Matt huffed and glanced sideways at him. “I thought I heard something, a twig snap, a footstep. I couldn’t place what. Cillian heard it, too. Then I felt it—we were prey. It’s a distinct sensation I’ve learned to listen to ever since I’ve been around shifters. So I was trying to convince Mom and Dad that we needed to go back, like I’d been trying to do for hours,” he added with a look at Rivvie. “Mom agreed, but Dad was being stubborn, then he was shot with the arrow, and Rivvie killed the attacker.” Matt shrugged. “That’s it.”
“Was he—or she—like the ones who attacked our pack?” Valen asked Rivvie.
Rivvie clenched his hands into fists. “Yes, I think so.” He scowled. “Or maybe not. What do we know about these hu—people? They could be part of a huge village, or he—and it was a man—could be a rogue killer. He was, er…aroused by what he was doing.” Rivvie blushed.
Several gasps followed that pronouncement.
“Aroused?” Valen asked.
Rivvie gave a clipped nod. “It was impossible to miss in profile.”
“Fuck,” Matt spat out. “He was getting off on trying to kill my father?”
“It’s more likely it was the act of murdering someone in general, not specifically Walter,” Valen offered, not that it helped, as far as he could tell. “We need to hurry up and get to shelter. There could be more of them out there.”
He hated to turn tail and run, but with Walter injured and night completely on them, it was the best option.
Anita walked beside him, touching Walter constantly in some small way or another. He waited until he saw her looking at him. “I expected more from you and Walter,” he chastised. “We were supposed to be working on building a pack together.”
“It was hard for us, stepping back and ceding control, even if it was to be shared,” Anita said. “Then it was suddenly easy, like a burden had been lifted, and we were free from the responsibilities we’d always had. Everyone’s lives didn’t depend on us anymore, and we were careless. We took advantage, and I’m sorry. As for us leaving, think of how scared you were when you saw Aaron going through that. How were we to react, knowing Matthew is sexually active with Rivvie?”
Matthew’s choking sound must have meant he’d heard at least the last part of that.
Rivvie hadn’t spoken a word to Matthew, despite his claims that he’d left only to try to bring everyone else back. Something was going on in Rivvie’s mind and it wasn’t pleasant. Valen knew that much by the silence Rivvie had kept.
“We don’t know how it happened to Aaron,” Valen said finally. “Sex almost certainly has to be a part of it, but we aren’t the only ones having sex. I mean, there are others from the village who’ve had sex with shifters.” There was no other way to explain it. “There hasn’t been a sudden surge in humans turning into shifters. Just one.” He smiled at Aaron, who beamed back at him.
“It didn’t hurt, either, Mom,” Aaron explained. “Inside I felt really amazing. I think my body did something to make sure the pain didn’t escape into me. Everything was fine. I could hear Valen. I wasn’t out of my mind. Just, kind of out of my body.”
Anita didn’t look convinced, however, she didn’t argue. “There could be more it happens to. Sex—maybe it has to be a lot of sex. Something in a shifter’s semen, perhaps.”
“Mom!” Aaron and Matt groaned in unison.
Anita waved them off and continued to propose scenarios and theories for Aaron’s transformation, including a bullshit one that being a shifter was contagious.
Valen had long since had his fill of it all by the time they reached the caves where the pack was sleeping. Dawn wasn’t far off, and he was tired to his soul, physically and mentally.
“Who has the most experience with wounds since Lanaka isn’t here?” Valen asked.
“Mom does.” Rivvie trotted over to where Beal was watching them, her yellow eyes gleaming with interest. She thumped her tail a few times as Rivvie spoke to her, then she shifted.
“She’s done hating us?” Anita asked, as Valen settled Walter on the ground beneath a stone overhang.
Valen bit back his retort to Anita, because asking if she and Walter were done being idiots wouldn’t help anything.
And he understood their fear, when he thought about it. He’d never been as terrified of anything in his life as he had been watching Aaron in the throes of one convulsion after another. It was impossible to stay angry, although he suspected he should.
Then again, Anita had apologized, and she seemed eager to make amends, judging by how she was flitting around Beal, talking animatedly.
Walter was conscious and trying to get out of having his wound cleaned. Valen put Rivvie on guard, and told him to get whatever people to assist that he thought would do the job right.
After that, Valen let Aaron fuss a little over his father, then he steered Aaron to their own small, temporary den.
“What do you think is happening?” Aaron asked once they were alone. “Are we in danger of being attacked?”
“I’m going to have to say we are. Better to be cautious than dead. I don’t know why it seems the whole world has gone off course in the past months,” Valen said. “I love you and would never change meeting you as I did, but even that was unheard of. So there was the first strange thing, then the marauders, and combining our people, the weather…” His mind drifted on all the change over the past months, then to the loss off his childhood lands, the security of living on the pack lands he’d always coveted. “Damn it.”
“There has been a lot of variables changed lately,” Aaron admitted. “Is it caused by any one thing? I’m not a philosopher and I’m not particularly well-learned on things of this nature. Does one affect the other? Is it snowballing, each event adding weight to the changes as they, and we, careen wildly toward gods knows what? Or it is all chaos? Shit happens, as I’ve heard said before.”
“I wish I had the answers. All I know is, everything is changing around us, and I’m not sure it’s a good thing.” He winced as it dawned on him what he’d said and how it could be misconstrued. “I don’t mean you being a shifter. I won’t lie and say that doesn’t thrill me. We’re hardier and our lifespans are longer than a human’s. I’m going to believe you have those same characteristics. Everything else, I doubt. And I lost—
we
lost—what I’d tried so hard to keep.”
“You didn’t lose the pack, Valen,” Aaron said urgently, leaning into him. “You saved them. The land? Yes, that may be gone. The world itself is changing, and it may be temporary, or it might be permanent. But it’s just soil. It isn’t the pack. It’s a place, and we can move on to a new one. That doesn’t mean you have to forget your past, nor do you have to let the pack forget it. Talk about your father, and the alphas before him. Pass down tales and truths alike, and build the pack’s past up so that none will forget it. As for changes, there
have
been a lot. Like trying to incorporate the villagers into the pack?” Aaron asked. He placed a hand on Valen’s chest. “You did the right thing there. They’d have died from starvation or been slaughtered by another band of sick bastards. In the animal kingdom, predators prey on the weak.
We
were the weak ones, Val. My former village, the people who lived in it. You saved them—and me—from that fate. Now we’ve got the possibility of becoming something better than we were before. How is that a bad thing?”
Valen wished he had the answer for that. All he did know was that a world without humans would be as wrong as a world without shifters, and he might have just started the two species on a spiral that could result in something more final than the End Times.
“I know you’re right about the pack and them surviving. We lost no one in the storm, which is miraculous, considering what happened. But I can’t just—” Valen sighed heavily, closing his eyes. “It’s like losing a loved one and that’s stupid, considering I
have
lost loved ones before, but the loss of the pack lands? It hurts.”
“Of course it does.” Aaron caressed his cheeks then gently kissed him. “Of course it does,” he repeated. “You’ll process the grief, and the world is scary again, like when you were turned out to find your own pack. You’re right back in that situation, except it’s even more frightening now because of everything that’s happened. But I know this—” Aaron kissed him again, this time lingering for a moment, his lips pressed to Valen’s. “I know that you are an alpha through and through. You’ll bring this pack home, wherever that may be, and we’ll be taken care of, protected. You haven’t failed us. You haven’t failed your father. You haven’t failed yourself.”
Valen hoped Aaron was right. Aaron wasn’t given to spouting pretty words just for the sake of someone’s ego. “Thank you,” he whispered, then he kissed Aaron back, a little less gently than Aaron had kissed him.
It wasn’t long before the need grew between them, fierce and unstoppable. Valen let himself find comfort and strength in his mate, and knew that Aaron did the same with him.
Chapter Fourteen
“I didn’t ask you to help,” Rivvie groused as Matt trailed along behind him. “I’m going to shift and can’t be—”
Worried about you.
“I can’t be watching out for you. Just, go back and stay with your parents.”
Matt grabbed at his arm.
Rivvie spun out of reach.
“Not until you listen to me,” Matt snapped, his eyes narrowing with temper. “And stop acting like a child and talk to me!”
“Like you talked to me before you ran off?” Rivvie didn’t wait for a reply. He shifted mid-stride, intent on leaving Matt behind and maybe sorting out his own thoughts.
Except a hard yank to his tail sent a shock of pain up his spine. Rivvie yelped and snapped when he twisted around. He just missed Matt’s hand. That he’d nearly bit Matt scared Rivvie. However, a visual check of Matt showed that he seemed only seemed irritated with him, not frightened.
Rivvie backed away.
“I’m going to grab your tail again if you turn it to me,” Matt warned. “Change back into a man and stop hiding behind all that fur!”
Rivvie didn’t want to. He was holding onto his anger and nursing it like a sore tooth. When he’d been a kid and had teeth falling out for new ones, he’d always poked and jabbed at the outgoing tooth, eliciting a deeper pain in his gums.
He was doing the same thing now, but with his feelings instead of in a physical way. Gods, it’d seem he hadn’t grown up any at all.
Rivvie shifted. “I can’t stay here and talk. I’ve got a job to do as Valen’s beta.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” Matt jutted his chin, his stubbornness clearly on view.
“Fine. Just don’t be loud.” He wouldn’t hope to ask for silence.
Much to his surprise, Matt didn’t speak. Rivvie kept expecting him to, maybe wanting him to, even. He wasn’t going to examine the reasons why.
But Matt actually helped patrol, watching for any strangers or threats. They circled the temporary encampment twice, bypassing other pairs doing the same. Assured they were safe for the moment at least, Rivvie sent half of his guards to check farther out. He was worn to the bone and was going to have to sleep for a few hours.
Trusting those he chose to help, Rivvie was able to leave them to it. He yawned and rubbed at his gritty eyes. “Now are you going to want to talk?” he asked tiredly.
Matt shook his head.
Rivvie was so confused. “Matthew—”
“Mattie,” Matt cut in. “You always call me Mattie.”
“I do not.” Just when they were alone, enjoying each other’s company, usually.
And why in the hells does Matt look like I just kicked his dreams in? Fuck, I have to sleep. I can’t deal with this.
Which is what he said. “I can’t handle whatever this is right now.” He gestured between them. “I have to get some sleep.”
For a moment, Matt looked like he was going to argue. Then his jaw softened, and he placed one hand on the small of Rivvie’s back. “You’re right. Let’s lie down.”
Rivvie didn’t remark on the ‘let’s’ part. He wanted Matt to curl up with him, not that he’d admit as much.
The area he’d been planning on using for him and Matt was occupied. Rivvie barely kept from rousing the two wolves snoring away there. He went past them, very aware of Matt following him. Off behind the rocky outcroppings, he found a set of boulders that looked like some giant had stacked them on top of each other. They were more than three times his height, and braced by a solid slab of rock that had come from fuck knew where.
All of them were various shades of red, orange and pink. As Rivvie studied them, he saw how there were layers upon layers to the boulders. He touched the closest one, mind blanking to all his worries as he traced the sandy, rough surface with his fingers. Rings ran around the circumference of the rocky surface, thick ones, thin ones, uneven ones. He marveled that such things occurred without the hand of an artist.
“Rivvie,” Matt said from behind him. “Please, stop hiding from me and let me hold you.”
Rivvie was too tired to fight his need for comfort. He stopped tracing one of the rings and sat right where he’d been standing.
Matt knelt and took off his shirt. “Pillow. Pick your head up.”
“What’re you going to use, then?” Rivvie asked.
“You.” Matt nestled the shirt in place then stretched right out beside Rivvie. “For all that your arms are so muscular, they, and your chest, are my favorite pillows.”
That was kind of sweet, Rivvie thought. A subtle wave of pleasure blanketed him and he let his mind drift.
Chapter Fifteen
The pleasure he’d dozed off to was nothing like that he woke up to. Silky, wet heat surrounded the tip of his cock, with the perfect amount of suction tugging at it.
“Nghn.” His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth, which meant he’d slept with it open again. Rivvie tried to gather up spit to moisten his mouth and ended up arching his back, which in turn forced more of his dick into that luxurious tunnel.
Through a lusty mental fog, Rivvie realized his shaft was being sucked. He somehow got his arms to obey his mind, got his hands to tangle in soft hair. Rivvie raised his head up and watched as Matt sucked him.