“Nafri? He helped me out when I was in a tight spot.”
“Don’t hang out with him too much. I don’t trust him.”
Crevan turned in his arms and peered into Alistaire’s face. “Are you jealous?”
“Who’s jealous?” Alistaire grunted.
Crevan chuckled, leaning up and pecked him on his lips. “Nafri might be good looking, but I have a certain type if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yeah, what’s your type?”
Crevan smiled, looking up at him. Alistaire could see affection shining in his blue and green colored eyes. “You. You’re my type.”
“I better be.”
Alistaire captured his lips, making both their worlds stop.
* * *
Fox walkedinto the suite he shared with Alistaire and growled in frustration seeing his mate’s uniform all over the bed. Admittedly he wasn’t a neat freak, but he at least knew how to pick up after himself. Grabbing a hanger from the closet, he hung up Alistaire’s pants when he heard the cling of something falling on the floor. Looking down, he saw dog tags and grew curious as to who they belonged to. As far as he knew, Alistaire hadn’t enlisted in the military. Bending, he picked up the dog tags and was shocked to see they were his from a lifetime ago.
What the hell is Alistaire doing with my old dog tags?
“What are you doing with those?” Fox looked up when he heard Alistaire’s question. “Give them to me.”
“Why do you have these?” Fox asked instead.
“That’s none of your business.” Alistaire reached out and snatched the dog tags from Fox’s hand.
“None of my business! You and I are mates. Everything about you is my business,” Fox yelled. “Why won’t you open up to me?”
“Open up to you? I tell you everything!”
“Not unless I pull it out of you.” Fox sighed, rubbing his temples.
He didn’t want to think about the possibilities as to why Alistaire had those tags. He’d tried to ignore the feeling and thought everything that had happened in the past would stay that way. He knew Alistaire wanted to tell him about the supernatural world, but he’d thought it was merely chit chat. However, he came to realize he was wrong—the world was much larger than he’d thought. They’d flirted in his past life, but Fox had always felt Alistaire was kidding around with him.
“Why do you have those dog tags?”
“Why are we talking about this?”
“Because I want to know Alistaire? I need to know,” Fox affirmed.
“Well, I don’t feel like talking about it.” Alistaire walked over to the nightstand, opening the drawer and threw the tags in there.
“Why? You know everything there is to know about me, yet you hold things back from me.” Fox knew he sounded a bit hypocritical, but he couldn’t stop the words from coming from his mouth. “I watched you almost die, and yet you can’t open up to me.” Fox closed his eyes, trying not to think about that day. He was thankful Alistaire had survived, and even though things were going well in their relationship, there were things they hadn’t talked about. “Was he your mate?”
“Crevan, drop it,” Alistaire ordered. “I don’t want to talk about this right now.”
“Well, too damn bad,” Fox snarled. “For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been holding shit back because I was too afraid to rock the boat between us. But I can’t keep doing that anymore. I feel like I’m suffocating if I don’t get some answers. As much as I try to ignore it, I know someone else has a hold on your heart.”
“Fine, you want to know. I’ll tell you.” Alistaire pointed to the nightstand. “Those dog tags once belonged to a man I loved with my whole heart, and he never knew how I felt. I held him in my arms as he bled out. Even then, I couldn’t tell him how I felt. Do you want to know what’s worse? He died in my fucking arms.”
Fox gasped, and his knees weakened, but he didn’t fall.His mate? I was his mate in my past life.Thoughts and feelings hit him like a brick.Why don’t I feel elated?
Alistaire sighed. “He was a good man, and like you, he wanted to be a lawyer. But he never got the chance because he died. I never got the chance to be with him or even tell him how I felt because he was taken away from me too soon. I tried telling him many times, but he wasn’t ready to hear it...even if I thought he was. After he died, I took those dog tags because I knew they meant a lot to him.”
Fox sat down on the bed, holding his head as images of his past life ran through his mind—of him and Alistaire working, laughing, and eating together. There was so much happiness coming off the man. Fox felt as if he was looking at a different person. When Alistaire smiled, he could tell he was in love with Fox Morgan. Fox grimaced and placed a hand over his chest.
