Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The next morning, Evan still couldn’t quite believe that George had been in his apartment. If not for the bite mark, he might’ve thought he dreamed it. His dreams had also been messed up, and he was going to blame the way the other wolf’s scent lingered in his house.
He chose a dark blue shirt because he didn’t want the bruise to show through a white one. And while he had stopped himself from messaging, he hadn’t been able to stop himself from searching for him online as he ate breakfast and drank his tea. George wasn’t hard to find, but there wasn’t much to find either.
A few photos of him on an oil rig somewhere off the northern coast of Australia, a few fishing pictures, and a few more of some bush and desert. All of which explained where he’d been for the last five years, yet told him nothing. And it wasn’t as though he could call up anyone.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted the Coven to point George in the direction of the Outcast Pack—the guys he ran with, if he wanted some wolf company—or give him a selection of neutral areas to run in. He didn’t want to think about what being in the same pack might be like. While Simon and Miles had gotten together, they’d been friends for a long time first. If George was in the same pack…
They had never been friends.
They still weren’t.
They weren’t anything.
The present and the past melded together and sat very uneasily.
He’d said too much last night, even though he’d accused George of talking too much.
If George joined the Outcast Pack, they needed to be able to sit down and be civil. Because while the sex had been great, he wouldn’t have called it civilized. But George hadn’t been as rough and angry as he’d expected. If he had been, maybe Evan wouldn’t be carrying the guilt.
Instead, George’s hurt had been clear to see, and he was the cause of it. He didn’t want George to look at him and only think of the past. That wasn’t who he was anymore. Fuck, he wasn’t even sure who he’d been, only who he’d needed to be to survive.
Something George understood. But he didn’t want his bloody pity, either.
He didn’t know what he wanted, which added to the uneasiness that slid cold through his veins as he drove to work.
The sickly smell of antiseptic in the hospital was enough to clear his thoughts. When working, nothing mattered except keeping the patient alive. That he relied on more than the machines when he put people under meant he was bloody good at his job in the same way Con used his heightened senses as a paramedic. He always knew if someone was brought in from Con’s ambulance because he smelled the wolf, but they rarely crossed paths at work.
He didn’t even know what shifts Con worked, and he doubted the other wolf would be helpful with his dilemma. Until Con had gotten serious with Zach, he’d seemed to live by the principle of fuck around and have fun. Which wasn’t a bad way to live.
What he should do is make an effort to run with the pack this weekend. He needed to check with Kyle first because once a month, no one was invited up, which was fair enough because Kyle and Cooper needed time to themselves. Having a pack of wolves around all the time added a whole lot of other pressures and complications.
For a start, there was no such thing as privacy, as everyone heard or smelled everything.
It was one of the reasons he didn’t run with the pack very often.
He didn’t run very often, period.
As much as he enjoyed some parts of being a wolf, the quick healing, the biting, and the better sight and hearing, he didn’t like shifting. And he hated being shifted. Another thing he’d hidden from his family pack because they all loved running on four legs.
While he let his wolf side out a little too much in human form because he enjoyed a little rough play, it meant he now went two months without shifting, which was fucking brilliant.
Hooking up with George might’ve fucked that up, though, because there was a thread of rough heat in his blood, and he’d only shifted four weeks ago—after a careless hookup. Maybe his body thought he should’ve shifted last night.
He shouldn’t have hooked up. It wasn’t part of his routine, and it hadn’t been planned, but he couldn’t regret it either.
And as soon as he shifted, the bite would be gone.
He made stupid chitchat with the surgeon while the human was unconscious. But his ears and nose were tuned to the patient, listening for the micro tells he was in trouble.
If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that a routine operation was never routine.
So why did he expect his life to be any different?
Of course, his routine was going to get all fucked up.
But he’d expected it to come from his father or pack leader, not from his past.
The bruise on his chest throbbed. The thing was, he didn’t mind that George had returned to bite him on the chest. It was the way Evan wanted him to do it again that was causing the unease.