Chapter 13 Harland
HARLAND
Harland woke from his daytime slumber to the sensation of Max on top of him, his mate sleeping soundly and clutching Harland like a giant teddy bear.
Gently rolling him off and onto the mattress, telling himself for the millionth time that he needed to get a bigger bed for his lair, Harland quietly left the little room and went to get changed.
He packed away his daytime leathers, changing into a much softer pair of leather pants, ankle boots, and a burgundy cashmere turtleneck that clung to his muscular torso like a comfortable embrace, and climbed the long stairs up to the ground floor.
A bell chimed throughout the house, announcing that the sun had fully set.
Heading to his office, Harland sat down at his desk to look over his correspondence and tend to his investments. As he worked, he couldn’t help but hope that Max’s presence in his bed meant that he’d been forgiven.
About half an hour after he’d sat down, Max trudged into the office with a sleepy look on his face.
“Evening,” Max said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Did you have a nice nap?” Harland asked, putting down his papers.
Max rolled his eyes. “Yeah, until my pillow got up and moved. That was rude.”
The corner of Harland’s lip twitched in the barest hint of a smile.
“Sorry about that.”
Max walked over to him and rolled him back from the desk. He squeezed into the space between Harland’s legs and sank to his knees, placing his face right down on Harland's crotch and rubbing his nose over his bulge.
Harland loved it when Max got like this, all clingy and wanting physical contact.
After a moment, Max spoke. “I went on a run with Warren’s other alpha.”
Harland stroked his fingers through Max’s hair. “Yeah?”
Max glanced up at him, his expression searching. “He says that you’re old fashioned and superstitious for thinking that we’re turning Warren into an omega.”
That sounded like a modern alpha, disconnected from his wolf and ignoring the magic of his own existence.
“I am old fashioned, that’s true,” he said. “Was he nice?”
“I don’t know.” Max pushed his face back down into Harland’s lap. “I think so? I kind of lost control and attacked him, and he was pretty nice about it after.”
“Did you put up a good fight?”
Harland wasn’t surprised that Max had challenged the alpha they were meant to share Warren with. Of course, he needed to know where he stood in the hierarchy. How difficult of an opponent Max had found him would tell Harland a lot about what kind of alpha the newcomer was.
Max laughed into his lap. “Not even a little bit. He curb-stomped me like it was nothing. He practically tore my throat out and I didn’t even get in a hit.”
That sounded like an alpha more on Harland’s side of the dominance scale.
“He’s a pack alpha, so it’s no surprise.” Before Harland could react to that piece of unwelcome news, Max dropped the equivalent of a nuclear bomb. “The Alaska pack. He’s pretty intense.”
Harland knew that pack. That was his pack. The pack that betrayed him when he was at his lowest and drove him out into the cold.
That the fates would be cruel enough to tie him back to them after all these years, Harland couldn’t understand.
He’d kept track of them over the years – keeping tabs on their increasingly unhinged alphas and their never-ending quest for territory – and he’d watched with a mix of pride and resentment as they rose up to become the most powerful and feared pack on the continent.
It seemed that each generation the pack expanded, and this newest alpha didn’t seem to be an exception.
Harland had half prepared himself to one day have to fight them off of his territory.
“That complicates things.”
Harland kept his feelings in check, though Max must have sensed his unease. His mate rose up, leaning his head against his chest.
“Do you know him, or something?” Max asked, stroking Harland’s waist.
Harland leaned down and kissed his hair. “Or something.”
“How?”
Harland hesitated, but then the story spilled out. He told Max how he and his pack had driven a vampire coven out of their territory, and how one of the surviving vampires – Harland’s maker – had kidnapped Harland and turned him in revenge.
“I broke the compulsion a newly turned vampire has to obey their maker.” Harland didn’t like thinking about that time of his life.
Now that he’d lived the larger part of his life as a vampire, he almost felt sorry.
After all, his pack had been the aggressors.
He sighed. “It wasn’t difficult. She wasn’t a particularly strong vampire, and she’d never sired a new vampire.
After I killed her, I went back to my pack.
They let me into the compound and seemed to welcome me back, but when daylight came, they opened the windows and tried to kill me.
I escaped. After I’d healed, I went back and got my revenge.
The survivors fled, and that was the last time I saw them. ”
Max looked up at him with wide eyes.
“Wow,” he said, licking his lips. “That’s intense. Were you badly injured?”
Harland shrugged. He knew now that he’d been lucky. It had been an overcast day, and he’d been wearing long sleeves, pants, and boots when he slept.
“My hands and face, mostly.” He stroked Max’s hair, staring down at his pristine hands. They’d been charred black. It was the first and last time he’d been burned by the sun. “That’s why I don’t sleep uncovered.”
“I figured,” Max said.
“I shouldn’t have gone back to them.”
Harland had never admitted that to himself before.
“Why not?”
Harland pulled Max up onto his lap so that they were face to face. He stared into his mate’s eyes, feeling grateful that he’d let this clueless werewolf into his life.
Max leaned in and put his head on Harland’s shoulder, hugging him.
“My wolf was dead – or at least it felt like it.” Harland nuzzled his face into Max’s hair.
It was easier to talk like this, when he didn’t have to look at him.
“It was like a void where my wolf should be. All I felt was hunger. I looked at my pack, my friends and family who had depended on me since I turned twenty and took over the pack, and my instincts told me that they were food.”
“So?” Max leaned back, indignant on Harland’s behalf. “Being your food isn’t so bad. They should have adapted – like you tried to do.”
Harland huffed, amused at Max’s cluelessness. Max had only ever known this version of him – the vampire with two centuries under his belt to learn control. Newly turned, he had been a different creature entirely.
It had taken him over a decade to learn how to feed reliably without killing.
“I wouldn’t have, if it had been one of them. I would have killed them before they even made it through the door.”
Max wrinkled his nose, and Harland could see him turning the statement over in his mind and trying to find a way to spin it so that Harland didn’t look like a monster.
“I was kind of a dick,” Harland admitted, just to see Max’s face scrunch up in outrage.
Harland lifted his brow, daring Max to contradict him. The truth was, Harland was still kind of a dick. He was selfish, egotistical, and possessive, and he rarely tolerated things that deviated from how he wanted them to be.
Max hadn’t had an easy time of it becoming his mate.
“Okay, sure. You can be an asshole, but it’s not like you’re evil and need to be put down.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” Harland said.
Max rolled his eyes. “Anyway, Marcus – that’s his name – thinks that you’re wrong about Warren being an omega. He says it’s super rare and unlikely and that it’s not something to worry about.”
Harland wasn’t surprised. With the advent of science, so much of being a werewolf was being brushed aside as superstition.
Harland could understand the phenomenon for humans, but werewolves were magic.
It was the height of folly to believe that the only supernatural part of their existence were their transformations and pack bonds.
“I don’t mind being old-fashioned,” Harland said. “I talked to Warren yesterday, after you stormed out, and told him about the risk of becoming an omega.”
Max froze, his eyes wide and his expression nervous as he asked, “And what did he say?”
“He needed some time to think. I didn’t push.”
Max sighed. “That’s fair, I guess.”
“So, am I forgiven?”
Max punched his arm. “I’m not the one who has to forgive you. That’s Warren’s job. I’m not angry with you, though, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No?” Harland moved his hands to Max’s hips, rubbing small circles under the hem of his shirt. “So, I don’t need to give you an apology blowjob?”
Max’s breath hitched, his hands fisting in Harland’s shirt. He licked his lips.
“I think you should probably go ahead with that, just to make sure we really clear the air.”
Harland chuckled, and with a burst of speed, rose up and flipped their positions so that Max was sitting in the chair and Harland was on his knees between his legs.
“Jesus,” Max cried, disoriented from the quick movement. “Warn a guy, would you?”
Harland responded by opening the fly of Max’s jeans and freeing his cock, making it bounce before it came to rest on his stomach. He grabbed the shaft by the base, squeezing down just shy of too hard, and leaning down to give the tip a lick.
“Fuck,” Max grunted, clutching the armrests of the office chair and spreading his legs as wide as they would go.
Harland swirled his tongue around the crown of Max’s cockhead, working his way down the shaft and pressing his face into the crook where Max’s cock met his thigh.
Savoring the scent of his mate’s musk, Harland licked his way down to Max’s balls, sucking them into his mouth one by one before licking his way back up to the tip of Max’s cock.
When he took Max into his mouth, his mate reached down and put his hand on the back of Harland’s head.
Harland allowed it, right up until the point Max twitched and tried pushing him down.