Thane
"WHAT THE EVERLOVING FFFFF—"
My body moves before my brain catches up. I jackknife upright, sheets tangling around my legs, one hand already flying for the nightstand where I keep absolutely nothing useful because I'm a hockey goalie, not a fucking soldier like Whiskey who probably keeps hand grenades in his drawer.
Whiskey who's thundering up the hallway.
Wraith slams his full weight against my door just as the doorknob jerks from the outside. The wood groans against Wraith's mass.
"THANE?" Whiskey's already at full volume, his bellowing drowning out Wraith's huffing growls. His eye peeks through for a split second as the door cracks open, but then Wraith slams it shut again. "THANE, WHAT THE FUCK—Wraith, are you holding the goddamn door shut?"
Ivy cups her hands around her mouth and yells at the door.
"EVERYTHING'S FINE! GO BACK TO PACK BONDING!"
Silence.
Then Valek's barking laugh, and Plague's muffled, barely awake groaning. "Oh my gods..."
"We're all getting freaky tonight, huh?" Whiskey asks, his voice moving further down the hall. "Hey, I'm not gonna judge. Ivy likes masked dudes. Thane's weird-ass migraine mask totally counts."
Wraith steps back from the door and turns, his eyes bright with obvious unbridled amusement. He signs one word.
Sorry.
He is not sorry.
He is not even a little bit sorry.
Ivy is laughing so hard no sound is coming out.
"You—" I point back and forth between them. My heart is hammering so hard my head feels like it's going to explode. "What the fuck is wrong with you two?"
Oh. Right.
She's feral too.
They're both fucking insane.
Ivy finally surfaces, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she gasps, "The mask, Thane. The blue mask. You looked like some kind of spa ghost."
"I looked like a fucking ghost?!"
She collapses sideways onto my mattress, wheezing.
Wraith rushes to her side, making growling sounds, his blue eyes worried above the scarf Plague gave him. He ends up in the bed somehow, crushing my fucking legs as he tries to help her up like she's actually suffering and not just having a laugh attack.
It makes her laugh harder.
"Oh, for fuck's sake," I groan, yanking my legs out from beneath my giant fucking brother who somehow has close to a hundred pounds on me even though he's solid muscle.
My leg bones crunch on their way out from under him.
I fling my migraine mask onto the nightstand and drag both hands down my face. My pulse is still jackhammering. "You snuck in here to scare the shit out of me because why?"
"We came to get you!" Ivy protests from where she's curled up in Wraith's arms as he grabs at her and feels for her pulse like he's going to have to resuscitate her.
"For what?"
"Cuddling?" She wipes at her eyes. "Okay, so the scaring was a bonus."
Wraith, seeming satisfied Ivy is perfectly fine, signs insistently at me. She was supposed to wake you up gently.
"And that—" I gesture at the omega wheezing on my bed. "—was gentle?"
I told her to touch your shoulder like a normal person.
"Except none of us are normal," Ivy says, grinning at me with her whole damn face.
The blue-green of her eyes catches the red glow of the clock, and her smile is so wide and so bright that it knocks the irritation clean out of me.
"Including you, Thane, even though you're probably the most normal in the pack. "
Shit.
I can't even be mad.
"Plague is the most normal," I grumble, offended for some reason. "Not me."
"Oh, no. Plague's the freakiest."
My shoulders drop and I slump back against the headboard, pressing the heel of my hand against my eye socket where the migraine is still pulsing. "You two are going to kill me. Not the league or Coach. You two."
Ivy pushes herself up to a sitting position. The laughter fades from her softening expression. "Your head's still bad?"
"It's fine."
"That's not what I asked."
She sounds exactly like she did this morning when she told me to eat. The same stubborn tilt of her chin, clearly unwilling to accept bullshit from anybody.
Including me, the pack leader.
Especially me, maybe.
"Yeah," I admit, sighing. "It's still bad."
Even worse after you scared the fucking shit out of me, I think, but I don't say it.
She crawls up the bed toward me. "Scoot."
I move aside, making room for her.
Wraith follows her.
I didn't make enough room for him, but he's already displacing me just by virtue of existing on the same mattress, his giant body taking up so much space I end up dangerously close to tumbling off the side.
I fling myself in a random direction and end up sandwiched between them somehow, head pounding freshly, Ivy already climbing over my torso like a cat, purrs and all.
For the first time, I notice Wraith's face.
The scarf's just draped loosely around his neck. Not pulled up enough to cover his lower face the way it always has been, checked and rechecked obsessively until no sliver of damaged skin is visible except for the scar cutting through his eye.
My eyes lock on the permanently exposed teeth, bright in the red light from my clock, and the scar tissue iridescent in the darkness.
He's not hiding.
I stare at him for too long. I know I do because his blue eyes flick to mine with that wariness I know means don't say anything, please don't make this a thing.
So I don't.
I look away and let Ivy settle against my chest, her small body warm and solid, her purring vibrating through my ribs. Wraith shifts behind her, his massive arm draping over both of us.
This is… strangely familiar.
We used to share a bed sometimes when we were kids.
After the worst nights, when the nightmares got bad enough that neither of us could sleep alone, I'd find him in my room or he'd find me in his.
We'd pile blankets between and around us and pretend we weren't seeking comfort from each other's presence.
Ivy snuggles closer. When her fingers find my temples, the touch is light and exploratory at first.
"Here?" she murmurs.
"Little higher."
She adjusts, her thumbs pressing into the spots just above my eyebrows where the migraine has set up permanent residence. The pressure is perfect. Firm enough to actually do something, gentle enough not to make me want to vomit.
I groan.
It's an embarrassing sound closer to what Whiskey makes when he finds leftover pizza in the fridge Plague didn't throw out in time than anything a pack leader should produce. But Ivy's fingers are magic and my dignity is suddenly not important anymore.
"You carry so much tension here," she says quietly. Her thumbs rub slow circles into the muscle, working the knots of tightness
along my brow ridge. "Do you always get headaches this bad?"
"Only when my pack loses their collective minds."
Wraith huffs a silent laugh behind her.
"Fair," Ivy admits. "We've been a lot lately."
A lot is an understatement.
Ivy's fingers slide from my temples to the bridge of my nose, pressing gently on either side. My eyes flutter shut automatically.
The migraine doesn't disappear. It's still there, pulsing dully behind my left eye. But the edges soften and the ice pick sensation fades to a manageable level.
Wraith's purr has joined Ivy's now, a deeper rumble that I feel through the mattress more than hear.
The two of them are vibrating against me like a pair of idling engines, and somewhere in the cocoon of warmth and pressure and Ivy's clever fingers working the tension out of my skull, my body starts to genuinely consider the possibility of sleep.
Then Ivy's fingers slow.
Drift.
One thumb traces along my hairline, then down the side of my face, following the line of my jaw. Slower than a massage.
I crack one eye open.
She's looking at me with a different expression now. The laughter's gone soft and warm and turned into something else, her blue-green eyes half-lidded, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
"You know," she murmurs, her voice dropping into a husky register that has my alpha instincts overpowering what's left of the migraine, "everyone else is busy tonight."
"Mm."
Her fingers slide down my throat. "And you're already in bed."
"I am."
"And I'm already in your bed."
“Ivy…”
"What?" Her hand splays flat over my sternum, over my hammering heart, and she shifts her weight so she's draped more fully across me. Her hip presses against mine. Her hair spills across my collarbone. "I'm just saying. It would be very convenient."
There's a beautiful omega sprawled across my chest, scent-matched and warm and looking at me like she'd let me do absolutely anything I wanted, and every instinct I have is screaming at me to flip her onto her back and—
And my head throbs once, hard, behind my left eye.
And my body, the traitor, just sinks deeper into the mattress.
"I would fucking love to," I say, and I hear how slow my own voice has gone. Thick and half-asleep already. "I really would."
Her mouth curves. "But?"
"But if I tried anything right now, I'd fall asleep halfway through and you'd never let me live it down."
She laughs. "That's fair."
"It's deeply unfair, actually." I cover my eyes with my forearm. "I'm running on fumes and one ibuprofen."
"You should've taken more than one." She pokes my ribs. "That's why you were lying here at midnight in a blue gel ghost mask, suffering in silence like a martyr."
Behind her, Wraith makes a sound that's unmistakably a laugh.
"You're supposed to be on my side," I tell him.
He signs something over Ivy's shoulder. Never.
Great.
I drag my arm off my face and look at her again. She's still draped across me, still warm, still smiling.
I want this. Not just the sex she's offering, though my dick is never going to forgive me for turning that down.
I want this. Her weight against me. Her fingers in my hair. The fact that she came up here, dragged my brother along, and snuck into my room in the dark because she didn't want me to be alone.
Nobody does that for me. I'm the one who does that for everyone else.
"Hey." The word comes out before I've fully decided to say it. "Tomorrow night."
Ivy tilts her head. "What about it?"
"Let me take you out."
She goes still. "Out?"
"Out." My pulse picks up, which is ridiculous. I'm a grown man, I've done press conferences in front of millions of people, this should not be the thing that makes my heart stutter. "Just us. Not the pack as group thing. You and me."
"Like a date."
“Like a date,” I repeat, grinning.
She blinks at me, and for one horrible second I think I've misread the entire situation, that she's going to laugh or let me down easy or remind me that things are too complicated right now with PR breathing down our necks and Wade in the hospital and the league deciding whether half my pack gets to keep playing—
"Yes."
I blink. "Yes?"
"Yes." Her whole face lights up, that bright wide grin coming back full force, and she pushes up on her hands to look down at me properly. "Where are we going? What do I wear? Is it fancy? Should I be worried it's fancy?"
"It's not fancy," I say, and I'm smiling now too, I feel it, stupid and helpless. "I'll figure it out. Somewhere we won't get recognized."
"Good luck with that."
"I have connections."
"You have a commissioner for a father."
"Which means I have connections," I say. "Trust me. Just say yes and let me handle the rest."
"I already said yes." She drops back down against my chest, still vibrating with that purr. "I get a Thane night. A whole Thane night. The others are going to be so jealous."
Wraith makes a low rumble of agreement.
Ivy giggles into my collarbone, and the sound of it softens up the knot of tangled up nerves in my chest a little more.
I let my hand come up and rest on her back. She's small enough that my palm covers most of her shoulder blade. I feel her purr start up again, low and content, and Wraith shifts closer behind her, his enormous arm draping back over both of us so that I'm half-pinned beneath the weight of it.
"You're crushing me," I tell him.
He doesn't move.
"Wraith."
He signs lazily with his free hand. Sleep.
"That's not…" I sigh. "Fine. Whatever. Crush me. See if I care."
I don't care. That's the problem. My giant feral brother is here and our scent-matched omega is purring into my throat and my migraine has faded to a dull background hum.
And yet, despite every disaster waiting for me on the other side of sunrise, despite the statements and the league review and the cameras and the slow-motion catastrophe my life has become…
I feel okay.
For the first time, I actually feel okay.