49. Ivy
Ivy
Plague drives even more like a grandma than Thane, which is both expected and hilarious. It's even funnier that his other mate is Whiskey, of all people. The two alphas couldn't be any more opposite.
He's even wearing driving gloves. Black leather, elegant, gripping the wheel at exactly ten and two.
"You're going to tell me where we're going, right?" I ask from the passenger seat. I know we're going to a restaurant tonight because Whiskey could be heard from Antarctica, but that's all.
"You'll see when we arrive."
"That's not ominous at all."
"It's a surprise," he says, flicking his eyes to me for half a second before they're back on the road. "There's a difference."
"Thane said the same thing."
"Then it must be a reliable strategy."
I grin and lean back in my seat, tucking my legs under me.
He's not wearing the surgical mask tonight.
Just a charcoal wool overcoat over a sharp turtleneck, waves loose past his shoulders because the ponytail apparently didn't survive the final stages of getting ready, and his scent beneath his dark woodsy cologne.
He looks gorgeous.
He always looks gorgeous, but tonight there's something softer about him. Like the mask coming off isn't just literal.
The car slows as he pulls into a small lot beside a building with arched windows and a terrace covered in flowering vines, some of the vines sprawling up the stone and warm-toned brick.
"A Jordanian restaurant?" I ask before I can stop myself.
Plague sighs. "How did you know that?"
I cringe. "Um. Whiskey?"
Plague rolls his eyes. "Whiskey has the operational security of a bull with a megaphone," he says under his breath.
"He was bragging about you, if that helps?"
The tips of his ears redden. He kills the engine and gets out before I can say anything else, pulling his gloves off and pocketing them as he rounds the car to open my door.
I take his offered hand and let him help me out.
Inside, the restaurant is small and warm.
Intimate, really. There are only a handful of tables, but it's busy.
Tilework in deep blues and golds covers the walls in pretty geometric patterns that remind me of waves.
All I can think about is the scent of lamb and spices that immediately make my mouth water.
A woman behind the counter sees Plague and her face lights up. She says something rapid in Arabic, and Plague responds in kind, his voice dropping into a lower, warmer register I've never heard from him. Like the language itself softens something in him.
She leads us to a corner table with a candle in a blue glass holder.
Plague introduces me, and we exchange pleasantries while I try to focus on the smalltalk—I'm Ivy, I'm his mate, I promise I'm not famous, Whiskey is back at the pack house and yes, we'll be taking food back for him—and not get totally mentally lost in the smell of food coming from the nearby kitchen.
I don't really know what most of the items on the menu are, so we go with small plates.
In a frankly startling amount of time, the table is fucking covered in food.
Flatbreads, dips, rice with toasted nuts, grape leaves stuffed with delicious nutty filling, roasted eggplant, pomegranate seeds on half the dishes, and a lamb stew that smells so good my eyes nearly roll back.
"This is mansaf," Plague says, pointing to the lamb dish with reverence. "It's the national dish. Fermented yogurt, lamb, rice. If you don't like it, lie to me."
I take a bite.
I don't have to lie.
"Oh my god," I say with my mouth full, already reaching for more.
His lips curve, then break into a smile. Not even a little bit of a smirk this time. An actual smile, complete with a quick flash of teeth before he schools his features into neutrality again.
He's beautiful all the time, but holy shit.
I'm so glad he isn't wearing a surgical mask tonight.
We eat in comfortable silence for a while, me demolishing everything in front of me with zero shame and Plague eating like he learned table manners at gunpoint. But he watches me eat with an expression I can only describe as deeply satisfied, his eyes tracking my every movement.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask. I reserve the right not to answer," he says, but his lips quirk slightly.
Fair enough.
I tear off a piece of flatbread and drag it through the eggplant dip. "You're such a closed book," I say. "Can you tell me more about yourself? I know you, but I feel like I know next to nothing about you."
Plague sets his fork down carefully, lining it up parallel to his knife on the edge of the plate. Buying time.
"A closed book," he repeats dryly.
"Locked, sealed, and buried under six feet of concrete," I confirm.
His eyes hold mine across the candlelight.
"My real name is Hamsa," he says finally, his voice soft.
"Hamsa," I repeat softly. It's beautiful. It suits him perfectly.
"It means 'five' in Arabic." He touches the tips of his fingers together briefly, then drops his hand. "It's also a protective symbol. A hand with an eye in the palm. My mother chose it."
"She has good taste."
His jaw flexes again. "She did."
The past tense sits between us.
My heart patters, but I don't push. Parents are a… difficult subject for me, actually. I take another bite of mansaf to distract myself, letting the silence breathe, and I watch him decide whether to keep going. His hand is on his water glass now.
"I was born in Jordan," he says. "But we lived in Lebanon. I was the fifth child, hence my name. I had two older brothers, two older sisters. Then there was my mother. My father. Grandparents. We all lived together. My family was… large."
Was.
I set my fork down.
"There was a blast," he says.
His voice doesn't change. It's like he's reading off a chart. But his hand has gone still on the glass, and he's staring off into the middle distance.
"Most of my family died that day."
The restaurant noise seems to recede around us. The clinking of glasses, the murmured conversations and laughter, the soft music piping from the corner speakers. All of it muffled, as if someone turned the volume down on the world.
"Three survived," Plague continues, meeting my eyes again. "My mother. My oldest brother. And me."
His hand moves to his chest, over the place where I know the scar over his heart is.
"Shrapnel lodged near my heart. They couldn't do much for me in Lebanon." His lips thin. "We came to the States. Medical sponsorship."
I reach across the table.
He looks at my outstretched hand and pauses. But he takes it.
"Your mother?" I ask gently.
"She never recovered." His thumb brushes over my knuckles.
"She lost everyone except two sons in a single bloody moment.
She carried us across an ocean and she kept us alive, and then…
" He exhales through his nose. "She died a few years later.
I think she was just done, like her mother and her grandmother before her.
She'd used up everything she had getting us to safety. "
My throat aches.
"Azhar and I had nothing," he continues. "No money, no family left, no connections. But we both ended up excelling at hockey. It was the only path to higher education. Scholarships." He smiles softly. "I used mine to start pre-med."
"And you almost became a doctor."
"Almost." He lets out a breathy laugh. "I nearly made it through medical school before I realized I didn't have the temperament."
"What do you mean?"
His mouth twists. "A good healer needs detachment.
I had plenty of that. I went into it thinking I was made for it.
What I didn't have was…" He considers. "Compassion under pressure.
I don't have that. When someone was suffering in front of me, I didn't feel the urge to comfort them.
I felt the urge to identify the source of the suffering and stop it. "
And I know exactly what he means.
I've watched him in the pack.
Namely, I've watched him protect me. Fiercely. And now Wraith.
"What about Azhar?" I ask.
His hand tightens around mine.
"Azhar stayed in hockey. He's good. Really fucking good, actually." Plague's gaze drifts to the tilework on the wall behind me. "He changed his name, though. It's Azarel now. He wanted to leave the past behind. Including me."
"Including you?"
"We had a… falling out." His voice is flat.
"A significant one. I won't go into details.
It ended with a fight, and not the metaphorical kind.
It was part of why I dropped out. We haven't spoken since, even though we ended up on the same path.
" He blows a puff of air through his nose. "We've even played against each other."
I watch his face for cracks.
There is one, but barely. A flicker in the set of his brow, a slight tension in his jaw that comes and goes.
"Would you like to see them?" he asks me suddenly. "My family?"
"Yes. Please. I'd love to," I murmur.
He pulls his hand from mine and reaches into the inner pocket of his coat hanging on the back of his chair.
He produces a thin black leather wallet, opens it, and pulls a small photo from behind his ID.
The right edge is damaged, blackened and curling where fire ate into it, consuming the corner and creeping inward.
He sets it on the table between us and turns it so I can see.
A beautiful family is gathered on a stone terrace overlooking a city that spills down a hillside in cascading white and tan, and the sky behind them is the deep, impossible blue of a Mediterranean summer.
I find Plague immediately.
He's tiny. Maybe four, five years old, smiling wide, perched on the hip of a woman with his exact same light eyes, a soft patterned fabric framing her lined face.
She's laughing at something off-camera, head thrown back, teeth flashing.
Behind her stands a man with a tired face and kind eyes, one hand resting on the shoulder of a tall older boy with broad shoulders on a lanky frame who has to be Azhar.
There's another boy, too, stockier and smiling the widest.
A family caught in the middle of being alive.