“If I let you go, will you go home and rest? Or will I wake in the night to you howling at the moon?”
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. For shifters, our wolf instinct is what makes us who we are, but we are still men. Sometimes we must leave the call of the beast and take care of ourselves as humans.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It doesn’t have to. Just promise me you’ll go home, or to Danielo, or Bomber. I know you have found comfort with your brothers before.”
Zio fought the urge to roll his eyes. If Varian thought getting buzzed and hooking up with his friends would quench the fire roaring through him, there was a missing link in the mystical chain that bonded a wolf to his alpha. A short circuit. A fault.It’s you, dickhead. Isn’t it always?
“I’ll take him home.”
The new voice in the room startled Zio, but Devan’s sudden presence seemed as if it had always been there. He glanced over Varian’s shoulder. Devan was leaning in the doorway, his gaze—as it had been ever since they’d returned from the Leicester mission—trained anywhere but at Zio.
“I assumed you’d be going that way at some point.” Varian’s tone was dry. “But I’m sure Zio can manage the walk alone if you have other plans.”
“I don’t.”
The flatness lacing Devan’s words made Zio’s teeth itch. How could someone so vibrant be the grey man?This shit is so fucked up. But Zio knew a defeat when he sensed one. Varian wasn’t going to let him leave without a genuine promise to do as he’d been told, and Zio couldn’t give him one without Devan to distract him from the urge to run riot in the forest all night. “Whatever. Let’s go.”
* * *
They walked home in silence, Devan in front, Zio trailing after him like a sullen teenager.
Devan opened the door and stood back to let Zio pass.
Zio scowled. “You don’t have to act like my fucking chaperone. I’m not a child.”
Devan didn’t blink. “Then don’t act like one.”
Ouch. Zio stepped into the house and moved automatically towards his room, his bed, unslept in for so long, a siren’s call, but every pace away from Devan added lead to his already heavy legs.Fuck’s sake. Zio knocked his fist on his headagainand turned to find Devan behind him. “What—”
Devan shook his head and closed his fingers around Zio’s aching wrist. The pain disappeared, gone in a whisper. “Now you can rest... brother.”
He released Zio and disappeared into the kitchen.
Zio followed him, naturally. “I’m not your brother.”
“Suit yourself.” Devan opened the fridge and pulled out a pizza, some green shit Zio hadn’t known was in there, and two bottles of beer. “But whatever you think I am, my place in your pack is to heal your pain.”
“I don’t have any pain. I didn’t have any before you put your weirdo hands on me.”
“You didn’t have a problem with my weirdo hands when we were foraging.”
With all that had happened since, their forest encounter seemed like a lifetime ago. “That wasn’t your hands, and I didn’t ask for that either.”
“Do you think I’m forcing myself on you, Zio?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Then what are you saying? That I should take care of everyone else and not you? Or that I should’ve left Bomber to be scooped up by the humans to save him from the violation of me healing him?”
“What? No.”
Devan sighed and switched on the oven. It buzzed and whirred, a clear sign as if Zio needed one that Emma had been the last to use it. “Look, I get that this is difficult for you, even without... this.” He gestured between them, then began the task of relocating every mushroom on the pizza to one side. Zio’s side, he presumed. “But however much I want to, I can’t make any of it go away.”
Dread churned coldly in Zio’s stomach. “Make what go away?”