Page 140 of Bonds of Fate

The gate slides open when they get home, and Rowan is on the front porch. He’s pacing and pulling at his hair. What the fuck is going on?

Leo has his phone out to see if they’ve missed messages. “Oh shit. We missed his texts.”

Jay doesn’t wait for the rest. He’s slamming the car into park, and he just leaves his driver’s side door wide open, heart in his throat and wolf at the ready.

“Nix is hurt, and Gideon is fucking puking. Hurry up!” Rowan disappears toward the gym.

Jay can smell the blood before he even gets to the gym, and when he clears the door, the vomit and petrichor hit him like a fist to the face.

But all he can see is Nix standing in the center of the room, tattered shirt in his hand, while Finn sews up a long, deep gash in his omega’s side.

Jay’s wolf is in near hysterics, shredding through any last attempt at restraint as he barrels forward. Fangs down, claws out, his growl is a warning that freezes every wolf in the room.

His instincts scream at him to assess his mate, but when he lifts his nose, searching for the telltale signs of pain—vanilla gone sour, burnt cookies singed at the edges—there’s nothing.

Nothing.

Nix is standing right there, Finn’s needle still half-pressed into his side, but his scent is locked down so tightly it’s as if he isn’t even there. The absence is so absolute that Jay’s wolf roars in confusion and fury. It doesn’t matter that his omega is in front of him—his scent is missing, and without it, Jay can’t tell how bad it is.

The burst of fear takes him right back to the time almost a decade ago—when he thought Nix had died—and the grief burns through him in a fiery rage. His second roar is enough to break Nix out of his daze, and he meets Jay’s eyes.

“Jamie. It’s okay. Really. Hardly hurts.” It’s not the comfort Nix intends for it to be. A huge gash hardly fucking hurts? No, it’s not the consolation Nix thinks it is, not at all.

Finn snorts and tries to hold Nix still so he can finish, but the omega is having none of it. Jay meets Nix halfway, and his wolf runs his nose over his mate’s hair and into his neck, huffing and growling. Still no sweet vanilla. And with his wolf holding court right now, Jay can’t get the words out to ask where it’s gone.

Jay goes to his knees next, pulling down Nix’s shorts and snuffling at the scent glands in his groin, and still nothing. Itdoesn’t seem to matter that the bond in his chest is bright and strong, so he growls again, and this time, it earns him a smack across the head with a growledstop that idiot alpha.Suddenly, he is on his ass with a lapful of omega-butt, and Jay puts his nose behind his ear.

“Finn, come.”

Finn approaches slowly at Nix’s request and starts stitching up his side again. Nix doesn’t even twitch every time the needle goes in, and eventually, Finn mutters to himself about stitching up mates and how he is goddamned tired of it. He’s pale, too, and it helps Jay to at least be able to scent tart black currant over the blood and vomit.

Why can’t he smell Nix? It’s making his wolf insane. Nausea roils in his gut, and there’s cold sweat covering his back. Maybe this is another reason they don’t want new wolves in scent blockers. They don’t tell you it’s not just about the transitioned wolf being able to scent themselves but also about fucking ridiculous enigma wolves losing their shit, PTSD-style.

Jay finally finds his words, and they’re not what he’d expected to come out of his mouth. “Finn?” It must be hard for him to treat his mate’s injury or smell the blood again.

“I’m fine, alpha. Fucking tired of this, though. Seventeen fucking stitches.” He swipes antiseptic across the wound again, and the scent burns Jay’s wolf’s nose, and he growls.

“Enough, Jamie. It doesn’t even hurt, and it’s my own damn fault. Just quit it.”

“Can’t smell you. Fucking makes my wolf crazy.”

“Oh? Huh. Wait.” Nix scrunches up his nose, and there’s a suddenfloodof vanilla. Jay’s wolf whines, and Finn’s shoulders drop, too.

“Hey. I didn’t know Weres could do that. That is so cool. Why do you all wear patches if you can just turn it off and on like a faucet?”

Finn laughs and plops onto his butt. “Because we can’t. It is not a thing at all, and when a Were doesn’t have a scent? They are wearing a blocker, or they are fuckingdead.”

“Dead?” He looks back toward the bathroom at the far end of the gym, where, just this week, Jay had to wash off the stink of his parent’s betrayal. Nix is on his feet in the next instant, hand out. “Oh. Jamie, give me your shirt, please.”

What? His shirt? But Jay has never denied Nix anything before and slides his black t-shirt over his head and back down over Nix’s, covering his wound. It’s then that Jay notices the sound of the shower turning off, and he can hear Luca talking. “He’s fine, Gideon. He hit his head on the way down and passed out, but he’s okay. You didn’t mean to hurt him—”

Jay can’t hear what Gideon is saying, but he doesn’t have to.Gideonis the one who put that gash on Nix’s side. The one that needed seventeen stitches and made their very own Dr. Merritt pale. He’d been unconscious, and it was enough to make Gideon think he’d fuckingkilled him.Jay knows what it’s like to fight Gideon as wolves do, claws slashing, lightning-fast, and vicious.

Gideon comes out of the bathroom, still wet from showering off the stink of his fear. He’s pale in his towel, and when he sees Nix, his knees go weak, and Luca has to catch him before he falls.

“Oh, Gideon.” Nix tries to go to him, but Jay has an iron grip on his omega’s wrist. He doesn’t think about it—it’s just instinct. His wolf has put all the pieces together, and it’s all mixed up in his head.

Gideon tried to kill Nix, and Jay’s wolf is livid. Gone is any thought Jay had about being reluctantly supportive of honoring Nix’s autonomy. It’s replaced by sheer fury.

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