Chapter Thirteen
Brodie
O n Saturday evening, I got a call from Rian out of the blue. My brain immediately went to Ben and Max, except that wasn’t why he was calling.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, pacing into the hallway from the kitchen where we’d been sitting to play cards again.
I could hear how unstable his breathing was, which put me on high alert.
“It’s not the boys,” he said quickly, the words stuttering out of him. “It’s me. I….” He dropped something and cursed under his breath, then I heard the sound of him unlocking his car with a key fob.
Impatiently, I waited for him to get into his fancy Volvo. It was weird how a vehicle that wasn’t super expensive could still portray how he was about money so well. Someone else might’ve picked a Lexus or a BMW, but not Rian.
He was breathing deeply, but choppily, clearly trying to center himself.
The fact that he didn’t start the engine right away told me a lot, too. He wasn’t in a condition to drive.
“I-I need you, Sir,” he managed to say in between gasping breaths.
I walked up the stairs and went to sit on the edge of the bed. “Rian, are you having a panic attack?” I asked in a deeper register.
“Uh-huh,” he wheezed.
“Listen to me. Close your eyes and concentrate on doing what I tell you. You can do that, right?”
He breathed out something that sounded vaguely like “yes, Sir.”
“That’s good, well done. Now slow down your breathing before you hyperventilate.”
I talked him through the worst of it like I’d done many times in the past, just not recently.
When I was certain he was going to be okay, I asked, “What brought this one on?”
“I don’t even know,” he said in an exhausted tone. “I was at an event and suddenly I couldn’t hear the people around me. I took that as a sign and got out of there.”
“I haven’t been away for long yet. Do you think this is because—”
“Oh, no.” The answer came too quickly, and we both knew it.
For him, BDSM was an outlet that centered him when life started to overwhelm him. Despite being sunshine with fangs personified, he had a darker side that came out in various ways, most often in periods of melancholy and numbness, or, like in this case, panic attacks.
“Try again, sweetness.”
He sighed. “Okay, fine. I could use a pain session right now, but I don’t have the energy and….”
And I was too far. He didn’t like playing with most people we knew in the kink community.
“Do you need me to give Moses a call?” He was a mutual friend of ours, an Alpha of a flourishing small pack, who kind of acted as my backup if Rian needed someone to get him through a session. The only potential issue was Moses’ submissive, Simone, who disliked him playing with other men even though she knew very well that Rian wasn’t into sexual play. That was still what she was jealous of, not the play itself, which didn’t make any sense to me, but to each their own.
Rian sighed. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll do that right now and try to set it up as soon as we can. I love you, sweetness.”
“I love you too, Sir.”
I ended the call and found Moses’ number. He answered quickly.
“Hey, I heard you’re out of town?”
I chuckled tiredly. “That I am. Permanently, too.”
“Oh shit, really?”
“Yeah, turns out I’m an Alpha now.”
Moses whistled. “Oh wow. I bet you didn’t see that one coming.”
“Not at all. It was a split-second decision and yeah, the rest is history. Oh, and I found my mate.” I grinned as I could practically hear his brain stalling.
After a few seconds, he said, “What?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Congrats, buddy! I’m happy for you!” I could tell that he really meant it, which made me smile. “Now, I know you wouldn’t just call me to tell me all this, sad as that is. So what’s up?”
“It really is sad. I’m not even going to try and lie about that. But it’s Rian. He had a panic attack and while he’s going to head here in a couple of months….”
Moses sighed. “I understand. I’ll help him as much as I can.”
“Is Simone going to—”
“Right now? Not my concern. She’s on my shit list with something she tried to pull last week, so it’s all okay. If she manages to unfuck the situation, then we’ll see, but I don’t see her having any say in who I help, especially in nonsexual play kind of way for the next couple of months.”
I had rarely heard him this angry, and I could imagine his eyes glowing Alpha red right then.
“You need to talk about it?” I asked gently.
He let out a messy, snarly breath. “No. Yes. But not right now. I’ll bend Rian’s ear. You take care of your own pack first.” He was quiet for a couple of seconds, then added, “I’m glad Rian is coming to you, though. I saw him the other day and he seems worn out. I wish I’d figured out what he needed right then, but better late than never.”
“Definitely. It’s not your job and I assume you were knee deep in whatever this thing with Simone is?”
“Yeah.” He chuckled tiredly, a feeling I could relate to after these calls. “Do you want to call Rian to let him know I’m available whenever he is or…?”
Since Moses worked from home, he’d go with Rian’s schedule.
“I’ll text him and tell him to call you immediately.”
“Okay, sounds good. Take care, buddy, and trust me to take care of Rian.”
I guess I’d needed to hear him say the words, but a weight fell off me. “Thank you.”
“What are friends for, eh?”
“Let me know if there’s anything I should know about with your sessions, and good luck with Simone.”
He snorted. “Thanks, I might need it.”
We said bye, and I messaged Rian. “Call Moses immediately. Then report back to me.”
There was a knock on the doorframe. Kye stood there, looking worried.
“Everything okay?”
I sighed. “Kind of. Come here.”
He walked to stand between my legs, and I hugged him close. He carded his fingers through my short hair and stroked my back.
It still felt miraculous that just breathing in his scent and having his hands on me settled me so much. So easily . I’d always had a bit of a temper, but more than that I’d always been a caretaker. Being here instead of taking care of the person who had meant the most to me for years was rough.
Yet my mate petting me calmed me down. Made my skin lose the feeling of tightness, and I shuddered as I relaxed.
“Rian had a panic attack at an event,” I whispered, unable to be louder in the moment. Kye’s fingers stopped for a split second, then he continued the soothing touches, so I added, “Normally, I would keep him from getting to that point by the scenes we do. I called a friend, though, he’s going to take care of Rian for me.”
Kye nodded slowly, obviously thinking for a while. “Is he going to be okay until the guys get out of rehab?”
What he meant was whether we needed to get Rian here sooner.
“I think we need to play it by the ear, but—” My phone dinged with a message.
“Session with M. at noon tomorrow. Thank you, Sir. I love you.”
I showed it to Kye and he exhaled. “That’s good.”
“I don’t know if I need to reiterate this, but it’s not romantic love he’s talking about there,” I said just in case.
Kye snorted softly. “No, I get that. He addressed you as Sir. You said your playtime is platonic only. I’m not worried.”
“Good.” I squeezed him closer, and we stayed there like that for a while, him petting me while I sat and held onto him.
“Guys? Are we going to play more?” Carys yelled from downstairs.
Kye chuckled and squeezed me back. “Let’s go play one more round, eh?”
“Let’s.”
T he next day was our “wedding day” as Carys had dubbed it. She knew we were both a bit nervous about everything and this was her way to diffuse that nervousness as best as she could.
“So this is what we’ll do,” she started that morning while we were having breakfast. “I’ll make a really meat-heavy lunch for you, and a bit less for us, and once we’re done with that, you two go do whatever it is you’re going to do with the bitey thing. I’ll prep more protein rich early dinner stuff, and then you tell me when you feel like you’ll turn soon, and we have dinner before that happens.”
“Oh, Holden will come run with me,” I said quickly, having gotten the message right before we sat down.
Kye smiled. “That’s awesome.”
Carys seemed happy, too. “Let him know he should come expecting dinner.”
I got out my phone and texted the good sheriff. “I’ll tell him to be here by six. The moon rises around seven-ish, if I’m right. That’ll give us time.”
Kye drank a bit of orange juice, then said, “So once you shift, you’re stuck until the morning?”
“Not quite. From the moment the moon starts to rise, it pulls the wolf out whether we’d want that or not. The moon reaches the highest point around one, so the most active our wolves will be is in the five hours around that time. We’ll hang with you guys for a while once he gets here, then go for a run or we’ll see what the wolves decide.”
“What do you mean?” Kye peered at me.
“Well, if they’re playful, a lot of it might be wrestling and tag in the backyard,” I said casually.
“Aww!” they said in unison.
Rolling my eyes, I picked up a piece of bacon. “There might be some posturing, too. The fact Holden has been around a couple of times doesn’t mean our wolves will agree completely at first. He’s not my beta.”
“Yet,” Kye said pointedly.
“Hopefully,” I agreed. “But we’ll go for a run later, and then likely be back to lounge around if we don’t feel like we can shift back. We’re both strong and healthy though, so shifting back should be easy. Sick, weaker wolves can be stuck until the morning. That’s where the belief that all wolves get stuck comes from. We’ll see what happens.”
Carys smirked. “So what you’re saying is that you’ll be frolicking around the backyard with your playdate while we—” Kye slapped his palm over her mouth.
“No. Absolutely not, brat,” he told her firmly. “We do not mock what we don’t have full understanding of.”
They were so fucking cute. “It’s okay. She’ll learn when I come in from a rainy run one day and shake all over her.”
The muffled, outraged objections from Carys made me laugh. I couldn’t remember when I’d laughed as much as I had since coming back here. Who would’ve thought?
I could feel the moon tugging at my wolf throughout the day. Kye and I did some of the renovation planning and even lugged out some trash to make room to work later on.
Then we sat in the kitchen, talking about what we were going to need for the house, starting from colors of paint and wallpapers, and of course, furniture. We’d also decided that since we wanted to pull the old carpet anyway, we’d see if we could salvage any of the wooden floors beneath. We wanted wooden floors and a lot of rugs instead of a carpet.
We made lists and had lunch, and I thought we were done with listing stuff for now, but Carys was eyeing the iPad as we came to the end of the lunch.
“Something on your mind?” I asked gently, when Kye got up to take the dishes to the sink.
“Uh,” she said, suddenly shy for some reason. “I just….”
I ducked my head to make eye contact with her. “Carys? This is your home, too. If there’s something specific you think we should have, then we put it for a vote, like everything else.”
She nodded and a quick, small smile flitted through her expression. “There’s this website that does all sorts of wallpapers. I was thinking we might want some of those?”
“Can you show me?”
She took the iPad and opened the browser. I made eye contact with Kye who was smiling at me from the sink. He made the heart sign with his fingers, then turned to rinse the dishes.
I never had a chance, did I? Even if he wasn’t my mate, I would be falling for this man. Falling for the siblings in different ways.
After growing up in this house, in Rusty’s pack, there hadn’t been many good influences especially after Mom died and Bella ran away. Some of the women had tried to parent me, but it had been more for show than anything real.
There’d been drugs, then more drugs, and finally I’d ran away with the knot of guilt forming in my chest for leaving Ben and Max behind.
Carys’s enthusiastic tone broke my musings. “Okay, here. I was thinking we could use this for the big wall in the family room.”
She turned the iPad my way, and I immediately smiled. The wallpaper had an illustration of woods that were darker and deeper in some parts, but here and there, there were animals. A deer, some rabbits, a wolf, a fox. The best thing was it didn’t look like a kids’ room wallpaper at all.
“That’s gorgeous,” I said honestly. “Kye, come see this.”
He wiped his hands and came to stand next to me.
“Oh wow. That is really nice. That’s a good pick, Carys!” He squeezed her shoulder. “Did you have others in mind?”
She blushed and with a speed that told us she’d definitely been browsing this store a lot found us another one. It was a sort of tropical plants and birds kind of thing.
“I was thinking, maybe for my room and the sunroom, whenever we fix that?”
“That’s a neat idea,” I murmured and raised a brow at Kye. “Didn’t you say you wanted plant stuff in the sunroom?”
He nodded and smiled. “Yeah, and that as a backdrop would be great.”
“Once we have the measurements of what we need, we can order those. Can you figure out anything else, like if you want something in the other rooms and even the main bedroom?”
“Oh, I think that should be decided by you two—”
“Nonsense,” Kye’s tone was easygoing. “You clearly have an eye on this stuff, so you figure it out. I can’t decorate and I’m pretty sure that Alpha here can’t either.”
Carys looked so damn pleased, and contentment rushed through me. The wolf, concentrated on the moon as it was right then, felt content, too.
K ye grabbed some first aid supplies while I carried a blanket, and we went outside.
“Are you sure this is where you want to be for this?” I asked him, the rising moon calling to my wolf as we made our way on the path to the riverside.
“You said it was your favorite place on the property. Of course I want you to bite me there,” he replied as if it was a given.
I wasn’t sure what I’d done in a past life to deserve him, but I wasn’t going to complain.
It didn’t take long to get there. His hand was in mine, which felt good for various reasons, including the fact that I could make sure he stayed upright on the uneven path.
The river ran through part of the property and there was a wide, shallow spot that we used to play in during the summers. The whole river itself wasn’t impressive at all, but in this spot with the sand someone had dumped there, it made a nice place for cooling off and having fun.
When we got there, Kye glanced around curiously.
“I love that boulder,” he said, nodding toward the large rock that sat on our side of the river.
“It was a great sunning spot.” I tried to see the place through his eyes.
“Was?”
“Yeah. We need to do some maintenance here come springtime. I think the riverbeds need some pruning.” I gestured at the veritable thicket that had grown here with disuse over the years.
“When was the last time you were here?” he asked and walked to the boulder.
He handed the first aid kit to me and climbed up to get to the smooth, almost tabletop-like surface.
I took a couple of steps and leapt to him.
“Show off.”
I grinned, spread the blanket, and we sat down on top. “The patrol goes a little ways that way. I jump across the river there and go around, then jump across in another spot upstream.”
“Like I said, show off.” He grinned, then looked a bit nervous. Before I had time to speak, he held up his hand. “I’m sure. I want this. I want you. Us. The pack.”
The determination and inner strength shining in his gaze floored me once again.
He shrugged off the jacket he was wearing and pushed the sleeve of his henley up to his elbow.
“Wait, does it matter which wrist?”
I shook my head. “You can pick whichever you want.”
“Then my left one. I’m left-handed. I want the scar somewhere I see it often.”
Floored.
I opened the first aid kit and began to prepare bandages to slap over the bite. “It will hurt. You’ll bleed. But it should heal pretty quickly, too, and leave a silvery scar.”
He smiled, breathtakingly beautiful in the moment. “Mother Moon’s Kiss.”
I chuckled. “Yes. That’s what the old tales call it.” I deemed the bandage ready and put it on my thigh.
“I want to kiss you first,” Kye said seriously.
Happy to oblige, I leaned in and met him in a sensual kiss that made me shudder.
He pulled away before I was ready, looking kiss drunk and smiling goofily. “Okay. I’m as ready as I’ll get.”
I didn’t insult him by asking him if he was certain he wanted to do this now. He would tell me if he wasn’t. He held his slender arm to me. He had long fingers that I could picture smudged with soil in the spring, as soon as he could start potting things again. He’d told me that was something he was excited about.
I kissed the inside of his wrist, feeling his pulse against my lips.
Holding his arm close to my face, I locked eyes with him. “I swear to you, by the Moon that guides all wolves, that I will do my best to be the mate you deserve until the end of our days.”
His eyes filled with tears, and he nodded rapidly, but stayed quiet.
I let my wolf through enough to give me sharper teeth, then turned his hand so I could bite the side of his wrist. I smiled at Kye, my mate, then kissed that spot and finally bit down.
His startled gasp and a whimper of pain hurt my soul. The last thing I wanted to give him was pain he didn’t ask for, but he’d accepted this so we could be joined together this way.
I felt his arm try to jerk back from my grasp, from the pain, and I tasted his blood as it filled my mouth. My wolf howled inside me, the connection between us becoming firmer, almost like a spiritual touch between us as it flared, held, and settled. Holding his arm, I let go with one hand and grabbed the bandage, then quickly replaced my mouth with it.
I panted for breath, putting pressure on the wound, and felt his gaze on me.
“What?”
He looked—turned on?
“My blood on your lips. I didn’t know it would be hot?”
I laughed, then leaned closer so he could kiss me. I could admit there was something erotic in kissing him with his blood mingling between us.
After I finished wrapping his wrist, he pulled his sleeves down and put the jacket back on, then shivered. The evening was going to be cold. I wished the fireplaces were in working order already, but at least the central heating worked most of the time, even if not in all the rooms.
I jumped down and held my arm for him so he could grab it as he clambered down to me with the first aid kit. I pulled the blanket and folded it under my arm.
“I can’t wait to come here in the summer,” he said thoughtfully as he gave my favorite spot one last glance before we started to walk home.
I took his right hand and kissed the back of it. He looked at me questioningly, but I suppose he read the gratitude and awe in my gaze, because he ducked his head and blushed.
“Come on, we have your next beta to woo,” he said, and so we went to wait for Holden to get there.