“You don’t have to believe me, you bag of dicks. You can look it up.”
His uncle raised his brows, and then he shrugged. “I don’t care. But I am happy I ran into you, unexpected though it may have been. I need a favor.”
Peter stared, sheer disbelief etched across his face. His uncle wanted a favor? Fromhim?
He had to be insane.
“No!” Peter growled, after which he shut his mouth so hard that his teeth rattled. He wasn’t having this conversation.
“I need you to tell me the password you wrote on those papers you signed for me,” his uncle said, ignoring his outburst. “I tried contacting you at the prison, but they just gave me the runaround. I didn’t realize you were out.”
“I don’t remember writing a password,” Peter said, honest and glad for it. He had no interest in helping his uncle, especially not with the documents that had landed him in prison. “And even if I did, I would tell you to fuck off.”
“Now you listen here, you little shit,” his uncle growled, grabbing him by the jaw and shaking him. “I need that password, and you’re going to tell me where it is or—”
Peter never got to hear the rest of his uncle’s threat, Carver appearing with a roar of rage and crashing into his uncle and knocking him to the ground. Carver kicked Peter’s uncle in the stomach, making him curl up into a ball, and then he kicked his head. Twice.
Carver’s eyes were red, and Peter was pretty sure his fingers were tipped with claws rather than nails.
“Carver, stop!” Peter shouted. He hated his uncle with every fiber of his being, but he didn’t want Carver to get in trouble for hurting him—or worse.
The law was not kind to out of control werewolves.
“He touched you!” Carver growled, rounding on Peter and grabbing his jaw, turning his head from side to side like he was inspecting him for damage.
“He’s my uncle,” Peter said, the words mangled by the way Carver was squeezing his cheeks. He could feel the tips of Carver’s claws digging into his skin, sharp pin-pricks of pain that, despite everything, managed to rouse a fire of arousal in Peter’s belly.
“Your uncle?” Carver asked, looking down at the crumpled form at their feet. He shifted his gaze back to Peter, the red receding from his eyes. “The one who framed you?”
Peter nodded as much as Carver’s grip on him would allow.
Carver’s eyes narrowed, but he took a deep breath and seemed to calm down. He looked around, the crowd of spectators that had gathered dispersing at his angry glare. Bending down, he grabbed Peter’s uncle by the scruff of his neck and lifted him up, leaning in close and letting out a warning growl from deep within his chest.
“If you ever so much as look at my omega again, I will end you. Do you understand.”
“I understand,” Peter’s uncle said, the terror in his voice making him sound like a stranger. He’d always been so cool and collected, seeing him undone by Carver’s burst of violence was unnerving.
“See that you do. There will be a restraining order filed against you by midnight.” Carver let Peter’s uncle drop back to the ground. “You do not want to fuck with me.”
Carver grabbed Peter by the waist and lifted him up, carrying him over to the car that he’d left halfway up on the curb. The driver’s side door was still open, evidence of Carver’s haste in getting out of the car.
Placing Peter in the passenger front seat, Carver let him buckle himself in and went around to the driver’s seat.
He pulled away from the curb, driving at a low speed and clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip like he was about to burst.
“Are you all right?” he finally asked, looking over as they waited for a red light to turn green.
“Shocked,” Peter said, still trying to process what had happened. “He wanted me to tell him the password I wrote down on the papers he and my sister had me sign.”
“A password?”
“I don’t remember,” Peter said. “I was busy with school and I filled them out in a hurry. I don’t remember putting a password anywhere.”
“Could you guess what it was?” Carver asked, sounding more in control of himself.
“Probably Pebbles-thirty-two,” Peter said, giving it some thought. That was the password he used for his online bank, and if he’d been asked to write a password on banking papers, that was probably what he would have chosen.
“I’ll look into it,” Carver said, reaching over and gripping Peter’s neck with a firm hand. It felt more like Carver was trying to comfort himself than the other way around, and so Peter didn’t complain that he was squeezing a little too hard.
