Chapter 30
chapter
thirty
Somebody was stroking Tobias’s hair.
Tobias rumbled happily. His whole body ached and he felt like he could still fall back to sleep any second, but he wanted to stay in this moment.
Then the scent hit him. The telltale scent of mate, so heady and intoxicating that it wiped every thought from his head.
He cracked his eyes open. He was lying on Alexander’s thin mattress, his head in Alexander’s lap. Alexander was reading a book, one hand running absentmindedly through Tobias’s hair.
It felt perfect. Tobias never wanted it to end. But memories were trickling back, filling him with painful and alarming questions.
He smacked his lips. “Are you running away with me?”
Alexander’s fingers froze against his scalp. He was wearing a shirt Tobias had never seen before, soft and baggy and relaxed. He closed the book, showing a cover that had something to do with breaking free of cults. His face was filled with such warmth it took Tobias’s breath away.
“No running,” Alexander said. “I actually quite like my apartment.”
His fingers resumed their lazy stroke against Tobias’s scalp. Tobias leaned into it, letting himself enjoy it before he had to face reality again.
“What happened?” he asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Alexander said, fond and exasperated. Then his smile dimmed. “It’s been a few days. Your body didn’t react well to all the stress. Donna slept for a long time, too.”
“Donna,” Tobias repeated fuzzily. The memories came drifting back: Donna writhing against the concrete with a broken arm, her bones shifting unnaturally under her skin. “Oh shit. The wolves better watch out, Donna’s on the scene.”
He screwed his eyes shut, images flickering through his sore head: Donna’s shiny, bedazzled gun. A giant wolf with a hole in his throat. Meredith, calm and vengeful, plunging a shard of shrapnel into its skull.
“Muzzle’s dead,” he said. Half question, half-confirmation. He could feel it—or rather, the lack of it. Nobody had a hold on him anymore.
“We burned the body to make sure,” Alexander said.
“Good.” Tobias wanted to say more. Wanted to know what the bastard smelled like when he was burning. But he was so tired, and there were better questions to ask.
“Your parents,” he started.
“They left.”
Tobias lifted his head cautiously. “Are they coming back?”
“They’d better not,” Alexander said, and the conviction in his voice made Tobias sag with relief. “They’d have a pack to deal with.”
Tobias squinted, remembering the empty barracks he had shouted at when he was buying time. “The pack is still around?”
“Some of them. Many left when they felt Muzzle die. They’re still figuring out who the next alpha’s going to be. Honey wants it to be Donna.”
Tobias laughed, imagining her introducing her bedazzler to the arena. “Goodbye fight club, hello silversmithing nights. Shit, not silversmithing. Pottery? Something crafty.”
He sat up, hissing a pained breath as his joints protested. “Josh could be her second in command,” he said, digging his chin into Alexander’s lithe shoulder. “They like the little guy. It wouldn’t be a stretch.”
Alexander said nothing. Even when Tobias dug his chin in harder, trying to coax him into an annoyed look. The silence stretched into something deep and dangerous, until Tobias took his chin out of Alexander’s shoulder.
“If you’re trying to spare me,” he said. “You’re only making it worse with all the waiting. My brain’s going crazy with possibilities, man.”
Alexander closed his eyes. “Josh is dead. He…died saving me.”
Tobias’s stomach turned upside down.
“Little shit,” he said numbly. His voice broke, which surprised him. He wasn’t even feeling it yet. At least, he didn’t think he was. But Alexander touched his cheek, and Tobias was alarmed to feel tears on his face.
“He was very brave,” Alexander said, soft and stilted. “In the end.”
Tobias grinned wetly. He tried to come up with something funny to say, but nothing came.
“Goddammit,” he croaked. “Fuck. That idiot.”
He collapsed into Alexander’s arms, burying his face in his neck.
Even through the sudden waves of grief, he couldn’t help but be grateful to Josh, wherever he was now.
If he died saving Alexander, it wasn’t because he held any affection for the guy.
It was because he knew what Alexander meant to Tobias.
Once he started crying, he couldn’t stop.
He hadn’t cried for so long it felt like he was crying not just for Josh, but for all of it: for his parents.
His sister. His transformation, his entrapment, stuck so long in a pack he never wanted to be a part of.
All these years on his own, searching for something to help him out of it.
He was finally out. And so was Alexander. There had been no doubt in his voice when he said his parents weren’t coming back. Tobias wanted to ask him what happened. But he remembered Meredith twisting the amulet, her steely face the last thing he saw before the pain pulled him under.
He could guess how that went. He only wished he’d been awake to see it.
Alexander kissed his forehead hesitantly. “How are you feeling?”
Tobias groaned, nuzzling deeper into Alexander’s neck. “Like I want to sleep for a week.”
“Feel free.” Alexander kissed his face again, more confident. Like every time Tobias showed him he wouldn’t rebuff him. “I’ll be here when you wake. I already have job interviews lined up—”
“I’m fired,” Tobias supplied.
“You’re definitely fired,” Alexander replied. “Donna says she’ll hire you if you want something to tide you over while you search.”
Tobias laughed hoarsely, wiping his eyes. “We can work together! Matching aprons, little matching hats…”
Alexander hummed. He was staring past Tobias at a wall that Tobias remembered as blank, but which was now covered in a poster of a National spark that Tobias vaguely remembered talking about during the road trip.
“I don’t know,” Alexander said thoughtfully. “I’ve been looking into community college.”
“Yeah?”
Alexander nodded. “I think I want a life. A real one.”
The words rang a painful bell, but Tobias didn’t remember why. He leaned in, brushing his nose against Alexander’s. “With me?”
This was the part where Alexander pulled back. Tobias was waiting for it, even after all of Alexander’s gentle caresses, even after disavowing his parents—Alexander was not practiced in affection. There was still a part of him that balked at it, Tobias could see it in his face.
But Alexander kept his gaze, even when he had to strain.
“If you’ll have me,” he said. He even had the gall to sound nervous.
Tobias laughed again and pulled him in. They kissed slowly and deeply, clinging to each other so tightly Tobias couldn’t help but think Alexander had also spent nights trying to imagine a future when somebody held him like this.
Convincing himself that somewhere in the future, someone was clutching him so passionately it echoed down through the years and into their lonely beds.
Alexander pulled back and traced the scar over Tobias’s lip. “You should’ve told me I was your mate.”
Tobias grinned wearily. “Come on. How would you have reacted if I told you that when we met?”
“Badly,” Alexander admitted. “But I would have come around. I’m yours, after all.”
“Mine,” Tobias agreed softly.
Alexander smiled with an unguarded joy Tobias could never have imagined that first night. He guided Tobias’s head back to his shoulder, and Tobias let himself sag against him, eyes falling shut.
Sleep was already coming back to claim him. It didn’t matter. Alexander would be here when he woke up.
And every day after that.