Chapter 8 Harland
HARLAND
Harland had never been a particularly good person. He’d been a good alpha – back before he was turned and his pack turned their backs on him – and he took good care of Max, but as he watched Warren being driven away, he couldn’t help but wonder what his mother would have said if she saw him now.
“You claimed him!” Max said, exuberant and joyous as he pulled Harland into a hug and squeezed him.
Harland’s wolf, more present than it had been for two hundred years, wagged its metaphorical tail.
“I did,” Harland said, letting himself be squeezed.
Warren hadn’t noticed. Harland’s claim had taken - the wound made from his teeth closing almost instantly and already scabbed over by the time Warren made it into the car – and Harland wondered if he’d be angry when he got home and realized what he’d done.
It wouldn’t matter if he was. With two claiming bites and the come of three alphas inside of him, the process of turning him into an omega had started.
Warren was his.
“So, what do we do about this other guy?” Max asked, releasing his hold on Harland and doing a happy little dance. “Do we kill him?”
Harland let out a small laugh and pulled Max into a one-armed hug, pulling his head down to his chest and kissing his scalp.
“Bloodthirsty thing, aren’t you?”
“Okay, so maybe we shouldn’t kill him, but we can chase him away, right?”
Harland ruffled Max’s hair and shook his head.
“We’re not going to chase him away.” He grabbed Max’s hand and pulled him deeper into the house, moving to the conservatory. “Think about it. How did you really feel about the way Warren smelled when you saw him? Take your time.”
“I was furious,” Max said, looking confused at where Harland was going with this.
“And?”
“And nothing?” Max tilted his head like a confused puppy, thinking furiously when Harland made it clear he wanted more. “I wanted to bite him?”
“And?” Harland took a seat in his favorite wicker chair.
“I don’t know!” Max lay down on the floor a few feet away from Harland’s boots and stared up at the ceiling. He folded his hands over his stomach and turned his head to look at Harland. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“You thought it smelled good.”
Max sat up, outraged. “I did not!”
“You did. The only reason you were angry was because your own claim hadn’t been staked.”
Making Harland proud, Max bit back his second refusal and sat quietly, deep in thought. After a few moments, he wrinkled his nose. “What the fuck?” he mumbled.
Harland huffed, amused at the sight of Max figuring out his wolf.
When Harland found him, Max was a walking time-bomb. He’d been adopted as a baby – and Harland was still trying to understand how that could have happened – and his solution to dealing with all his wolfy instincts had been to ignore them.
He was the most maladjusted werewolf Harland had ever met. While it worked out well enough when he was among humans – with the exception of potential mates like Warren – he had no idea how to act with others of his kind.
Harland hadn’t known what to make of him.
His first instinct had been to rip out his throat and be done with it, as he did with most werewolves who made the mistake of thinking that his city was neutral territory, but then Max had caught his eye from across the park, grinned, and ran over to him and asked him if he was a werewolf, too.
The sheer obliviousness Max had demonstrated toward Harland’s body language had caught him so off guard that he’d frozen in befuddlement.
Instead of answering, Harland had flashed his fangs – intending to scare the perhaps brain-damaged werewolf away – but Max had just widened his eyes and looked impressed.
After that, Harland hadn’t been able to shake the younger wolf – not that he’d tried very hard. For all that Harland was a vampire, he’d been a werewolf first, and he’d missed being someone’s alpha.
Max, without any experience of being in a pack or fighting for his place in the hierarchy, was the perfect way to satisfy that longing while not being too reminded of everything he’d lost.
It had caught him completely by surprise, six months in, when he’d rolled over after fucking the younger man silly and realized that he was head over heels in love.
“I told you, remember? Omegas are a way to bring alphas together.” Harland absentmindedly kneaded his bulge, his wet cock pleasantly sensitive where it lay trapped under the leather of his suit.
Even though he knew that they were in for a rough time – making omegas was an ugly business – he was confident that they would end up happier for it in the end.
“Whoever this alpha is, we’re stuck with him. ”
Max scrunched up his nose, still confused. “I mean, not really. We could still get Warren to pick us if we don’t like this guy. I mean, so what if he smells kind of nice? He could be a total asshat.”
Harland tapped his fingers on his thigh, deciding – now that it was too late to do anything about it – to tell Max what an omega actually was.
He was surprised by how much he dreaded the idea of Max being disappointed in him.
“No. We’re stuck with him.”
“Why?” Max leaned back on his elbows, crossed his ankles and gave Harland a curious look. He was still oblivious and in a good mood from Harland claiming Warren on their behalf. He laughed. “I mean, you say that so decisively.”
Harland decided to bite the bullet.
“Omegas need their alphas. If even one of us abandons him – or is driven away – he’ll die. It would be an excruciating way to go.”
Max sat up, his expression very confused. “What do you mean?”
“If Warren is an omega – and I’m pretty sure that by sleeping with him and claiming him we’ve triggered the process to turn him into one – then he’ll need us to survive. He’ll be addicted to us. If we deny him, he’d do anything to get it, and if we continued to deny him, he’d die.”
“Deny him what?” Max asked, horrified. “How can you be addicted to a person?”
Harland glanced down at Max’s bulge, nodding at the line of Max’s cock where it rested against his thigh. Max followed his gaze, staring at his own package, before lifting his head in outrage.
“Our come?” Max sounded about as horrified as Harland had ever heard him. Jumping to his feet, he ran an agitated hand through his hair. “That’s not what you’re saying, right?”
“It’s a big responsibility.” Harland glanced away from Max’s accusing expression, the horror on his face making him feel uncomfortable.
Max parroted Harland’s words back to him, incredulous. “A big responsibility? Does Warren know? Did you tell him that you were using werewolf bullshit to tie him to us for the rest of his life? That he’ll have to let us fuck him or die?”
Harland rose up and put his hand on Max’s shoulder, only for Max to yank away from the touch.
“Of course not,” Harland said.
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like his opinion on being tied to three werewolves he’s known for less than a week and being their sex slave for the rest of his life doesn’t matter?”
Max was shouting, and rather than calming down, he only seemed to be getting more and more agitated.
“I-”
“Can we stop it?” Max asked, looking around the room with wild eyes. “I mean, if we stay away, is there a chance that he won’t turn into an omega?”
“Yes.”
Harland had never created an omega himself, but his old pack had enough lore that he knew how it usually went.
Two or more alphas discovered a human that smelled preternaturally good, they kidnapped that human and took them back to the pack, and then, through a combination of sex and giving them the claiming bite, the human became an omega.
Though Harland had the impression that it was a fast process, he wasn’t sure.
“We’re going to stay away from him.”
Harland shook his head. “You have to understand-”
“No,” Max interrupted, making the hackles of Harland’s newly awakened wolf rise. “I know that in your day it was the norm to kidnap humans and to behave like a barbarian, but we have a treaty with them now. We are supposed to be civilized!”
“He’s supposed to be ours,” Harland said, speaking carefully and trying to get through the meltdown that Max seemed to be experiencing.
“The same force that lets you change into an alpha shift that weighs fifty more pounds than you do – the one that lets me feel you through our pack bond – that force has brought Warren into our lives. It’s not wrong. ”
Max looked sad, and Harland firmed his resolve. Their instincts weren’t wrong. They were supposed to claim Warren.
“I can't deal with you right now.” Max turned on his heel and marched for the door. Harland intercepted him, speeding ahead of him and blocking his way.
Max growled, ignoring the instincts of his wolf that had to be telling him to obey his alpha and elbowed past him.
Harland followed him down the hallway toward the front door.
“I’m sorry. I should have talked this through with you before going forward-”
Max rounded on him with a furious glare. “This isn’t about what you owe me! This is about Warren. We have no right to just commandeer his life – do you not get that? The second you knew what he was – what he could become – you should have explained it to me and let us back off.”
Harland frowned. Max was taking this much harder than he’d expected.
“We’re not going to abuse him.” Harland spoke carefully, trying to bridge the gap between his and Max’s understanding of what was happening. “Warren being an omega is nature’s way of saying that we’re compatible. We’re going to make him happy. You said it yourself, it’s like he was made for us.”
“But he wasn’t!” Max rubbed his forehead. “That’s just… pheromones, or whatever.”
“No, not whatever. That’s being a werewolf. When nature hands you an omega, you take it.”
Max made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat.
“He’s not an it. Jesus, you’re fucked up. Do you even hear yourself?”
Harland heard himself just fine, and he was getting sick of Max’s judgmental attitude. He’d felt slightly guilty about turning Warren into an omega, but that guilt was nothing compared to his certainty that things would work out for the best.
“What do you want me to say?” Harland crossed his arms. “I’ll admit that I should have explained what was going on, but I don’t regret anything I've done.”
Max gave him a long stare, his eyes narrow.
“What if this other alpha is more dominant than you, huh? What then? Will you still be happy?”
Harland scoffed. They didn’t make alphas more dominant than him. He’d ruled his pack with an iron fist, and it was only trickery that had allowed his step-brothers to get the better of him after he came back after being turned into a vampire.
“That’s not going to happen.”
“It might.”
“It won't.”
“You don’t know that. This might be nature’s way of putting you in your place.”
Harland bared his teeth and growled. Back when he’d been a pure werewolf, when his word was law, this kind of disrespect would have had him ripping Max to pieces.
“Watch it.”
“Or what?”
Harland moved forward, tapping into his vampire nature to move fast, and put Max in a headlock. He squeezed Max’s face into his chest, holding him tight and growling down into his ear.
“Enough.”
“Let me go!” Max clawed at Harland’s arm, kicking his legs and flailing. “I’m serious!”
With a snarl of frustration, Harland tried one more squeeze, but that only resulted in more furious struggle. He released his hold and zoomed back down to the basement, where he slammed the door shut and activated the lock that would prevent anyone – even Max – from entering.
Max was so frustrating. Harland knew that the younger man’s wolf had been all but going crazy in its desperation to submit – he could feel it across their new pack bond – and Max had just ignored it like it was nothing but a nuisance.
How could Max be overcome by the urge to hunt a squirrel one minute, and the next manage to ignore the bone-deep need to yield to his fucking alpha the next?
“Fuck!” Harland slammed his fist into the steel door, bruising his knuckles and leaving just the tiniest dent in the metal.
He shook out his hand, the pain fading within a few seconds.
“God damn it!” Stripping down, throwing his gloves to the floor and leaving his boots and suit strewn over the carpet, Harland sat down on the couch and wondered how he was going to fix this.
Had he made a mistake? Harland forced himself to consider the possibility.
He was old. He didn’t feel it – vampirism had a way of making the present feel immediate and the past feel like it existed behind a frosted wall of glass – but Harland was still a product of his time.
When he’d been growing up, werewolves lived in packs away from humans, raiding their crops and livestock and stealing young men and women when the mood struck them.
From a modern point of view, Harland’s early years had been more than barbaric. They’d been cruel. His pack had terrorized the human villages and settlements that surrounded the lands claimed by his pack, and they’d considered the lives of individual humans less than worthless.
Not that the humans had been better. Harland sneered, remembering how much he’d hated humans back then. Even the humans taken into the pack as mates had been viewed with suspicion and scorn.
Things had been so different. Werewolf pelts were a common sight in the homes of the rich, and the effort to kidnap werewolf children and ‘humanize’ them hadn’t come to a stop until the werewolf-human treaty went into effect.
It had been an ugly time, and the current state of affairs was so much better.
Leaning back and looking up at the ceiling, the scent of his and Warren’s release filling the air, Harland allowed the idea that he had miscalculated to take root.
He should have told Max what the stakes were – including him in the decision-making process, no matter how unnatural that felt – and figured out a way to get Warren that didn’t include deceiving him.
Pushing to his feet, Harland made his way to the bathroom and gave his front a quick wipe before putting on a new leather motorcycle racing suit. He grabbed his boots and gloves from the floor and tugged them on, and then grabbed his helmet and made his way back up the stairs.
When he ascended to the ground floor, he tilted his head and listened. There was no sign of Max’s heartbeat anywhere in the building. Putting on his balaclava and helmet, Harland made his way out into the sun and climbed on his bike to go find his mate and apologize.