Maybe Matt should have been offended too, but the minute he saw the size of those beds, all he could think was God, yes,thank you. No longer would his joints be suffering on unyielding floorboards. He must be getting old.
Matt wasn’t alone in his acceptance of the inevitable. When Karl eventually conceded, moving just enough to flop down onone of the huge, fleecy mattresses Tristan had laid down, a contented sigh escaped before he could stop it.
Yeah. No way in hell were they living this down.
JESSE
Jesse stretched, and for the first time, it didn’t hurt. Much. There was an abiding ache in his stomach, but the sharpness of the pain had gone. He didn’t think that was just due to Don’s meds.
No, what he put it down to was lying here in Matt’s bed, in Matt’s arms. Matt was asleep, but Jesse felt wide awake. He’d slept for what felt like days, and his body didn’t seem to care it was the early hours of the morning.
Matt was warm against his side, his deep, regular breathing somehow grounding Jesse. The wave of love hit him so hard, it almost stole his breath. It felt like too much, too big to fit inside of him, yet at the same time, like something that had always been there, just waiting for him to notice it. Matt’s steadfastness, his patience with Jesse, the fact he’dlet Jesse go—hell, even his bossiness was feeling attractive right now, which told Jesse those pills must have damn strong side effects.
He didn’t know when he’d fallen in love with Matt, but it’d had the weight of inevitability. There was no way he could be on this earth with Matt Urban andnotlove him.
He ran his hand down Matt’s arm and pressed a kiss against his jaw. For what felt like the first time in his life, Jesse was happy. Not just content. Not just safe. But truly, bone-deep happy.
MATT
It was three days before Matt judged Jesse and Karl healed enough to call a pack meeting around the kitchen table.
The pack needed to understand just what Jesse’s Argent heritage might mean, should anyone outside the pack discover it. He didn’t want any of them to betray the truth through simple ignorance. Until and unless Jesse wanted, no outsiders would learn from members of the pack of the Argent in their midst.
Once they were all sitting down, Matt straightened in his seat, ready to speak. Jesse got there first.
“Matt? Can I say something?” he asked. He sounded more uncertain than Matt had ever heard him, without a hint of his usual attitude. It was unnerving.
“Go ahead.”
Jesse took a deep breath. “I just wanted to say…” His voice trailed off.
Everyone remained quiet, and Matt knew they were giving him space, letting him take his time. As if they knew how hard this was for him.
Jesse sucked in a breath and tried again. “Thing is—” When he broke off this time, he started to worry at his lower lip.
“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and knocked him up, Urban,” Karl said from the other end of the table. “Goddamn it, am I going to have to get the shotgun out?”
“That’s not how biology works,” Matt muttered, but it was already too late.
Jesse was spluttering, Tristan was howling with laughter, and the pack somehow ended up planning Matt and Jesse’s nonexistent wedding, right down to the cake and the flowers.
But then Jesse recovered his equilibrium. And his attitude.
“When you’re done marrying me off to bossy britches over there,” he said through the hubbub, and they quieted. “I just wanted to say thanks.”
“It’s what packs do—look after one another,” Jason said. Coming from their quietest member, sounding so matter-of-fact yet warm, it caught at Matt’s heart.
“It’s what you did for me,” Tristan said very softly to Jesse, from where he sat beside him.
Jesse had tensed, like he expected someone to jump on him for daring to say something real. But when all he got were Jason’s quiet words and Tristan’s encouragement, his shoulders loosened. Like maybe he was finally starting to believe he’d been accepted. That he belonged.
Matt stepped in to turn the attention away from Jesse. He had some idea just how hard it had been for Jesse to make himself vulnerable. So, Matt talked about Argents at a little more length than he’d planned, giving Jesse space to recover his composure. He also added a brief refresher on shifter politics, just in case anyone had missed the point and thought Jesse’s inheritance was no big deal.
There was a shocked silence when he finished. Looking around the table, seeing everyone’s reactions, he thought it had blindsided all of them. Jesse was looking highly self-conscious again.
“So, Princess, does that mean we gotta call youYour Highnessnow?” Christian shot at Jesse.
“Just on holidays,” Jesse said. “The rest of the time, you can call meSir.”
