3. Chapter 3
Roman held Lance’s gaze and tried to make sense of the anger in eyes that a moment ago had held nothing but warmth. Even Lance’s mouth had gone tight, the easy smile gone. “I don’t understand.”
“Then think back,” Lance snapped.
The good times came back first, the trouble they’d gotten into.
Then the rest of it, the parts he’d let himself forget.
The jeers and the snide remarks. The spitting.
The cuffs to the head he’d tried to shield Lance from.
He’d even envied Lance once, the freedom of living out in the stable instead of the main house, skipping the pack meals and the gatherings.
He’d been a boy. He’d thought it was luck.
Standing here now, he understood there had been nothing lucky in any of it.
None of it had been freedom. None of it had been a choice.
“I forgot,” he said, barely a whisper. “How could I forget?”
The silence stretched between them.
The truth came together fragment by fragment, and his stomach turned over as it did.
“You didn’t leave me,” he said slowly. “You were," he paused, then practically spat the word, "exiled.
" Memories of all the ways Lance had been slighted by the pack carded through his mind, making sense only now. "Because you’re a half-blood.”
Somewhere outside, gravel crunched and voices carried toward them, drawing closer by the second. Both their heads came up at once. Roman caught Lance’s wrist and pulled him deeper into the stable. “Back exit, you remember it. You up for a run? And a softer bed than hay?”
“I remember. But this could be dangerous for you, your reputation."
"I like to live dangerously, Rat.” Outside, Roman went to a favorite tree and stripped without hesitation, dropping his clothes in the grass.
Lance mirrored him, peeling off his shirt and laying it open on the ground.
Roman’s eyes roved over Lance’s lean, hard body. “Oh God.” He gritted his teeth against the howl that wanted out.
“What, praying you can keep up with me?” Lance grinned and shucked his pants and shorts, toed off his moccasins, and rolled all of his clothes into a tight packet, using his belt as straps for the satchel that he slung around his neck.
“I don’t usually have spare clothes to lose, or anyone to gather them for me if I leave them behind. ” He shrugged.
“Ah... my cottage near Eagle Point?” was about all Roman got out before he shifted into wolf form and tore into the woods, Lance on his heels.
***
Roman pulled on the fresh clothes waiting, folded on the porch table.
Lance got his pants back on, then picked bits of hay from his shirt before finally pulling it on. Every jab of straw reminded him how far he’d fallen from the world Roman lived in. The cottage was a world away from the corners of the earth he’d been forced to call home.
Inside, he let out a quiet whistle. Nobody he knew would call this a cottage.
Nothing was overdone, but quiet money showed everywhere.
The rich oil painting of a pack of wolves running in a shadowed forest sat above a deep leather couch, which faced a huge flat-screen TV.
The coffee table was an elaborated saltwater fish tank.
Beside the TV was the tallest amethyst cathedral Lance had ever seen.
All of it seemed to mock the bare-bones life he’d scraped together.
He crossed the dark wood floor and gave the thick white fur rug by the fireplace a long look. Curl up on that and you’d never want to get up again. “Nice place for a lone wolf. When did they finally let you have your own?”
“When I became a productive member of the pack.” Roman rolled his eyes. “And threatened to stay celibate the rest of my life.” His grin faded.
Lance sank onto the edge of Roman’s couch, still loose-limbed and wrung out from the run.
He kept his eyes moving so they wouldn’t settle.
Off the leather under him, worn soft as a glove.
Off the warm lamplight, the painting that probably belonged in a museum.
Soft had a way of ruining you. You sank into it, got used to it, and then it was gone and took a piece of you with it.
He’d learned not to touch it. Not to want it.
“You’re bleeding,” Roman said.
“I’m not.”
“Your arm.” Roman crossed the room and went down on one knee in front of him.
A prince, kneeling, to the half-blood who used to muck his brother’s stalls.
It was backwards, and it pulled something tight in Lance’s chest. He nearly told him to get up.
A thin red line ran down his forearm where a branch had caught him somewhere in the dark.
He hadn’t felt it. Half-bloods healed slowly, slower than any full-blood, and a scratch like this would still be with him in a week.
He felt it now, with Roman’s thumb bracketing the cut.
His breath grew shallow. He didn’t let himself look at why.
“It’s nothing. I’ve had worse.”
“Sit still.” Roman came back with a first-aid kit, a real one, stocked and ordered. Lance couldn’t remember the last time he’d cleaned a cut with anything but spit and the hem of his own shirt.
Roman worked the antiseptic in with a care that was frankly ridiculous for the size of the wound. It stung. Lance held still and let him, eyes fixed on the top of the alpha’s bent head so he wouldn’t have to do anything about how close the man was.
“There,” Roman said, but didn’t let go.
Instead, his hand moved instead, up from the cut to Lance’s shoulder, slow, like he had every right, and then around, and Lance felt the exact second Roman’s fingers found the first ridge across his back through the thin shirt and went still.
Neither of them breathed.
“Don’t,” Lance said. It came out rougher than he meant it to.
Roman didn’t pull away. He didn’t paw at the scars or make the soft, horrified sound people made.
He spread his palm flat over the worst of them, warm, and lifted his head, and then they were looking at each other from a hand’s width apart.
The air grew tight and searing warm between them.
Roman’s nostrils flared, the way a wolf pulls in a scent he wants, and heat bloomed low in Lance’s gut.
Roman’s gaze dropped to his mouth and came back up.
Lance’s pulse was going hard enough that an alpha this close could feel it off his skin, and for a second he was sure he was about to be kissed. Worse, he was sure he’d let it happen.
“Who,” Roman said finally, his hand still where it was. “Who did this to you?”
“Not the ‘nats, if that’s what you’re thinking.
A couple of years after... after here, a pack took me in to look after their horses and muck the stables.
Guess they decided I was getting too friendly with one of their favorites.
They beat the hell out of me, wanted me gone to some other territory.
The scars are from that. Ironically, some humans found me and got me to a hospital, then into foster care for a while.
It wasn’t bad. Got schooling. Got treated like, like you treated me.
Like I wasn’t lower than scum. Hell, I even learned to ride a motorcycle.
Piece of crap bike, but it was mine.” He broke into a grin at the memory.
“That’s a long time ago, you were what, eight, ten? You’re twenty-two. Those scars should have healed.”
“Half-blood, remember? When you’ve been weak, or starved, it goes even slower. Practically human-slow.” He paused. “Speaking of food, I don’t suppose you could spare a meal? An egg, some cheese, anything?”
“I’m sorry. For what they did to you after here, and that you had to leave at all.” His jaw was tight, his voice level and sure. “I made you a promise once. I’d have made my pack let you come to school with me. Gotten you clear once I had the standing to. I meant it then. I still do.”
For a second the years fell away and he was back in the stable, poring over Roman’s homework while the young prince painted a brighter world for him, and he’d clung to every word, a kid with a dark birthright and no future.
And here that prince was again. “I believe you. Your pack didn’t like you looking out for me, that’s all.
There’s nothing to be sorry for, Roman. You were the one light in a dark world for me.
” Lance let a real smile through, the first in a long time.
***
“Put your clothes in the wash and take whatever you want from my closet.” Roman waved a hand. “Laundry and bedrooms are through there. I can do way better than just an egg.”
The second Lance was out of sight, the rage broke.
Roman swept his arm across the mantle and sent every framed photo, every careful little memento crashing to the floor.
Glass burst against the hardwood. He stood over the wreck with his hands shaking and his vision going gold at the edges, the wolf clawing up the inside of his throat, wanting blood, wanting every wolf who’d driven a child out into the dark and then lied to a grieving boy about it for fifteen years.
His own parents. Merritt. All of them. He dug his nails into his palms and breathed through it, because the one thing he would not do was let Lance walk back in and see what it was doing to him.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, low and ragged, to the broken glass.
***
It felt good to be clean after days of running.
He’d put on a soft blue shirt shot through with lighter blues and a pair of sweatpants without a single hole in them, the flannel more luxury than any defense against the cold.
The smell of seasoned meat on the grill pulled him out to the backyard, where a well-kept garden sat in the moonlight, full of little white flowers in bloom.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Roman said, flipping a steak that hissed over the flames.