Authors: Joyee Flynn
“What are you sorry for, baby?” he asked gently, not sure what was going on in Garreck’s mind.
“I was the one who suggested you guys have sex,” he answered with a whimper. “I was the one pushing for the three of us to be together, and this is what happens?”
“This is not your fault,” Dante replied firmly, cupping Garreck’s cheek with his hand. “I’m not mad that this happened. Shocked, yes, mad, no. I’m mad because he walked away like that afterwards. It makes me think again that he won’t ever put us first. Oh sure, he might buy us pretty things and take care of us, but you needed comfort and he left. That pisses me off.”
“It hurt,” Garreck agreed with a nod.
Kelley came back in with a huge basket in her hands. Dante’s jaw just about hit the counter as he looked over all the chocolate-covered fruit on sticks arranged in some green foam in the basket. She put it down in front of them with a huge smile before handing Dante the card.
“I’m so, so very sorry,” Dante read aloud for Garreck. “I didn’t know what to say or do, so I left before I made it worse. But that was stupid, too, and I’m sorry for that as well…
Austin
.”
“At least he cares then, right?” Garreck asked before eating a strawberry. Dante nodded and picked out a chocolate-covered apple slice.
“He’s never dated before, guys,” Kelley hedged as she picked out a pineapple flower. “At least not in the years I’ve known
Austin
. He’s bound to fuck up, but he is a good guy.”
Dante let that go for now, mulling it over as they snacked on their gift. Kelley asked them about their favorite foods and they chit chatted while Dante processed everything. Garreck answered for them, helping Kelley make a grocery list with lots of the food they would need to eat if they were pregnant. She also put getting some books about pregnancy on the list.
“I-I can’t read,” Garreck said quietly as he glanced over at Dante.
“Well, then that’s something we need to work on, too,” she replied with a soft smile as she patted his hand. Dante really liked her. She was incredibly welcoming and thoughtful when they needed a friend most.
After about another half an hour of them all talking, Dante excused himself. It was time to go talk to
Austin
and get this all straightened out. The buildup and questions in his mind were becoming more than he could bear. He’d just walked through the kitchen door when the doorbell rang again.
“I got it,”
Austin
called out loudly as he entered the foyer and then pulled open the door. Dante didn’t even have time to announce he was there, standing back by the kitchen doors and staircase. He had a front row seat for what happened next, much to his heart’s dismay.
“Hello, lover,” a handsome man purred as he stepped into the house.
“Peter?”
Austin
gasped. He didn’t have a chance to say anything else as the man pulled
Austin
against him and kissed him. Dante wanted to gouge out his eyes so he didn’t have to see this, but like a car accident, he couldn’t seem to look away.
Austin
just stood there, not pushing Peter away as the man obviously had kissed their dragon before.
"Our dragon my ass",
Dante snarled in his head and spun on his heel. He hid his anger as he went back to Garreck. “We’re going to go check out the grounds, Kelley.”
“Okay, you guys have fun and just stay within the fences,” she said, waving them away. His heart hurt even worse for lying to the sweet woman, but if he told her the truth, she’d go tell
Austin
. Not that Dante thought the man would care, of course.
“Good thing we put shoes on when we got dressed so we could take your impromptu walk.” Garreck snickered as they reached the back door.
“We’re leaving,” he whispered as they got outside. He took Garreck’s hand, but the man had frozen in his steps.
“Why?” Garreck asked with a whine, his eyes tearing up. “What happened? You were only gone a few minutes.”
“A man came to the door.
Austin
called him Peter,” he answered as he dragged Garreck along behind him. They needed to get out of there before Kelley or Austin figured out what was going on. “They kissed, Garreck. And
Austin
knows him, Peter called
Austin
lover
. Something’s very wrong here, and I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to go.”
“Go where, though?” It broke Dante’s heart to hear Garreck sniffle, but he couldn’t focus on that right then. Everything in him was screaming that they needed to run, and after the shit life he’d had, he learned to trust his instincts.
“We’ll go find Ryan and Neil in Mitchell. I heard
Austin
say that’s the town they live in. We should be able to find Gabriel’s ranch,” he answered more on instinct than anything, but it was still the best plan.
“How will we get there?”
“Baby, have I ever let you down?” he asked, spinning to look at Garreck as he touched his shoulder. The smaller man shook his head as tears spilled down his cheeks. “I’ll get us there however I have to. I’ll always protect you, and right now we have to get out of here.”
Garreck gave him a sharp nod, wiping his tears away. They figured out how to get off the property, which was their first hurdle. The next was catching a ride to Mitchell, and Dante didn’t have a clue how he’d get them there. But he knew he would. He just might not like what he had to do to accomplish it.
Chapter 5
“How, I mean, what? You are here, but that can’t be. Am I hallucinating?”
Austin
sputtered as he shoved Peter away. He hadn’t seen the man in almost two centuries. How the fuck was he still alive, since he was human, and how did he find
Austin
? And why now?
“How am I not dead?” Peter chuckled as he caressed
Austin
’s cheek.
Austin
smacked the man’s hand away, noticing the sudden flare of anger in Peter’s eyes before it was quickly hidden. “Your eldest brother made me his mate after you denied me.”
“
Houston
’s not gay, and you’d never be stuck with a fag for eternity, if I remember your words correctly,”
Austin
replied with a growl. He snapped out of his shock at seeing his old lover alive after all these years and went to push him out the door. “I have nothing to say to you, Peter. You need to leave. I have a life that I won’t let you interrupt.”
“Oh? I’d love to see this new life.” Peter chuckled, sidestepping
Austin
. “So you did take a mate, just not me?”
“What do you even care?”
Austin
shouted, throwing up his hands. “You are mated to my brother.”
“Please, he’s got dozens of mates.” Peter snickered and gave a careless wave. “I’m just one of his harem he’d fuck every decade or so to give him another heir to add to his army.”
“But you’re not gay,” he muttered, stomping off towards his office.
It was obvious Peter wasn’t leaving without a fight, and
Austin
didn’t want to draw attention to the man or have his mates find out before he was able to explain. He was in enough trouble with them, and he didn’t need another reason for them to leave.
Peter followed, and
Austin
closed the door to his office behind him. He eyed over his first love, noticing the years had not been kind. And that gleam in Peter’s eyes that
Austin
had mistaken for mischief in his younger years now screamed of deceit.
“How long did it take you to convince
Houston
to claim you?” he asked after he realized that Peter had aged as a human since he’d left.
“A couple of decades,” Peter answered, his upper lip curling in disgust. “He said if I gave him twenty years of great sex, he’d make me immortal. Of course then there was more to the deal when the time came.”
“Yeah, you guys are equally matched in your self-serving ways.”
Austin
rolled his eyes. It sounded just like
Houston
to go back on his word or change the rules when it suited him. “I feel
so
bad for you, Peter. It must have been horrible to be some
fag’s
toy for a few decades.”
“I like sex, doesn’t matter if they’re male or female,” Peter said with a shrug, picking a piece of lint off his expensive suit.
Austin
wasn’t buying the lie. The reason he’d left in the first place was because he overheard Peter’s drunken ramble to his friends that he was fucking a fag to get what he wanted. Peter had always wanted to be immortal, not
Austin
. It had broken his young heart at the time, but he’d had almost two centuries to get over it.
And looking at Peter now… he felt nothing. Not love or anger or hate, just annoyance that he walked back into
Austin
’s life.
“Fine, you are immortal and mated to my brother.”
Austin
sighed as he scrubbed his hands over his face. “Great, good to know. Why are you
here
at my home, Peter?”
“I missed my little dragon,” Peter purred, using the old nickname that
Austin
had once loved. Now it was like a knife in his back. “I’m finally done with my obligation to your brother and came to find you. It wasn’t easy though. Took me five years to track you down.”
“What obligation?”
Austin
knew something was missing from his story. Peter wanted immortality from
Austin
. It had never been about love or mating. What was the man hiding now?
“I had to give him ten sons.” Peter sighed and looked bored. “That was the deal for immortality. I had to stay in his pathetic harem until I gave him ten children. And he didn’t want them every three years. The bastard made me raise the whelps with his other mates. Once one was grown then he’d come back until he knocked me up again. That’s why it’s taken me over a century to get back to you.”
“You never wanted me. You wanted to be immortal,” he replied, skeptically eyeing Peter over. “So try again,
lover
.” He put all of his disdain for the man in that last word, mocking him.
“Look, I know what you think you heard,
Austin
,” Peter started to say, but
Austin
held up his hand to stop him right there.
“We both know what you said. Don’t try and lie about it all these years later. I was young, Peter, not stupid.”
“What I
mean
,” Peter ground out, narrowing his eyes at
Austin
. And that was the Peter Austin knew so well. He had no patience, he never did. But
Austin
wasn’t a lovesick kid anymore, willing to do whatever Peter wanted without question. “You heard what you heard, but it wasn’t what I meant. You ran before I had a chance to explain. If my parents found out I was gay or even sleeping with a man, I would have lost everything. And then what if you left me?”
“So you did it to keep up appearances?”
Austin
asked smoothly, waiting until Peter nodded to continue. “And deny me, what we had, and lied to people… Yeah, that makes me feel so much better about it. Great, you came, now leave.”
“What?” Peter gasped, shooting to his feet. “I take all this time to track you down after you abandoned me without letting me explain. I put up with your brother all those years so I could live long enough for us to be together again. I come here telling you I still love you, have always loved you, and you’re telling me to go?”
“Yes, because there’s something you are not telling me. I know you well enough to know when you’re hiding something from me, Peter,”
Austin
ground out. “What, are you out of money? Did the ending of your obligation to my brother mean you are cut off from his funds, too?”