Chapter Thirty
JESSE
Pain dragged him awake. No warning, just a bolt of fire low in his belly, ripping a broken sound from his throat.
Not again. The thought was raw, instinctive. Because he’d woken like this before—helpless, hurting, abandoned.
Panic clawed up his throat, desperate and wild. He tried to move, and the dark caught him again, yanking him back under.
* * *
Jesse drifted toward wakefulness, like floating up through deep, dark water.
Light brushed at him, thin and distant, but pain was an undertow, dragging him down. Not sharp, not slicing, but heavy, feeling as if it had been there always, deep in his belly.
A warmth along his side chased the pain until it became smaller, no longer all-encompassing. Warmth and something solid, grounding him.
It took him time to understand what it was. The scent came first—home, and comfort, and mine. Then the slow, steady rise and fall of breathing, of the body beside him. Matt.
Jesse tried to turn his head, to see him, but exhaustion held him too tightly.
He wasn’t strong enough to move, or even to stay here in this moment.
As he slipped back down, he felt Matt move even closer, pressing against him.
Like he knew. Like he was keeping Jesse anchored so that, even though he was falling back into the darkness, he’d find his way home.
* * *
When he opened his eyes again, the living room was awash in soft evening light. A heavy shape sprawled nearby, a big dark wolf whose breathing was harsh but steady. Karl. A smaller wolf curled against him—Jason.
And Matt, always Matt, so close Jesse could feel the warmth of him sinking into his bones.
Jesse turned his head, shocked by how weak he was. Like overcooked noodles, with no strength in him. When he met Matt’s eyes, he couldn’t look away. Sleep was again pulling at him, but he needed just one more minute of this, of him.
Matt’s muzzle brushed his. A sigh escaped Jesse as he let go, letting himself sink into safety, into warmth. Into Matt.
This time as he slept, Matt seemed to come with him, following him into his dreams.
MATT
Matt paused in the doorway, one paw raised as he observed the scene in the living room. Jesse now looked as if he were merely sleeping, rather than how those first few hours had been, when each shallow, unsteady breath had been a gift.
Matt had forced himself away from Jesse’s side briefly once he knew Jesse was safe. Leaving Jesse had felt like leaving part of his heart behind, but he’d needed to be sure the rest of his pack were steady on their feet.
Karl was regarding Matt from half-open eyes, Dave lying close beside him.
Pack members had been taking turns lying next to Karl, letting him know he was home, safe and surrounded by his pack as he slept.
They’d have done the same for Jesse, too, Matt knew, but he’d only surrendered his place by Jesse’s side long enough to check in with Bryce. And to eat.
“Because you may not have noticed, Matt, but you were torn to hell, too. If you want to be there for Jesse, you first need to make sure you’re there.”
Sometimes, Matt forgot just what a mother hen Bryce could be. That first morning, before Jesse had so much as stirred beside him, Bryce had crouched down, his gaze deadly serious as he looked between Matt and Karl.
“Don left more painkillers for you both, Jesse too when he wakes, but he wanted me to tell you—no shifting for at least another twenty-four hours. You need to heal more first.”
Matt didn’t much want to shift right now—he didn’t have the spare energy and everything hurt—but he wasn’t going to let anyone tell him how to run his pack. He had to ensure everyone was safe.
“Christian’s patrolling, and there’s no sign of anyone out there,” Bryce continued, as if he’d read Matt’s thoughts.
“Neither Jason nor Dave were hurt too badly, but I’ve removed them from the rota for the rest of the day.
As for Tristan… ” He paused, and Matt could see in his face concern for Tristan, for the mark that night had left on him.
“He’s okay,” he said finally. And Matt knew Bryce would make sure of it.
Across the room, Karl’s gaze found his, seeking his alpha’s judgment. Matt gave him a little nod. No shifting for Karl, not yet. He still didn’t know how bad Karl’s injuries were, but he trusted Don’s call.
And if keeping Karl safe meant not shifting himself, well, maybe he’d do that.
* * *
Some hours later, Matt awoke again to find Bryce standing in the doorway, a familiar glint in his eyes that usually meant trouble. Matt eyed him suspiciously.
“I sent Dave shopping,” Bryce declared, then with a flourish, gestured behind him.
Tristan edged into the room, his arms around a huge pile of something Matt couldn’t identify.
“Dog beds,” Bryce announced proudly.
Karl snarled.
Maybe Matt should have been offended too, but the minute he saw the size of those beds, all he could think was God, yes, thank you. No longer would his joints be suffering on unyielding floorboards. He must be getting old.
Matt wasn’t alone in his acceptance of the inevitable. When Karl eventually conceded, moving just enough to flop down on one of the huge, fleecy mattresses Tristan had laid down, a contented sigh escaped before he could stop it.
Yeah. No way in hell were they living this down.
JESSE
Jesse stretched, and for the first time, it didn’t hurt. Much. There was an abiding ache in his stomach, but the sharpness of the pain had gone. He didn’t think that was just due to Don’s meds.
No, what he put it down to was lying here in Matt’s bed, in Matt’s arms. Matt was asleep, but Jesse felt wide awake. He’d slept for what felt like days, and his body didn’t seem to care it was the early hours of the morning.
Matt was warm against his side, his deep, regular breathing somehow grounding Jesse.
The wave of love hit him so hard, it almost stole his breath.
It felt like too much, too big to fit inside of him, yet at the same time, like something that had always been there, just waiting for him to notice it.
Matt’s steadfastness, his patience with Jesse, the fact he’d let Jesse go—hell, even his bossiness was feeling attractive right now, which told Jesse those pills must have damn strong side effects.
He didn’t know when he’d fallen in love with Matt, but it’d had the weight of inevitability. There was no way he could be on this earth with Matt Urban and not love him.
He ran his hand down Matt’s arm and pressed a kiss against his jaw. For what felt like the first time in his life, Jesse was happy. Not just content. Not just safe. But truly, bone-deep happy.
MATT
It was three days before Matt judged Jesse and Karl healed enough to call a pack meeting around the kitchen table.
The pack needed to understand just what Jesse’s Argent heritage might mean, should anyone outside the pack discover it.
He didn’t want any of them to betray the truth through simple ignorance.
Until and unless Jesse wanted, no outsiders would learn from members of the pack of the Argent in their midst.
Once they were all sitting down, Matt straightened in his seat, ready to speak. Jesse got there first.
“Matt? Can I say something?” he asked. He sounded more uncertain than Matt had ever heard him, without a hint of his usual attitude. It was unnerving.
“Go ahead.”
Jesse took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say…” His voice trailed off.
Everyone remained quiet, and Matt knew they were giving him space, letting him take his time. As if they knew how hard this was for him.
Jesse sucked in a breath and tried again. “Thing is—” When he broke off this time, he started to worry at his lower lip.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and knocked him up, Urban,” Karl said from the other end of the table. “Goddamn it, am I going to have to get the shotgun out?”
“That’s not how biology works,” Matt muttered, but it was already too late.
Jesse was spluttering, Tristan was howling with laughter, and the pack somehow ended up planning Matt and Jesse’s nonexistent wedding, right down to the cake and the flowers.
But then Jesse recovered his equilibrium. And his attitude.
“When you’re done marrying me off to bossy britches over there,” he said through the hubbub, and they quieted. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
“It’s what packs do—look after one another,” Jason said. Coming from their quietest member, sounding so matter-of-fact yet warm, it caught at Matt’s heart.
“It’s what you did for me,” Tristan said very softly to Jesse, from where he sat beside him.
Jesse had tensed, like he expected someone to jump on him for daring to say something real. But when all he got were Jason’s quiet words and Tristan’s encouragement, his shoulders loosened. Like maybe he was finally starting to believe he’d been accepted. That he belonged.
Matt stepped in to turn the attention away from Jesse.
He had some idea just how hard it had been for Jesse to make himself vulnerable.
So, Matt talked about Argents at a little more length than he’d planned, giving Jesse space to recover his composure.
He also added a brief refresher on shifter politics, just in case anyone had missed the point and thought Jesse’s inheritance was no big deal.
There was a shocked silence when he finished. Looking around the table, seeing everyone’s reactions, he thought it had blindsided all of them. Jesse was looking highly self-conscious again.
“So, Princess, does that mean we gotta call you Your Highness now?” Christian shot at Jesse.
“Just on holidays,” Jesse said. “The rest of the time, you can call me Sir.”
Tristan choked on his soda, which promptly went up his nose.
That resulted in an all-out disintegration of Matt’s nice orderly meeting, with Bryce banging Tristan’s back, Jason complaining about the soda Tristan had spat all over the table, and Christian grumbling about precious princesses who were too full of themselves for their own good.
Matt shook his head despairingly as he looked at his unruly, unasked-for, exasperating pack. After all these years, all his mistakes, it turned out he’d done something right. He hadn’t just built a pack—he’d built a home.
JESSE
Matt had dismantled all of Jesse’s defenses.
The last tiny remnants, the ones Jesse hadn’t been able to surrender completely, crumbled in the days after he’d been hurt.
Yeah, Matt was still the bossy britches he always was, and his words sometimes were harsh, but his eyes and his hands were tender, and he’d watched over Jesse—and Karl—with a care that Jesse had never known before.
His care extended to the entire pack. After dinner, while Jesse had tried to make himself useful by helping clean up, only to be told by Bryce to sit and rest, Matt had headed toward the back door. He’d glanced back at the last minute and caught Tristan’s eye.
“Help me with Missy and the foal?” he’d asked, and Tristan instantly dumped the silverware in his hands onto the table in a clattering heap.
Jesse watched them go, fighting a twinge inside. He’d had Matt’s attention and been his focus for the past few days. He knew Matt had other responsibilities, but that hadn’t stopped the sting when Matt had turned to Tristan instead of him.
A small, petty part of him whispered that now he wasn’t on the verge of dying, Matt could turn his attention back where it belonged—on his pack. And Jesse still wasn’t sure where he fitted into that.
He knew he wasn’t being fair. But he also knew what he felt.
Right up until they were curled up in bed together, later that night, another of those pink tasseled lamps casting a dim light. One of these days, Jesse would remember to ask about that particular interior design choice. But not tonight. He had other things on his mind.
“Missy okay?” he asked. Because he couldn’t quite shake the fear that he wasn’t enough for Matt. That the pack gave Matt something Jesse couldn’t.
Matt drew him closer, and Jesse gave a little huff of frustration. How was he supposed to stay mad when Matt held him like this, skin to skin?
“I wanted to check in with Tristan,” Matt said. “Make sure he was okay after what happened.”
Jesse hadn’t even thought of that. Of course Matt would have.
He’d have seen Tristan standing there in all that blood, fighting like hell, and refusing to run.
Jesse had been so focused on his own survival, he hadn’t thought what it must have been like for Tristan—to watch someone he knew go down and wonder if they’d ever get back up.
And then he’d witnessed another wolf being killed in front of him.
Guilt flickered sharp and unfamiliar in his chest. Jesse just got through things and moved on. Maybe Tristan didn’t know how to do that yet.
“He’s okay, though, isn’t he?” he asked, suddenly worried.
Matt pressed a kiss to Jesse’s temple. “I’d be lying if I said yes. He’s not doing too badly, but it’s not something you ever get past—seeing your pack and your friends cut down in front of you.” His voice roughened at the end, and Jesse knew he wasn’t just talking about Tristan.
He levered himself up on Matt’s chest, heroically ignoring the acres of warm, bare skin under his hands in order to look Matt in the eyes. He couldn’t take away what had happened to Matt in the past, but he could make sure he knew everyone here was safe.
“We’re okay,” he said, firm and certain, because Matt needed to hear it. Only after the words were out did he realize that he’d needed to hear it too. The shadows slowly cleared from Matt’s eyes, until he was looking at Jesse and seeing him, not whatever lay in his past.
Jesse lay back down on him, loving that he could do this, loving the way Matt’s arms tightened around him.
They lay like that a while, and Jesse was just drifting off to sleep when Matt spoke, his voice rumbling through his chest under Jesse.
“I need to go back to work tomorrow,” he said, and it sounded reluctant.
“You ain’t ready yet,” Jesse pointed out. “About the only thing you’d be able to stop right now would be if the old folks knocked over the liquor store for brandy. And even that’d be questionable.”
Matt’s hand, which had been combing through Jesse’s hair, tightened in it.
“Is that right, Turner?” he demanded.
Jesse knew that tone in his voice, and suddenly every single part of him was fully awake.
“You going to prove to me otherwise?” he asked.
To his delight, Matt rolled him carefully over so he was above Jesse, and then he looked down at him, eyes teasing. “Hell, yeah,” he said, leaning in and kissing Jesse.
Later, Matt pressed a last kiss to his sweat-damp skin and murmured his name. Jesse held him close, no words needed. Matt was his. He was Matt’s. And he wouldn’t change that for anything.