Heading back to Dylan’s apartment after two weeks was kind of surreal. Last time we’d been here, we’d spent the night deep in conversation — and I should have utilized that time to tell him the truth about my pack’s lunitis epidemic, but that was neither here nor there now. I was going to fix my mistake just as soon as I had the chance.

Admittedly, that probably wouldn’t be very soon. The other thing that had happened last time I visited this apartment was meeting Josie. Dylan’s daughter was adorable, and probably not the best addition to a conversation about a highly infectious disease that I may have exposed her to. After so many years, this was the final straw — the moment I couldn’t take the guilt of waiting to be tested any longer. I couldn’t be around her, carrying the thought of indirectly killing her with me.

‘Thought’ being the operative word. After my appointment at the clinic, I knew now that there had been no risk. I was not a contagious carrier of lunitis. I was a carrier, so any kids I had were at risk of inheriting that from me — but the gene was recessive, and posed no immediate threat to the wolves around me. Essentially, I was safe.

I had spent years too afraid to attend that appointment, anticipating the pure terror of waiting in an uncomfortable chair for results that could ruin my life. My imaginings had not been far from the truth. Sitting in the waiting room and waiting for the doctor to call me through for my results was a terrifying ordeal. It had taken everything in me to keep from standing up and walking away before I could hear the truth, but it had all paid off in the end.

It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. There was nothing to hold Dylan and I back anymore.

Unless he couldn’t forgive me for the lie or for the time I’d taken away, of course, but I couldn’t think about that right now. I was already knocking at the door, and I’d find out from the omega’s mouth soon enough. There was no sense in shifting into my fur and high-tailing it like my instincts wanted.

As soon as he opened the door, his scent came flooding through to fill my senses. When he came in to see me at SeaTac Tat, a similar effect had happened, but not nearly as strong — not with all the intensity of his home environment to contribute, and with an appealing unfamiliar note that drew me in and made me want to bury my face in his neck. Was he wearing a new body lotion, I wondered?

“Hey,” he said. His collarbones were already flushing, and the flutter of his shirt over a rapidly-beating heart. Stunning. “Come in…?”

“Thank you,” I said, holding onto myself with the last threads of my dignity. The thought of pinning him to the ground was a damn sight more than enticing, but it wasn’t as though I could get my kicks right here in the hallway, especially with his daughter in the place. “It’s good to see you. You look great.”

He did, too. There was a freshness to his skin, and a shine to his hair. Maybe he’d been getting a lot of sleep, or an extra blend of vitamins. Whatever it was, it suited him — and it didn’t make it any easier for me to hold my distance.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, closing the door behind me. “We have a lot to catch up on, I guess.”

“I’m sure. Where’s little miss artist?”

“Oh – Josie’s already with Mom.”

I felt a snarl of lust thrash through my body. “She is? She’s not here?”

“No. We’re all alone.”

His lips quirked up in the corner of his mouth. Did he know what he was doing to me, looking and smelling like that? Finally free to express my desire for him, I pressed him up against the wall of his hallway, rubbing my forehead roughly against his.

“God, I’ve missed you.”

I felt a shudder run all the way up his body, hips rolling into mine as if they were compelled by some outside force. After such a long gap in communication between us, it was good to feel that our bodies hadn’t forgotten how this felt. Whatever wedge my stupidity had driven between us was irrelevant in the face of all this hot blood and our straying hands.

I ground my hips into him, drawn by the swelling I could already feel in the crotch of his jeans. His hands were already tugging at the waistband of my jeans, and I wasn’t about to keep him waiting. Without pausing to shrug off my jacket or the rest of my clothes, I pulled back to unbutton my fly and shuck my jeans down just enough to free my cock, groaning as he took me in both hands.

“We’ve got time,” he said, breath already catching. “Just-”

“Yeah,” I said. “Take it off.”

“Take-”

“All of it.”

He shuddered against me, beginning to pull off his shirt as soon as I stepped back to give him the space. He didn’t question me, either relishing the chance to obey or already badly in heat. I drank in the sight of his lithe body as it appeared from beneath the fabric of his clothes, not looking away for a second. His cock was already damp with a sheen of precum at the tip, without even the slightest physical stimulation.

He didn’t wait for me to take hold of him, either. As soon as he was free of his clothes he returned to me, pressing up hard against my still-closed torso and grinding his hips into mine. Our cocks nudged together between us, tantalizing with soft contact. We needed more.

“Going to fuck you,” I told him, burying my face in the crook of his shoulder and inhaling the scent of him — his natural floral air, and the sex pheromones laced through it. Was there something different about his scent today, or was I just misremembering? Dylan moaned, wrapping his arms around my neck, and shrank back into the wall, but I had other ideas. I picked him up in one swift move, one arm around his waist and the other supporting his round, firm ass. He whined and leaned into me, eager as only an omega in heat could be.

I carried him to the couch, dropping him behind it and then turning him with a hand on his shoulder to force his body over it, belt at the waist and prone to me. I watched his hands clamp to the couch cushions, knuckles turning white, and left him there to pine and wait while I found the lubricant and a condom in his bedroom – discarding my jacket in the process. When I returned, I caught him rutting into the back of the couch, and held his hips fast with both hands.

“Better wait for me,” I told him, tone thick with alpha command and purpose. His full body shuddered at the sound of it, falling still as he was told. As I slicked up my hand with lubricant, I watched him stand up taller on the tips of his toes, trying to lift his perfect ass to the right height. Trying to press against me. Still so impatient.

I knew the feeling. Taking pity, I finally reached down between his thighs to dip the first of my fingers inside him, straight to the first knuckle and then slow with the rest. I felt the intimate tightness of him, and the heat; I crooked my finger, relishing in the way it resonated through his limbs in an unconscious quiver. It wasn’t long before the second finger joined it, working him open like a piston. When I bent down to check him, pressing hard kisses to the edge of his hole, I saw him seeping and wet against the couch.

He’d probably fuss about that later, but right now nothing mattered.

When I stood up close behind him, he seemed to knew it was coming, tensing up and arching back in anticipation. “God, Jack, please, I’ve needed it-”

“I know you have.”

I lifted him higher over the couch, half-drunk on the sight of him prostrate in front of me. With a guiding hand, I pressed inside his heat, and felt myself flood through with need. It took a lot for me to wait, gritting my teeth and tensing as he adjusted to the size of me. I felt him clenching around me, and the quiet litany of his whispered moans below me on the couch.

When I could finally thrust into him, it was a gift. It didn’t take long for him to loosen up, body flushed all down his back as I sped up. By the strangled sound of his cries, I was hitting that knot of nerves inside him nearly every time — and kneading into his hips with my hands, slow and steady against the far rougher rhythm of my cock.

The first time I’d knotted inside him had been a surprise. Not so much this time. When I felt myself thicken inside him, swelling up to keep me tightly inside him, it felt inevitable. Natural. Rutting into him hard on instinct alone, I came hard and unexpected into his heat.

The come-down was slow and winding, leaving me with just enough mental dexterity to flip him over and pull him off into my hand, lips soft and lingering against his to swallow up his moans. When he came, shivering and shuddering and with his hand crumpling the fabric of my shirt, I felt a tension in me begin to slip away.

Things would be fine between us.

They had to be.

I kicked off my shoes and let my jeans fall, sure that they were spoiled at any rate. My shirt followed, abandoned to the floor in favor of skin-on-skin contact. He was still melted against the couch when I picked him up and carried him to bed, shuffling in close behind him and wrapping my arms around his sweat-damp body.

“I did miss you,” he said without turning to face me, breath almost recovered now and voice impressively steady. “Really, really.”

“Me too.” I kissed the back of his neck in a short line, legs tangling into his. “I’m sorry I had to be away.”

He wriggled back against me, then hummed and looked back between us.

“Condom’s still on.”

“Oh.” Admittedly, I wasn’t as good at using them as I should be; I’d forgotten to discard it in the afterglow. I reached down to tug it off, but found it in significantly worse repair than I had imagined. “Um. I think it broke.”

“It did?”

He turned over to face me, lying on his side and seeming more amused with the prospect than I would have guessed. I was clean, and I imagined he was too if I was his first partner after losing his husband — but he didn’t know about my clean bill of health for certain. Why did he look so entertained?

“It’s actually not much of a problem,” he said. He was avoiding my eyes now. I tried to chase the eye contact, eyes flicking over him and drinking in the red flush on his face. “I don’t think we even remembered to use one the first few times.”

I couldn’t recall. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right, but…

“There’s… something I should tell you, actually.”

I frowned, propping myself up on an elbow. He didn’t look so entertained now. I could see a tightness in his jaw and his shoulders, and that dropped eye contact suddenly seemed more significant. I rubbed his arm, hoping to coax the nerves out of him. Instead, he let out the truth.

“I’m pregnant.”

I sat in stunned silence, hand stopped still on his arm.

“I know it’s a shock,” he continued, rushed and unsteady. “I wasn’t expecting it either. But… it’s yours, obviously. There’s nobody else. And I know it’s soon, but I… once I got over the shock, I think I… I’m happy about it.” He finally looked up at me, eyes shiny and unsure. “So. That’s happened.”

My head was reeling. Still a little dizzy from the depth of my orgasm, I didn’t know how to process the information. My heart was fast against my ribs, and I knew that the silence had gone on for too long — certainly once he filled it.

“It’s okay if you’re not ready for that kind of commitment,” he said. “I know it’s very, very soon, but… I want this baby. Even if you need to bow out, I understand, so… I don’t want you to feel pressure, or…”

Dylan was struggling to meet my eyes again. I had to speak now before he got any more afraid. I owed him that.

But I also owed him my own truth.

“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted, choosing my words carefully. “I’m not scared off by it. I’m not unhappy. It’s just… surreal, I guess.” I looked down at his stomach, barely capable of comprehending that there was a life growing in there. A life we had made together. “I never thought I’d be a father. I just never even pictured it.”

“I think you’d be really good at it,” he said, soft and careful. “For what it’s worth.”

I smiled, heart full. I wished I could reach in and lift his fear away. I could see he was shaking slightly, and a little color had drained from his face. This wasn’t a bad thing. In fact, the more time ticked on, the more happiness was swelling in my chest, but I couldn’t let that get ahead of me. I had to be honest first.

“Dylan, before we talk any more about this, there’s something I have to tell you too.”

He blinked, settling down for comfort on the bed. “You do?”

“Yeah.”

I took a breath, surprised at how difficult it was to get these simple words out. The fact was that he meant so much to me now that I was frozen in place. If I told him, I risked losing him and everything we had — and that beautiful life that was now growing in him, too. If I didn’t, I was doing him a great disservice. He deserved better than that. I couldn’t do it to him any more.

The discomfort crawled under my skin, but it was almost over now. I looked up.

“The truth is I wasn’t just worried about commitment these past two weeks.”

Dylan’s eyes were wide with confusion, brows creased. His bottom lip vanished between his teeth, pink and a little swollen from our sex.

“What I told you about my pack,” I said, lying flat on my back and staring down at my hands. “Losing them all. It was true, but… I didn’t tell you what happened, and I should have.”

“It’s painful,” he said, shaking his head. “I get it.”

“No.” I turned to face him, holding his eyes. “I mean… it is. But that’s not why. I didn’t tell you because… it was lunitis, Dylan. They died of lunitis. All of them.”

He sat in silence. Now our roles were reversed, and I wished he would speak. Hoped that just like me, his silence was less to do with anger and upset than it was with confusion.

“I never got infected,” I continued. “I didn’t get sick. Me, Mark and Oscar — we all survived. We were fine, but… there was a chance I could’ve carried it. A small chance.”

“Lunitis,” he said, tone blank and impossible to read. “That’s what’s been on the news recently? The sickness?”

I nodded, pressing quickly on. “Yes. But I couldn’t commit to being around your daughter and your family, you know? If I thought I would be risking their health. So I got tested. I’m a carrier genetically,” I stressed, hands clenching into fists and then loosening again. “It’s in there, recessive. But I’m not infectious. I’m safe.”

There was still no answer. I cleared my throat.

“We should probably have the baby screened, though, just in case I-”

“But you did risk their health,” Dylan interrupted, voice still toneless and hard. “You risked everybody’s health. Every wolf you’ve ever met. How can you justify that?”

I felt my heart drop.

“Dylan...”

“No,” he said, sitting up. His brow furrowed deeper, washing over his face with an anger I had never seen him wear. “It doesn’t matter how scared you were, Jack. My baby. My Josie. My entire family. You came to dinner. You didn’t know.”

“I know. I’m sorry; I-”

“You can’t be sorry,” he said.

I felt the life draining out of me as I sat up to face him, face tight and heart pounding. “I am. I feel terrible about it. I’m sorry-”

“No!”

Dylan stared at me, eyes glittering with something between anger and hurt. I would have done anything to fix it, in that moment, but I knew there was nothing. I knew what I’d done.

“I’ve seen it on the news,” he pressed. “What people go through. How they die in pain and in indignity, all… vomit and shit and piss and blood, and so young. All the pups. Especially the pups. They just fade away to nothing. You risked that for my pack, knowing what it did to yours. You’ve been risking other wolves for years.”

I kept my jaw clamped shut. There was no defence. I could apologize again but it would only incense him further. All these years my fear had stopped me from getting tested really had been selfish. Over time, when nothing bad had happened around me, I had just allowed myself to believe that it was okay. To avoid seeking confirmation — to bury my ears in the sand.

“Go home, Jack.”

“Dylan…”

“Go. Home. Don’t call me.”

He turned away from me now. I could see the movement in his shoulders — the heaviness of his breath, and what it did to him to have to speak like this. He wasn’t an assertive person. It wasn’t in his nature, but what was in his nature was to defend his pack to the death.

No wonder he hated me.

I nodded, even knowing he couldn’t see it, and slipped from the bed.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

He didn’t answer — didn’t say a single other word to me as I dressed and slipped out of the door, feeling the ghost of that illness I’d never even contracted still skipping and sliding over my skin like a leper. Like damaged goods, unworthy of love. As I walked down the street, feeling infrequent spots of rain begin to hit my skin from the blue but cloudy sky, I didn’t dare to turn back. I knew he wouldn’t be at the window watching me go, and somehow that hurt as much as the rest.

Worse now was that I hadn’t just lost a partner.

Now, I’d lost a child.

And in both regards, it was nothing more than I deserved.