Page 31

“He can’t be allowed to remain in Bliss.

” Samuel’s tone brooks no argument, but both Sascha and Celeste swell with aborted responses anyway.

“I don’t trust you or my son to keep away from him, nor do I trust the werecreature to stay away from us.

Who’s to say he won’t seek revenge against our pack? ”

Sascha’s jaw hangs. “Revenge? Do you think this is a goddamn superhero movie?”

“Alexander, I’ll forgive your prior language, as I realize I haven’t told you ‘no’ enough up until now. That will change today. You’ll speak to your father with respect, and you will obey my instructions to cut contact with the werecreature.”

‘You can eat my ass ,’ Avery would probably respond. Sascha isn’t quite that brave.

“I’ll think about it,” he grumbles instead, then makes a point of weaving around Samuel and Garrett, neither of whom moves to stop him. “I gotta piss. Little privacy would be great.” That will hopefully deter them from changing their minds about letting him leave freely.

Sascha does go to the bathroom, after which he returns to his room like a normal person.

A huge breath of relief escapes him when he sees his phone sitting on his pillow, plugged into a charger.

When he gets closer, though, he also sees a car key, but not his own, because Avery was holding onto it while Sascha was in cougar form.

He scents the air, frowns, then crosses the room to open his window.

Outside, Petra is leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette.

“ You? ” Sascha demands because the first time she caught him smoking a cigarette was also the last time, considering she smacked him with her purse until he swore never to do it again, under penalty of her threatening to remove his lungs before he could ruin them .

“Shush,” Petra says. “Listen. He’s at your lake.” In response to Sascha’s confused expression, she wiggles her phone, reminding him that he’d given Avery her number before they… Yeah. “They retrieved your car from the farm, but your dad still has the keys. Don’t fuck mine up, or you’ll owe me.”

“I owe you anyway.” Sascha lunges out the window, dipping to kiss her forehead, then ducks back inside to pack.

Sascha is much bigger than Avery, but he throws anything that could be useful into a duffel bag, assuming Petra already has first aid supplies in her car.

He doesn’t know what state Avery will be in when he arrives at the lake, so he figures it’s best to be prepared.

Sweatpants and a few shirts that ran small on Sascha’s larger frame, some toiletries, an extra phone charger…

Fuck, how’s he going to charge his phone on a lake ?

Getting food would be a smart decision, but Sascha can’t risk going to the kitchen.

He swipes his emergency credit card since his wallet is in his car, and he doesn’t know where his father parked it.

Furthermore, Samuel is probably keeping it monitored in case Sascha tries to leave—he didn’t anticipate Sascha having a sympathetic ally, which Sascha admittedly didn’t anticipate either.

Petra feeling an ethical obligation to heal a dying person is different from going against her alpha’s orders to facilitate his son’s forbidden, star-crossed romance.

Armed with only a bag of semi-useful things and Petra’s car key, Sascha struggles to wedge his too-large body through the window and only barely succeeds. He closes the window behind him, then takes off at a run, paranoid he’ll be spotted before reaching the car Petra parked close by.

He’ll need to acquire actual survival gear if Avery is going to be camping on the side of the lake.

There’s nowhere else either of them can go right now, and the helplessness almost freezes Sascha in place as the car’s engine turns over.

Forcing himself into action, Sascha steadies his mind enough to drive calmly and carefully off the Madison pack lands, heading toward the nearest camping supply store.

Determined to make it back to Avery’s side, the many looming consequences be damned.

Beyond exhausted but not yet able to stop, Sascha tows the raft down the bank of the lake, paddling as hard as he’s able.

He had to debate before deciding how to best swim but reasoned the practical, driven mindset of an animal fighting for survival would get his tired muscles to the cave faster.

It also keeps his clothes from getting wet, as everything has been packed into a water-tight tub he precariously balanced on the raft before grabbing the rope in his mouth and starting to paddle.

Avery crawls out of the cave before Sascha reaches shore, his green eyes wild.

Sascha almost abandons the raft to run into Avery’s arms, but his cougar’s sensibility keeps him functioning long enough to reach shore.

Avery ties off the raft and, using strength that seems so jarring from his slender body, lifts the tub above the water and drags it into the cave.

Then, before Sascha can stumble through the underbrush on his own, Avery grabs him , too.

Though he didn’t fully realize how much he needed the support before Avery offered it, Sascha goes near-deadweight in Avery’s arms. He flops on his side, purrs weakly when Avery kisses his wet cheek, and allows his eyes to slip closed.

Sascha doesn’t wake up until so late it’s early, the birds already twittering.

Avery somehow got his cougar form onto a bedroll without waking him, and his tiny body is curled up at Sascha’s back, forehead pressed against his fur.

With a sigh, Sascha releases his shift, unfolding from the aether to tangle his limbs with Avery’s.

It’s not cold, but he shivers anyway, naked and exposed in this little cave where he and his mom used to huddle together and tell stories.

While Sascha was out, Avery set up a pathetic little camp.

Sascha wasn’t able to outfit it the way his mom used to, but he got somewhere for Avery to sleep, a crank generator, a solar phone charger, fresh water, and a bottle to filter more from the lake, along with what food rations he could acquire.

“Are you okay?” Sascha’s voice creaks.

“You killed him,” Avery says instead of answering. “You really just killed that guy.”

“Not ‘that guy.’ A piece of shit bastard who would’ve killed you .”

“You killed someone for me.” His seaglass eyes shimmer with unshed tears, so Sascha takes him by the face and drags him into a hard kiss.

When Sascha draws back, it’s only far enough so he can murmur, “I said I would, didn’t I? You deserve to be protected by someone who loves you.”

“You… Sascha, what?”

“I love you, Avery.” Weaving his hands into Avery’s sweaty curls, Sascha holds him close. “I thought it earlier, when I was still a cougar, and it just made sense , and I know this isn’t romantic, but you deserve to know.” He sucks in a shuddering inhale before adding, “Just in case.”

“In case of what?” Avery asks as if he needs Sascha to vocalize his fears.

Sascha shakes his head, refusing to give him something more to worry about.

“You deserve better than this. A half-asleep confession in a cave. If I could, I’d give you candles and fancy food we’d have to drive at least an hour to find.

I’d drive you so far out of Bliss Township they wouldn’t recognize either of us and take you to a restaurant in nice clothes and tell you I loved you like a proper boyfriend.

And maybe I shouldn’t assume that I’m your boyfriend, but after saving your life and fucking you for nearly two days straight, I think I get at least the chance to be wrong. ”

A wet-sounding laugh bursts from Avery’s chest. “You aren’t wrong. At all.” He paws at his eyes, mumbling, “Can’t believe this all happened because of that stupid app. I deactivated my profile after we met, I was so freaked out.”

“I know you were,” Sascha says, pulling Avery to rest his cheek on chest. “I looked for your account before I decided to stalk you.”

Avery snuffles against Sascha’s skin. “I’m glad you decided to stalk me.”

After that, they’re quiet. Sascha holds Avery as long as he can, rocking him and stroking under his shirt, up and down his knobby spine.

Finally, he buries a kiss in Avery’s hair, followed by about ten more, until Avery laughs in his arms and nips at his neck.

He must know what to expect, though, because he doesn’t cling when Sascha pushes himself upright.

“I wish I could stay longer.”

Sascha cuts to the chase because he can’t bear to say goodbye otherwise.

If Avery cries in earnest, Sascha doesn’t know what he’ll do.

It’ll be twice as hard to leave, though they both know he needs to.

His dad might not assume Sascha’s at the lake right now , but if Sascha stays gone too long, it’ll definitely be one of the places Samuel searches.

Fear of the spinning sickness won’t keep the pack away from his little Forgotten Lake, and Avery’s scent will give the cave away immediately. He can’t risk that.

But Avery doesn’t cry because he’s strong and brave and wonderful. His lips twitch into a pained-yet-understanding smile, and he says, “I wish you could, too. But you’d better get going, yeah.”

“Sleep,” Sascha insists before he rolls off the bed. He crouches to kiss Avery one more time, then unfolds a light blanket to cover him with. Avery doesn’t seem tired at all, but it makes Sascha feel better to go through the motions .

Shifting again is not a good idea. It’s an actively bad idea, what with how tired Sascha already is and how he’ll have to shift back in order to drive. He’d have no problems leaving his own car, but he can’t abandon Petra’s.

Still, Sascha doesn’t want to swim as a biped, and he doesn’t want to climb the fence afterward either, so he breathes a worn sigh and shifts as he slips into the water, then begins to sluggishly paddle.

Sascha doesn’t remember getting back to the car, but he does so successfully, robotically dressing in the spare clothes he keeps in the back.

He even gets the engine started and drives out of his usual hiding place, easing Petra’s car onto the road and heading in what the most primal part of him knows is the direction of his home, despite that same primal part screaming about leaving his boyfriend behind.

As his awareness of Avery fades, Sascha’s awareness of everything else fades alongside it until the car stops moving.

Or maybe it just stops moving in a way that’s under his control.

There’s an impact—a very not-good one that makes Sascha’s neck and chest scream, but he doesn’t know what to make of it.

He parks the car, which wasn’t going anywhere anyway.

He gets out of the car.

He takes several heavy steps, no longer knowing where home is: Before him, or behind.