Chapter 21
chapter
twenty-one
Alexander was weirdly silent while Tobias cleaned him up.
At first Tobias assumed it was the quiet satisfaction of a good fuck. But Alexander’s brow was furrowed as he watched Tobias rub the makeup trails off his cheeks with a wad of toilet paper.
“Do you feel different since you became a wolf?” Alexander asked drowsily. “Other than the obvious physical changes.”
He looked troubled, as he often did when they talked about Tobias’s monsterhood.
Tobias hoped this was a good sign. That they were slowly breaking down the bullshit his parents had built into him.
Still, he had seen how Alexander could backslide: he’d let the girls go, but then spent the next three years hunting on his own and desperately trying to make his family take him back.
He could run away with Tobias. Or he could turn away from him for good. Tobias had no fucking clue how this was going to go when push came to shove. He just wanted to enjoy the ride.
“Nope,” Tobias said, wiping away the last of the makeup off Alexander’s cheeks. “Why?”
Alexander was quiet as Tobias balled up the toilet paper and threw it in the trashcan. Then he said, “You know how they say monsters don’t have souls?”
“Sure,” Tobias said, sliding an arm under Alexander’s head. “Why? Are you asking if I feel like I have a soul after I got turned?”
Alexander stayed silent, watching Tobias with a strange, thoughtful expression. Like whatever was going through his head, he wanted it to stop right now.
Alexander pulled at him until Tobias got the hint and rolled on top of him.
“Want a second round?” Tobias asked, brushing their still-sweaty noses together.
Alexander stared up at him, cheeks flushed with leftover exertion. The thoughtful expression had gone, just like it did every time. Tobias was noticing a pattern: Alexander would start thinking something he really didn’t want to think, usually because of Tobias. And Alexander would…what?
Tobias had been thinking sex was Alexander’s way of answering a question he didn’t want to answer. Now he had the sinking feeling it was his way of avoiding the question entirely, even in his own head.
“I bet you can’t make me cry again,” Alexander said finally.
Tobias watched his face carefully. Alexander’s cheeks were clean, sweat still drying on his forehead. There was some apprehension in his expression, but mostly it was that cautious lust that Tobias was so goddamn fond of. Like Alexander still couldn’t believe it felt this good.
This wasn’t a distraction for Alexander, Tobias decided. Not just a distraction, anyway. If Tobias was lucky, this could be another way Alexander clambered his way out of the cage he locked himself in.
Tobias kissed him breathless. “Get ready to eat your words, crybaby.”
Alexander frowned. Then Tobias wrapped his fingers around his half-hard cock—still slick with spit from Tobias edging him until he sobbed—and Alexander’s eyes slammed shut, everything wiped from his face except deep, desperate want.
Their drive back into the city was tense.
For Tobias, anyway. He kept waiting for that telltale pain to slam into him, the car folding around him as his limbs swelled, his senses giving way as the wolf took over.
Alexander could definitely tell; his attention was split between watching Tobias with concern and flipping that jawbone knife so fast it blurred.
The girls were having a good time, at least.
“I’ve never been here before,” Honey pointed out when they cruised over the city limits, staring out at the sprawling suburbs around them. “Guys, where’s good to get dinner?”
Tobias made a face. He only moved here after his parents died. He never had enough money to go anywhere ‘good.’ “There’s this nice Chinese place near my apartment,” he said.
“Next to the laundromat,” Alexander agreed. “They offer two-for-one meals today.”
This filled Tobias with such strange fondness it made him helpless to do anything but turn and stare at him.
Alexander was still flipping his knife distractedly, watching Tobias in a way that suggested he had forgotten he was holding it.
Their gazes connected, stretched, held. Tobias felt that he’d known Alexander for a very long time and would know him infinitely longer, talking about takeout places near their apartment and learning each other’s food preferences by heart.
Then something slammed into the van ceiling hard enough to dent it, and all tender thoughts fled at the hot stench of wolf.
“God fucking dammit,” Tobias snarled.
Sadie gasped from the driver’s seat. “Shit! Steve-van!”
“I got it.” Tobias punched the dent so it popped back into place. The wolf above it yelped with surprise, its paws skittering over the metal.
Alexander scanned the windows, knife held out dangerously. “How many?”
Tobias breathed deep, picking up their scents. “At least three.”
Honey made a noise like a game show buzzer. “Four.”
She pointed. Tobias followed her gaze and swore. There were several more wolves racing along the wide suburban streets on each side of the van.
“This is gonna end up on Keep Virginia Weird,” Sadie said. “Do they even have wolves here?”
“Speed up,” Alexander instructed.
Tobias looked over at him. Alexander’s face had smoothed out into that determined mask he often wore when he was fighting, his mind running through all possibilities like it was a chess game.
A wolf running alongside them threw itself into the van. Sadie swore, grabbing the steering wheel harder as it tried to swerve.
“They’re trying to make us crash so we have to fight on foot,” Alexander snapped. “Drive faster, Sadie.”
“This van can only go so fast,” Sadie replied sharply. “And we’re in the suburbs! You saw the speed limit!”
“There are four wolves throwing themselves into the van,” Alexander said, “and you care about the speed limit?”
Sadie’s answer was cut off by another wolf slamming into the side of the van. Claw marks appeared in the roof, metal peeling away as the wolf above them tried to get inside.
Tobias undid his seatbelt. “I’m going up there.”
“I’ll lean out of the window,” Alexander said. “Sadie, is there a way we can get the weapons in the back?”
“No, you’d have to—” Sadie broke off yet again when a third wolf slammed into the van, hard enough that Sadie had to slam on the brakes or be rammed into a lamppost.
Honey shrieked as they all bounced in their seats, half in terror, half with excitement. “Tobias! They’re your pack, can’t you talk to them?”
“I’m only pack on a technicality,” Tobias yelled back, out of breath from being shoved back into the seat from their sudden stop. “I don’t know them!”
Alexander flipped his jawbone knife, his eyes hard and flinty. “Sadie, cover me. We’ll go around the back of the van for my weapons. Tobias will—”
Tobias didn’t get to hear what he was doing. A wolf ran into Alexander’s door with such force it dented the door into Alexander’s knife arm, making him yell in pain.
“Hey,” Tobias snarled. He surged over Alexander, ready to punch through the window and shove his fist through the wolf’s head.
But the rip in the roof was getting bigger. Another wolf slammed into the back of the car, making it rock even harder.
“There’s too many of them,” Honey yelled.
“No such thing,” Alexander called back, his teeth gritted.
The roof wolf stuck its arm through the hole and started swinging. Everybody leaned out of the way except Sadie, who lunged and bit a chunk out of the wolf’s palm.
Honey laughed in shrill triumph. It was short-lived: the door hinges were creaking. The van was rocking harder with each wolf’s attack. There was no running for weapons like this. They were being caged in like rats.
“Alex,” Tobias said warningly.
“Give me a second,” Alexander told him.
But Tobias could see it in his face: he didn’t have a plan for this. He would simply fight until he couldn’t.
Before Tobias could do anything about it, a jeep squealed around the corner. It had floodlights mounted on the grate, flashing so brightly everybody winced. Nobody more than the wolves, who cringed when the light was turned on them.
Tobias blinked his stinging eyes, grateful that he hadn’t had wolf vision for that.
The jeep didn’t slow down like he expected. Instead, it barreled straight toward them. Tobias braced himself over Alexander, sure they would be plowed into.
The jeep crashed into two of the wolves instead: one who had been banging into the side of the van and another who had run around from the back.
The wolves hit the asphalt, howling in pain.
“Holy shit,” Sadie said quietly. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Tobias said, his stomach sinking despite their surprise allies. He turned to Alexander, hoping that his hunch was wrong.
But Alexander was staring at the jeep with a slack expression, his knife hanging forgotten at his side.
Tobias clenched his jaw anxiously. The only people who could make Alexander look like that were the ones Tobias had hoped he’d never see again.
The roof wolf jumped off the van with the other pack mate still standing. They tried to run around the jeep and hit it from the side. It was so fast the jeep didn’t have time to turn, and Tobias went to grab the dented door handle.
But before he could yank it open, a blacked-out jeep window rolled down. A silver crossbow emerged from it, shooting the two wolves in quick succession—one in the leg, the other in the flank.
The wolves cried out in pain. The ones who had been smacked by the jeep stumbled up, and Tobias watched, half grateful, half apprehensive, as all four of their attackers ran down the road and out of sight.
Honey let out a shaky breath. “Friends of yours, little Alex?”
“Don’t call me that,” Alexander said urgently. “Seriously, don’t.”
His gaze was still fixed on the jeep. The floodlights switched off. The passenger door opened and a woman climbed out onto the bloody asphalt.
She was straight-faced and muscled and limping. Her hair was so pale it was almost white, scraped back into a vicious ponytail. She stared into the van, and Tobias shivered. Her gaze just as withering as he remembered.
Then the driver’s door opened. A man climbed out, mustachioed and waving, his smile surprisingly joyful even as he rested his other hand on a belt full of knives.
“Alexander,” he called cheerfully, as if he hadn’t seen his son in three hours instead of three years. “You don’t happen to know a good place to eat? We’re starving.”