Chapter 15 - Melvin
The next morning, Melvin and Jasmine sat on the steps outside her building with coffee, the way they always did when he was home. Neither of them suggested it. Neither of them needed to. The city worked its way toward morning around them.
Melvin had slipped out not long after waking, leaving Mac asleep in the hotel room with the curtains half-drawn against the early light and a note propped beside the lamp, written in Melvin’s careful, deliberate hand.
Went to see Jasmine. Back soon.
He had stood there a moment after setting it down, watching Mac sleep with that steady calm that came when he finally let himself rest, then eased the door closed and stepped out into the morning.
The air still held a trace of night-coolness that wouldn’t last once the sun climbed. Melvin sat with his forearms on his knees, the cup warming his hands, letting the silence stretch. Jasmine had learned long ago that if she waited, he’d tell her what mattered.
“You’re somewhere else,” she said at last.
He watched the steam drift from his cup. “Thinking.”
“You do that?”
He smiled faintly. “Don’t get excited. It’s a glitch.”
She leaned back against the railing, studying him like she was putting pieces together.
“This about him?”
Melvin nodded.
She tipped her head, considering. “Tall, serious, Army type with the boots and the look like he doesn’t waste words?”
He couldn’t help smiling a little wider. “That obvious?”
“Very. You’ve always had a type.”
Then, softer, “I already like him.”
“You haven’t even met him.”
“I don’t need to.” She shrugged. “You told me he was coming and it was like watching something in you settle all at once. I’ve never seen that happen before. You or the panther.”
Melvin shook his head slightly.
“Yeah,” he said. “Pretty sure the panther decided he belonged to us about five minutes in.”
Melvin stared out toward the street. She wasn’t wrong. The moment he’d known Mac was on his way, something inside him had gone quiet. The constant edge he carried eased into something cleaner.
“He’s different,” Melvin said, and the words still felt too small.
“Yeah, I figured that part out,” Jasmine said. “Most people don’t cross an ocean on last-minute leave unless there’s something real on the other end.”
He laughed under his breath, surprised by how easy it felt.
They sat for a bit, the silence comfortable while the street filled in around them with movement and noise. When Jasmine spoke again, curiosity threaded her voice. “So he’s really a wolf.”
Melvin turned his head toward her. “You make it sound strange.”
“We turn into panthers,” she said. “Strange isn’t the problem. I just never thought my brother would end up with a wolf.”
A slow grin spread across her face. “That’s actually kind of amazing.”
Melvin smiled into his coffee and shook his head. “It’s not about him being a wolf.”
Jasmine’s grin eased into something more thoughtful. “Then what is it about?”
Melvin didn’t answer right away. Avoiding it didn’t make sense anymore.
“It’s just… him,” he said.
She nodded slowly, as if that told her everything.
They sat with that while the coffee cooled. The thought that had been circling Melvin since the night before pressed closer now that he’d stopped pushing it away.
“You love him,” Jasmine said.
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah.”
The word stayed with him longer than he expected. Then, quieter, almost like he was discovering it as he spoke, “I think he might be my Mate.”
The words left his mouth and didn’t feel like words anymore. They felt like a lock clicking shut.
He stared down at the coffee as if it might anchor him to something familiar, but the world felt subtly shifted.
Jasmine didn’t tease him. When he glanced over, her expression was sharp, searching.
“Melvin,” she said.
He shook his head, not disagreeing, just steadying himself. “I didn’t mean to say that.”
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t true.
He let out a slow breath. “I think it’s true.”
Something like wonder crossed her face before it settled into something sure. “Well,” she said, “that explains a lot.”
“What does?”
“The way you talked about him,” she said. “Even when you didn’t realize you were doing it.”
A small smile touched one corner of her mouth. “You don’t circle back to people like that unless they matter.”
Melvin looked down at his hands, the paper cup turning slowly between his fingers.
“When I finally got word he was coming,” he said, “it wasn’t excitement exactly. It was more like something in me stopped feeling off.”
He searched for the shape of it. “And when he walked through the door it felt normal. Like that was how things were supposed to be.”
Jasmine shook her head once. “That’s about as close to a textbook answer as you get without someone from the Council taking notes.”
A quiet laugh slipped out of him.
She bumped his shoulder with hers. “My brother ends up with his Mate and he turns out to be a wolf. I’m still wrapping my head around that part.”
Melvin smiled faintly.
After a beat, Jasmine’s voice softened. “You’re sure?”
Melvin took his time. “No. But I’ve never been this close to sure about anything.”
She studied him, then nodded once. “Then I trust you.”
After a while, Melvin said, more quietly than he meant to, “You’re really okay with this?”
Jasmine turned toward him with a look somewhere between disbelief and irritation.
“I’m not just okay with it. I’m proud of you. That’s different.”
The words caught him off guard enough that he blinked hard and looked back at his cup.
She bumped his shoulder again, gentler. “And yes,” she added, lighter now, “I want to meet him. Preferably before Mom and Dad figure out something’s going on and start asking questions you’re not ready to answer. ”
He let out a breath that turned into a quiet laugh. “They don’t even know I’m gay.”
“And now there’s a wolf,” she said. “Maybe break that news in stages.”
Melvin nodded because she was probably right, though the thought of Mac meeting them felt less like a problem to solve than something inevitable that would happen in its own time.
They stayed there until the coffee went lukewarm and the street fully woke.
The strange thing was how calm Melvin felt in the middle of it all.
The city usually left the panther in him restless, too much motion pressing in from every direction, but that morning something had settled deep in his chest, steady and certain.
Mac was here. Close enough that the pull he’d felt for weeks no longer felt abstract. And underneath that certainty was the sense that whatever waited between them had only just begun to unfold.
By the time Melvin made his way back to the hotel, the sidewalks were busy and the traffic steady below.
He found Mac awake and dressed, standing near the window with the curtains pushed back, watching the movement outside with the quiet attention he gave to unfamiliar terrain.
Even in jeans and a plain shirt he carried himself like an officer taking in a new area of operations, noting patterns without making a show of it.
Mac glanced over as Melvin came in. “You eat?”
“Nah. Just coffee,” Melvin said.
Mac nodded once, as if that accounted for everything. For a moment neither of them spoke. The ease between them settled back into place as naturally as if Melvin had never left.
Then Mac asked, “Reynolds doing alright?”
“Better,” Melvin said. “He’s been training all week. Getting steadier.”
Mac nodded, absorbing that.
Melvin hesitated, then added, “Council wants to see you while you’re here.”
Mac’s eyes sharpened. “Me.”
“Yeah. They’ve been watching Reynolds all week. They want to see what happens when the three of us are in the same room.”
Mac let that sit for a moment before nodding once. “Alright.” He didn’t ask questions yet, which Melvin understood.
“It’s not far,” Melvin said. “Underground access. Training facility.”
Mac gave a faint half-smile. “Council’s version of not far usually means complicated.”
“You’ll see.”
The entrance sat behind an unmarked service door off a narrow side street where delivery trucks came and went without attracting attention. From the outside it looked like nothing worth noticing, aging brick, a steel door worn dull by weather and time.
Inside, the security belonged to a different world entirely.
Mac didn’t say much as they passed through the controlled checkpoints, but Melvin could feel the way his attention sharpened, cataloging details without appearing to. Muscle memory from years of deployment.
Reynolds met them on the lower level where newer construction gave way to older stone. The change was subtle at first, then unmistakable as the corridors narrowed and the air took on the mineral coolness of deep earth.
He looked steadier than he had in Iraq. The strain of transition had begun to settle into something more grounded.
“Sir,” Reynolds said, nodding to Mac.
Mac returned the nod. “How you holding up?”
“Better every day.”
“I can see that.”
They moved through older sections where the walls shifted from reinforced concrete to worn granite blocks set generations earlier.
Electric lights ran in discreet lines along the ceiling, but the spaces above them disappeared into shadow, the structure extending in ways that suggested far more than what lay open to view.
Mac slowed slightly, attentive, his gaze moving over junctions and passages that branched away without explanation.
“You come here much?” Mac asked.
“A few times.”
Mac nodded. “Didn’t realize how big it was.”
“Most people don’t.”
Even Melvin knew only part of it. The Council chamber lay beyond heavy doors of dark wood banded with iron worn smooth by generations of hands. Reynolds opened one side and stepped back, and the three of them entered together.
Several members of the Council waited inside, their attention settling with the quiet patience of people accustomed to observing before speaking.
Reynolds moved forward first. Melvin and Mac followed.