Chapter Thirteen Rowan
Rowan
Rowan knew he was a little bit spoiled. While Luca was the “baby” of their family, Rowan was the actual youngest and was treated with all the reverence that the role implied. He admits that he uses his wiles to his advantage as much as possible. Sweet smiles and puppy dog eyes during his early pre-presentation courting days or sly, sexy, spiced-rum-scented smirks since. Wrapped around his finger, every single one of them, in any and every way, Rowan got what he wanted sooner than later. No one was immune. Not even Gideon.
Except right now, Gideon refuses to let Rowan in to see Nix, and Rowan doesn’t know what to do about it.
“Ro, go back to the waiting room. You can’t be in here right now.”
He couldn’t escape the ominous feeling that had been riding him since Jay had given Nix enough of the venom to start the change.
Almost immediately, their mate had coded. They had expected as much and were prepared, and the five of them had been shepherded out of the room so the crash carts they had on standby could be used. Jay refused to leave, and where Jay went during hard times, Gideon wouldn’t be far behind.
The rest of them had stayed together in the doorway of the waiting room, watching nurses and doctors move in and out of the room steadily for the next several hours. They listened to Luca count the eight times that the vitals monitor had sounded its alarm until around sunset when only the steady beat of Nix’s heart monitor had remained.
Beep . Beep . Beep . Rowan won’t forget that sound in a hurry, although he wishes he could.
It seemed enough to satisfy Riordan, who departed soon after with a wave and a thumbs-up (Boomer!). They’d closed the door to the waiting room, pulled out the blankets, and watched Luca make the nest, the beta so anxious that he’d made them all take their shirts off (Leo had insisted that pants stay on again) so they could be added to the nest. After arranging each mate in a way only Luca understood, he collapsed onto Leo for his usual comfort, suckling at his chest while Grayson spooned in behind, his nose pressed firmly between Luca’s shoulder blades.
Rowan wanted to be calm enough someday to comfort Luca like that, too. Both betas looked so content, and the scent of family soothed them all into a light snooze. Rowan’s nose pressed into the back of Finn’s neck, and his hand on the alpha’s toned belly.
Waking from a dream he couldn’t remember, his heart pounded and muscles twitched with an inexplicable urgency to see Nix now. A scent lingered in the room—one that didn’t belong to his mates in the nest.
In the days since they’d discovered Nix was alive, the others had caught his scent—but not Rowan. Everything had moved too quickly, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, his wolf refused to settle.
Like the sensation of falling when you’re asleep, the wolf kept prodding and poking until Rowan had to get up or go crazy. He grabbed Finn’s shirt from the pile, fully aware it wouldn’t button, the sleeves would be too short, and it would pull tight across his shoulders. Still, he shrugged it on and left the nest, driven by that elusive scent his wolf wouldn’t let him ignore.
And now, Gideon will not let him in to see Nix.
Later, Rowan will not know what came over him.
He knows what happens when his wolf tries to challenge a senior wolf in his pack. Both Jay and Grayson have spoken to him about how being an enigma wolf is a life of constant vigilance, that Rowan’s wolf is born to lead, and his instincts will always push for him to fight, fuck, breed; to challenge authority. That’s why the commonly held belief is that the enigma wolf is a dying breed and that enigmas are a throwback to the earliest days of the Were people.
Currently, less than 10,000 enigma alphas live in the United States, and for three to live together in a single pack is cause for judgment, suspicion, and the occasional stare from those who are really brave or really stupid. People are less understanding in a world where cooperation and equality are more the ideal, and enigmas are becoming obsolete.
When Gideon will not let him see Nix, Rowan’s wolf makes him. He picks up his much-beloved mate by his arms like a rag doll and firmly moves him out of his way. When Gideon struggles, he growls in his most menacing voice, one that demands the lower alpha’s submission. It’s completely contrary to the work he and Gideon do to keep his enigma in line, and Rowan-the-man is horrified but can only watch as his wolf takes over.
He is not sure how long has passed, but he comes back to himself flat on his belly, with Jay’s body on his back and his teeth in his neck. The Pack Alpha is growling and shaking him slightly. The controlled violence is clear to even Rowan’s wolf.
Jay is dead fucking serious.
“Fuck, Ro. Stay down.” Gideon’s voice is uncharacteristically shaky, and Rowan smells blood, a sharp tang that sets his instincts on edge as he wonders where it’s coming from. He forces his body to go lax, though his muscles protest, and Jay bites down harder, pressing his hips down as if testing for a trick.
Rowan doesn’t plan to rebel—there’s no point—but he waits, tense, until finally, the bite is released. Even then, Jay doesn’t move, his weight grounding Rowan as his pine scent saturates the air, thick and overwhelming. Rowan struggles to clear his head, but it’s no use.
Defeated or not, his wolf refuses to yield. The mantra begins again, relentless: I want Nix. The elusive scent he’d first noticed in the waiting room now floods his senses, impossible to ignore, sharpening the ache his wolf won’t let him forget.
“Please. Please, I need Nix. It’s not fair. Please.” He’s sweating through Finn’s shirt, now bloody around the collar, and his hair is sticking to his forehead. The room is full of their enigma scents, pine warring with Rowan’s spiced rum, but even then, he can smell the sweetest scent.
His leader must hear something in his voice because he stands. The bite mark on Rowan’s neck is healing slowly, and his knees and back ache with every movement. Gideon looks exhausted, but Rowan feels an overwhelming sense of relief when his mate offers him a hand and helps him to his feet.
“Ro, fuck. You would not stay down. I thought you were going to…” He breaks off, looking at Jay, who is wiping the blood off his face with the bottom of his t-shirt. The pack alpha looks no worse for wear from the altercation, barring the exhaustion and stress of the past few days.
The best man surely won, and Jay hardly broke a sweat doing it. Nurse Yasmine peeks out of the patient restroom in the corner of the room, where she must have hidden when Rowan lost his mind. She still looks spooked, so Rowan smiles, showing his dimples in apology.
“My apologies. I am sorry if I scared you.” The sassy nurse rolls her eyes, waves a hand dismissively, and whispers “pssht” but still gives them a wide berth as she slips out the door.
Fighting alphas are not for the faint of heart, especially two enigmas in a fight for dominance. “I’m sorry. He wants Nix. I lost my grip on him.” Rowan bends at the waist with his hands on his knees, struggling to get his equilibrium back. His wolf is him, and he is his wolf, but seeing them as separate in this instance is the only way to describe how his control slipped the tight leash he keeps on his enigma instincts. Rowan has him now, though—he thinks.
“Well, you almost had yourself a new pack,” Jay sighs, his tone heavy. An attack from within the pack had been the last thing he expected. Rowan feels his stomach plummet, horror spreading through him at the thought. The ramifications would have been disastrous for them all.
Taking Jay by surprise would be impossible if their pack leader hadn’t been awake for twenty hours with little food and the heavy burden of life-altering decisions. Worse yet, Rowan 100% does not want to lead their pack. He is happy to be right where he is in the hierarchy: on top, but with none of the big choices or responsibilities.
“I’m sorry, Jay. Truly.” It’s not much, but it’s all he can say in the face of the almost-disaster, and he wholeheartedly means every word. Jay’s wolf is still standing stiff and watchful; it won’t let Rowan close right now, and Rowan mourns the loss of the grounding closeness of a hug from his alpha. Gideon picks up the slack and puts his arm around his shoulders. “Gideon, are you alright? I’m sorry.”
Gideon squeezes him, “Can’t say you didn’t get my heart pumping, but I’m okay. Come on, let’s get you what you came for. I think you’ve earned it.”
Their leader resumes his seat at Nix’s bedside with a huff of annoyance. “Easy for you to say.”
When Rowan finally looks at Nix, it takes him a moment to recognize the person he’d seen for just a fleeting second the day before, when Jay had started the change. The respirator is gone now, and Nix is breathing on his own. He already looks so much better. Less than a second later, Rowan’s instincts take over, and he follows his nose straight to Nix’s neck. He doesn’t even notice Jay standing abruptly as if sensing Rowan’s wolf howling to bite down and claim his mate. With an internal growl, Rowan shoves the urge away. He’s so fucking tired of the wolf stirring up trouble.
Nix smells less like a human now, and more like a Were, with the vanilla scent he’d detected before so much stronger than what he’d smelled on the others. It smells richer. He dares a tiny lick to get the flavor on the back of his tongue, and his wolf purrs mine as the scent travels to his cock, his fight, fuck, breed urges are instantly back on high alert.
He stumbles back and supports himself with a hand on the wall. What the hell? Nix is unconscious and unwell, and Rowan can only think about following that scent to where it’s strongest. Shame forces a burning flush into his cheeks and his stomach into his toes.
In times of difficult emotions, his default has always been sarcasm and humor, lightening the mood and making his mates laugh or smile. He does the same now to hide his shame. “Why does Nix smell like sex and cookies? And what the ever-loving fuck is that popping sound?”
His mates exchange glances; they know him so well.
Gideon responds, “Well, that popping noise is Nix’s bones setting.” A particularly loud one sounds near where Rowan has gone back in for a second whiff of the intoxicating scent, and his eyes blow wide with shock. The bones not hidden by the bandages on Nix’s face are shifting and roiling. “It’s been going on for hours.”
“Does it hurt?” Rowan feels a little sick thinking about it, and hearing it only makes it worse.
Jay runs a soothing hand through Nix’s hair. “It’s excruciating. They’re keeping him in a coma until the worst of it is over. They’ll get him a scan tomorrow if he remains stable. We didn’t want any of you to see him like this.”
In his pheromone-induced freak-out, Rowan had missed that even while in a coma, Nix’s body was in constant movement. The transition is reshaping him— healing him at the same time.
Rowan remembers that Gideon hadn’t answered his question about why Nix smelled like the best sex anyone would ever have—in a bakery. When Nix is ready, Luca’s mocha and Nix’s vanilla sweets will be an irresistible combination. Rowan cannot wait. “You never answered: Why does he smell like sex on steroids?”
“We don’t know,” Jay says, gazing hard at his newest mate as if the answer is written on the soft skin visible around the bandages.
“What do you mean you don’t know? What does Yasmine say?”
“We consulted the on-call doctor, and they say it’s just his new scent developing, and it will probably settle. But we’ve requested an endocrinology consultation as soon as possible.” That’s fucked up because Nix’s mouthwatering scent is so far from subtle.
“So aside from the snap, crackle, and pop horror show and the smelling like sex in a bakery , he’s going to be okay?”
Jay sighs. Yasmine answers for him from the doorway, “We won’t know until we get him a scan and he wakes up. But it’s safe to say he’s much better than he was.”
Rowan feels an overwhelming wave of relief—so powerful it’s almost embarrassing. To hide the sudden sting of tears, he leans in, pressing his face close to Nix’s ear. “Hello, Nix. I’m Rowan,” he whispers.