He came first with a spill of thin, sticky come that smeared Jack’s fingers and dripped onto the bed. It was Jack’s name on his mouth, as close to a prayer as any wolf with pride would spit out, as his cock twitched and his balls tightened. His breath hissed raggedly between his teeth, and he grunted into the mattress, as Jack worked his cock the last few strokes to orgasm into Danny’s ass and it fluttered around him in reaction.
As he came, pleasure wrung roughly from his gut as his balls cramped, he bit down on Danny’s shoulder, his mark chewed into the swell of muscle in the smell of his spit and the shape of his bite. Sweat salt and blood stung on his tongue, the sharp intake of Danny’s gasp a pinch of pleasure on its own.
This was his—Jack sprawled boneless and comfortable over Danny’s back. He licked the blood off Danny’s skin and growled annoyance when Danny finally jabbed him in the ribs to make him move. They lay on the bed, legs lazily tangled, and waited for whoever would be the first to come hammer on the Old Man’s front door for solutions.
“Nothing has changed,” Danny said. He pressed a kiss to Jack’s throat. The cut Lach’s knife had opened had healed, but the ache was still there under the bones. Danny’s kiss didn’t ease that, but Jack appreciated it anyhow. “Nothing has to change.”
“No,” Jack said quietly, because everyone got to lie their own way.
When Jack asked Danny when they’d last been together under his da’s roof, he already knew the answer. It had been his birthday, a month before Danny left. Even as Danny had straddled Jack, sweet and long, easy muscle spread out for him, he’d had the offer from university folded away in one of his books. He’d known he was going to leave the Pack and not see Jack again, because he couldn’t stay and still beDanny.
And nothing had changed, had it?
The sound of a fist on the door downstairs saved him from having to admit he had no answer.
Chapter Fifteen—Danny
“I DON’Tknow,” Ellie said. “That wasn’t something that Lach told me. Told any of us, as far as I know.”
She sat on the low, scarred stool in the middle of the Old Man’s living room. Her head was tilted back submissively to show her throat to Jack, her eyes tipped down and to the side, so she wasn’t even looking at him. The handful of the Pack Jack had handpicked to have their say—the accusers, the survivors, the wronged—stood around her in a rough, judgmental circle.
Danny sat to the side, not quite part of it, but no one was ready to face down Jack and get him thrown out.
“You were willing to sell the Pack out to the prophets,” Jack said skeptically. He crossed his arms and leaned back against the Old Man’s desk. “And you didn’t even know why?”
Her eyes flickered to him and away. “He was the Numitor,” Ellie said. Behind her Kath growled, an angry scratch of noise in the back of her throat. It made Ellie cringe, for which Danny had some sympathy, but she didn’t back down. “I did what I was told. Besides, you were exiles, and the rest were only dogs. Not my pack.”
Kath clipped her around the ear with the back of her hand. “You don’t get to make that call,” Kath said through gritted teeth. “And Lach had no claim to be Numitor.”
“Soyouget to make that call?” Ellie asked sarcastically. She ducked her head to avoid another slap and beat her fists against her knees. “You didn’t tell him that to his face, though, did you? No, you were a good wolf and fell in line. Same as me.”
Kath grabbed a handful of blond hair and yanked Ellie’s head back to roughly expose the tight line of her throat again.
“And you know why.”
Bron, in a borrowed coat that hung down to her thighs, curled her lip in a toothy, humorless smile. “And I wasn’t a dog or an exile,” she said. “Neither were the children.”
A mutter of agreement ran around the room. Danny bit at the inside of his lips to hold back a cynical comment about how disposable he was. He didn’t doubt his mam would have tried to save him, or that she’d mourn if he was gone, but would she have bent the neck forhissake or put the Pack at risk?
Danny doubted it.
The future of the Pack lay in their children, and even if Danny had a bit more interest in women than Jack did, a dog couldn’t sire a wolf. It didn’t help. Danny raked his fingers through his hair, which was overgrown and tangled in knots from Jack’s hands, and tried to swallow the sharp edges of that.
He could have sworn it never used to bother him this much. Too many years away had weakened his tolerance. Or maybe it hadn’t. He’d left, after all. If it hadn’t bothered him back then, he could have stayed.
Danny glanced sideways at Jack from behind the glasses he’d retrieved from the bathroom sink—sharp green eyes and the compact, lean lines of a body that had been wrapped around Danny an hour before. If hecouldhave stayed, back then, he would have, wouldn’t he?
“And I’m ashamed I didn’t help you,” Ellie said. “But that was the prophets’ doing, not Lachlan’s. There wasn’t anything we could do about them other than do as we were told so they didn’t end up an object lesson.”
“Yeah, well, one of those dogs managed to get us out,” Bron said caustically. “So maybe they’re more useful to the Pack than you.”
This time Ellie bit her tongue. Jack glanced away from her and at Danny, as though the backhanded compliment had reminded him he was there. Bron followed the direction of his gaze and glared at them both.
“For whatthat’sworth,” she said caustically, and then irritably blew a stray curl out of her face. “And what does that mad old bitch want withmypup? It’s not even out of my belly. It might not even live that long.”
It might not. If it did,shemight not live long enough to see. Wolves lived a long time, but they lived hard and the Wild took its tithe. Danny didn’t particularly want to think about it. He couldn’t stand his little sister—the sharp-nosed apple of their mam’s eye, a sneer given legs and a mouth—but he loved her. Nothing should happen to her.
“She claims she’s pregnant,” Jack said. He curled his lip at the thought.
