Page 11 of Blood Loss (The Obscura Saga #2)

LATH A N

On the main floor, he’s made himself comfortable with his laptop and some study materials in the living room. With a fresh mug of coffee he’s brewed himself, he’s kicked his feet up on the couch—only because he’s seen David do so numerous times now—thankful for his still-healing hearing or else he’d be sat listening intently for every bodily change occurring below him.

He’s feeling better than the day before. Physically, at least. The venom has completed its trials, and he’s no longer burning from the inside or exhausted from the sedative qualities. And he feels oddly soothed by the events of yesterday. Like a part of him received the love and care he dreamt of as a kid. But it’s way too late to fix that , he knows realistically, because the damage is done, and at twenty-five years old he’s wondering why his parents have never loved him. Wondering why it still hurts, when he knows to expect it.

He hides his mother’s bite with a black sweater—his chest hurts every time he catches a glimpse of the sleeve riding up. ‘ People don’t hurt those they care about ,’ Kylo had confirmed, and Lathan knows that. He’s known that. But it doesn’t make it easy, even though his parents have never shown him affection.

Kylo’s words battle within Lathan’s chest, his mind. Why? Why don’t they care about the child they chose to raise?

He knows he has to let them go, but part of him—the young part—still wants to hold on to hope.

The hour affects Lathan more than he suspected it would. The last time he heard the sounds that crawl up the vents, up the stairwell, was at the football game. During a massacre he was harmed in. His ear aches, as if reacting to the noises of the werewolves below—regardless of how muffled the sounds are to him, he knows them too well—and he has a hard time focusing.

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t leave the house. He feels a kinship to these people, and if anything happens, he’s appointed himself to be here for it, to help.

They’re his pack.

As time passes, the sounds taper off into silence. And when the hour turns, a loud beep chimes out along with the clunk of the shackles unlocking, releasing the wolves’ wrists, and clattering as they swing back against the wall.

With the drone of the shackles releasing, the silence growing limply through the house, Lathan waits a few minutes for the pounding in his chest to soften before getting up. He blows out a breath and drags his feet to the top of the basement, where he opens the door and somewhat nervously leans down the corridor. “Anyone hungry?”

“ Please ,” a voice growls up at him. It’s rough and raspy, but doesn’t sound like Kylo’s shifted tone. Because of the politeness, he thinks, Maria?

He can hear feet thumping across the concrete floor to the other side of the room. A large, beastly figure passes the stairs, hunched over with fluffy, silvering fur. David .

Lathan squares his shoulders and fetches the platters of food. He toes down the stairs, unsure of what he’ll find—even though he knows exactly what will be there. Three shifted werewolves of varying sizes and colours of coats, sank into different corners of the room. The one he assumes is David—larger than Kylo, slumped in front of the television, turns to sniff the air as Lathan breaks the stairwell.

“Ah, brisket,” his hoarse, deep voice grumbles as he lifts onto his hind legs from the misshapen sofa. “Thank you, Lathan.”

Lathan blinks up at David as he approaches—stunned by his sheer size, but mostly by his speech. “You can speak pretty clearly,” he says, his thoughts aloud.

The older Alpha wolf upturns his jowls into a grin. “Practice.”

“Yes,” Maria forces, having to pause between words to enunciate them properly, “thank you.” She walks over to him with open hands—dark paw pads to the ceiling—to take the platter from him, giving an intimidating attempt at a friendly smile.

He places the dish in her large paws and watches her talons curl over the edges, then looks her over much the same way he did David, logging her shifted appearance, organizing it in his brain for future reference. He’s sure, now that he’s part of their family, that this won’t be the last time he witnesses Kylo’s parents as beasts.

Kylo . Lathan’s eyes move to his mate crouched on the floor, a silhouette who’d never go unrecognized.

He didn’t see Kylo during the event on campus. He saw his skin tearing, fur sprouting, the blur of movement behind him, before pushing away and running. So his memory of Kylo is preserved in this form from their mating.

Heat kisses his cheeks, but it’s hardly noticeable under the soft, dimmed lights of the basement—installed to simulate moonlight. Kylo’s brilliant canine stare has been tracking him since he came down the stairs. Now across from him, the wolf inhales deeply, letting his breath back out with a slight rumble; his pupils fight to dilate fully.

Without a word, Kylo rises from the ground, his harsh shadow stretching impossibly out from his feet, and slowly stalks toward the vampire in the middle of the room. He huffs breaths out his nose, his widened chest rising and falling harshly beneath his fur. Before he’s within reaching distance, his knees hit the floor, evening out their heights, and he pulls Lathan against his body. Kylo’s neck stretches as his head nuzzles up against Lathan lovingly, letting out a sound like a deep purr; Lathan can feel the vibration from his throat.

He scratches his fingers into Kylo’s coarse fur, massaging him. “Hi, baby,” he says, running one of his hands up his fuzzy cheek. “Do you need anything? ”

“Just you,” he says, and the words seem to come easier from him, like his father. “Maybe food”—he pulls Lathan in tighter and sticks his nose into his hair to sniff—“but not yet.”

Goosebumps climb up Lathan’s skin as Kylo’s snout puffs quick air at him. He laughs once. “Have you been practicing too?”

Kylo’s sniffing stops, but he doesn’t respond.

They haven’t seen each other like this while being mated, and it feels different now. Intoxicating. Lathan doesn’t know if it only has to do with the bond, though if it does, he assumes the sensation is much stronger for Kylo, being a werewolf—hence his need to breathe Lathan in as much as he can.

And then his muzzle nudges against the edge of the scarred bite peeking out from Lathan’s neckline and his body flares, and he knows it’s the bond.

“ Mate .” The hushed word rumbles off the beast’s tongue and into Lathan’s ear. Kylo’s claws extend gently against Lathan’s back, where he’s being held, and his breaths heave as he opens his maw and tips his head to draw his tongue across the exposed skin of Lathan’s neck.

He recalls the sensations of that night, of Kylo’s full strength and dominance and girth . Size that hurt, but felt good, too. And a bite that broke deep into flesh, but ignited pleasurably.

Lathan craves it, too. Fully shifted or not, he wants Kylo to take control again, to bite the scars he created that tie them together. But it isn’t how they’re usually intimate. And Lathan isn’t complaining—he loves to love Kylo—but the more protective Kylo becomes over him, the more he desires to become submissive for him.

“Kylo,” Maria warns from across the room. Kylo growls with annoyance as he flicks his black eyes up at her over Lathan’s shoulder; his lip is twitching up into a snarl.

With his breath caught in his throat, his mark burning with the lingering lick of Kylo’s tongue, Lathan presses backward, away from his mate’s clutches. Though he wants the opposite.

“Should…should I go?” His voice is quiet and defeated as he asks the room, though he only looks at Kylo.

“No,” Kylo whimpers, his eyes sad—a puppy admitting to its poor behaviour.

“Ria,” David more or less growls through a tear of beef, “they’re new mates.”

Maria’s ears go back as she huffs a dramatic sigh, and somehow Lathan understands it being that of a mother coming to terms with the fact that her baby boy is no longer a baby.

It still feels weird to hear—especially from someone other than Kylo—that they are mates. The verbal confirmation runs hotly through his body, and ends in a tremble in his fingers, running through Kylo’s fur. A tremble of desire.

Though already small against Kylo, he shrinks further. Because Maria and David know exactly what they’ve done, and know exactly what they’re thinking of now—they’ve been in this position before, after all. But it’s awkward and humiliating and different when one of the two isn’t even a fucking werewolf .

“Come on,” he forces himself to say, ignoring the course of heat in his body. “Eat something.”

Kylo lets out a sound of protest, but then shoves his wet nose into Lathan’s cheek before lifting to his heavy feet and lumbering over to join his parents. He claws at a rare steak with a bare hand and sinks his sharp teeth into it, tearing off half of the bloodied meat to chew haphazardly as if he were eating a cookie.

Sitting down amid a trio of transformed beasts, snacking on a variety of cheeses, Lathan watches their movements, their mannerisms. Not out of fear. But curiosity. And then entertainment. Until finally he’s laughing, snorting and wiping at the corners of his eyes.

They all turn to Lathan, ears like satellite dishes, twisting to take in his joy.

He gestures broadly with his handful of cheese. “This is just…absurd,” he states, and continues to chuckle.

Never did he think he’d be tied so deeply to werewolves. To any species but his own. And their differences are huge—literally—and undeniable, but the absurdity of sitting and eating a snack with three canine apex predators that could shred him in an instant is hilarious. No wonder his parents are mad. They make him look tiny. They make his parents look like nothing but ants that Lathan can finally step on. And they make him feel so much bigger than his life ever has.

Kylo’s grin elongates, his lips glistening with the juice of his meal, and he, too, huffs hard breaths of wolfish laughter. Maria sniffs and snickers, and David follows up with a single bark. “Hah!”

The four of them then feed each other’s laughter. And the uncanny sounds of a werewolf’s laugh—their deeper, growling reverberations ill-suited to the joyful sound—makes it all the more amusing.

I get to laugh with my family , the little boy in his heart sings.

Kylo tosses the second half of his steak in his mouth. As he crushes it, he stands and walks back across the room to a wall of jugged water—the kind meant for a dispenser. He cracks the thick plastic cap and lifts the heavy jug with ease. Tilting his head back and allowing his jaw to fall loose, his tongue slithering into place, he pours a steady stream into his mouth from above. His throat bobbing as he swallows gulps at a time. Lowering the half-empty jug, he pants in air and licks his chops.

Lathan follows the turn of his mate’s head toward the screen near the Power Hour shackles, where he can see the digital clock announcing the early hour of the morning. They’ll have to be up in a handful of hours for class, though that’s more of an issue for Kylo than himself.

“Sleep,” Kylo rumbles, stomping up to Lathan.

Maria makes a noise as if challenging his true intentions.

“Just sleep,” her son insists, though a little harshly in his gravelled vocal cords, and then bends down and scoops Lathan up with the hardened muscles of his arms.

“Kylo!” Lathan shouts, humiliated to be picked up and carried as a grown man—one who is usually bigger than his partner. Though the strength Kylo emanates while shifted is always impressive, Lathan hides the embarrassment on his face from Maria and David.

He’s carried up the basement stairs—Kylo ducks to avoid hitting his head on the sloped ceiling—into the main hall, and up the second set of stairs to the second floor. Kylo pushes open his old bedroom door with a nudge of his clawed foot, closing it behind him with a reverse of the gesture as he sways with Lathan cradled in his arms.

“I can walk,” Lathan mumbles, but his body is warm against Kylo’s fur, his elevated body heat, and he’s comforted by it, like a baby soothed in its swaddle.

“Mhm,” Kylo sighs, rubbing against his face in reply. He kneels onto his bed, the wooden frame crying under his weight. As he rests his mate atop the duvet, Kylo shifts his legs and curls himself around him—the full-sized mattress struggling to accommodate him, even in this crescent position.

“I love you,” he says lowly, and licks Lathan’s jaw, cheek, and ear with three small swipes.

Lathan shivers in bodily response, but doesn’t pull away, instead automatically leaning more into Kylo. “I know,” he breathes, running a hand up Kylo’s perked ear. “I love you, too.”

The wolf preens, and then shifts his nose, slopping his tongue up the centre of Lathan’s face, who recoils in surprise. Playful sniffs pepper the vampire’s ears, his neck, as Kylo’s tail wags, falling off the bed with each flump .

Lathan shoves at Kylo’s snout. “What are you doing?” His voice is a mix of confused annoyance and amusement. He winces and squeezes in on himself as Kylo’s wolfy huffs tickle his neck, the side opposite his mated mark.

Where Kylo gets a reaction, he dives his muzzle into Lathan’s skin, wiggling to tickle him more, placing his hands on his sides to keep him in place.

Lathan’s hands shoot up to aimlessly grab at Kylo’s neck in protest, giggling involuntarily against the fuzzy lips caressing the crook of his neck. “S-stop! Your parents are going to think we’re fucking around.”

Kylo reels back and his pupils expand. The longer he looks Lathan over, the tighter his grip gets, slipping lower down his mate’s body. Lathan feels his pulse rise up his neck.

“Kylo,” he breathes, his voice barely audible even to his unhealed eardrums. He grips Kylo chest fur, tugging it with the amount of desire that roils through him, making his mate growl hotly. But then he releases his handful and smooths out the tuft. “I want to. But we can’t.”

Kylo growls again, louder, but moves his paws reluctantly from Lathan’s hips. He almost thinks the wolf is mad about the rejection, but then Kylo curls around him again and rests his chin calmly against the mark he made in his lover’s skin, sighing and closing his eyes. When the beats of their hearts synchronize, he falls asleep.