He told himself he didn’t hear the echo of emptiness as the door shut behind him.
BRYCE
Matt rubbed at his temples, as if one of the headaches that plagued him was starting up. They’d been friends too long for Bryce to miss the signs. In the old days, Bryce would have stepped behind him, slid his hands over tight shoulders and kneaded the tension away. Matt would’ve leaned back into him eventually, tipping his head back with that heartbreaking smile, grateful and open in a way he rarely let anyone else see.
But that wasn’t Bryce’s place anymore. Not now Matt was with Jesse. So he kept his hands to himself and poured coffee instead. Something safe, mechanical, and impersonal.
He took his usual seat at the kitchen table—opposite Matt now, not beside him. Funny how the geography of closeness had shifted. He had to stop himself reaching for what wasn’t his.
“Four councilors are determined to visit, and they’ve required two separate security checks beforehand.” Matt’s voice was tightly reined in, but Bryce heard the edge of weariness underneath. That was new. Or maybe it wasn’t, and he’d just been trying not to notice.
“What the hell do they think is going to happen to them here?” he asked. Then he remembered the way they’d found Cale’s pack slaughtered, and grimaced. Perhaps the Council had a point with their security arrangements.
“But seriously,twochecks?” he continued. “Next thing you know, they’ll want us to move out while they grace the place with their presence.”
“I hate this,” Matt said. His eyes held the kind of honesty that came from decades of knowing one another too well. “I hate the way they’re looking at Jesse, like he’s some sort ofthing. I hate that I have toletthem in order to keep him safe. But most of all, I hate that they’re poking around about all of us.”
“Yeah,” Bryce said. Because most of the pack had stories they didn’t tell. Wounds they’d wrapped tight and buried deep. Letting the Council poke around now in the name of background checks felt like handing them scalpels.
“Sending Christian to New Mexico might be the smartest thing you’ve ever done,” he added, before taking a sip of his coffee. God, that was gross—he’d forgotten to put any sugar in, which told him just how distracted he was right now.
“Do you think Christian and Dave will actually find out anything about Jesse’s old pack?” he asked, spooning sugar into his mug and stirring it in.
“This many years on?” Matt stared into his mug, as if trying to find the answer in his coffee. “I doubt it. But maybe someone remembers something. We’ve got to try.”
“Yeah,” Bryce said, and sighed. Needle in a haystack didn’t begin to cover what they were searching for.
“You know the Council’s going to send people down there just as soon as they hear Jesse’s story,” Matt said. “I don’t think locals are going to want to talk to the likes of Caddel, and once they’ve muddied the waters, we won’t have a hope in hell of finding out anything. With Christian and Dave going now, they’ve got a few days’ grace to get ahead of the curve.” He squeezed his eyes shut, as if in pain. “Fuckit. I’m starting to talk like a damn politician.”
Bryce snorted. “Not much danger of that,” he said. “You’re too straight. Talking, I mean. Obviously. Notstraightstraight. Or Jesse might have something to say about that.”
Matt rolled his eyes, but the tightness around his mouth loosened a little.
Bryce kept going. He didn’t mind being the clown if it was what Matt needed. “The other good thing about sending them now is that we don’t have to worry about Christian assaulting a politician for excessive pomposity.”
“There’s that,” Matt agreed with a rueful grin. “Or, knowing Christian, just for existing in the wrong place.”
Bryce huffed a laugh. The pack had certainly been more… interesting since Christian came along. It was like he spent his life revved up, ready to take offense.
And with Christian away for a while, Colby would finally have a little space. No constant barbs and no narrowed eyes judging every damn thing he did. If only they’d fight out theirdifferences, Bryce was sure everything would be okay. But Colby didn’t fight back. He suffered Christian’s hostility, flinched from it like he thought he’d earned every lash. And that, more than anything, made Christian double down, taking it as proof he was right.
Of course Christian was testing Colby—standard pack bullshit for a newcomer. But Colby wasn’t standard. He’d barely survived his previous pack, and now he was here, trying so hard to stand up straight. Every time Christian snapped at him, Bryce could see Colby shrinking down like he was bracing for a blow. It wasn’t fair, yet Bryce knew if he or Matt intervened, the two of them would never sort it out.
But sitting on the sidelines and doing nothing was damn hard. Tristan—Bryce’s kid in everything but name—was wearing that pinched, anxious expression again, the one he thought he was hiding as he worried about his mate.
Matt knew it too. He knew everything that happened in his pack and cared about them all. It was Matt who, unasked, had found the trauma counselor Colby was now seeing. Bryce wouldn’t be surprised if Matt had chosen Christian and Dave for that trip partly to give Colby some breathing room.
He blew out a slow breath and looked at Matt, still hunched over his coffee. His face was strained, the way it had been ever since he’d learned about the buyer in Washington, and Bryce wondered just how much sleep he was getting.
“I know it’s all bullshit,” he said quietly. “But we’ll get through this. Jesse’s going to be a seven-day wonder right up until they find he isn’t a poodle they can parade on a leash. They’ll lose interest when they find they can’t use him. Then, they’ll probably want to pretend he never existed.”
“You don’t think that’s when the scientists are going to step in and want blood samples and God only knows what else?”
“I think,” Bryce said slowly and carefully, “you’ve been watching too many bad sci-fi shows and you need to get some sleep. Maybe you and Jesse should take the horses out while I deal with security guy number one.”
He saw the instant of longing on Matt’s face before he shut it down.
“I figure Jesse could do with the distraction,” he added casually.
