Chapter 37
Temporary or Permanent?
NATHAN
“I’m sorry.”
Fifth time I’ve said that? Sixth?
True, I usually offer apologies easily, but this time, there’s more at work. No matter how many times uttered, the words remain true, yet incapable of encompassing the whole of my regrets.
Reassurance warms the bond tying me to Dan, alternating between a trickle and a flood because he’s still figuring out how our connection works. Only three or four hours—I’m a bit blurry on time—have passed since I bit him. The bleeding has stopped, but the mark remains red and swollen.
The cold doesn’t help. We’re side by side in his zipzap, rattling through the streets between my home and Corin and Johanna’s.
The plan is for the four of us to spend the weekend together figuring out what to make of the situation.
The backseat now holds Dan’s overnight bag by virtue of a side trip to his home while I was packing mine, which sits next to his—along with an additional bag containing cat food and medications, an unopened bag of litter, and a clean litter box in the footwell below.
In their crates, my cats share the remainder of the backseat, making their unhappiness known with pitiful meows.
A few assorted snowflakes dust the bushes and yards we pass, but have yet to accumulate on the street.
They dance about thanks to wind gusts that whine through cracks along the windows, filling the vehicle with a bitter chill.
The street lamps blink on as twilight combines with snow to make a magical scene straight out of a movie.
I huddle in my coat and hat. Dan does likewise, but his coat only covers his left side and right shoulder, sleeve loose behind him. His right shirt sleeve is rolled up to let the mark breathe.
I touch the skin just below. “I need to tend that.” Need to lick the marks, nurse them, share the healing properties of alpha saliva so the bite will heal into a clean, glowing scar.
In return for his reassurance, I send care and concern through our bond as best I can. It’s been ages since I had a new bond. The previous were slightly different from each other, as this is from them, yet this feels already strong and resilient.
For now.
Half of my work deals with the aftermath of bonding—not the happy kind.
Most of the differences between alpha, beta, and omega physiology make a certain degree of scientific sense. Bonds don’t. They’re one of the few things nearly everyone agrees on as magic.
Mating bonds connect disparate people, allowing them to share emotions and read their mates better, but with certain caveats: when one tunes into another through a bond, one can learn what they’re feeling—share in it—yet it lacks context, leading to assumptions about the source of the emotion, usually with high odds of being wrong.
Further, with practice, mates can learn to block the bond wholly or in part—and to hide their emotions.
After all, why else would my law practice see so many clients seeking to dissolve them?
Yet that undersells bonds’ power. The mere existence of the new connection between Dan and me is electrifying. It changes all manner of things. I’m a remade man with a mate, however temporary. Bonding with Dan has grounded me, forcing me to face how untethered I’ve been these last weeks and months.
That’s why I keep apologizing.
To Johanna, for my alpha taking over and trying to bond her.
Corin, for the same.
A different apology goes to my assistant Zan, who now has the onerous job of clearing my calendar for the remainder of the day, which basically means apologizing profusely to the one client on my schedule—who is, unfortunately, easily offended.
I’ll add a bonus to Zan’s next paycheck, yet it’s only proper to extend my regrets for their having to deal with burden.
Most of all, I apologize to Dan.
Thing is, I’m not actually sorry. I regret my alpha taking over and setting everything in motion, but we’re in agreement about wanting Johanna as a mate. Of course, that now extends to Corin, if not quite as readily—and, more importantly, to Dan.
If anything, I’m happy with this bond and its timing. My connection with Dan serves as a revelation, a comfort, an anchor beating next to my heart, regularly flooding me with reassurance that, where there’s life, there’s room for mistakes, apologies, and connection.
No wonder a forest composes the base notes of his scent. He’s a tree, grown straight and strong, capable of withstanding the winds of fate. Every breath brings that to me, overriding the lingering funk in the zipzap.
“It’s not permanent,” I say as we turn onto Johanna and Corin’s street, as much to remind myself as him. “The bond will fade within a month or two.”
“Unless I bite you back. I understand.” We stop at a corner while a tram crosses. He reaches back to pat the cat carriers, earning a hiss from Fluffy. “Why do you keep reminding yourself?”
“Guilt.” I like the look of my mark on his arm too much, and the fact that his scent now carries a faint hint of mine—probably likewise. Any alpha who comes near enough will know he has a mate.
That part of the bond is familiar and welcome—I carried traces of my mates wherever I went.
“Is that all?” he asks as we start up again.
“Isn’t it enough?” I can’t tell if he senses my relief at having a bond again.
“Did you listen when I explained to Corin and Johanna why I ensured you bit me rather than her?” A rill of his frustration hits me.
“Yes.”
“But did you really take it in?”
The answer must be obvious. Shame and my own frustration surely seep across the bond. Why can’t he just accept my apologies so we can move on?
“I could have held your arms and kept you away from Johanna without getting bit. Instead, I chose to let you bite me.”
Again we stop as rush hour trams take priority in the main lanes.
He runs his fingers across the mark, a caress that echoes deep in me.
“I bear as much responsibility as you. I could be apologizing for taking advantage of your moment of weakness to get a taste of what bonding with an alpha might offer me.”
For the umpteenth time, I drink in the man who piqued my interest—if against my wishes, since I’d come to the meeting room to focus on Johanna—who keeps surprising me, who’s now tied to me closer than anyone since my lost loves.
Whose midnight-forest aroma lingered in my house after he left last night, disturbing my sleep.
“You’re too honest for your own good,” I say. My alpha mostly rests now, after the earlier exertions, but rouses enough to agree, flooding me with a desire to protect him against a world that rarely rewards honesty.
“Perhaps.” He grins, evidently sensing my alpha’s interest across the bond. “Strikes me, you rather like it.”
“As long as you don’t expect the same from me,” I reply. Amusement trickles back along the bond. We’re sharing bits of everything back and forth. He’s new to bonding, and I’m out of practice with blocking fleeting feelings.
It’s just so damn good to be connected to another person again.
“You mean it isn’t catching, after all?” Another rush of mirth, this time with a teasing slant.
“Not yet.” As we pass Johanna and Corin’s house, in search of a parking spot, I wag a finger at him. “And if you’re ever involved in a court case, don’t let me catch you volunteering information. Tell the truth—always—but only answer the exact question you’re asked.”
“I’ll be sure to remember that if it ever happens.
” Dan slips the zipzap into a small rectangular space and shuts it off.
What little heat seeped through the vents instantly vanishes, and the already-cold space gets chillier.
The cats’ meows seem louder without the rattle of the tires over pavement half-drowning them out.
Time to get out—but leaving the zipzap means facing Johanna and Corin again.
It was bad enough in the first flush of embarrassment and guilt after my rational self regained control.
Now, I’ve had time to remember more of what my alpha did, what it sought to do.
I cringe at the memory of Johanna retreating down the hall, much less the endless minutes spent licking and sucking her neck—though, thankfully I managed not to bite.
Still not sure how my rational self kept my alpha from that.
“Well? Shall we go in?” Dan asks.
I’m not a coward. I will face my sins. Though waiting a little longer beforehand would be nice.
“What’s wrong?” Dan turns to face me, goosebumps evident on his bare skin around the bite. Curiosity and concern trickle across the bond, along with a touch of impatience.
“I came to court Johanna earlier and took a giant step forward, only for my alpha to take two giant steps back.” I rub my arms, toes curling against the cold.
“How so?”
I swivel to mirror his posture. “You saw what I did, what I tried to do.”
“For a successful divorce and dissolution lawyer, you’re doing a lousy job of figuring out people’s motives.” Dan shakes his head, and more mirth mixes with impatience to thrill me. “Maybe you’re better at it when you’re not intimately involved?”
The suggestion stings, but he’s right enough; I’m relying on instincts more than logic at the moment, and my instincts swing like a pendulum between elation and despair.
Perhaps I need an external perspective, and Dan has proven capable of insight, even as he avoids lies and half-truths. “What do you see to give me hope?”
“Compare everything that could have happened—and didn’t—to what did.
” Dan starts ticking options off on his fingers.
“Johanna could’ve locked herself in a bathroom and called for help from the Alpha Center or local peacekeeping station or waited for Corin and me.
Instead, she stayed with you and gave you at least one blowjob while waiting. ”
All true. Heat floods my body at memory of her mouth on me.
“At which point, I offered her several options.” Dan chuckles.
“You evidently didn’t listen, lost in your alpha, but we could’ve tied you up and waited until your rut wore off.
Or contacted a private doctor to call in a suppressor prescription.
Instead, Johanna gave you another blowjob and let Corin knot her to help bring you out.
Then, she and Corin invited us to come back and spend the weekend—two whole days and nights—with them figuring out where to go from here.
To me, that shows she cares about you, even if she’s not ready for you to bite her. ”
How much of the hope that follows the earlier warmth is mine versus his? Hope and happiness chase each other back and forth across the bond, mine feeding his feeding mine.
“So, ready to go in and face them?” he asks.
Turning, I frame his face with my cool hands.
The tips of my fingers brush his hair, thumbs curving along his jawline.
Meeting his gaze, I open the bond between us to its fullest extent and lean in close enough to taste the forest on his exhaled breaths.
“I want you, as well as Johanna. All of me does.”
We both lean forward, mouths meeting and tongues dueling. His taste fires my blood, but the chill ensures that my body declines to respond. That, and my cock is already tired from two or more orgasms—there might have been another before Dan and Corin arrived.
“What about Corin?” Dan’s words carry an arch tone, while the humor flowing from him mixes with a fair amount of worry.
“Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have an alpha stronger than me around.” I bow my head, letting some of my reluctant admiration and even attraction seep back to Dan. “Though, if my Renee were still with us, I’d bow to her before him.”
Before he can respond, loud and demanding meows interrupt from the back seat. We laugh, then start gathering bags, bins, and cats for the trek back to the house.