4
The lie tasted like ash on Scott's tongue before he even finished speaking it.
“I went to the healer,” he said, standing on the porch with the dawn light turning everything gray and cold.
“She needed to monitor me overnight. The first heat took more out of me than I realized.” He couldn't look at Fynn's face, so he looked at the step beside Fynn's feet. “I should have sent word. I'm sorry.”
Fynn didn't move from the porch step. His hands were still clasped between his knees, knuckles white.
The silence stretched long enough that Scott finally forced his gaze upward.
What he saw made his stomach drop. Fynn's eyes weren't just red-rimmed now.
They held something quiet and wounded that asked a question Fynn wasn't willing to voice.
"Okay," Fynn said. His voice was flat in a way Scott had never heard before. "I'm glad you're alright."
He stood up slowly, joints stiff from hours on the hard wood, and brushed past Scott without touching him.
Scott watched him walk down the path toward the main compound, and every step Fynn took made Scott's chest pull tight.
Scott's mouth opened. The words were right there, crowded behind his teeth. They didn't come out. They never did.
"Fynn, wait." Scott's voice cracked, and he took one step off the porch before his legs locked.
Fynn paused at the edge of the path, his back still turned.
The morning light caught the set of his shoulders, the way his hands hung at his sides.
Scott wanted to close the distance, to grab his arm, to make him understand.
His feet wouldn't move. "I didn't mean to make you worry. I just needed time."
Fynn turned his head just enough that Scott caught the profile of his face.
"You don't have to explain. I'm not owed anything.
" He paused, and Scott saw his jaw work.
"Take care of yourself, Scott." Then he walked on, and Scott stood on the porch with his hands shaking until Fynn disappeared around the bend.
The cabin door clicked shut behind him when he finally went back inside, and Scott pressed his forehead against the wood and breathed until the urge to scream passed.
Morning training was already underway by the time Scott gathered enough courage to leave his cabin.
The pack's warriors were gathered in the dirt yard behind the longhall, sparring in pairs under the watchful eye of the training master.
The air smelled of sweat and trampled grass and the faint metallic tang of practice blades.
Scott hadn't planned to stop. He'd only meant to walk past on his way to the kitchens, but Norrix spotted him from across the yard.
The older alpha said something to his sparring partner and crossed the distance with the easy, rolling stride of a wolf who'd never needed to prove anything to anyone.
Sweat gleamed on his bare chest, and his hair was pulled back from his face, making the scar through his eyebrow more prominent.
He looked at Scott with an intensity that made Scott's feet root themselves to the ground.
"You're walking," Norrix said, stopping close enough that Scott had to tilt his chin up. "That's good. After what happened in the longhall, I wasn't sure you'd be on your feet for a week."
"I'm fine," Scott said, the same lie he'd given Fynn, now worn smooth with use.
"You're not." Norrix's voice dropped, losing its usual teasing edge.
He stepped closer, close enough that Scott could feel the heat coming off his skin.
"I've been going out of my mind since the gathering.
Watching Rukheim carry you off. Knowing what was happening in that room.
" He leaned in, and Scott caught the scent of clean sweat and alpha musk and something raw that hadn't been there before.
"I've wanted to protect you since you were a clumsy kid tripping over your own feet. But you're not a kid anymore."
Scott's heart slammed against his ribs. His body reacted before his brain could catch up.
The nearness of an aroused alpha, the heat of Norrix's skin, the memory of what Rukheim's hands had done to him.
It all crashed together, and Scott's hips shifted forward without permission, his cock already stirring.
Norrix made a sound low in his throat and stepped closer still.
"Can I kiss you?" Norrix asked, his voice rough and low. His hand came up and hovered near Scott's jaw, not touching, waiting. "Tell me now if you don't want it."
Scott's mouth opened, but the word no didn't come. What came instead was a shallow, broken breath, and then a nod. "Yes."
The kiss was hungry and desperate. Norrix's mouth was rougher than Rukheim's had been, more urgent, and Scott's body answered with a surge of want that made his knees weak.
His hands grabbed at Norrix's bare shoulders, fingers slipping on sweat-slick skin.
His hips ground forward, seeking friction, and Norrix's thigh pressed between his legs in response.
The world narrowed to heat and pressure and the growing certainty that he was about to let this happen right here against the training yard wall.
Then panic hit.
Scott shoved Norrix back with both hands, hard enough that the alpha stumbled a step.
His breath came in ragged gasps, and his whole body was shaking.
"I can't. I'm sorry. I can't do this." The words tumbled out in a fractured rush, and he couldn't stop them.
"I don't know what's happening to me. I can't think straight. I'm sorry."
Norrix held his hands up, palms out, putting distance between them. His chest heaved, and his eyes were dark with want, but he didn't move closer. "Scott, stop. Breathe."
"I have to go." Scott was already backing away, his shoulder hitting the corner of the wall. "I can't. I'm sorry. I can't."
He fled before Norrix could say another word, and he didn't stop running until he reached the tree line behind his cabin, where he doubled over with his hands on his knees and tried to remember how to breathe.
His body was still half-hard and aching, and his lips still tingled from the kiss, and some vicious part of him whispered that he'd pushed Norrix away only because he was a coward, not because he didn't want it.
He stayed in the trees for a long while, waiting for his heart to slow and his thoughts to settle into something he could carry.
They didn't settle. They kept circling back to the same broken images: Fynn walking away without looking back, Norrix asking permission with a gentleness that made Scott's chest ache, Rukheim's hands on him in the dark.
He pressed his palms against the rough bark of a pine tree and focused on the sting of it until the world stopped spinning.
When he finally emerged from the tree line, the training yard was empty.
The sun had climbed higher, and the pack had moved on to the day's chores.
Scott walked to the longhall with his head down, avoiding the paths where people gathered.
He needed food. He needed sleep. He needed to figure out what he was going to say to Fynn the next time they crossed paths.
The communal dinner that evening was held in the longhall, the same longhall where Scott had presented three days ago.
He sat at the far end of a bench with his brother Troy on one side, a solid, silent presence who didn't ask questions but kept glancing at Scott with worried eyes.
Scott kept his gaze on his plate and tried to eat.
Hope arrived late, looking fresh and lovely in a green dress that matched the spring leaves outside.
She scanned the hall with a small smile, and Scott watched her path as she wove through the tables.
She didn't come toward him. She stopped beside Norrix, who was sitting with the other warriors near the fire, and leaned down to say something that made him look up.
She was holding a cup of mead. She offered it to him with both hands, her smile sweet and her posture perfect.
Norrix accepted it after a pause, and Hope settled onto the bench beside him, close enough that her shoulder brushed his arm.
She laughed at something he said. She touched his forearm lightly, her fingers trailing there for just a moment longer than necessary.
Norrix didn't pull away. He was polite. He nodded at whatever she was saying, and he didn't frown or move aside, because Hope was a good packmate and she'd never done anything to make him treat her otherwise.
She was kind and graceful and exactly the sort of omega an alpha like Norrix might eventually choose.
Scott's stomach twisted so violently he put his fork down.
He told himself it was because he still liked Hope.
That was the story he'd been clinging to for a year, the safe, normal story about a boy who wanted a girl and a simple future.
The jealousy burning in his chest had to be about her.
It had to be proof that he was still the person he'd always thought he was, that his body's response to Rukheim and Norrix was just biology and heat and nothing to do with what he actually wanted.
He watched Norrix lean slightly toward Hope to hear something she said, and the twisting in his gut got worse. He watched Hope's hand rest on Norrix's arm again, and his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached. He was staring. He knew he was staring, and he couldn't stop.
Hope glanced up then, her eyes meeting Scott's across the hall.
She smiled, soft and knowing, and tilted her head toward Norrix as if to say, look at us, isn't this nice.
Scott's fingers curled against the table's edge.
She held his gaze for a long moment before turning back to Norrix and saying something that made the alpha nod.
"Scott." Troy's voice was quiet at his side. "You okay?"
"Fine," Scott said, the word automatic now. "I'm fine."
Troy followed his gaze toward Norrix and Hope, and something flickered across his face. He didn't say anything else. He just put his hand on Scott's shoulder and squeezed, the same way he'd done at the gathering before everything fell apart.
Scott finally managed to look away from the firelit tableau of Norrix and Hope. His eyes swept across the hall, searching for an anchor, and found Fynn instead.
Fynn was standing near the entrance, a plate untouched in his hands.
He was looking directly at Scott. His expression wasn't angry or hurt or any of the things Scott might have expected.
It was worse. It was the look of someone watching something precious crack apart, helpless to stop it, already mourning the pieces.
Their eyes met. Scott's chest constricted. Fynn's mouth opened like he might say something, then closed. He set his plate down on the nearest table and walked out of the longhall into the spring night, and the space where he'd been standing felt larger than it should have.
Scott sat frozen on the bench, trapped between the sight of Norrix and Hope by the fire and the memory of Fynn's face, and he understood with horrible clarity that he was losing everything he'd ever cared about. He just didn't know how to stop it.