Chapter Twenty-Seven
Patch
Em doesn’t respond to my text all day. It takes me hours to work up the courage, but I text Jamie, too, because my wolf is insisting I need to check he’s okay.
I need to do that, anyway. I’m not a complete idiot. I know he left last night because of me. Because I made it clear that I didn’t want him, even though that’s never been true.
Flynn skulks around the flat all morning. He has to work tonight, and I’m hoping Em will reply that he’s free tomorrow, that I can spend time with him before my shift at the pub, but as the hours pass, I’m less and less hopeful.
Eventually, Flynn drops down on the sofa and stares at the side of my head. I keep looking at the TV, some murder mystery playing that I’m really not paying enough attention to. “What is it?” I ask.
“Did you talk to him yet?”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Patch—”
“We went on our second date.”
“And?”
“And…” I turn my head. “How many of those women you’ve moved in with have known what you are?”
“Like, all of them,” Flynn says. He sounds confused. “I mean, they mostly weren’t human. And when they were human, they were kind of adjacent to all this, so…”
“It’s different.”
“Patch.”
“It is.” The words spill out of me before I can stop myself. “I slept with him and Jamie last night.”
“Him and—” Flynn blanks out. I literally see the moment his brain shuts down. He closes his mouth and opens it again. No words come out.
“Fucking hell,” I mutter, swinging my attention back to the TV. It’s not the first threesome I’ve had, but it’s the first one that’s mattered that way. They’re always a little fun and a little awkward, but that was—
More than I could ever have dreamt of, really. It felt right. And I’m trying not to think about why that is because that means dealing with something bigger and scarier, and I really don’t have the capacity to handle that right now.
Not when Em isn’t texting me back.
Not when Jamie isn’t texting me back.
“What did you do that for, then?” Flynn asks.
I gape at him. “What did I…?”
“I thought Em was your mate?”
“He is!”
“So what, you’re just toying with Jamie? Leading him on?”
The undercurrent of anger in his voice surprises me.
“No, I—We weren’t—Fuck, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Patch.”
“What?”
Flynn frowns. “Are you all right?”
I sigh and sag back into the cushions. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Do you think you might have—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Surely it’s a good thing?”
“I don’t really know how to deal with it. What it means.”
“What do you think it means?”
I look at him for a long moment. “What would you do if your mate were a man? Fuck, what would I do if mine were a woman? It’s like that.”
“Is it?”
“Feels that way. I think.”
“Huh.”
We’re both quiet for a while. The TV drones on. I’m not watching it. I don’t think either of us is.
“You know,” Flynn says after a while, “it’s not like you don’t know someone who could… help.”
“Help? How?”
“Fuck’s sake,” he mutters, like I’m not supposed to hear him. I smile. “Go talk to those wolves in your would-be pack.”
“Would-be?”
Flynn levels me with the most serious look he’s worn since he moved in. “You think we don’t all know what’s coming? Where Dax goes, you go. I’m surprised you’ve held out this long.”
“I’m not planning on leaving.”
“You might not be, but your wolf is.”
It still takes me another few hours to work up the courage to head over to Alpha Kieran’s pack house. It’s dark now, and despite my misstep with Drew the other day, the wards still let me through. I guess he didn’t tell Sam about it.
The issue isn’t just about whether Em is truly my mate or whether it’s the two of them. That’s one large part of it, of course. The main part.
The issue also is how to break all this to a human without having them understandably freak out and want nothing to do with me. If that happens with Em, I think it will break me.
I let myself into the building and jog up to the first floor.
Voices rumble on the other side of the door I know leads to Alpha Kieran’s flat, but I walk past that.
Perhaps I should present myself to the alpha, seeing as I’m firmly inside his territory, but I’ll apologise later.
If I don’t go straight to the source, I’m going to lose my nerve.
I take a breath to steel myself before I knock on the door.
Adam opens it. His eyes widen when he sees me standing there, eyebrows flying up, and then his expression settles into something decidedly neutral. He doesn’t open the door wide enough to let me in, or even to look past him, being as he’s almost as tall as I am.
“Um. Is Drew in? I’d like to talk to him.”
Adam purses his lips like he’s thinking. “No.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He narrows his eyes, tilting his head to one side, and I swallow hard. I don’t know him all that well, but he’s always struck me as friendly, perhaps a little goofy or overenthusiastic, the way Dax can be.
Now I’m staring into a predator’s face. I’ve pissed him off.
“I don’t… Is he okay?”
“Oh, he’s fine. But you upset him the other day, didn’t you?”
Ah, fuck. “I didn’t—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just—”
“Take your problems elsewhere. We don’t want to hear it.”
He goes to shut the door, but a hand comes around the side and holds it open. “Adam,” Drew says, and he sounds a little irritated, but mostly unbearably fond.
“Little wolf,” Adam says. The sudden danger is gone as he leans up into Drew’s space. I can see them both now, and Drew gives me a small smile before he looks at Adam again. “You know I don’t like it when you get upset.”
“Shouldn’t have put that film on the other night then, should you?”
“That’s not—I didn’t know the dog died at the end. That’s Sam’s fault! I told you.”
Drew chuckles. He looks at me again, properly this time. “You want to talk?”
“I—Yeah. I mean, I’m sorry. For the other day.”
“It’s fine.” Drew hooks his fingers through the belt loops on Adam’s jeans and tugs him aside. “Come in. Adam was just going to talk to Lucien.”
“I was?” Adam scowls up at Drew. “No, I wasn’t.”
“No, you weren’t. But Patch deserves some privacy.”
“If he upsets you again…” Adam whirls on me, which is a little clumsy, what with the way Drew has his arms around him now. “If you upset him again, it will be the last thing you do.”
Drew sighs and shakes his head. I don’t know if he doesn’t believe Adam will do it, but I certainly do. “Yeah, okay. I won’t upset him.”
“Go,” Drew says. He ducks his head and kisses Adam’s neck, but high above his mating mark. “Sam probably needs a distraction anyway. Kieran’s been bugging him all week.”
“Fine.” Adam sighs, then slams a hard kiss on Drew’s mouth. “But if I feel anything I don’t like through our bond, then I’m bringing Sam back here with me too. Got it?”
I think the last part is for me, but Drew nods all the same. He presses his own soft kiss to Adam’s lips. “I’ll be fine. Go.”
Adam shoots me the occasional glare as he pulls on his trainers, then shoulders past me before he makes his way down the hall. Drew lets out a heavy sigh when the door to Kieran’s flat opens and shuts. “Sorry. He took it too far.”
“No, I—”
“Come in.” Drew doesn’t seem to care that he’s cutting me off. I nod and follow him inside, careful to kick my shoes off by the door before I make my way over to the sofa. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No. Thank you, but no.”
Drew nods. He wanders over to the kitchen anyway and pours himself a glass of juice, then joins me on the sofa. “What’s going on? I would have thought you’d go to Dax if you needed advice.”
“I don’t think he can help me with this.”
Drew stares at me for a moment. “Because you think both Em and Jamie might be your mates?”
I’m taken aback, even if I shouldn’t be. It’s why I’m here, isn’t it? The thought I don’t dare allow to take shape because if it’s true…
I don’t know what it means if it’s true. Aside from Drew—who I don’t know well, all things considered—I don’t know anyone with two mates. I’ve never heard of it happening before him, and I didn’t come from a sheltered pack even before I moved to London.
“What’s holding you back? Is your wolf unsure?”
“I don’t…” I take a breath in and hold it. “I don’t know.”
“Have you tried asking him?”
“Have I tried—Fuck, I don’t understand any of this. I don’t—”
“Don’t what?”
“I don’t know how it can work.” The backs of my eyes burn, even as I think of the way Drew surrendered to Adam’s hard kiss, completely unabashed about the fact that I was standing right there, watching them.
“I’m not—I’m supposed to… I’m supposed to look after him.
Them. And last night, I didn’t feel… I didn’t feel like I did that. ”
“Hm.” Drew takes a sip of his juice, then sets it back down on the coffee table. “How so?”
I press my lips together. How much can I tell him? How much should I tell him? I don’t think Em and Jamie will mind, and I think Drew will keep it to himself, but—
“I won’t tell my mates, Patch. Or anyone. And whatever you’re going to tell me, I doubt it’s something to be ashamed of.”
“Em brought a picnic,” I say. I don’t know that I’m even going to say it until the words pass my lips. “He organised everything. Fed me. Provided for me. He asked if Jamie wanted to join us, and they both… I just did what they said.”
Drew leans forward, shoulders tense. My wolf reacts in kind, all the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. “You did want to do everything that happened, right? You said yes?”
“Yes! Of course, yes. It’s not that. It just feels different. Not… not right.”
Drew settles some, but he still watches me warily. “Not right how?”
“I’m the wolf. I’m supposed to take care of them. Feed them. Protect them. Let them know they’re mine.”
Drew smiles. It’s faint, but there, and at least that means his mates aren’t about to burst in and murder me or anything like that. “This isn’t about having two mates at all, is it? Not really.”
“I guess not.”
“Your sister’s mated, right? You and Dax mentioned her.”
“Yeah.”
“To another wolf?”
“Yeah.” I shrug. “So?”
“So who’s doing the feeding? The protecting?”
I growl. Drew doesn’t react to the sound. He continues looking at me, eyes all soft. “It’s not the same.”
“I’m trying to work out if this is truly a wolf thing or a man thing.”
“That’s not—”
“Because it doesn’t matter what you like in bed, Patch. Or out of it, for that matter. So long as you and your mates are on board.”
“I know, but—”
“I know what people think when they look at me,” Drew says, and I come up short.
“And especially when they look at me and Sam. Out on the street, I mean. Wolves know. Vampires know. But humans? They see me, and they see him, and the assumptions I see on their faces… I don’t care about that.
I think I did at first, but getting hung up on that, getting in my own head, wasn’t going to help him or Adam or me. That’s what’s important. Isn’t it?”
My throat is dry. It hurts when I swallow. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“Providing isn’t all about food and protection.
” Drew sighs. “My dad fed us plenty. Our pack was safe. But he was a terrible father and an even worse alpha. You show up for what they need. I feed my mates, sure, but I listen to them, too. I help them when they’re troubled.
And they help me. That’s what being mates is. ”
I rub my eyes. They’re hot, but not wet, though I’m probably a second away from everything spilling over. Drew watches, silent, as I try to breathe through it.
“Sorry,” I mutter, voice thick. “I really didn’t think—Jamie left. Last night. Me and Em went to make dinner and he texted us and I don’t think… I think I messed that up long before Em even arrived.”
“Oh, I do have good advice for that one.” Drew smiles. “Don’t mess up the way I did. Talk to them. That’s important. At least if you’re honest, you tried. Being dishonest… That can kill everything before it begins. Trust me on that.”
The words are grave and strike me as incredibly true. “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”