“JORDY!?” CHESTER RUSHEDup to us, his eyes full of horror and confusion.
“Dad?” Jordy’s weak voice was similarly confused, his fingers tightening into the front of my shirt.
“Where the hell were you!?” He demanded. Guilt bloomed in my guts, and I wanted to throw up. I was definitely not ready to be having this confrontation yet. “What is going on? Why haven’t you been answering my calls!? What have the two of you been doing!?”
Don’t say fucking. Don’t say fucking,I silently begged the unpredictable person in my arms. It was just the kind of blunt and straight-forward thing he’d say when he didn’t feel like approaching a situation with any kind of tact or nuance. Or when he wanted to embarrass me.
“My phone broke when I got attacked,” he responded, and to my relief he’d somehow managed to inject that pitiful, feel-bad-for-me note into his voice that always prevented him from facing any real trouble or consequences no matter what mistake he’d made. “Don’t freak out, we can explain everything. But I need my insulin first, so…”
“Damn right you need your insulin!” Chester said, waving his phone screen at us. The tone in his voice was already starting to lose the heat in it, even though hearing him use the worddamnwas rarer than seeing a comet shoot across the night sky. There was a big red flashing warning on his phone screen, which I was pretty sure was probably some indicator for Jordy’s whacked outglucose levels. And I knew the app had a tracking system on it too, so even though Jordy’s phone hadn’t alerted us or been able to take his calls, he’d at least been able to track our location. “But I’m so glad you’re okay. The police explained what happened.”
“I’m fine now,” Jordy assured him. “Can you get my insulin out of Kieran’s truck? It’s in my overnight bag.”
“I’ll get it,” I said quickly, but when I made a move to put him down onto his feet, he let out a distressed little whine and clutched onto my chest.
“Don’t put me down,” he said, the words dripping with an obvious pout. “I don’t feel good.”
The memory of what he’d said to me at my tattoo shop rang in my head loud and clear. When he didn’t feel good, he wanted me. That compulsion would probably only intensify now that we were officially mated. I felt exposed, but the knowledge that being held by me could bring him even a tiny bit of comfort had me hugging him against me just a tiny bit tighter.
At his very firm and clear request, Chester and I locked eyes, both apprehensive for different reasons. As we were both equally terrible perpetrators of giving in to whatever Jordy wanted at all times, it felt imperative to agree and keep him in my arms. But it was an odd thing for him to ask for, and everyone in the conversation knew that.
“I brought some with me,” Chester said quickly, digging into his pocket to extract one of the little insulin coolers that Jordy usually carted around with him. “I grabbed it from home. Wait,” he said suddenly, shaking his head, then giving us an odd look. “What do you need an overnight bag for?”
When my mouth went so dry my tongue felt like a block of wood in it, I couldn’t even stutter out a lie or any sound at all.
“Can we talk about this at home?” Jordy asked, as he unzipped the case and took out an insulin pen. “It’s kind of personal.”
“Personal?” Chester echoed. “I don’t understand a thing that’s going on here, and both of you have me totally confused. I need some answers!” He demanded, but even that declaration wasn’t as authoritarian as it could have been. He trusted us, even in the bizarre situation he’d found us in. At least, for now. “What exactly happened here?”
Jordy and I glanced at each other, our eyes meeting for just a brief moment of emotional intimacy and shared misery for what we were about to have to do. Maybe it was better to focus on the Andrew part of it first.
As he went through the process of calibrating the pen and injecting himself in the stomach, Jordy began a hurried explanation of the situation with Andrew, first how he knew him from the center, and then how I’d intervened at the party, and then the texts and the charity auction. When he finally got to the point where the psycho had cornered him in the office, Chester interrupted.
“Did he cut you?” He asked, squinting and reaching out. I realized just a second too late what he’d been drawn to, the blood just starting to seep through the collar of Jordy’s shirt. And it wasn’t like I could have stopped him anyway, as my hands were both occupied, since Jordy still didn’t seem to want me to put him down. But watching Chester peel back the cloth to reveal my bite mark was like a scene from a horror movie.
It looked red and painful, and I felt the stinging jolt of instinct to close my mouth over it and lap up the blood again, but I was frozen in place. It was more than obvious what it was. Even betas knew what mate marks looked like.
“This is…” Chester paused, his wide eyes darting between the mark and Jordy’s face several times before he went on. “W-whatisthis!?”
Jordy jerked his shoulder away, bringing one of his hands up to cover the little spot of blood on his shirt. “I said we needto talk about it at home, okay? Shouldn’t you be more worried about the fact that I could havedied?”
“I-” Chester visibly balked at the non-explanation. “Of course I’m glad you’re okay, Jordy, but-”
“Then you can thank Kieran for that, since he’s the one who stepped in and stopped everything.”
“Kieran,” he repeated, like my name was a word in a new language he’d only just discovered existed.
It was true he’d barely looked at me or acknowledged me since running up to us, because he’d been so concerned about Jordy. But I could tell the wheels in his head were spinning, putting together the details he knew and filling in the blanks of what he didn’t. Not that he had to think very hard. I’d carried his son out of a room we’d been alone in, and now he had a mate mark carved into his omega gland. So fresh it was still fucking bleeding. It didn’t take a detective to solve this mystery.
“Did you… do this to him?” He finally asked, his eyes boring into mine with the force of a drill bit.
It felt like my throat was coated in razor blades when I swallowed. “I… I didn’t hurt him,” I stuttered out. I wasn’t sure why those were the first words my brain let come out of my mouth, but part of me must have felt like if that part was true, then the rest wouldn’t be so bad. “I mean, he… we… We had to.”
I knew I sounded like a moron, and my idiotic sentence fragments weren’t doing anything in terms of an explanation, but before he could probe further, the woman from the charity auction emerged from around a corner and rushed up to us, a police officer at her side.
“Oh my god, Jordy,” she breathed out his name, with her voice full of relief and exhaustion. I didn’t even want to think about what might have been going on in her head, and part of me was worried she’d blame us for Andrew getting hurt. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” he assured her, just like he’d assured Chester, who was still staring a hole into the side of my head as I resolutely kept my gaze averted from him. “Where’s Andrew?”
