Page 23

The van hits a bump, and Leo tips toward the edge of the narrow bed. There’s the jarring sensation like he might fall, before he feels a hand on his ass, holding him until the van rights itself on the off-ramp.

With a last squeeze, the hand disappears with a familiar, soothing glide.

Grayson .

“Hey, Gray,” he whispers, sliding one leg off the bed and landing a bare foot on the cool floor.

He receives a grunt in return, and when Leo’s eyes adjust to the dimly lit space, he sees his alpha sitting on the floor between the neighboring captain’s chairs.

“You okay down there?”

He barely sees the nod before a basil-scented T-shirt and yet another pair of Gideon’s sweats are tossed up and over his head with unerring accuracy.

“Watch the face. This is my money-maker,” he jokes, just to hear Grayson snort.

When it isn’t forthcoming, he quickly yanks the clothes on and wedges himself between the seats.

“You’re not okay, because you always tell me it’s my ass that’s the money maker. So what’s up, handsome?”

Spinning lightning fast, Grayson presses his warm nose into Leo’s throat.

“I’m okay.”

As usual, Leo knows all he has to do is wait Grayson out. Patience has always served him well when it comes to Grayson, even with that single time he’d had to push a few buttons about that soulmate thing .

Where Luca needs searching out and riling up sometimes when he’s down or worried, Grayson typically wants to make him feel better, so if he waits, his fae princeling will spill it all. Usually.

“I hate this.”

Grayson’s voice is barely audible, with the way he’s pressed against Leo’s neck, but he manages to parse out the words.

“This?” he presses, asking for clarification on what could have offended Grayson so deeply.

Them being on the run? The possibility of violence? The vulnerability of their pack in rut on the fucking highway hundreds of miles from home? The cost of gluten-free food?

The list is arguably long.

Grayson sighs, nodding.

“Finn isn’t in the nest at home, and you know how he hates exposing his underbelly to the world when he’s like this. How could we not notice last night that he was hurting?”

Leo feels the same way; he’d cried about it not even two hours ago, actually, but he can at least offer comfort.

“Look, Gray, you know biology waits for no one. Stress triggers all kinds of shit. Look at Jay’s rut last fall; Nix’s heat, too, come to think of it.”

“And my rebound, and Rowan’s being triggered by a chase. Am I alone in thinking it’s weird? What’s happening with us?”

Jay had asked the same thing earlier in the lobby, too.

Though it might seem strange, Leo prefers to think of it as just something new .

“I believe it’s Nix,” he murmurs, glancing over his shoulder to check if Finn and Nix are still out and recovering from their last round.

Jay had joined them thirty minutes ago, putting Nix on his side between Finn and Leo before fucking Leo within an inch of his life.

Leo’s body is still humming with satisfaction.

The pheromones inside the van had been overwhelming; how Gideon managed to keep the truck on the road was nothing short of miraculous, a true testament to his iron will .

“You’re not blaming him, are you?” Grayson growls, his alpha’s proverbial ruff standing straight on end.

“Whoa. Dial back the alpha defense mode. I am on your side, on his side. What I am saying is that maybe he’s a catalyst. We’re all resetting our cycles for his cycle.

Finn said that the other alphas in other packs had changes in their cycles once they bonded.

Maybe this is us just living through it. You know?”

Grayson hesitates before tilting his head to the side. “A reset? Like, will this schedule be our new normal? Huh.”

He shakes his head, long hair flying around his face. Leo pulls up his mate’s slim wrist and removes the elastic hair tie Grayson keeps there for just this reason. Going to his knees, Leo gathers the soft hair back and binds it in an elegant top knot as loose pieces fall around his face.

“How are you so beautiful, Gray?” he sighs, and Grayson blushes prettily. “Inside and out.”

“Still, I don’t like that Finn’s vulnerable in the back of a truck.”

“No, me neither. But I do like it better than in that hotel. Too damn exposed there, but we’re headed somewhere better. To regroup.”

“I hate to interrupt, but I need a navigator. These directions are shit,” Gideon says.

“I’ll go. You lie up here. Absorb some much-needed endorphins from our Pack Alpha,” Leo whispers, pulling Gray to his feet. He’s rewarded with a soft kiss on his forehead before Grayson presses up close behind Jay. Their leader hugs him with an awkwardly bent arm behind him.

On his way to the front, he passes a sleeping Luca, whose head is in the unconscious Rowan’s lap, one of the alpha’s fingers in his mouth, and a hand under his skirt in between his thighs.

“Ah, Leo, my love. Feeling better?” Gideon asks, signaling to make a left turn along a road with dense trees along the roadway. “Can you see where the hell we are on that map? Who the fuck reads maps anymore? What was Lauren thinking?”

What was his mother thinking? Don’t ask Leo, that’s for damn sure.

Turns out he didn’t know his mother was a well-connected super-spy .

I mean, sure, she spoke all the languages; she was certainly confident in every situation. But she read him James and the Giant Peach and did all the voices when he was six. She sometimes watched The Real Housewives of Miami when she thought no one was looking.

Did he even know who she was at all?

And if he didn’t know who she was, then who the hell was he?

Even his Mama Frankie seemed to know, because her comments on the phone this morning surely showed she knew what her wife had been up to all those years.

Does his Dad know? What about his sister? Was he the only one who hadn’t known?

Leo hates feeling like a fool almost as much as he hates feeling like the butt of their joke.

It hurts like nothing else has in a long time, maybe ever, and the hurt simmers into a slow boil.

“Stop it right now, Leo; you’re making my nose burn, and you’ll wake Finn or Rowan up. We need them on solid ground before that happens. Tell me what’s got you smelling like someone died.”

“Why would you say it like that?” Leo hates the words, but is it so far from the truth?

Surely his perception of his mother has crashed and burned.

“But… you didn’t know, right?”

“What? That your mother was a super-spy? Ha. Fuck no. She was always just a pain in my ass. I think she kept it pretty close to her teeny-tiny chest.”

“Ew. Don’t talk about my mother’s boobs. And also, don’t be mean when she’s not even here.”

“Sorry, force of habit. What I mean to say is that she is probably out of the business. Why would she tell anyone?”

“Because I’m her son, and she didn’t tell me . Doesn’t she love me?”

Ouch. He hadn’t thought about the words before he said them, but he couldn’t even dispute the truth in them.

Gideon slams a hand on the steering wheel, risking a glance in Leo’s direction .

“Of course she does. That’s why she didn’t tell you. You’re…fuck…you’re a fucking light—pure and sweet and honest. You don’t have a mean bone in your body. I don’t want you tainted by the dark stuff, either.”

Leo turns in his seat at the words, eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Gideon had said I , not she. Oh.

“You have dark stuff you don’t want me to know about, alpha?”

The van swerves a bit, and there is a thump and a distinctive groan as Grayson falls off the bed.

“Shit,” Gideon says under his breath.

“Nothing to say?”

“You know my past is…and I’ve been—” Gideon’s voice trails off, and he doesn’t pick it up again. He just shakes his head and locks his jaw.

Leo’s voice is carefully neutral as he gives the next directions.

“Turn right up here, and then I think it’s three miles to the private laneway. The gate code is 266266.”

Sighing, Gideon makes the turn, and then they’re even farther into the forest than Leo thought possible.

“Leo. My life was shit for a little while, and those lessons don’t go away. I love you, and I will be damned if I drag any of you into the pit that I will have to dig in order to do what I need to do.”

It’s the weirdest sensation to have his heart soar and his stomach fall at the same time.

Gideon never says the words I love you . Almost never.

Leo will not stand by and let his alphas bury themselves under the weight of this—whatever it turns out to be—alone.

“You don’t get to decide what I do, or what any of us do when it comes to protecting this pack. We are equals, and you deserve our protection, too.”

“But—”

“No. You say you’ve been ‘training’ your whole life to do this, right?”

Gideon gives a single nod.

“Right, well, I have been training my whole life to take care of people and to love them. To care for them inside and out, hold them up, and try to give them what they need. Let me do that for you. You never let me just…love yo u. It’s like you think you have to earn it.”

The van speeds up abruptly, like Gideon’s foot had stumbled on the pedal.

But it settles when Jay grunts from the back of the van.

Leo’s heart clenches because that’s a revelation.

“You do! You think I love you because you can protect me or cook for me?”

“Don’t forget the fucking,” Gideon mutters under his breath.

Leo surprises himself with anger.

“Are you serious?” he asks incredulously, which sparks into something else entirely when only silence follows.

“You are. Holy fuck. Am I the only one who just figured this out?”

Leo questions the last two years; fear that he’s let his mate down in such a grievous way pushes that earlier simmer into a full-blown fury.

“Have I not shown you how much I love you? Just for being you ?”

“Leo.”

Self-doubt is as unfamiliar as being lonely in their house or unaware of his family’s needs, and it’s by far the worst thing Leo can remember feeling.

It burns in his gut—an amalgamation of fear, shame, and horror, sending his heart rate skyrocketing.