“We’re okay, but I need you. Is Jay…okay, too?”
Gideon pulls his door closed, and Leo starts the CR-V as Gideon points him in the right direction on the app, where tiny purple and yellow lights are blinking not twenty minutes out.
“He’s being his usual clingy self.”
“Hey! Don’t kick a man when he’s down,” Jay mutters weakly.
Luca sucks in a hitching breath, and Jay can hear Nix’s comforting baritone whispering, “We’re okay. We’re okay.”
“We will see you in twenty minutes, kittens.”
Sooner, if Leo can manage it.
“Will you stay with me, Gideon?”
“Always. So…how do you feel about another dog in the family?”
“Another dog?” Nix asks. “When did you have time to find another dog?”
Jay chuckles, because that was not a no.
He focuses on Gideon’s careful explanation of how Rowan is now a Wolf—sometimes without his express consent—but he’s exhausted and worried about seeing Nix and Luca after the debacle of a day.
He can’t believe they’ve been this lucky: Jay making it to the hospital in time, Nix and Luca escaping undetected by Carnell.
Jay’s starting to think it’s not luck at all, but more like divine intervention.
“Fucking cool,” Luca whistles, and then it turns into a whine on the next breath. “I want to be a wolf, too.”
It’s so typical of Luca that Jay has to laugh under his breath, thankful that his mates are happy and safe enough to be ridiculous.
“Is Rowan okay with it?” Nix asks after they’ve calmed down.
“Surprisingly…Or maybe, unsurprisingly. He’s always been…” Gideon breaks off, unsure how to express Rowan’s more animalistic tendencies.
“He’ll be happy to see you,” Leo says as he brings the CR-V to a stop outside the gas station, and Gideon finally hangs up. “We’re here.”
Jay can see Luca through his rear-door window, and he just lets the receiver drop so he can run toward Gideon in the passenger seat.
The second the SUV stops, Nix has the rear driver’s side door open—almost taking the thing off its hinges.
In the next instant, Jay has a lapful of growling omega, who’s blasting out a burnt-cookie-vanilla-baked-bread scent.
It’s a complete surprise when Nix sinks his fangs deep into Jay’s throat, high on the left side. The pleasure-pain makes Jay’s eyes roll back in his head, and his cock kicks hard in his pants for the second time that evening.
Holding Jay’s head still as he moves his jaw—biting and releasing—he’s claiming him again, making sure Jay can’t forgetwho he belongs to. Bearing down hard, he rides the ridge of Jay’s sudden hardness. His left hand trails down Jay’s chest, over the scrub top, and finally tugs at the waistband of his pants with unbridled desperation.
“Whoa, baby boy. Slow down for a minute.”
“No. Mine,” Nix growls, his teary eyes flashing blue; he’s got Jay’s blood on his chin, with their babies pressed hard against Jay’s belly.
Jay wants to ask what brought this on—but he knows. Of course he does. He’d heard it from every single one of his mates: Jay had died.
Nix must have felt their bond break, but surely he’d also felt it snap back into place.
His beloved finally gets his hardness out, then starts struggling with his own shorts. Jay can’t deny he would love to have Nix here as a reaffirmation of their bond, but Nix is crying in earnest now, and somehow, it seems less about pleasure and more about the cessation of pain.
“I’m sorry, baby. So sorry,” Jay whispers, trying to stay Nix’s desperate hands.
