Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
T his sucked, Kade thought. And not in the fun way.
He’d had an idea or two about what his first full moon bonded might be like. Sexless, restless, and bored was not it. He was going insane, and Liam wasn’t doing much better. Some of it was the echo of Kade’s emotions, but the majority of his frustration was from being trapped in a room with nothing to learn or do.
Kade had scrolled through the entire internet on his phone in an attempt not to maul Liam. Because he’d already done that. Multiple times. And he kept trying to convince himself he didn’t want to do it again.
But fuck , he wanted to do it again.
He’d worked out after breakfast to get rid of some of his excess energy. If running was out of the question, hundreds of sit-ups and push-ups and an hour-long plank might help.
Except Liam’s gaze had dragged over his body as he watched Kade over the top of his book, and that made things so much worse. Made Kade want to remove his shirt so Liam could get a better view of his muscles as they glistened with sweat.
Yet another terrible idea.
It was almost a relief when lunch rolled around and he could use it as an excuse to step outside, though he felt like an even bigger ass because that relief was his alone.
Downstairs, Elijah was sitting in the living room, working on his laptop, looking smug and pleased with himself. No other pack members were in there; everyone was giving him a wide berth.
Kade found Victor in the kitchen, making lunch, his movements a tense, predatory prowl.
“He’s enjoying this,” Victor grumbled as he ripped a head of lettuce to shreds. “He’s waiting to see how long it takes me to break.”
“And you’re not breaking because…?” Once Victor broke, they’d have significantly more fun than Kade and Liam were.
“Because I have self-control, and he said I wouldn’t make it past noon.”
There was still a half hour to noon. Given how tightly wound Victor was, Elijah might have been onto something. But if anyone could suppress their wolf on a full moon, it was Victor.
“How do you keep your wolf tamped down?” Kade asked.
Victor grimaced. “Years of practice. But when it comes to Elijah, I should have listened to it from the start, so maybe you should listen to yours too. What’s it telling you about Liam?”
“My wolf is confused because it thinks we’re bonded.”
“You are bonded.”
“No, not really.”
Perhaps that was why he felt anxious when his thoughts wandered to Liam. His wolf knew they weren’t bonded—not properly, not permanently. Liam didn’t want this, but his wolf thought it just needed to prove itself, to prove they’d be a good mate for him, that they’d take care of him and do everything they could to make him happy.
“Take your own advice,” Victor said.
Kade’s brow furrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll figure it out.” With that, Victor snatched the chicken Caesar salad he’d made off the counter and stalked away, heading back to Elijah.
Kade returned to his bedroom, food in hand, then froze as he stepped inside.
He inhaled, frowned, then inhaled again.
The faintest hints of summer greeted him, but not what he was used to, not what he was expecting. Summer, yes, but with other elements mixed in.
Liam had said there was a smoky note to his scent, and when Kade took in another lungful of air, he caught a ghost of that. It was frustratingly light, just a whisper of breath over his skin, but it was there, teasing him with a presence he couldn’t quite grasp, flickering in and out of his perception.
He’d suspected Liam had been smelling their combined scents, and now he was sure. It seemed unfair that Liam could smell them better than Kade.
Being able to smell something , no matter how faint, was a nice change, but he wanted more. He wanted his enhanced sense of smell back, wanted to know how he and Liam smelled together.
“Everything okay?” Liam asked from where he was propped up against the headboard, reading on his phone. He’d finished the two books he had with him hours ago.
Kade shook himself and brought Liam his food. “Yeah, all good.”
Liam didn’t call him out on the blatant lie, though it was clear he didn’t believe him.
The day dragged by, the longest of Kade’s life. Had the moon ever been this slow to rise?
Having Liam to himself was easier than letting people get near him, but at the same time, being alone with him, in the same room as him, getting the occasional confusing whiff of their scents mingling… It was maddening.
Kade’s wolf hadn’t felt this wild since he was a teenager. It was like he’d lost control over his ability to shift, like he might sprout claws and fangs at any moment. And what was worse, Liam sensed it, sensed how wound up and feral he was becoming.
If the spirits hadn’t been lurking in the forest, he would have shifted and run under the moonlight to work off some of this energy. That wasn’t happening tonight.
He paced his bedroom and held back a growl, resisting the urge to go over to where Liam was sitting and… But he couldn’t do that either.
Liam was pretending to read, but his gaze was a delicious weight on Kade’s skin, and it did nothing to calm his amped-up instincts.
With a sigh, Liam set his phone aside and gestured toward the bookshelf. “Where do you want to go?”
Kade hummed noncommittally, then made another lap of the room.
Liam scoffed. “Don’t give me that. You don’t collect books about every country in the world if you aren’t interested in visiting a few.”
“I had a bookshelf and figured I should get some books to put on it. They seemed like they’d look nice.”
“You bought a bunch of expensive photobooks for aesthetic reasons?”
“Maybe I enjoy the pretty pictures.”
“Fine. Then which has the prettiest?” Liam got up and pulled two books off the shelf.
Kade wanted to flinch. He had those arranged the way he liked them.
That sentiment must have transferred through their bond, because Liam narrowed his eyes at him. “I work at a library. I know exactly how you have these organized. Now stop pacing, come here, sit down, and tell me where you’d go.”
Kade found himself obeying. They sat on the floor with their backs against the bed, peering up at the bookshelf.
“You’ve heard of those around-the-world tickets?” Liam asked, and Kade glanced at him before nodding. “East or west?”
“West,” Kade answered without hesitation.
“Okay. Seattle first. I want to visit my teacher and family, and you’d probably have fun in the clubs there.”
Kade didn’t say that if they were together, he’d have zero desire to go clubbing. He’d rather take Liam out for the cliched Space Needle dinner, or go to Kerry Park and watch the moon rise over the city skyline. Instead, he leaned forward to snag a book on the West Coast of the United States and flipped it open to a panoramic view of Denali National Park. “Then up to Alaska. We have some remote areas around here, but I want to see truly untouched wilderness.”
Liam grabbed a book on Japan. “Aran has family in Shizuoka. They might be willing to show us around.”
And then they were off, planning a ridiculously lavish journey, the likes of which Kade had never let himself consider taking before. They arranged the books around them as they did, a line forming along the floor—one stop after another, all the sights Kade had seen in books but couldn’t imagine visiting in person.
He was still restless, still longed to shift, to run, to fuck Liam until they were both out of their minds with pleasure, but this was as good a distraction as he could ask for. Liam sat beside him, traveling through the world one book at a time, going through Asia, swinging down to Australia, up Africa to the Middle East, over to Europe, and back to the Americas. Then they traveled in the opposite direction to hit some of the countries they’d skipped, because there’d been no backtracking once they’d started going west, and sometimes that meant sacrificing visiting one destination for another before moving on. Debating where to go, why country X instead of country Y, and what they’d do there helped him ignore his baser instincts.
As they planned, the scent in the room grew stronger—a Polaroid coming into focus, blurry but revealing itself with each breath. Smoky and warm and relaxing Kade further.
When they were finished, they had two lines of books, two around-the-world trips—one going west, one going east. Kade wanted nothing more than to go on either. On both. It didn’t matter as long as it was with Liam.
“Why do I get the feeling you don’t share this part of yourself with people often?” Liam asked. “Does your Kindle have travel memoirs on it?”
Kade shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’ve lived my entire life in the middle of fucking nowhere. I hauled Victor on a couple road trips when we were younger, and sometimes we’d head to nearby cities, but that’s about it. Even a night away was too much for him. He used to do it when he was a beta; he’d never do it as alpha. I have no clue the amount of effort it would have taken to get him to go further from the pack than that, and he was the only one who’d even consider it.”
“You can’t go by yourself?”
He could; he’d just never felt like he should allow himself to have that. “Victor was raised to be alpha, and I might not technically have been raised to be his second, but there was an unspoken expectation that I would be. Those lessons were driven into me as a child. Support the alpha, support the pack. There was never a point where I could leave for any extended period. Once Victor took over, I needed to be here, helping him. Before that, there was everything with his father. It was always something. And now, there’s the spirits. I can’t abandon the pack when it’s like this.”
“When it’s over?”
“Maybe, but no one here wants to go with me, and I don’t want to travel solo. Wolves are pack animals by nature. Besides, I’m second-in-command. Being gone a night is one thing. A week? A month? How could I do that?”
“I can understand not wanting to travel alone. Like I said, my parents were fond of family trips. Occasionally we’d sneak Elijah along with us. And during our apprenticeships, the guys and I would take road trips whenever our studies allowed it. So I can’t imagine traveling on my own either. I know some people prefer it, but for me, it’s something you do with family and friends. Sharing those memories is what makes them special. But solo or with friends, it’d be amazing to see the world.”
Liam tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling, his neck exposed as he continued. “There’s disparate magic spread throughout the world. Every family and mage line has their own practices. How my family does magic differs from how someone in Asia or South America might do it. My parents never had enough money to take us overseas. Not that we were poor by any means, but with four kids—five, with Elijah—international travel wasn’t happening. But I’d love to go abroad. To learn the various practices and preserve them before they die out or something happens to them. To make that knowledge available to people who can’t afford the airfare. The more we know, the stronger we are. Same goes for how interconnected we are.”
“Wolf shifters are the same. Our connections—to other pack members, to nature, to neighboring packs—make us stronger. Where did you go with your family?”
“Before my siblings were born, when we were living in Louisiana, basically all over the South and up the East Coast.”
Kade relaxed as Liam’s words flowed over him, as he told stories of his family trips, when it had been just him and his parents, and then later, when he’d spent most of his vacation time chasing after his younger siblings, making sure they weren’t getting into trouble.
There was a passionate spark in Liam’s dark eyes whenever he talked about something he’d learned, his hands gesturing as he spoke. It was fascinating to listen to him, but part of Kade’s mind was wandering through the itineraries laid out before them.
What would it be like to have the freedom to do either of those trips, let alone both? To leave the pack and wander the world with Liam as he learned anything and everything his heart desired, then come home with him, curling up in bed together to rest and relax for a month or two before doing it again with a new set of places to see.
He inhaled deeply, his eyelids fluttering shut at the summery scent filling the room. His scent. Their scent. No longer a fuzzy, nebulous thing, an image blurred with motion. Instead, it sharpened to distracting clarity. A late summer night infused with fire and woody smoke. The moment before a pack run, the bonfire crackling bright in the dark, anticipation hanging heavy in the air, as full as the moon.
Liam smelled right, like he was meant to be Kade’s. Like Kade was meant to be his. The combination of them was euphoric, everything Kade had ever wanted.
Unable to suppress the instinct, he filled his lungs with Liam, with them . His wolf surged forward, rumbling its approval. It had known when Kade had not.
Liam’s story faltered.
Kade trailed his hand down Liam’s neck, and he leaned closer, running his nose along Liam’s skin and inhaling like Liam was the room’s sole source of oxygen. He let out a shuddering exhale.
Damn, Liam smelled so good. So perfect. And more than a little turned on.
He rested his hand over Liam’s bite mark and dug his fingers in. Liam groaned, his scent spiking with arousal. He’d been half-hard most of the evening, as had Kade, but now Kade smelled it on him, and he craved more. How much better would Liam smell without his clothes in the way, when he was fully hard and leaking precome, when he was wrapped around Kade’s knot?
Kade growled, drunk on the scent of him.
His bed was right there, and he had so much extra energy. It’d be a shame if they didn’t put it to proper use.
Liam let out another groan, but it was more of a frustrated sound than one of pleasure. His hand came up, and he yanked on Kade’s hair.
“Your wolf seems to have taken over again. Remember the whole ‘not a good idea to deepen the bond’ thing?”
“Fuck being good,” Kade said, his voice a deep rumble. “Let me show you what a wolf shifter can do on a full moon. I’ll make you feel better than you ever have. Just say the word, and I’ll have you begging for my knot.”
Liam shivered.
“You want that, don’t you? Last time doesn’t count. This time, I’ll get you warmed up and ready, so when I’m stretching you wide, all you’ll feel is ecstasy. And then after I’ve made you come, I’ll grind on you until I milk you dry.”
Liam forced out a breath. “You’d regret it in the morning.”
Kade was pretty damn sure he would not. He dropped his hand to Liam’s knee, then slid it up the inside of his thigh toward the bulge in his pants. Liam caught his wrist before he got anywhere interesting.
“ Kade .” Liam’s voice was tight. “I’m trying to do the right thing here, but I’m not a saint.”
“Then don’t be one.”
“Okay,” Liam said, breathy and low. “You want to fuck me? I want explicit consent from both sides of you. Give the human side full control. If human Kade can look me in the eye and make me every filthy promise wolf Kade just did, we’ll talk.”
That seemed fair. Kade’s wolf sank below the surface.
Kade inhaled.
Liam’s scent was all around him, all over him. So fucking perfect, so entangled with his.
What the fuck?
Liam wasn’t supposed to be his mage. Kade wasn’t supposed to find him immediately after Victor found his. It should have taken a while. He’d spent hours mapping out the various scenarios. Their first meeting, how he’d sweep his mage off their feet. It shouldn’t have played out like this.
But after smelling them together, it was impossible to deny. The way their scents had mixed was divine.
This was why his wolf had kept sniffing Liam, why it couldn’t stop breathing him in. It had been able to register something the human side of Kade could not, some pheromone that went deeper than scent that had let it know.
Not that his wolf knowing made this any better.
He’d spent the last few days joking around with Liam. Playing stupid pranks on Liam. Being entirely too casual with him. Thinking he was hot and kind of funny and enjoyable to hang out with, but obviously they weren’t compatible. That wasn’t how he was supposed to treat his mate, not even close. And this sure as hell wasn’t how he’d intended to get bonded to someone. He should love and cherish them like they were the most precious person in the world, do romantic shit for them, tell them he loved them, take care of their every need.
But Liam didn’t want to be tied to a pack. To be tied to Kade forever.
They were so different; Kade couldn’t blame him for that. Even without that goddamn spirit, he couldn’t fathom how they’d make this work. No one would think they were meant for each other.
But their scent. Fuck. Anyone who smelled them together had to realize—
His fucking pack. Those bastards. They’d known for days and hadn’t bothered to mention how Liam’s scent fit perfectly with his. Instead, they’d let Kade continue to screw things up royally. He’d thought they’d been judging him at their pack dinners, but that wasn’t it at all.
He was going to kick Victor’s ass for this. Some closest-thing-to-a-brother he was. How could he not have told Kade something this important?
But if he and Liam were supposed to be like Victor and Elijah, why wasn’t their bond working the same way? He sensed some of Liam’s emotions, and Liam did have some access to his energy, but not to the same degree.
True bonds didn’t feel like this.
Maybe they weren’t meant to be together after all and he was convincing himself they smelled compatible when that wasn’t the case. His sense of smell had come back online, but it might still be fucked up.
This wasn’t how shifters were supposed to experience their scent mixing with someone else’s. It was intended to be gradual, and he’d planned to savor the whole process. That first note of developing attraction, their scents slowly blending as they got closer. Traces of his future mate teasing him, lingering on his clothes after they’d touched, mingling until there was no question about their compatibility. And then, when they finally did bond, their scents would combine in that sublime way that came from a true bond.
He’d missed all of those stages and had been blindsided by his scent completely, utterly, blissfully entwined with another.
This was too overwhelming. Too confusing.
Liam snorted. “Considering how freaked out you feel, I’m going to assume that’s a solid no on the sex.”
It wasn’t a no—not even remotely—but how could Kade explain that?
“On the plus side,” Liam said, “at least we only have to deal with this for one full moon.”
That hit Kade like a blow to the chest.
Liam raised an eyebrow at him. “You alright there?”
Kade nodded. He was a little numb, a bit nauseous, and a whole lot shell-shocked. “Yeah. I’m fine.” The faintness of his voice exposed that for the lie it was.
Liam looked skeptical, but he let Kade play it off. “We should have the spirits captured before the new moon.”
“I guess we can only hope that happens,” Kade gritted out.
Liam’s presence lit up in his mind. “What did you just say?”
“Let’s hope we get this done before then.”
“No. How you said it before. ‘Only hope.’” He stood up and grabbed a sweater. “Jesus fucking Christ. I’m an idiot. I have to go to the shop. If your wolf isn’t okay with that, find a way to get it to be.”
Kade had no idea what was going on other than the fact that their bond was glittering with Liam’s excitement.
Liam tugged his sweater over his head and changed into pants so fast Kade couldn’t appreciate the show. He grabbed his bag and gestured for Kade to hurry.
“Come on. I will leave without you, even if it means stealing your damn car and driving myself.”
Kade dropped his sweats and pulled on jeans, but Liam wasn’t paying attention. He was too absorbed in checking something on his phone.
It was early morning, a hint of dawn on the eastern horizon as they exited the quiet house and got into his car.
Liam radiated determination.
For all that he was driving, Kade was just along for the ride, but his curiosity about what he’d discover when they got to the shop helped distract him from this fucked up situation. He’d have to face this revelation later, but for now, he focused on Liam’s impatience as they sped toward town.