’t hide myself. That’s not just new, Karl. That’s fucking terrifying.”
Karl brought their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Leon’s knuckles. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know,” Leon said. “And that’s what makes it worse.”
Karl’s brow furrowed.
“Because now I have something to lose.”
Silence settled around them again.
After a moment, Karl shifted a little closer. “I can’t promise you nothing bad will ever happen. But I can promise I’ll be beside you if it does.”
Leon felt those words in his soul. He swallowed, then said softly, “If we’re doing this, being mates, then we do it our way. Not just the wolf way.”
Karl’s lips quirked, slow and warm. “You mean I don’t get to piss on you to mark my claim?”
Leon made a strangled noise. “I swear to God—”
“I’m kidding.”
“Jesus.” But Leon was laughing now, the tension bleeding out of his body. He reached for Karl and tugged him down into another kiss, slow and grateful.
When they broke apart, he lay watching Karl, the ring warm against his chest.
“So,” he said, “what does the fated-mate life entail in wolf-world, exactly? Don’t tell me you expect me to start wearing flannel. Because that’s not happening. Not now, not ever.”
Karl snorted. “I think you in flannel might break the world.” He ran his fingers down Leon’s cheek, looking seriously into his eyes. “You know this is your home too, now, if you want.”
Leon lay there for a moment, stunned speechless. To Karl, it was so simple. And when he thought about it, maybe it was. Luna had given him her blessing to try something else. He didn’t know what he wanted next, but he knew he wanted a change.
“Luna let me go,” he said, before he knew he planned to. And it sounded… if he were honest, it sounded small and hurt, even though he knew it was a good thing.
Karl’s brows drew together.
Leon continued, “She said I didn’t have to keep protecting her. That I’d been doing it long enough. Said it was time to do something for myself.”
And this was getting way too serious. He hadn’t even figured out what he wanted, other than to be with Karl. He smoothed his hair back. “If I ever were to move in, my skincare routine would need its own medicine cabinet.” He kept it light, committed to nothing.
Karl rolled his eyes fondly and tugged him closer. “Yeah, well. I’d survive.”
Leon melted into the warmth of him, his head tucked under Karl’s chin, the slow beat of his mate’s heart against his cheek. And for once, that voice in the back of his mind—the one always waiting for rejection, for the other shoe to drop—was quiet.
It felt good, nowhere else he’d rather be than lying here like this, drifting peacefully.
So of course Karl, wolf that he was, broke the silence. “We should start a business.”
Leon tipped his head back. “You’re proposing capitalism now? Romance isn’t dead after all.”
“I’m serious,” Karl said. “You wanted something new. How about security consulting for private clients? High-risk profiles, high-value assets. You and me. We’ve got the skill set.”
Leon tilted his head to one side as he thought about it. “Uniforms are non-negotiable. There will be epaulettes. And maybe velvet.”
Karl grinned at him, fond and exasperated all at once. “Not quite the first impression we’d want to make.”
Leon gave a lazy stretch that was more calculated than it looked, showing off long lines of bare thigh, the flex of his stomach. “But so pretty.”
Karl groaned, and it definitely wasn’t in exasperation. “I would pay actual money to see you stalk through a club in velvet. Full honeytrap mode. Guys wouldn’t know what hit them.”
“Oh, honey.” Leon straddled him in one smooth motion, slitting his eyes as he looked down at Karl. “You couldn’t afford me.”
Karl’s hands dropped to Leon’s hips, holding him there. “I think you’ve forgotten I’ve already got you.”
“Got me?” Leon echoed. He leaned in close, their noses almost touching, his voice a velvet purr as his hair fell in a sleek curtain around them. “That sounds suspiciously like something a wolf would say about their mate.”
Karl flipped him.
Not hard—just fast enough that Leon let out a breathless oof and ended up sprawled smugly on his back, having gotten exactly what he wanted.
Karl hovered over him, pinning him there. “That’s because I’m a wolf,” he growled. “And you’re mine.”
Leon tilted his head like a cat eyeing a bird, letting his lips part in a wicked, satisfied smile. “Then claim me, wolf.”
Karl didn’t need a second invitation. This time, the kiss was heat and hunger again, less desperate than before but no less intense. This was them, learning each other. Learning the shape of the rest of their lives.