Four: Complicated

Damon had to practically push Jun out of his house. The alpha was hell bent on staying – which Damon attributed to the hormones – but Damon couldn’t let him sit there and smell like that. Driving him crazy in his own home, his safe space, was criminal. So, with the promise that he would hang out with Jun later – preferably in a public place – Damon was finally able to convince him to go instead of hanging over the back of Damon’s couch and staring at him with his big dark eyes.

Once he was gone, Damon had barely closed the door before there was a knock. He resisted the urge to groan – knowing that whoever was on the other side would hear it – and hoped it was just Jun coming back to neurotically check in with him about the time and place they were going to meet tomorrow for the fifth time.

It wasn’t Jun. Standing on the other side of the door was a handsome man in his late forties with blond hair, brown eyes, and soft smile lines around his mouth. His face was friendly, welcoming, but his stance was confident and intimidating.

This was the leader of Ganymede pack. Peter Reyne. He was an amiable and just leader, and Damon had gone to school with his son, Malachi.

Damon tried to guess why Peter was making a surprise visit like this before the man spoke. Peter was friends with Damon’s parents, who were off taking a vacation in Europe, so Peter might just be checking in on him for them. That was the most likely reason.

Damon had gone to collegee to get a degree in finance, and he was currently the pack’s assistant accountant, so there may have been some problem with their funds that needed sorting. But if that was the case, Damon probably would have just gotten an email, or heard something from his boss when he went into the office on Monday. The pack leader doesn’t visit for just anything.

There was also the possibility that there was something horribly wrong – his parents had an accident; he’d screwed up something massively with the pack accounts. Damon couldn’t help how his mind automatically flew to those awful possibilities within the split second before Peter spoke.

“Hey, Damon, how’ve you been?” Peter asked in his smooth, politician-esque voice. Damon would never say it, but he hated how creepily well-modulated it was. Peter was a great guy, it was just that voice that grated on Damon’s ears.

“Fine, thanks, Mr. Reyne. What brings you here?” Especially on foot. Damon’s house was on the outskirts of pack property – still close enough that he could walk everywhere he needed to go, because the pack territory was not terribly large – but it was still a bit of a hike from Peter’s house to his.

Peter hesitated, and Damon’s mind once again flew to every tragic possibility there could be. What was it? Had Mark gotten into an accident? Had Damon forgotten to pay one of his bills? Had Jun somehow died in the five seconds since he’d left?

But Peter didn’t seem too eager to sate Damon’s curiosity. His smile widened, in that way that Damon knew meant that he was trying to cover some other emotion with friendliness. “Actually, I was wondering if you could come up to the house, so we could talk about it.”

Oh god. His parents. Definitely his parents. They were probably dead in some horrible accident -

Some of Damon’s panic must have shown on his face, because Peter hurried to reassure him. “Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong. It’s actually a selfish request of mine – and Hailey’s.”

Hailey was Peter’s wife. Now that Damon had been assured nothing was wrong… what the hell did they want with Damon?

“Sure,” Damon agreed easily. He grabbed a coat before leaving, locking the house up behind him. He hoped Jun didn’t come back while he was gone. Jun knew his work schedule, and he knew the days that Damon usually spent with Mark and their friend group, but to find him gone at a time when Damon was typically always home – Friday afternoons – might send him into a preheat crazed cycle of abandonment. Jun was clingy without the hormones rotting his brain. With them he might just go off the deep end.

Peter’s house was a large, two story building with lots of windows and a carefully curated lawn design. Behind it was a massive expanse of woods owned by the pack for the purposes of hunts, bonding activities, and letting off steam. Even at this time of day, Damon could see a few flashing shapes between the trees – either guards, or pack wolves playing around.

It had been a long time since Damon shifted, and it was starting to culminate into a bone-deep ache. The problem was that Jun seemed to have a sixth sense for when Damon was about to head into the woods to shift for a bit. He always wanted to shift with Damon, but it was a pretty big deal to shift in front of people who weren’t your family, friends, or mate. Werewolves bond easier in the wolf form, and it’s often harder to control emotions and reactions, so anything could happen. Damon wanted to wait to take that step with Jun.

Now it was even more impossible. With Jun’s heat coming, shifting in front of him would earn Damon a one-way ticket to being bred on the spot, and if he was fucked in wolf form, he would have to give birth in wolf form. That would be complicated for a whole bunch of reasons. It was, once again, another risk Damon couldn’t take.

Peter led Damon into the house and up the stairs into a study, where a woman was waiting. Hailey, Peter’s mate, and the omega that took over the pack during her husband’s heats. She smiled as Damon walked in and gave him a hug. She had been one of Damon’s babysitters while he was growing up. She was quite pretty, with brown hair, a smile as kind as her husband’s, and hugs that felt intrinsically motherly.

The study had a large window on one wall, facing the woods and allowing waves of sunlight to pour into the room. A large desk sat to the left, a couple of chairs set up on either side. There was a beige couch on the other side of the room that looked more expensive than all of the furniture in Damon’s house combined.

Peter sat at the desk, inviting Damon to take the other chair while Hailey perched on the arm of her husband’s chair.

“So,” Hailey began, “We’re sorry for calling you out here so suddenly like this, but it’s important.”

Damon nodded. “Of course. I wasn’t busy.”

“Good…so. We’ve both heard about your courtship. Congratulations, by the way. How is that going?” Hailey asked. Innocent enough. At first.

“Fine,” Damon said. “Why do you ask?”

Hailey hesitated, sharing a glance with Peter. Okay. Damon was starting to get nervous again. Any conversation to do with courtship probably wasn’t anything good.

Instead of answering Damon, Hailey asked another question. “Do you…think you’re going to say yes to him? To Jun?”

Damon’s gaze darted between the two of them, mouth falling open slightly as he tried to formulate an answer. “I, uh…I’m not sure yet.”

Peter sighed, leaning forward in his chair, lacing his hands together, as if he was about to make a business deal. “Listen, Damon…we understand that you’re in the middle of a courtship, and we respect that. However, we want to figure out what your intentions are before…”

“Before what?” Damon asked, voice small. He didn’t like where this was going.

The two pack leaders shared another look. “Well, the thing is, Damon,” Hailey chimed in again, “Malachi has expressed to us his… preferences in a mate. He listed you as his top choice. We just wanted to know if you were available for consideration.”

Damon was frozen to his seat, petrified. This could not be happening. No way.

It couldn’t be that goddamn Malachi Reyne was going after him. If it was true Damon was about to go ballistic.

Because Malachi…had been Damon’s first and only boyfriend. That is, Damon’s boyfriend until he finally got Damon to give in and sleep with him before breaking up with him by fucking some random omega in his living room, where he knew Damon was going to be because Malachi had been the one to invite him over.

So it couldn’t be that Malachi Reyne was going after him now. And if it was true…then Damon might just have an aneurysm.