Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Mason
Of course I was.
And he was still a fucking bastard. I hadn’t believed things could get any worse—until they did.
It was a few weeks ago that the humiliation had begun. We were in the middle of our Sunday video chat when Jerome knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Strip off your clothes.”
“W-W-What?”
“I said take off your clothes,” he growled, obviously irritated that I didn’t jump up and strip as soon as the words had left his lips.
No… no, no, no.
No way did I want to do this, but I’d been given an order. I swallowed hard, made sure my door was locked, then returned to the camera. I stripped off my sweatshirt, my skin pebbling in the air conditioning.
“Very nice. Keep going.”
I could feel the prickle of tears behind my eyes, but I couldn’t disobey. I slipped off my shoes, then my socks. Jerome’s eyes widened with every article I took off and his breath rasped.
The sound made my skin crawl.
“Yes, just like that. Now the pants and underwear.” He smiled.
“Go slow, I want to enjoy this.” Then he stood and unzipped his pants.
When he slid them down, his underwear too, my heartbeat raced, but not in a good way.
I hadn’t seen a lot of nude men, but if they were all hung like Jerome, I figured the human race would become extinct pretty damn soon.
It was right there on the tip of my tongue:
Don’t those things come in adult sizes too?
Then I figured that would be in poor taste, not to mention it would also piss him off, so I remained silent.
Jerome reached over and slathered some lube on his fingers before sliding them over the shaft.
“I can’t wait to take your cherry,” he grunted as he stroked his tiny dick.
As small and pathetic as his cock was, I figured my ‘cherry’ was pretty safe, since I doubted I’d even feel it. I started to pull my pants and underwear down, giving him peeks of skin, hoping to hell he’d get excited and shoot so this garbage would stop.
The pounding on my door made me jump. ‘Yo, Mason. Dinner.”
Jerome gave a start and hitched up his pants a moment before the connection was cut off.
Fear, anger, and helplessness bubbled up inside me.
I stumbled to the door, threw it open, and fell into Kip’s arms, sobbing.
He came into the room, closed the door, and held me, stroking my back, murmuring I was okay.
“How did you know? I mean, how did you know to interrupt right that second?”
“I could hear you talking, and you sounded upset. I also heard another voice. I assume that was Jerome?” He let his fingers drift through my hair, and the touch was so comforting.
I nodded, unable to form words.
Kip scowled. “We have to get you away from him.”
I swallowed. “We’ve been thinking about nothing else for months, and now time is running out.” Everything we’d thought of had slammed into the brick wall of reality.
We can’t stop this, can we?
Kip
I had to be honest, I didn’t understand half of what Mason’s family did.
To hear him talk, they had all these traditions, rituals, strange rules about bonds and purity, plus a half-mumbled family history that felt old, in the way cathedrals were old, or mountains.
Mason had once mentioned “responsibilities,” but I’d assumed it was metaphorical, like “church family” or “community.”
I didn’t pry. Sure, I was curious, but Mason always looked embarrassed when he tried to explain, so I left it alone.
But here we were, me sitting on Mason’s bed, and Mason pacing up and down, tearing his hair and tugging at his shirt as though he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. I couldn’t back off anymore.
My best friend is being forced into some kind of hardcore religious marriage, and I have to get him out of it.
Mason was in full-fledged panic mode now: his breathing was way too fast, his eyes wild, moving in sharp, restless motions that felt wrong for him.
There was something primal about him, maybe even feral.
I’d only seen him like this a couple of times, and I had no idea why he’d worked himself up into such a state, but now wasn’t the time to question it.
“I can’t do it, Kip,” Mason whispered, his voice cracking. “I can’t marry Jerome. He’s—he’s awful. He thinks he can control me. He wants me to be…pure, like I’m—” His voice broke. “I don’t want this. I don’t want him.”
Heat surged through my chest, a heady mix of anger and protectiveness—and something else. Don’t ask me what, but it always stirred when Mason was upset.
I had to be cool for both of us.
I steadied my voice. “Okay. Then we stop it.”
Mason looked at me as though I’d just offered to catch a falling star with my bare hands. “How? My parents already signed things. It’s—it’s basically done.”
I sat up straighter on the bed. I knew nothing about his family’s customs. I didn’t know the rules. But there was one thing I was sure about.
Arranged marriages relied on compliance.
The germ of an idea began to seed itself in my mind. It was crazy. It was out there.
And there was the teensiest chance it might work.
“Your parents only get to arrange your marriage if you’re not already committed,” I mused, a plan forming. “Right?”
“I guess?” Mason stammered. “Historically, yeah, but I’m not—”
“What if you were?”
Mason blinked. “Were what?”
“What if you’d already promised yourself to someone else?” I was warming to the idea. “Like, long ago. Before this Jerome thing.”
“That’s not how it works, Kip.”
“Maybe not in their system,” I insisted, “but what if you told them? Made a big deal out of it? They’re religious, right? Old-fashioned? They care about vows and bonds and purity and all that weird stuff—right?”
Mason hesitated, confused. “Kind of?”
“So if you made a promise to someone else,” I continued, “they can’t force you to betray it. That would go against their own beliefs.”
Mason’s brow furrowed. “But I never promised anyone anything—”
“You promised me.”
Silence.
Dead, stunned, horrified silence.
Mason stared at me, his mouth hanging open. “Kip. We were fourteen.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart pounding, “and that’s exactly the age when people in weird traditional families decide vows matter.”
Mason made a strangled sound. “But it wasn’t a vow. We said we’d look out for each other. That’s just… friendship stuff!”
“Your parents don’t know that,” I said, cocking my head to one side.
Mason’s expression of outrage gave way to something else—intrigue.
“And another thing. I gotta ask you this…. Do you think your parents are evil?”
His eyes widened and he gaped at me. “Of course I don’t!”
“Do you think they arranged this marriage out of duty? That there was no malice intended?”
He drew in a deep breath. “I believe they genuinely think they’re helping the… the community survive.”
“Do they have any idea how much you hate this guy?”
He shook his head, and I breathed a little easier.
“Okay, then. If we announce a fake engagement, I’ve just given you a couple reasons why this might work. Mason, they care about you. I don’t believe they’d want you to go into a loveless match. So if you tell them how you really feel, then how you’ve felt about me for years….”
Mason
My head was spinning.
“You mean, if they think this is about my happiness instead of just rebellion, maybe they’ll listen?”
Even if the odds were low, it had to be worth trying.
Kip nodded. “Look, right now it might sound as though my brain is doing some frantic logic gymnastics, but try to keep up, okay?” Another breath.
“If your family—and your community—is really this deep into arranged-marriage old-world traditions, then maybe old promises count too. Maybe you claiming another commitment blows this whole thing sky high.” He grasped my hand.
“I know, I know, it’s an insane idea, but it’s better than letting you be miserable.
” His voice softened. “If you tell them we made a promise—any kind of promise—years before they set this up…they’ll have to take it seriously.
They won’t want to break their own rules. ”
I opened my mouth slowly, aware of what was flickering in my chest. Only a small flame, but it was there.
Hope.
I let my thoughts follow the path Kip had laid down, even though he didn’t have all the facts right.
Kip is a human.
Humans don’t have standing in wolf politics.
Humans aren’t bound by pack rules.
Humans can’t form werewolf-style mating pacts.
And where did that lead me?
I’ll claim I made a promise to Kip—a human—and that will force my parents to pause everything because they don’t even have rules to cover this.
Then cold logic took hold.
I shook my head. “No. No. They’d never buy it. Much as I appreciate the offer, this isn’t gonna work. My parents, Jerome…. They’d see right through it.” I swallowed hard. “But dude…Thanks. I mean, you really sounded as if you’d do all that. For me.”
Kip’s face glowed. “To save you from a fucking miserable life? I’d do anything.” A heavy sigh rolled out of him. “You’re right, though. They wouldn’t buy it. And it was a hare-brained scheme.”
“The most hare-brainedest,” I confirmed with a grin.
That brief flare of hope flickered out of existence.
Unless I came up with an absolutely foolproof plan, I’d be marrying Jerome right after graduation.
My life already sucked.
It was gonna suck a hundred times more.