Cold seeped into Josh’s half-naked body from the tiled floor, keeping him awake even though the other wolf’s drowsiness wanted to translate over to him to lure him into sleep as well. That was what men did after having sex, after all. They slept.

At least, that was what all the other men in Josh’s life had done once they were done pounding him. Alphas and betas alike, they treated sex like it was a sleeping pill, something they could demand and take as necessary whenever they felt in need of it. He hadn’t ever slept with another omega, hadn’t heard a male omega talk about what they did after sex, but he’d overheard plenty of women complaining about how their husbands never wanted pillow talk.

Or couch talk, Josh thought, looking over at the snoring alpha. He could smell blood from here and that worried him, though not as much as something else.

He had been asking Blake to get condoms, not lube.

But, he supposed, what was done was done, and he had certainly been done. He ached in new places now, including way deep inside his body. That ache up in there was of a deep, nagging kind that not even aspirin would be able to diminish. He grimaced upon standing but it was almost nice somehow to feel that pain, to know he’d been claimed in a way no others had ever done before to him.

The question was, now what? Was he just supposed to stand here awkwardly while Blake napped or was he meant to leave?

But if he left, he knew he would never come back. And those sparks which had flown when they touched told him that he needed to be here. The well hadn’t been wrong. He suspected that as the truth, though before he’d doubted it, and he needed to follow this course through to its ultimate end.

Which means I’m staying. But what do I do while he’s out?

Eventually, he figured the first thing to do was to clean up. Tiptoeing to the bathroom, he did just that...and took a peek in the medicine cabinet and in the space under the sink. As he’d suspected, there were no condoms to be found. While the alpha might keep them in his room, Josh didn’t think that would actually be the case. In the past, he’d turned down a lot of offers for sex because no one ever wanted to use a condom. Did no one care about safety anymore? He couldn’t really understand why people were so against the practice, but maybe he just wasn’t meant to.

Yeah, right.

He emerged from the bathroom and looked around the apartment. The smell of sex mixed with the sharp aroma of burning coffee. He went to turn the pot off, then sipped his lukewarm cup while contemplating his surroundings. He and Blake were really very similar in some ways, it seemed. They both could have done more for the places they were living but had chosen not to, albeit for different reasons.

Or were the reasons really all that different? He imagined that if his parents had given up on him, thereby forcing him to relocate to a place like this, it would be pretty damn depressing. Maybe Blake was in a state of stagnation as well.

Ryan’s words came back to him. Live a little. If he stayed around Blake, chasing the idea that they were meant to be mates, wouldn’t that also improve Blake’s life? He then had a responsibility to stick around, not just for himself but for another person. Maybe that was what he had been missing all this time.

“Okay,” he whispered, finishing his coffee. “Okay, sure. Let’s see where this goes.”

He knew Blake only had sex with him because he was horny, but there was still a connection between them, however tentative. He needed to push at it, to further the bond.

Shyness rose up inside him and he blushed, turning his head away slightly. Could he really be thinking about...

But why not? Clearly, it was naptime.

One hesitant step forward at a time, Josh crept closer and closer to the sleeping alpha. He expected Blake to sit up and snarl at him any second but the alpha was deeply unconscious, his chest rising with almost unbearably slow breaths. He seemed to be growling but it was only a trick of the mind as his nervousness converted snores into something more sinister.

He turned around and lowered onto the other loveseat cushion like a man doing his first squat: hesitant and a bit wobbly. His butt contacted the cushion and he sank down into it until his shoulder blades hit the back. Through the whole long process, which really couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds, Blake didn’t stir.

Josh leaned, then paused. He held his breath, waiting to be shoved away, but again it didn’t happen. He leaned another inch, sagging closer and closer. He felt the other’s heat and lingered in that position for several painful, awkward minutes, so sure that Blake would feel him in return and be furious with him for daring to stick around. He was trembling, timid, afraid.

Another inch to the side and he finally made contact. Their shoulders touched, separated only by two layers of clothing.

He had no idea how long it took him but eventually he was resting right against Blake’s side, his cheek on his shoulder. He struggled not to breathe too loudly, to be just a little bit less present, but damn, it felt good. There was no telling how long it had been since he cuddled with someone like this. Longer than the past couple of years certainly, because his parents weren’t particularly touchy-feely despite how much he loved and admired them. And his past relationships were little more than fuck-sessions every couple days. Even if his partner was unconscious, this was the most cuddling he had done since childhood.

Both saddened and amazed by this realization, Josh closed his eyes to savor the moment. Blake smelled comforting and somehow solid, like smoke and sex and masculinity.

His breathing slowed. His thoughts slowed in their racing, then took a break altogether. Before he knew it, he, too, was asleep.

He dreamed he was a pup again, cuddled in a pile of fluff with his companions after a hard day of play. The adults murmured in the background, their voices indistinct and low as they discussed Adult Things; he knew in his young mind he was a world away from such concerns and there was absolutely nothing better than being a pup.

Very dimly, he became aware of the fact that the voices belonged to only two adults. That realization brought with it another sort of clarity, that one of the speakers was Blake. Confusion roused him slightly, the dream and reality mingling as he struggled to remember if he had known Blake as a pup, and why he sounded so adult and aggressive and world-weary, not at all like a pup should be...

And the other voice was also that of an adult. Asking questions which the Blake-pup answered with a snarl. An odd scratching sound punctuated these exchanges, like dull claws against wooden flooring.

“...ime would you say you saw...”

“Do I look like I wear a fucking wa...”

In and out, back and forth. And the other pups were not pups at all but blankets and musty-smelling couch cushions, and he wasn’t a carefree pup at all but a full-grown man with a heavy bladder and a body that made it feel as if he’d been hit by a freight truck full of weightlifting equipment.

With a gasp, Josh opened his eyes. The room was dull and dark without the lights. His internal clock spun out of control, confused by the lack of windows in his home and the fact that he didn’t take naps. Even when he was in the midst of a harder depression than usual, he always found he suffered from insomnia rather than a desire to sleep the pain away.

And this isn’t my home. I’d never tolerate my parents’ couch smelling like this.

He looked around the dim room, eyes finally adjusting. He was still in Blake’s apartment, but Blake was beside him no longer. Instead, he was curled up on the loveseat with a pillow beneath his head to prop him up and two heavy blankets holding him down. His own body heat had created a cocoon of warmth, which he was reluctant to leave. He wanted to tuck his head down under the blankets and reclaim the dream, but that was a child’s wish.

And he wasn’t a child. He had responsibilities. He was one of the grown-ups who had been talking in the background, boring but reassuring. What would the rest of his pack think if they saw him like this? What would Ryan think?

Blake stood in the doorway of the apartment, one hand on the frame and the other on the door itself to form a living gate. On the other side of the gate, silhouetted by the hallway lights, was a man in a dark uniform with a pad of paper and a pencil.

Police, he thought, alarmed, and sat up. Were they looking for him? Had someone reported him missing?

The officer broke off from whatever he was saying to Blake and gestured past him with the pencil to Josh. “Look, he’s awake now. I’ll need to ask him some questions.”

“I don’t think so,” Blake snapped. “He’s exhausted. We’re both traumatized and tired. I answered all your questions.”

“Yes,” the cop replied in that faux-patient sort of voice people tend to use when explaining simple concepts to children. “But he was there. I need to get his side of the story.”

Josh slid forward to the edge of the cushion, grimacing as the pain in his body fully awoke, reminding him of what he’d gone through. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Blake snarled. “Lie down, Josh. Go back to sleep.”

What stunned him wasn’t the ferocity in Blake’s voice. It was how genuine that ferocity was, as if he actually cared.

The cop was nonplussed by this whole scenario, however. He looked past Blake. “Josh, was it? I’m Officer Ripley. Don’t worry, I’m a wolf too. No need to try and omit any part of your story because there was shapeshifting involved. I just need to ask you some questions.”

I don’t think Blake would call the police about what happened. He’s not exactly on good terms with them right now. So, who did?

“Josh?” Officer Ripley repeated. “I need to ask you questions. Can you hear me?” Quieter, “Can he hear me? Did he hit his head?”

“No,” Josh said loudly, answering for himself. He stood up, though his legs wobbled beneath him at the end of the strenuous process. “I’m...I’m fine. I’ll answer your questions.”

“Good.” The cop sounded pleased but he didn’t exactly look pleased, as if there was something he was trying to keep a secret from both of them. “If you’ll step out into the hall with me, then?”

“Sure.”

“Wait.” Blake reached out for Josh as he wobbled closer and for a moment he wondered if the alpha was about to touch him again, and if it would be more or less intense now that they had slept together. Certainly there weren’t many things more intimate than that?

“Yes?” He turned to Blake, a question in his eyes.

However, there was no question at all after he saw the look on the alpha’s face. It was anything but friendly, everything but concerned. Warning burned in those dark eyes, instructing him to be careful with what he said and exactly how he said it. Josh didn’t nod, didn’t give any indication he understood. Doing so would tell the cop that they were up to something—not that he himself knew what it was.

Officer Ripley looked back and forth between them for a moment, looking impatient. “Can we get on with this? I have other places to be right now.”

“Sure,” Josh stammered, and followed the cop out into the hallway. It was certainly no breath of fresh air out here but he could feel his head clearing anyway, no longer fogged up by the lingering haze of sex.

The cop turned to him once they had gone a way down the hall, near the staircase which looked as if it would be more at home in a horror movie. Dirt caked each step, creating a slick death trap. The railing looked almost fake it was in such horrid condition, as if a falling person might grab onto it and come away holding a piece of splintered wood while continuing to tumble to their death.

Josh shuddered. My imagination is getting the better of me.

“So, why don’t you tell me your side of the story?” Ripley suggested. Though phrased as gentle encouragement, he was an alpha—if not a particularly brutish one—and it was a command in actuality. Josh knew better than to disobey a command and especially one from a person of authority, so he agreed and readily told his tale. He left out the reasons behind the circumstances and instead phrased the scenario as if he had been there the whole time even though it wasn’t the truth. Neither was it a lie, though. He had been there for the confrontation.

Ripley occasionally took down a note as he told the brief tale. The brief glance Josh got of his notepad seemed to indicate that he was marking down the areas that correlated between his viewpoint and Blake’s. There seemed to be a lot of checkmarks, which made him hopeful.

He left out most of their conversation, and ended the story with recounting how he saved Blake from walking into the path of the truck.

It was there that Ripley paused and looked up, which made Josh nervous, but he finished anyway.

“You know,” the cop said, “Mr. Sanderson didn’t mention that part.”

Josh was on the verge of opening his mouth to ask who Mr. Sanderson was when he realized it must be Blake. He covered his near-mistake with a yawn. He wasn’t quite sure why he didn’t want the cop to know that he and Blake were all but strangers but he took his guidance from that warning glare in the other man’s eyes. “He...didn’t?”

“No.” Ripley noted down something else on his paper. This whole time he hadn’t been making much of an effort to hide what he was writing, but he did now. Josh’s heart gave a tremble deep in his chest. He prayed to whatever wolf-god might be out there that he hadn’t just royally fucked up. “Not that I can blame him. Makes him look really stupid.”

Josh laughed, startled. He took a closer look at the cop, who was smiling with amusement. Even teeth, an easy grin, full golden hair and grey eyes. Probably not anyone’s idea of a catch, but an okay man. A trustworthy man.

“I don’t think I’ll have to go back and ask him to corroborate, because that fits with what I already know. The man who nearly hit him with his truck is the one who called us.”

“Oh. Really? He didn’t seem all that concerned at the time...”

Ripley grunted. “He wasn’t. Said he felt like an asshole when he looked back and realized the man he almost ran down was all bloody.”

“Why did it take him so long to call?”

Ripley didn’t answer, which was really an answer in and of itself. The man in the truck had called, and probably quite soon after it happened. It had just taken the police this long to respond. And why? He had a nagging suspicion the answer was because Blake was Blake, a delinquent and apparently just not a valuable member of society in general. If it was anyone else, they probably would have been intercepted by the cop car on their walk back to the apartment. In hindsight, that was probably a good thing. Blake would have been more angry than horny by the time they arrived, which would mean no sex, no cuddling on the couch...

“...osh?”

“Huh!” he snapped out of whatever weird trance his thoughts had placed him in and focused back on the cop again. “Yes?”

“I asked you a question.”

“I was just...uh...” In his nervousness, he couldn’t recall the proper word.

The cop made an odd plucking motion with two fingers. “Wool-gathering?”

“Right.”

“I know this is none of my business,” Ripley said. “Trust me, I do know that. You can tell me to shut my yap, and I won’t speak another word to you about anything, since I’ve got all I need right here.” He waved his notepad around to punctuate his words, making his point. “But let me tell you that I think whatever you’ve got going on with this guy Blake, you need to drop it and go off somewhere else. You look nice enough. You could have anyone you wanted if you tried hard enough. Don’t settle for this punk.”

Josh took a step back and had to grab for the railing on the stairs to keep from taking a tumble as his heel struck open air. The bolts which held the rail to the wall gave an ominous squeal but held. “I’m...not sure what you mean, officer.”

But Ripley’s grey eyes were bright with generosity, clear with caring. “Yeah, you do. Don’t play dumb with me. You seem smarter than that. You think I can’t smell what went on in that apartment? It’s way too small of a place to have dissipated. And you reek of smoke.”

Oh.

“He’s gotten himself in a lot of trouble. He’ll only get you in trouble, too. Don’t let it happen, Josh. Don’t let him drag you to a place you got no business being in. And that’s all I’m gonna say. I know my advice ain’t appreciated and you probably won’t listen anyway but hey, I had to say something.” Ripley shrugged, looking genuinely bashful. “I’m a cop. It’s my job to try and help you suckers, even when you don’t want it.”

“Um...okay,” he stammered out. “Thanks for watching out for me, I guess.”

Ripley waved one hand and turned to walk away. He stopped only a few feet down the hallway and turned back as if he had something to say, shrugged, and went into the elevator.

Josh stayed where he was until he heard the distinctive rumble that meant the elevator was descending. Only then did he dare relax even a little bit, though it was more like he couldn’t stand to be tense for even a second longer. All of this had really taken a lot out of him.

He went back to the apartment, where Blake was waiting just behind the door. He leaned forward, gaze sinister. “Well?”

“He left,” Josh replied.

“Good. Now, you buzz off.” Blake shut the door.

Josh reacted on pure instinct: he stuck his foot between the closing door and the frame. Pain shot up his leg as the bones in his foot were pushed together with excruciating force, but he only grimaced and stared up into the eyes of the other man. He could see himself reflected in those eyes and was startled to see that it looked like he was snarling. “N-No,” he stammered.

“What?” Blake held the door tightly where it was. Pain stole Josh’s breath and for a moment he thought he might start crying from it, but he bit his lip and tried to find enough energy inside himself to glower. He couldn’t, but at least the search distracted him. “What did you say?”

“I said...no! I’m not leaving! You might think I’m crazy for the whole well thing, but you know there’s something between us now, and I’m not going to let you just shove that aside!” And there it was. For once, he had put his foot down...literally.

Blake stared at him. Some of his anger had been replaced with puzzlement, which Josh considered to be a good sign.

“I mean, I felt it just as much as you did. The way we felt. When we were...having sex? I’ve never felt like that before. Have you?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Well, you know denying it makes it seem even more likely!” Josh blurted out. “You’re lying by omission! Just like you did with the whole truck thing. You’re scared of making mistakes right?”

“Get out.”

“No!”

Blake suddenly seemed to realize he was causing Josh pain and opened the door a few inches. Josh’s heart soared with relief but the look on Blake’s face still wasn’t exactly friendly.

“Go away, you fucking crazy omega! Don’t make me call that cop back here!” Blake snapped.

“With what? Your nonexistent phone? I didn’t see one in there at all. You can’t afford it.”

Shit. Wrong thing to say.

In an instant, Blake’s eyes went darker than Josh had seen them yet. The alpha reached out with one massive hand and pushed him back, away from the door. “Dammit!” Josh swore, lunging forward again. He tripped over his own foot but it didn’t matter, as the door had already closed in his face. He pounded on the door with one fist. He could smell the alpha lingering right on the other side, taunting him with his nearness even as he locked the door and slid the chain into place.

“Why don’t you just live a little?” Josh said, aware he was being a hypocrite for echoing the words which had been said to him not all that long ago. “You going to sit in there and have a pity party because you’re down on your luck? Or do you want to keep seeing me for an occasional fuck? I’ve been that before. I’ll be it again.”

Silence.

“Don’t pretend you don’t care, because we both know it’s not true. If you didn’t care, you’d have hurt me. I mean, yeah, my foot is killing me, but I mean you would’ve hurt me real bad when I first mentioned the well and you told me I was crazy. Instead, you let me come home with you! You had sex with me!

“And don’t say the sex was meaningless, because if it was, you wouldn’t have covered me up when you got off the couch!”

And that was where his words ran out. He’d been speaking almost on autopilot, hardly aware of what he was going to say or what the significance of any of it would be until it was already out. It wasn’t until he’d blurted it out that he realized the significance of waking up with blankets drawn to his shoulders.

Blushing, fuming, he rummaged through his pockets and came up with a crumpled and washed-out receipt from the last time he’d gone grocery shopping. He remembered pushing his shopping cart through the aisles, walking through the whole store without grabbing anything to put in the basket. He even wandered up to the checkout lane with his empty cart; only the puzzled stares of other customers brought him out of his stupor to realize how dumb he looked. He went through the store again and managed to get halfway through his already pitiful list before calling it quits.

Yeah, the receipt would do just fine. Problem was, he didn’t have anything to write with.

Suddenly, he just wanted all of this to be over.

Josh summoned his fangs and nipped at the tip of his thumb. Blood welled, bright-red and startling. Using his index finger from his other hand, he painted his telephone number in blood on the faded receipt. He waved it through the air like an old polaroid photograph, then shoved it under the door. He had no idea if the numbers were readable. Maybe going under the door would have smudged them beyond hope of recognition. He didn’t really care, if he was honest. It was out of his hands now.

He drove home and went to bed without undressing and slept far, far too long.