Chapter Six
Ethan
He had a bear of a time getting back inside the townhouse, and not just because Pat decided to act like an overprotective mother growling and grumbling over a recalcitrant cub.
“Kinky,” he muttered to himself, picking through the piles of soot in the front room.
“What?” Pat called from the front door.
“Nothing.”
The damage could have been worse; it didn’t look like the blaze had done much structural damage. Cosmetically speaking, however, the front half of the townhouse was a wreck. The rugs were toast, the hard wood underneath singed to a black, oily slick. Scorch marks marred the four walls, neat black lines against the pale lavender walls, now tinged a dark grey from smoke. The ceiling too bore marks from flame and frantically escaping heat.
And the furniture—not a single piece in the living room had escaped untouched. It made hot frustration well up in Ethan’s chest as he searched the mess for his books: specifically, the one he’d had that morning, a priceless first edition that Lailana had probably collected from the writer himself.
“What are you doing?” Pat’s voice drifted sharp across the room.
Ethan ignored the werewolf as he slid onto his belly and reached back under the skeletal remains of the chair he’d been sitting in earlier. His fingers closed around the leather binding, and he slid it out of the mess with a soft, relieved sigh.
A warm hand wrapped around his elbow and helped him stand up.
Ethan blew ash off the cover of the book and glanced at Pat from the corner of his eye. The wolf stared at the wreckage, his shoulders tense around his ears.
“You should grab a change of clothes. You can take a shower next door.”
“I can just go home,” Ethan said, even though the idea made his stomach clench into a knot of anxiety.
Pat frowned. “If you want to.”
“Well, we can’t stay here.”
“No. But that doesn’t mean— We can stay in the master bedroom next door.”
Ethan huffed. “I’m not kicking a bunch of college students out of their house.”
“They’re all on winter holiday. Besides, I have seniority.”
He gave Pat a look, but the wolf had a grim expression on his face that didn’t budge. Pat crossed his arms over his chest and met Ethan’s look with one of his own, mouth tight and muscles bulging a little under the lines of his leather jacket.
“They can go back home for a couple of weeks until we get someone in here to clean this up.”
Ethan pressed one hand over his eyes and decided to give up before the conversation devolved into a full blown argument. He didn’t care either way, and he didn’t really want to go back to his own apartment in Fremont.
“I can pay for—”
Pat huffed and grabbed his wrist, squeezing once as he pulled Ethan’s hands away from his face. The wolf stared hard at him until their eyes met.
“Don’t be stupid,” he grumbled. “The pack will take care of it. It’s not your fault.”
“Beg to differ.”
The wolf cocked his head.
Ethan flexed his numb fingertips, waggling them under Pat’s nose.
“I don’t know how… I mean I know it was magic, but I’ve never had that happen before.”
“What?”
Ethan shrugged. “I thought I saw something—”
“What?”
“Nothing. And then whoosh.”
“You set the house on fire?” Pat asked, sounding confused.
“It was an accident. Fire’s not usually my thing.”
Ethan flexed his neck, working at the tension building up in the vertebra. Pat still had not relinquished his hold on his wrist, but the wolf’s skin was warm against his, warm but not burning, and it felt grounding to him rather than containing.
“It takes too much power.”
“Maybe,” the wolf said in an undertone. “Come on.”
He chivvied them upstairs and helped Ethan pack up clothes and toiletries, which the wolf then carted downstairs and into the neighboring house. Ethan trailed after him, toes cold on the front walk and arms wrapped around his chest.
It didn’t take any convincing to get him out of his ashy clothes and into a hot shower. He could hear the distant rise and fall as Pat talked to a young, curious wolf in the hall, but Ethan turned on the water and stuck his head under the spray before he had to listen to Pat come up with an explanation that didn’t sound entirely crazed.
An explanation that didn’t begin with: well, the mage I live with decided to shoot a fireball across the living room.
Cleaned up and restless, Ethan dug through his duffle and found Lailana’s special blend of herbs.
It didn’t do much good trying to sneak around in a house full of werewolves, but he found the downstairs empty when he crept out of the bedroom. The front door stood open, and he could see the lights from a cop car flashing on the street outside.
Ethan brewed himself a cup of tea, using double the recommended quantity of leaves and left it in the water to steep until it turned a dark, murky color.
Nose wrinkling at the pungent smell, he carried the mug up to the master bedroom. His eyes slid across the features of the room as he blew across the top of the tea.
Despite the fact he knew there were three werewolves living in this portion of the building, all of them between the ages of eighteen and twenty and college students, this bedroom looked barely lived in at all. There was an empty glass on the nightstand next to the left side of the bed and a stray sock poking out from below the dust ruffle. But when he slid back the closet door, Ethan found nothing more than a collection of snow gear: jackets, fluorescent pants, hats, scarves, and ski boots.
As the soporific effects of the herbs began to work on him, he climbed onto the bed, settling himself down in the middle with his back propped up by a considerable mountain of extra large king size pillows. Between the downy softness and his drink, his eyes grew heavy, and Ethan caught himself jerking away as his chin bobbed against his sternum, the half-full mug nearly slipping out of his limp hands.
With some difficulty, he set the cup down on the nightstand next to that dusty glass, and slipped onto his stomach, wrapping one arm around a pillow in a half-hearted gesture at self-soothing, before his eyes gave into the allure of a drugged sleep.
Patrick
After the firemen had cleared out and the EMTs had been put off, despite trying to take Ethan to the ER for tests and scans, Pat shut the front door and slid the deadbolt home with a sense of relief. They lone pack kid still there over winter break had cleared out quick enough when he explained the situation, taking away the worst of the clutter and leaving behind a pile of dirty dishes in the sink that Pat contemplated with no small degree of disgust.
But it wasn’t worth calling and chewing anyone out over.
Pat tuned his hearing into the slow heartbeat thumping softly from one of the upstairs bedrooms. It was enough to reassure him that Ethan was resting comfortably, and he kicked off his boots and jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and grumbling set to work cleaning up the rest of the teenage detritus.
When that was done, he took a quick whiff of the fridge, relieved that it didn’t give off any strong odors. Of course, the reason for this became obvious once he opened the door to find a grand total of three half-empty bottles of ketchup on the door, a carton of baking soda hiding at the very back of the bottom shelf, and one wrinkled apple.
“Of course.”
His ears told him that Ethan hadn’t moved in the half hour he’d spent messing around downstairs. Pat found a collection of take out menus in a junk drawer next to the sink and ascended the stairs on light feet, flipping through the local options—one thing he would say, the kids had a much better selections of menus than he did.
“Hey, what do you feel like—”
Pat trailed off as he took in Ethan’s bone white face and shallow breathing. He was lying on his back on the bed without a single muscle twitch; even his eyes behind purple eyelids were still. He dropped the menus and crossed the room, bringing one hand down to wrap around Ethan’s wrist in a useless gesture. He didn’t need to touch him to count the pace and strength of his heartbeat.
His nose burned a little when he sniffed the contents of the mug next to the bed, a collage of astringent floral scents assaulting him all at once, too tangled up together for him to detect individual notes.
Under his fingers, Ethan’s skin felt as cool as the stone cold mug of tea.
Pat chuffed the mage’s hand between both of his larger palms, repeating his name sharply when he got no response.
“Ethan!”
Nothing.
Panic clawed up the back of his throat. Pat had almost decided that he had to call the EMTs back when he noted a slight uptick in Ethan’s heartbeat. But still, there was no outward response. He wrapped his free hand around the other man’s shoulder and shook him, repeating his name again.
He let go and swept the room, eyes falling on Ethan’s duffle bag and a pouch of dried herbs spilling out of it. He recognized the embossed label on the package as belonging to Ethan’s favorite magic shop.
Magic. Hadn’t Ethan said the fire had been a magical accident too?
“Wassit?” a low, crumbling voice whispered behind him.
Pat stared at Ethan, trying to meet his blurry unfocused eyes as he held up the pouch of herbs.
He knelt next to the side of the bed to be on a level with the mage as he demanded, “What is this?”
Instead of answering, Ethan huffed under his breath and rolled his eyes, struggling to turn over onto his side, but Pat’s hands held him in place.
“Leggo.”
“Ethan!”
“What?”
The mage’s eyes snapped open, sharpening like the edge of a tripwire you weren’t expecting. His nostrils flared a little, and he pursed his mouth.
“Your heartbeat…” Pat said.
A calculating line appeared between Ethan’s eyes.
“What about it?”
“It’s too slow.”
“It’s fine.”
“I can hear it.”
“Why are you listening to it?”
Pat shook his head, confused. “You’re sweating,” he said, realizing it as he stared at Ethan’s face, noting the beads of sweat that had darkened his hairline and gathered in the dip at the base of his throat.
“It’s warm.”
“No, it’s not.”
Ethan tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling, one pale hand reaching up to finger his damp collar.
“Leave me alone, Pat.”
“I came up to see what you wanted to eat for dinner.”
He waved a negligent hand. “Don’t care.”
“Ethan!”
“What!” the mage snapped, struggling to sit up.
A bright pink flush spread across his cheekbones, above the hallows that the fall and winter had carved out of his delicate features. His heart, despite the angry activity, still beat sluggishly in his chest.
“Why do you always do this?”
Pat frowned. “What, worry about you?”
“Yes. That. I don’t need it.”
He caught Ethan by his shoulder and wrestled a pillow into place to support the small of his back, crowding up close despite the hands that batted ineffectually at him. Pat smoothed dark blond hair off the other man’s forehead and cupped the back of his head, tipping his face up to meet his eyes. They were bloodshot, red veined, and watery, the pupils blown too wide under the light of the overhead light, and as Pat stared, he thought that the other man seemed to struggle to focus on his face. Some of that could have been due to resistance on Ethan’s part, a kind of childish petulance at being manhandled and worried over as his words suggested, but his eyes slid off of Pat’s face without focusing in such a way that it made his gut tight with concern.
Pat was a born worrier. One of the older children in a large family. One of the eldest brothers. And his mother’s second. It was in his nature to be concerned, and even on a good day, Ethan seemed a dismal failure at taking good care of himself. He was Pat’s mate—no one could blame him for being extra careful of the other man.
“What’s in the shit you took?” he asked, schooling his voice so that it was something less harsh than he felt, filtering out the worst of his anger as it simmered around the edges of his thoughts.
“Nothing bad. Hecate. I just wanted to sleep.”
Pat squeezed the back of Ethan’s neck. The mage blinked and his head lolled forward, pressing their foreheads together. He felt fever hot even to Pat’s warm werewolf skin.
“Not like that,” Ethan whispered. “Just—just wanted to get a little rest. After… I swear it was just something to help me sleep a little.”
But the way his eyes fell away, slippery as an eel caught in a lie, made Pat pull him closer and press his nose into the warm, damp space behind Ethan’s ear, breathing in deeply the musky scent that had become so familiar—so comforting—to him. That tang of cotton and male sweat and a flicker of overblown ozone that he had begun to associate with Ethan’s magic. In particular, that ozone scent was sharper tonight as he cataloged his mate’s smell. Bursting full bodied and overpowering across his nose.
Pat sat back and sneezed into the crook of his arm.
Under his hands, Ethan twitched, and when Pat looked up he caught the other man trying to hold in a laugh.
Before he could catch himself, his hand slipped around the side of Ethan’s jaw. He thumbed the other man’s bottom lip, feeling the plush give with a greedy possession.
“What are you offering?” Ethan murmured.
Pat blinked, coming back to himself. His hands slipped to the bed.
“What?”
“For dinner.”
“Oh.” He scrambled to pick up the loose take away menus and proffered them to Ethan like a Vegas card dealer. “Whatever you want.”
The other man sighed and curled up a little on one side to pick through his options. He selected Indian, an order of butter chicken and jasmine rice with extra naan, and handed the stained papers back to Pat.
Before he left the bedroom, Pat grabbed the empty water glass next to the bed. “I’ll get you something to drink.”
But Ethan wrinkled his nose and scrambled upright to demand a clean glass.
“Not sharing germs with college kids. Last thing I need is the plague.”
Pat called in their food order and finished tidying up the kitchen while he waited for it to be delivered. He already had his wallet in his hand by the time the doorbell rang. He exchanged his credit card for two brown paper bags, signing the digital ticket with a stiff nod and a generous tip. While he was juggling the food and his wallet, a white rectangle fell out of the latter and fluttered to the floor. Pat stared down at the simple business card—just one name printed in duo-chrome black, a phone number, address, and an unassuming minimalist depiction of a tree merging with the profile of a person’s skull. He sucked in a sharp breath and reached down to pick up the card. He’d forgotten about it in all the drama with the fire.
Upstairs, he found Ethan passed out in an awkward looking sprawl, still half-sitting up and one hand clenched in the edge of the duvet.
Pat set the business card down next to the stone cold mug of tea and climbed up on the bed next to the mage. The movement startled Ethan awake, and only werewolf reflexes kept him from being slapped by wayward limbs or losing his hold on the food. He passed over a plastic fork and a container of chicken.
Ethan cleared his throat with a wet noise and brought the carton up to his nose with a sigh.
“Thanks.”
“Of course,” Pat said quietly.
Ethan
When his stomach felt pleasantly overfull and the naan was all gone, Ethan set his empty cartons, used napkins, and disposable fork down on the nightstand and drank hall of his water in one long swallow. His eyes snagged on a business card next to his glass. Ethan grabbed it with numb fingers, eyes raking over the name on the front, and then again across the name written in black ink on the back.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked without turning to look at his bed partner.
The wolf gave him back an echoing silence. Well, that had never deterred Ethan Ellison before, and he wasn’t going to let it start now, even if his head still felt like it was full of cotton from Lailana’s tea and his stomach rolled uncomfortably full of food. He rolled over and shoved the card at Pat, repeating his question.
“It’s for you,” the wolf said.
“Did you get it?”
A furrow appeared between Pat’s dark eyebrows. He shook his head. “The Captain.”
“Shit.”
“It’s not an order.”
Ethan snorted.
“She just thought…”
“Well?”
“That it might be good.”
He glared at the wolf, who squirmed under the heated attention.
“Not like you to pussy foot around a subject,” he sneered.
“What do you want me to say? That our boss isn’t going to let you come back to work until you get your head screwed back on straight by a shrink?” Pat snapped his mouth closed with a frustrated noise and gathered up the remains of their dinner, standing up from the bed.
“I’m not going to go to a psychologist.”
“You have to.”
He flicked the card onto the floor and crossed his arms.
Pat sighed. “Why not?”
Ethan pressed his lips together, holding in all of the words clamoring to spill his guts out before the wolf. They weren’t the kind of secrets he would have wanted to confide in his closest friend, let along a stranger. Let alone—whatever he and Pat were to each other.
“It might help.”
“I’m fine.”
Pat stormed around the foot of the bed, picked up his garbage, and grabbed the half-full mug of tea, gesturing with it sharp enough it sloshed over the rim and dampened the edge of his flannel shirt.
“Tell that to someone who doesn’t live with you.”
“That’s nothing. Not like I’m the only one having trouble sleeping in this room.”
Pat growled in the back of his throat and left the room, kicking the door shut behind him. Ethan listened to the sound of his angry retreating footsteps until they were replaced by bangs and clatters as the wolf did something downstairs.
“I’m not wrong,” he muttered, hoping that the wolf was listening in close enough to catch it.