12. Val
Val
It had been wrong of me to blow Harley like that. To take him like a cheap trick in the alley, yes, but even more so to do it without telling Harley who I am.
The knowledge lands late, which makes it worse.
It should have been there from the beginning, louder than lust, louder than instinct, louder than the way he looks at me like he wants to climb inside my skin and hide there.
It should have stopped me when he first pressed against me outside the club, or when his hands curled in my shirt, or when I realized his desire was tangled up with fear and loneliness and whatever Joshua Dobson had done to him.
Instead, I let myself have him.
Not all the way, no, but enough. More than enough to make guilt crawl hot and ugly beneath my skin now that the haze is cracking apart.
One minute I was talking to Harley, trying to figure out how to keep both of us steady, and then we were kissing.
That kiss blew every bit of restraint I had straight to hell.
After that, everything moved too fast. His mouth, his scent, the shaking need in him, the shocking strength of my wolf stirring for him when nothing else has reached that sleeping part of me for weeks.
Then I had him in the alley, pressed close in the dark, and the next thing I knew, I was on my knees giving him what he begged me for, sucking the sweetest damn cock I’ve ever tasted.
By the time I’d drunk him down and kind of gotten some sense back, I had it again—that sensation of being watched.
It’d snapped me right out of my lust-stupid haze and I knew I’d really fucked up.
It wasn’t just the act that was wrong. Harley had wanted that.
I’m not going to lie to myself and pretend otherwise.
He asked, begged, shook apart in my hands because his body finally let him feel something other than terror.
I could sense that much, even with my instincts dulled and broken.
But I did it without telling him who I am.
Without telling him what I am. Without telling him Marcus sent me to watch him.
That is where I crossed the line.
Maybe I crossed it the second I followed him into Scoundrels.
Maybe earlier, when I looked through the peephole and wanted him before I knew the first thing about his face beyond pain.
I don’t know anymore.
All I know is that it bothers me badly, and not only because I’ve broken Marcus’ orders.
That should be the worst part. Marcus is my Alpha Anax.
My loyalty to him has always been the foundation under my feet.
Serve Marcus. Protect the pack. Obey the chain of command.
Those things were simple, clean, and solid once.
Nothing feels simple now.
Because the thought that really guts me isn’t Marcus will be disappointed. It’s Harley will hate me when he knows.
That should not matter more.
But fuck me, it does.
The realization leaves me feeling cold despite the heat still lingering in my body. What does that say about my loyalty? What does it say about me, that I can disobey so easily when Harley looks at me with those wounded green eyes and asks for something I have no business giving him?
I force myself to focus on the street instead of the mess I’ve made.
The sensation of being watched hasn’t gone away. Whoever is out there, they’re good enough to stay out of easy sight, and with my left eye useless and my wolf-senses dulled to barely better than human, I’m at a dangerous disadvantage.
“Can you call us a cab?” I ask Harley.
His breath is still uneven. He’s close beside me, too close for my concentration and not close enough for every selfish part of me that wants to pull him back into my arms. “Sure.”
He pulls his phone from his pocket, and I keep checking the alley, the sidewalk, the street, every patch of darkness that looks deeper than it should.
If I had my wolf’s sight, I could see into the unlit alley across from us.
I could scent the watcher properly, identify pack, age, health, intent.
Instead I have this weak, frustrating human version of awareness and the steady knowledge that I am not what I used to be.
Making do with slightly above human shit sucks stinky nads.
I guide us closer to the club entrance while Harley taps at his phone.
I don’t touch him more than I need to, though my hand keeps wanting to settle at his back again.
Right by the door is better. People are coming and going almost constantly now, laughing, smoking, stumbling around with drinks they shouldn’t have outside.
Foot traffic might discourage whoever is watching us.
Might not. But I’ll take any advantage I can get.
Maybe the watcher doesn’t mean to harm Harley but I can’t take that chance.
Protecting Harley is my assignment, yes, but already it feels like more than an order.
It has lodged somewhere deeper in me, in the same place my wolf stirred when Harley touched my scar.
I don’t understand it, and I don’t trust myself enough tonight to examine it closely.
I just know I won’t let anyone take him.
“Should be here in about five minutes,” Harley says, slipping his phone away. “There’s a cab doing a drop-off a few streets over.”
“Good.”
He sidles closer, tilts those pretty eyes up at me, and the words on my tongue die.
“You’re gonna let me come to your place, right?” he asks.
My pulse kicks. His voice is quieter than before, the sultry teasing stripped down to something far more fragile. “I really don’t like being alone at night, and lately that’s led to me doing some, uhm, stupid things.”
He glances away and my stomach lurches at his quiet confession.
Every instinct in me wants to ask what stupid things, even though I already know enough to guess. Clubs. Alcohol. Men who don’t care if he’s shaking as long as he gives them what they want. Harley handing pieces of himself to strangers because being alone with his memories is worse.
“Yeah,” I grind out.
The word comes too rough, but I can’t soften it. I’m torn between asking and demanding, between wanting the truth and knowing I have no right to it.
Harley decides for both of us.
“Some bad shit happened to me a while back,” he says, still not looking at me.
My hands curl at my sides.
“I’m fucked up, but I’m working on that.
It’s only tonight I’ve realized being fucked up doesn’t mean I’m totally ruined, ya know.
” He gives a small, humorless laugh that makes something in my chest ache.
“I’m not just good for blowing strangers and getting wasted so I don’t have to remember exactly what I did, and with who. ”
Then he turns back to me. The sadness in his expression strangulates the anger rising in me.
It’s not anger at him. Never at him. It’s anger at every man who took advantage of that loneliness.
Anger at Joshua Dobson for putting this look in Harley’s eyes.
Anger at myself because I am standing here with his taste still on my tongue, knowing I haven’t been honest either.
“I have to tell you,” Harley says, and his voice breaks around the edges. “Swallowing was a big, big mistake. I can’t swear I’m c-clean.”
He whispers the last word like it cuts him open. Then his eyes go huge, and he slaps a hand over his mouth. “I didn’t even think before—”
He looks like he might run, cry, or puke. Maybe all three.
“Harley.” I keep my voice low, steady, even though my heart is slamming hard enough to hurt. “It’s not your fault.”
He shakes his head, hand still over his mouth. “I knew what I was doing,” I continue carefully. “The chance I was taking.”
A lie, technically, because there is no chance.
Shifters don’t catch human diseases. Not like that.
We can develop diseases of our own, cancers and rare genetic disorders and things Shania is still learning to document, but airborne, blood-borne, bodily fluid transmission—none of that touches us the way it touches humans.
But I can’t tell Harley that here. Not with him already looking like shame might knock him to the pavement.
“Even if you have something,” I say, hating the way he flinches, “the chance of me getting it was one I chose to take. But we’ll use condoms if you want to do anything else. I don’t have any at my place, though. I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone.”
That much, at least, is true in the way that matters. I expected to watch him. Protect him. Keep my distance.
Instead, I’ve already ruined everything.
“We are going to talk first,” I add, because I can’t keep deceiving him.
Harley’s expression shifts immediately, fear trying to hide behind heat. “I’d really rather not talk, if you know what I mean.” His lashes flutter in a deliberate move that is almost convincing. “Unless it’s you or me moaning yes, harder, things like that.”
My cock reacts because apparently it has no moral center whatsoever.
I shake my head. “I can’t—”
Then movement catches my eye. Across the street, in the dark mouth of the alley opposite us, something shifts where nothing should be shifting. There’s a solid darkness inside the shadows.
My blood turns cold.
The shape moves again.
It’s too smooth and deliberate to be human. A large form separates itself slowly from the darkness at the back of the alley across the street. For one suspended second, yellow eyes flash in the blackness, bright and unmistakable.
Wolf eyes.
“Get behind me,” I say immediately.
My hand closes around Harley’s arm before I even realize I’m moving. I tug him backward, positioning myself between him and the alley.
“Why?” he demands. “What’s wrong? Did you see someone?”
“Maybe.”
I keep my voice low because panic is contagious, and Harley’s already too close to the edge. My attention stays locked on the alley while the shape shifts again, larger now, moving just enough to prove I’m not imagining things.
“I think there’s someone over there.”