“I’ve lived without that part of me for years already. Hurting you just to tap a ley line isn’t something I’m willing to do.”
“Doesn’t hurt,” Jono said, staring at him with those bright eyes of his.
Patrick leaned forward to kiss him. “You’re such a fucking liar and I don’t even need enhanced senses to know that.”
Patrick kissed away Jono’s argument, drowning in the taste of him. Jono’s hands stroked down his back to grab him by the hips and pull him closer. Patrick didn’t know if the desperate need for closeness was driven by their newly bound souls or the exuberant realization that they’d survived the fight. Whatever drove them, it was a far cry better than searching for the bottom in a bottle of alcohol.
Only when his lungs ached with the need to breathe did Patrick tear his mouth from Jono’s, pressing their foreheads together.
“What happens now?” Jono asked into the quiet between them.
Patrick sighed, leaning backward a little and trying to ignore how uncomfortable his jeans were getting. “I’m being transferred to the New York City field office here, so you won’t have to move.”
Jono slid his hands beneath Patrick’s T-shirt, rucking it up a little as he sought out skin. “Bet Youssef and Estelle will be thrilled about that.”
“Do they have immortal patrons?”
Jono shrugged. “Maybe? Don’t really know. I’m not part of their god pack.”
“Great. That’s all we need,” Patrick muttered. “A fucking civil war in the werecreature community.”
Jono nipped at his mouth, stealing another kiss. “When does the transfer happen?”
“Setsuna gave me a month for the move. She even offered me a vacation.”
“So you’re not moving because of me?”
“I didn’t tell Setsuna about you.”
Jono eyed him thoughtfully. “But she knows?”
“About our bond? She suspects, but she made sure no one else would find out,” Patrick said carefully. “If someone discovers what I did to you, I will go to jail, Jono. I will be charged with destroying the essence of your soul, and that’s a capital crime right up there with murder.”
A soul, like a life, was sacred. The law was very clear on that, and as often as Patrick had bent the law to finish a case, he’d never outright broken it like this before.
“I’ve spent the past thirteen years without a pack. No one is taking you away from me,” Jono growled.
“I don’t know anything about how to be pack.”
“Neither do I. We’ll figure it out.”
Patrick looped his arms around Jono’s shoulders, drawing him forward. Jono went willingly, pressing his forehead to Patrick’s chest, right over the scars. He let out a shuddering sigh that made Patrick hold him tighter.
“I can’t sleep,” Jono said in a slow voice. “I’m so tired, but all I see is…”
He trailed off, but Patrick knew what lived in that silence. He knew the way nightmares could steal everything from a person—their sleep, their dreams, their sense of peace. Trying to go through the motions of acting normal after trauma would only make a person crazy over time. If there was anything years of one-on-one and group therapy had shown Patrick, it was that normal was relative, and you lived every day one day at a time.
He shifted, pulling away from Jono just long enough to get them both lying down on the couch. Jono wrapped his arms around Patrick’s torso, their legs tangling together. Patrick settled his chin on the top of Jono’s head, listening to him breathe.
Between them, the soulbond drew ever tighter.
It should have scared him, but if Jono was okay with it, then Patrick would learn to be as well.
What was one more debt, after all?
22
“You owe me a vacation.”
