14. Tension

Despite the hard work T put into pulling my mind away from all the goings on in the pack, the bond between Hiroshi and his two mates continued to play on my mind. I couldn’t help but ask why Tate and Asher had been given the gift they’d received.

Some of it was jealousy. I wanted to be able to have a family of my own, a mate who loved me. While I had Teárlach and knew beyond doubt he adored me, we could never be mates in the sense shifters were.

I was also on guard. Blake’s words circled through my head. Kade had great instincts. If he thought T was hiding something, then he was. I was watchful for hints and, aside from the preferential treatment his people gave him, there was nothing that set alarm bells off. He was important to the military; he was older than the others, and though ívarr was technically the leader, it was natural the others would look to T for guidance since he was tasked with the security of the elves whilst they were in Sweetwater.

Still, I watched my lover, waiting for the secrets to unveil themselves. I was careful to guard my heart from falling any harder, as difficult as that was. We spent as much time together as we could, considering how increasingly busy we were. T seemed to spend any free moment at the clinic pouring over the research when he wasn’t patrolling our lands, climbing into the trees to make the area easily defensible from aerial attacks, a possibility now that the Northarbor Aviary was causing issues for us.

My senses told me he was hiding something, yet I felt like nothing he could tell me aside from already being married, which I’d immediately dismissed, would actually matter. Whatever he was hiding hadn’t prevented him from being in Sweetwater with me for months. Whatever it was, we could get past it.

A couple of weeks passed since our date under the stars, during which time Roan and his former mates had moved into their new home next to our Alpha Pair. It wasn’t all smooth sailing for them. I had to discipline enforcers for their behavior towards the omegas. Tate had been so overcome he had fainted, potentially putting his baby at risk.

The truth was, we knew so little about how the pregnancy would progress that anything could bring about a loss. Babies were so precious to a pack. We had to do anything we could to make sure Tate made it to term. Hiroshi too. The healer omega was carrying twins, even more precarious of a situation.

I’d ordered the troublesome enforcers to dig out the corners for new warding spells as punishment. They had to do it in human form because I knew some wolves just liked to dig. Chase had been a nightmare about it, often digging up Mom’s flower beds to hide something he thought was precious. Usually something like a toy figure or a shiny stone.

Of course, they whined the entire time, claiming they’d done nothing wrong. How the omegas couldn’t be bonded because that’s not how it worked and other bullshit. It got to the point where I was just so sick of their shit I decided to give them a lesson in manners. With my fists. Then I didn’t let Hiroshi heal them. Aldrin had to, all the while, they listened to a lecture about respecting omegas regardless of their mating status. How they deserve to be treated like people, not just things ruled by hormones.

Handing Blake a list of enforcers to watch didn’t make me happy, but I did enjoy how each enforcer flinched whenever I got close.

“What did you do to them, dear one?” Teárlach asked as he met me for lunch in my office one late January afternoon.

Blake had helped the local coven find a missing demon. Turned out one of their own was not only a witch, he was half demon! He’d found his fated mate, only for that mate to be kidnapped. Something about witches and contracts.

Either way, Basil, fucking terrible name for a person, by the way. Well, he was the same dick who gave Jared potions to try to impregnate Hiroshi. Back when he was forced to go through some of his heat with him. That bastard, Basil, had the demon, Toth.

Basil got away, but Blake now had a lead on a potential new partner for our cider making business, since Toth had an orchard of these fancy apples.

He and Dakota were going through the legalities of how the deal would work if it went ahead. They wanted it all organized for when Cody and Toth were ready to discuss it, so they could get moving as quickly as possible. The demons faced a lot of discrimination, a fact which worried Blake since it was such a good opportunity to improve the brewery.

With them tucked away, there wasn’t all that much for me to do. The elves helped with a lot of the security around the babies. Kade even had a new nanny, Cryabell, who watched the triplets so Kade could do his council duties.

Cryabell… I didn’t like her. It had nothing, okay, everything, to do with her hogging the babies and not letting me in to hug them whenever I wanted. She kept saying things like schedules and self soothing, which was bullshit, FYI. Babies who stopped crying hadn’t soothed themselves. They’d just learned no one was coming, and I hated that idea for my niblings.

So, okay, I’d argued against that tactic, and won because Kade loved those babies more than anything and couldn’t stand the idea of them suffering when all they wanted was love.

Now Cryabell was being difficult, not letting me see them when I knew I wouldn’t wake them. Planning to get her fired was wrong, wasn’t it?

“Hmm?” I answered distractedly. The elf nanny would have to wait.

There hadn’t been much time to spend with T recently, with us falling into bed too exhausted to do much other than kiss and sleep cuddled up together. Sometimes he would get me to shift so he could brush me to sleep. I’d wake in the morning with the brush on the floor and T sleeping over me.

“Oh, just showed them the error of their ways,” I finally said.

“They look terrified to breathe too deeply around you.”

“Added bonus.”

His grin was nearly as wide as mine, telling me he enjoyed how brutal I could be when it came to protecting others. We were alike in so many ways. I often forgot he was an elf with centuries of life experience on me. He spent so much time here in wonder at how we lived. He was almost like a new soul living life for the first time, not an ages old elf who had seen kingdoms fall.

Seeing that smile, the delight and affection in his eyes, had me hungry for something else.

I pushed T against the wall and covered his mouth with mine, kissing him hard. My cock thickened in my pants and I rubbed against his hard body. I wasn’t quite accustomed to seeing my elf in cargos and a t-shirt, especially with his long hair braided back in an elaborate style, but he was so hot to me in anything he wore. Better if he had nothing on at all.

T groaned as I cupped him, bucking into the touch.

Dropping to my knees, I unzipped him, only to be interrupted before I could get my mouth on his dick.

“Yo—Sir, we need you,” an elf I was yet to learn the name of barged into the room. I should have locked the door. Regardless, this guy was on my shit list. One fucking hour, that’s all I needed.

Seeing my expression, T kissed me sweetly. “I shall return soon and we can eat.”

The conflicted look on the new elf’s face suggested otherwise.

“No, you go ahead and eat when you can. Can we try again for dinner?”

He nodded, kissed me again, and left.

Dinner didn’t happen. It felt like days passed before I got to spend any time with him properly and like a gulf was opening up between us.

Something would have to give. One of our jobs? Our relationship? We couldn’t sustain things as they were. Only seeing each other for minutes at night and in the morning was killing the spark between us.

I knew the elves had too much of a hold on T to let him go. Would my pack and everything I’d built there for myself, my role as Second, be the casualty of keeping Teárlach?