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By the time Mark finished, Thomas’s face was a bloody mess and two of Mark’s fingers were broken, jutting out awkwardly. He fell to the side, chest heaving as he lay next to his brother. They stared at the ceiling as their bodies healed, cuts closing and bones resetting.
“I’ll never give him up,” Mark said quietly.
“I know,” Thomas said. “I know.”
They never told anyone about it. That moment.
So, yes. Standing in front of me again after years was something he treasured, no matter what my reaction had been.
And it went on for years, after. But it didn’t matter to him, not really. Oh, sure, it’d hurt sometimes, being so close and yet kept at such a distance. But he felt settled in ways he couldn’t explain. Maybe it was being back in Green Creek. Maybe it was having Joe with them again.
Or maybe it was the fact that his mate was only a few miles away on any given day.
Until he wasn’t.
The beast came, and Mark’s Alpha lay on a pyre in the woods, wolves howling their songs of mourning around them, and he’d thought about that day again. That day where he’d gone after his brother, the rage that had long simmered below the surface finally boiling over. Thomas should have done more. Fought harder. For Gordo. For him. For all of them. He was the Alpha of all, yes, but he was the Bennett Alpha too, and there was a Bennett wolf whose heart was broken, and he’d just taken it. Even when his nose had snapped, even when his cheek had shattered, he’d lain there and taken it. Mark had been shouting down at him, telling him it was his fault, it was all his fault, how could he do this, how could Thomas do this to him.
After they’d healed and wiped away the blood to hide the e
vidence from Elizabeth (who, in the end, would still be able to smell it and would glare at the both of them without saying a word), Thomas had said, “I’ll make this right. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to make this right.”
And I could feel it now. All of it. How ridiculously proud he was at this moment to have someone such as me as his mate, the love he felt, the dark, animalistic part of him reveling at his cock still up my ass, spunk dripping down the length. He wanted to roll in the scent of our sex that was thick in the room, covering us both in it until everyone knew what we’d done.
He was scared too. Oh Jesus Christ, was he scared. Scared that he’d finally gotten what he wanted and wouldn’t be good enough. Scared that he wasn’t brave enough or strong enough. Scared that he was going to lose all of this. That his tether and mate would disappear into the wolf when he turned Omega.
Because he didn’t know what to do.
How to stop it.
It was there still, low and vibrating. Even now he could feel it. It wasn’t as loud as it’d been before, but it was there.
And it terrified him.
This wolf.
This foolish, wonderful wolf.
I blinked slowly down at him. He stared up at me, a look of reverence on his face. My hand was still wrapped around his neck, though I wasn’t holding on as tight as I had been.
He reached up, pressing his fingers against my face. “I never thought—” His voice broke. He shook his head before he tried again. “I never thought it could be this way. Feel like this. You—I saw things. Gordo. You—I’m so sorry. About everything. All of it. I’m so sorry.”
I turned my face and kissed the palm of his hand. “You can’t leave me.”
“Never, never, never.”
“I won’t let you.”
“I know.”
“I’m too old for this shit.”
And my god, how he smiled up at me. “Move good for an old man.” He jerked his hips, causing my eyes to roll back in my head.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
“Yeah.” His fingers fell from my face to the bite mark between my neck and shoulder. It would scar, I knew. I’d seen Joe’s and Ox’s. Elizabeth’s, though hers wasn’t as pronounced as it’d once been.
Blood had trickled down from the wound onto my chest, bisecting the tattoo of the wolf and the raven. He ran his thumb down the wet stripe, smearing it into the ink.
