Chapter 30 Elias
Elias
The cement of the front porch is cool under Elias’s bare feet.
He shivers, surprised, given the heat of the Tennessee summer.
It’s the kind of heat that bakes driveways and patios long after the sun goes down, the warmth lingering like it doesn’t know how to let go.
But the little portico holds no heat at all.
It must be that it stays in the shade most of the afternoon.
Or maybe it’s him. Maybe the rejected bonds have already started pulling warmth out of his bones.
“They’re gone?” Isaac’s body trembles beneath his arm.
“Hush now. It’ll be okay.” Or at least, Elias hopes so.
He holds Isaac tighter, hoping the heat of his omega’s body will warm the chill creeping into Elias’s bones, too.
That achy feeling of rejection sucks so much worse now that they’ve kick-started the pack bond into high gear over the past few days.
It hurts only slightly less than holding back the tears burning his eyes.
“What are we going to do? We can’t let them just leave,” Elias says louder, embarrassed that it sounds more whiny than he’d like.
Connall doesn’t answer him.
He has to know that a partially-formed pack bond will mean hospital visits for them all within a few hours.
What were they thinking?
Maybe he thought that since he hadn’t been in the nest, he could get away unscathed.
And as a Human, Kaian wouldn’t know shit about Were bonding rituals that are set in biology, the way so much of their culture is.
They’ll be feeling the rejection, too, and it will only get worse the farther away they get.
Connall stands halfway down the drive naked as the day he was born, feet braced, and fists clenched tight. His tense shoulders flex in the low light, speaking of anger and frustration, but the light breeze blowing his frosty scent back toward them reeks of regret.
Elias has learned more about their pack leader in the past few days than he had from his obsessive attention to the gossip blogs over the past eighteen months.
From the moment he had convinced Connall to save Isaac, the alpha had been all in.
As if once he’d committed to a course of action, he wouldn’t—or couldn’t—be swayed.
He’d also been sweet, thoughtful, and had a dominant streak a mile wide. Right now, though? He’s barely stopping himself from chasing Soren to the bottom of the driveway as they listen to the old car accelerate loudly down the street and into the night.
“Why did they go? Was it me?” Isaac whispers. “I’m a lot, I know, but I can be better. I can change—”
Fuck. They didn’t have a few hours before that trip to the hospital, after all.
“Izzy, you know that’s crazy. You’re—”
Connall growls as he stalks toward them, his eyebrows drawn down in a frown. “You’re fucking perfect. Everything about you is perfect. And Quinn and Kaian think so, too. This is not about you, baby. Quinn just doesn’t want me—” He stops abruptly, shaking his head.
Elias doesn’t know what he was going to say because he’s distracted by Soren running full tilt up the driveway.
Ghostly pale in the moonlight, his every muscle flexing like a predator, he blows past Connall’s outstretched hand.
His scent follows, and it’s rotten flowers and the same ‘sick’ roiling around Elias’s stomach.
Elias narrowly pulls Isaac back out of the way.
“Soren? Hey, slow down!” Connall runs a hand over Isaac’s head and gives Elias a reassuring smile as he passes them. Both gestures seem to pull Isaac back down to a slightly elevated emotional baseline. There’s no doubt in Elias’s mind that it will be temporary.
“Fuck. I have to go after them.” He groans, an arm wrapped around his waist as he roughly rifles through the piles of clothing on the floor. “They’re not safe. Jesus. Where are my fucking boots?”
Connall has found his own scrub pants and pulled on the button-up that Kaian had been wearing two days ago.
Soren tosses couch cushions, like a madman looking for socks and his wallet.
He’s broadcasting angry, hurt alpha vibes with no thought to the rest of them, and it’s making his alpha and omega feel the same.
Soon, Isaac will be a mess on the floor, and Connall will be tearing down the house around their ears.
Isaac wrings his hands, biting his lower lip raw. There’s a spot of blood already forming in the center, and the scent of their omega’s blood only adds to the problem. “It’s me, right? They think I’m too much. Was I too pushy, Eli?”
That. Is. It.
Dealing with his own rejection, anger, and never-ending waves of nausea is one thing, but this is spiraling out of control.
“Hey!” Elias shouts. He feels bad when Isaac flinches, but nothing short of raised voices will bring them to heel.
Soren comes to a complete stop. Half-dressed and hopping around, one boot on and one off. Elias wishes he had the whole thing on camera for a time when they can all look back on this and laugh—whenever the fuck that will be.
“You need to calm down for five fucking seconds, or you’re both going to send Izzy into shock. We need his meds and some water.” They’re both still standing there like big alpha deer in the headlights. “Well? Move!”
“Fuck. Shit,” Connall says, moving into the kitchen. “Two tablets, right?”
Soren returns with a glass of tap water. “Meds?” Soren bites out. “For what?”
Isaac stutters around the words, “Long story. Just…could you not go anywhere for a bit?” Elias can tell he hates to ask—that he’s feeling like the burden he’s afraid of being.
Connall looks shame-faced and drops to his ass on the couch. “I suck at this.”
“Me, too,” Soren sighs as his anger seems to bleed away. He crouches down beside them, running both hands along Isaac’s pale thighs. “I can’t stay, baby. I have to find them. It’s not safe, but I’ll be back. I promise.”
“You keep saying that,” Connall says, head in his hands. “Is it not safe because of me?”
A sliver of fear crawls down Elias’s spine. He’d completely forgotten that while he was safely cocooned here in suburbia, Connall’s real life existed out there, and it was dangerous.
“Fuck no.” Soren gets to his feet, jaw set in a hard line. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Make time.” Connall stands too, arms crossed.
“Besides, you can’t just leave us here. Or not Connall, anyway,” Elias adds. “Because you have a partially complete bond. You wouldn’t get too far.”
Soren’s eyes go wide. “Dammit. Okay.” He rubs a finger over his bond bite as if he’s reminding himself that Connall is his alpha, and he’s not unhappy about it. “I honestly don’t know much, but Kai—”
“Kai?” Isaac asks. He’d been leaning heavily on Elias’s shoulder, but he straightens, voicing the shock Elias feels, too. “I thought he’d just gone with Quinn? I thought maybe it was Quinn who wanted to go. I mean…he obviously had his nose out of joint about you, Alpha…”
Soren runs a hand over the top of his head in frustration. “That’s on me, I think. The years Con and I were apart have been rough. He saw what it did to me.”
Connall’s face pales at the reminder that Soren had suffered the same rejected bond for almost two decades. It couldn’t have been any easier for Quinn to watch Soren hurting than it had been for Elias when Isaac collapsed on Quest’s floor.
“I’m sorry—” Connall says hesitantly.
“No. Don’t do that,” Soren places a hand on the back of Connall’s neck, pressing his wrist into Connall’s scent gland.
It’s not as good as a bite, but it is a claiming gesture of sorts until they can complete the bond.
“I don’t think he left because of that, or not just that.
Quinn has baggage with baggage, and he’s stubborn as fuck. Right now, it’s Kai I’m worried about.”
“Why, though? How could someone like him be in danger? I mean, he’s got this aura of innocence, you know? Is it his magic?”
Kaian hadn’t used magic at all the entire time he was here, at least that Elias could tell. In fact, Elias had almost forgotten he was magic, the scent of patchouli almost imperceptible under the coconut. It’s weird now that he thinks about it.
“Yeah. Damn, where to start…okay…we were at All’s End…it was fight night—” His eyes flicker to Connall’s and then away.
“You were fighting?” Isaac asks, and his eyes track the almost faded bruise on the side of Soren’s cheekbone and eye. “Why?”
“I need it—” Soren cuts himself off.
Connall’s brows drop with a growl. His anger is tangible with a dark flush creeping into his cheeks.
“Fuck, Ren. Are you serious?” He stops abruptly, clenching his fists and holding back what Elias is sure would have been a lengthy lecture.
“We will talk about that later. Just get to the part that makes you think they’re in danger. ”
“Kaian found me in the alley behind the bar and called Quinn. We ended up at his place over that little bakery, Slice of Life.” The ‘found me’ isn’t lost on Elias, and it’s way too short of a story for meeting your soulmate behind a bar.
“Ohh, I know that one,” Isaac says, “they do a really good key lime danish.”
“Izzy, let him get it out.”
“They’re my favorite, and Quinn’s, too. Should have known…” He smiles ruefully. “Anyway, we gave him the 101 on Were mates and shit, then Vincenzo’s goons showed up out of the blue.”
Connall is on his feet. “What! Why would they be at Quinn’s apartment? I didn’t know about you, let alone him.”
Elias’s pulse stutters, then hammers. Being reminded that they could be used as leverage feels as bad as it sounds.
“They weren’t there for Quinn. They tracked Kai somehow. They were just as surprised to see Quinn and me as they were that Kai was magic. Seems they were just the retrieval team.” He chuckles before adding, “He seemed really annoyed they hadn’t sent the big guns, too—like he was insulted.”
If Elias’s favorite podcast is to be believed, the Vincenzos are one of three big crime families in Nashville. The second largest after the O’Daire family, and twice as dirty.