Page 40 of Lost and Bound
I looked up at last.
Ian had his eyes fixed on me, his gaze hungry and lost and full of so much goddamn hurt.
“You look like Jared, and you smell like Jared,” he muttered. “I can’t fucking—”
And then he lunged at me, so quickly I couldn’t react, couldn’t try to get away. His arms wrapped around me in a bear hug that nearly squeezed the breath out of me.
He was a few inches taller, but he slumped down, leaning until he rested his forehead on my shoulder. And his own shoulders were shaking, his chest heaving. Crying. I was pretty sure Ian was crying.
I grabbed him back, fiercely, hanging on for dear life, inhaling him greedily. I’d have given my right arm for a single breath of my cousin’s familiar scent when I was locked up alone and in pain. My own eyes stung. Fuck, I wanted this to be real, I wanted to really be me…
Ian lifted his head and fixed me with a wild-eyed, bloodshot gaze. “You’re a fucking asshole,” he growled. “Nate. Everything. Fucking Jonathan fucking Hawthorne, Jare. What the hell were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” I choked out. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—I’ll never—it’s me, Ian, it’s me, please, it’s me, whatever you buried, that wasn’tme—”
Ian grabbed me close again and crushed me in his arms, my face smooshed into his shoulder this time. “Don’t ever do that fucking bullshit again,” he said in my ear. “Fuck. I missed you so fucking much.”
Not for the first time in the past couple of days, or the past two years, I didn’t think I could break any more than I’d already broken.
Wrong again.
I sagged in Ian’s embrace, resting my face on his shoulder, and I howled. Only with my human throat, but it still felt like all the pent-up misery flowed out of me, finally finding something like its proper voice.
Ian held me tight, and I could’ve stood there and cried on him for hours.
The back door banged, and heavy footsteps pounded through the kitchen.
I looked up to find Calder snarling in the doorway, his hair flying wild around his shoulders and his eyes glowing like twin supernovas, his claws out at the ready. Ian spun and shoved me behind him. The peace and contentment I’d started to find ebbed right back away again, but…Ian had shoved me behind him. Protecting me.
He’d wanted to protect me. He cared enough.
I didn’t really want that, though. I wanted to be equals again. I didn’t have my claws, I couldn’t shift.
But I could still stand shoulder to shoulder with him.
So I did, stepping forward until I was even a couple of inches in front of him. After all, it was my enraged mate he was confronting.
“He didn’t hurt me,” I told Calder, looking him in the eyes steadily. “Not physically. Not the other way, either.” I hoped he’d remember what we’d talked about that morning, and that I wouldn’t need to spell it out.
Apparently he did, because he eased back, his posture loosening and his claws retracting a little. “Don’t protect him from me,” he said. “Being your cousin doesn’t give him the right to touch—”
“The right to what?” Ian demanded. “Hug him? I’m pretty sure I’m allowed if he wants me to!”
More footsteps, and then Arik popped up behind Calder, peeking around his giant upper arm and looking ridiculously tiny next to him, even though he wasn’t actually all that small—taller than average, even. I couldn’t help noticing he got a lot closer to Calder than anyone else would have dared, what with him looking like he might commit murder any second. Arik didn’t seem to have any sense of personal space where Calder was concerned.
And for a moment, as Arik glared at us, I could almost see a family resemblance. It wasn’t in their features, unless you counted Arik’s very light blond hair and Calder’s white-blond tangle. Something in the way they held themselves, though, and the way they stared people down without a trace of concern. Like Arik had grown up modeling himself on Calder, the way a kid tries to imitate his father.
And then it disappeared, as Arik rolled his eyes and shook his head, an almost Nate-like display of annoyance. “They’re allowed to hug, Calder. We’re allowed to hug. Fuck it, let’s all have a group hug, if you’re done posturing. Are we done posturing?” he asked, in a tone like you’d use with preschoolers who’d been misbehaving on the playground.
Calder and Ian both grunted something that could’ve been agreement. Christ, but I could see why Matt had chosen Arik as his mate. Aside from Arik being completely fucking gorgeous, someone I’d have tried to fuck a few years before.
Arik nodded sharply. “Then let’s pack up and get the fuck out of here, okay? This place gives me the creeps. What’s with the fucking chicken on the wall, anyway? It looks feral.”
We didn’t have anything to pack, although Calder ducked into the bedroom for a minute and came back holding a pair of socks, which he held out to me. “It’s cold,” he said. It was, and I refrained from pointing out he still didn’t have a shirt on. I stared down at the socks for a second before I put them on. No one had given me anything in…he’d thought about my feet, in the cold.
A car engine and the whisper of tires on asphalt sounded from out front, and we all headed out, Calder, to my shock, bothering to turn the lock in the handle of the doorknob as we left.
Chapter 10
