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“Nothing really, I suppose. Or enough, depending on how you look at it. Charitable donations to food banks and volunteering with shelters for both animals and humans. Donations to several seniors’ facilities and wherever your mates perform, there’s a huge donation to the LGBTQIA+ youth centers.

Don’t ask how I know, I have connections, too. ”

The man chuckles, and then he coughs and coughs.

Gideon offers him the unopened bottle of water from his jacket pocket, which the man accepts with a smile.

“Thank you. So. Ask me what you want to know, and then you can get back to your hunt.”

He dumps the last of the birdseed onto the wet sidewalk, and the older bird finally scrounges up his share.

“You were in his home for decades. Your grandson still works for him. Tell me where he might be hiding, and I’ll make sure your son is avenged. I swear it.”

The man bursts out laughing maybe at Gideon’s dramatic words, or maybe at the idea of Gideon’s ambitious plan.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just that you looked just like her again. She could always make me laugh, and yet she was so passionate in her loyalty and duty…and about you .”

The man shakes his head, eyes far away.

“I’m sorry you lost her. She did not deserve her life with him, and neither did you. So I’ll help you, with two conditions.”

Gideon feels his anger surge.

How dare this old fool hold back the information… how dare he think he had a right to bargain.

Gideon should—whoa.

Gideon should what? Hurt this old man?

It’s enough to turn his stomach.

He’d been living in the shadows too much lately—reveling in threats and minor acts of violence, using money to buy loyalty and information.

It has led him here, where he has thoughts of using his power to hurt and manipulate someone whose only mistake had been trusting Gideon Carnell.

“What is it?” Gideon asks, brusquely, hiding that his heart is full of contrition and self-loathing.

“I will tell you what you want to know if you promise you’ll tell one person you love about what you plan to do with the information, and then come back here and feed the birds once a week.”

No. Gideon couldn’t tell anyone about his plans. They were for him alone, and he wouldn’t want his family to know about the dark things he was willing to do to protect them.

But it’s not that condition that stops him.

“The birds? Why?”

“Well, I’m not long for this world. Maybe that’s why I met with you today, in my favorite spot, and not in a warm café, drinking tea and eating cake.

These birds have comforted me, maybe not these same ones, but their parents, their families, and their loved ones.

As much as birds can love, I suppose. When I’m gone, I hate to think they’ll wonder where their food is in the winter and it would bring me comfort to know someone was here in my stead. ”

Gideon wants to say no he just wants his information and he wants to get it without making any inane promises about feeding sparrows and magpies in the dead of winter.

“I’ll do it,” Gideon says, and pauses, surprised to hear himself agree .

The man just nods. “And you’ll tell someone you love about your plans before you do anything?”

“Fine. Yes.” He won’t. Lying won’t be the worst of his sins—not even today, and certainly not by the end of this.

There’s that feeling again, that lurching in his chest at the acknowledgment that he’s been lying for months about being at Quest. Buying food and passing it off as his own, just so he has an alibi.

So he can lie to his mates about where he’s been and how he’s been getting the information he needs.

The man just sighs, as if he can sense Gideon’s true intentions, but he tells him what he wants to know anyway.

“Connall has been in your father’s employ for fifteen years.

I haven’t seen the boy since last summer, but I get the occasional email.

He mentioned that he recently got a terrible sunburn at a work function.

I’m guessing that three days ago, Patrick Carnell was at his compound in Clearwater Beach.

It’s the only piece of property he owns where it’s warm enough to get a sunburn in January. ”

“How would you know he’s not vacationing in Miami? Or Los Angeles?”

“I don’t. But it’s more than you had before you sat down with me today, no?”

It was true. If Carnell was in Clearwater, then Gideon had to be there, too. The thought makes him smile, though by the look on the man’s face, it’s not a pleasant one.

“I should go. The cold gets into these old bones. Never liked winter myself. Remember what you promised me, Gideon,” the man says, and stares at him for a minute longer. “You’ve been spending a lot of time in the dark lately.”

Gideon doesn’t deny it. “Are you saying I should let this go?”

“No. I understand well the need to protect your family, but I do think you should think about how you are going about it. You should also remember the kind of man your mother wanted you to be.”

He nods then, and makes his way away from the bench down to the main walkway. Gideon sits for a few minutes longer and watches until the man disappears from sight .

A glint of brass catches his eye as the sun shines briefly through the gray clouds. It illuminates the plaque embedded into the back of the bench, one of those memorial benches where families can dedicate a city bench to the memory of a lost loved one.

The plaque reads: In Loving Memory of Eleanor O’Daire. Beloved mother, daughter, and friend.

The bench hadn’t been a coincidence, then. He wonders why the man in the suit came here every day to sit with Gideon’s mother’s memory and feed the birds.

He’d left Gideon with more to think about than just the location where Carnell was lying in wait.

Gideon remembers his mother’s smile when the group chat text comes in.

2:56 PM – Luca

Nix is tossing his cookies at Common Grounds

2:57 PM – Jay

Tell him to pick up his phone

Finn?

2:59 PM – Finn

I’ll see him when you get here

3:04 PM – Rowan

He’s out of the house?

Did he eat cookies?

Shit

Ew

I’ll meet you there

3:04 PM – Grayson

En route

Gideon’s response is notably absent, and he rubs his finger across his mother’s name. He hadn’t known the bench was here, but the plaque looks like someone cleans it regularly—and maybe once this is over, he’ll find the older man again and ask why.

But for now, he’s going to be the man his mother wanted him to be and he’s going to the hospital to see what’s happening with his pregnant mate.

3:07 PM – Gideon

OMW

3:08 PM – Luca

Bout fucking time

…And try to make it up to his very pissed-off soulmate.

***

It takes twenty minutes for Gideon to get across the park and finally jog into the hospital’s lot, which is fifteen minutes too long, in his opinion.

Judging by the frequent updates in the group chat, they’re at the hospital ahead of him, which is less than ideal.

He wants to see Luca beforehand, and he’d rather not do that with an audience, but he’ll take what he can get.

Luckily, the ER entrance is the one closest to the park, and as he approaches the door, he yanks off his beanie and makes sure his scent patch is still in place.

No sense in giving anything away before he can talk himself out of all the shit he’s already in.

“Gideon.”

Shit. Gideon’s soulmate, the love of his life, is standing to the left of the doors—almost hidden by the large shrubs and the planter overflowing with leftover Christmas greenery, already withering, dry, and brown.

Seems an apt metaphor for his love life.

“Were you hiding?” he asks, careful to keep his tone even, but Gideon can’t keep the small smile off his face.

“No. Yes. What if I were? Would you have avoided me if you’d seen me standing here, waiting for you?”

The breeze blows his mate’s burnt coffee scent his way, and Gideon resists the urge to flinch, just barely.

Luca is so livid that he is pink-cheeked and narrow-eyed and—if he’s not mistaken—100% at the end of his tether.

Gideon is genuinely shocked at his words, if not his absolute right to be Pissed Off . “What? No! Of course not.”

“‘Of course not?’”

Luca climbs over the low bush that edges the flower bed and stomps to where Gideon has moved out of the way of the door so as not to block the entrance should an unlikely medical emergency occur.

He’s met with a very hard, very pointy finger to the center of his chest, right over the ache that has been throbbing almost nonstop for months.

He’s ignored it, but now that he’s with Luca, when he’s awake, it burns like fire.

“You have been avoiding me for weeks. Weeks! I know you sleep in our bed. I can smell your fake attempts at pretending to be at Quest. I can smell the lies and the bars and the—the dogs that one weird time. But you have been avoiding me. Don’t act so surprised!”

Instead of picking up steam, Luca’s rant peters out.

“Honey, I’m sorry,” Gideon says softly—and it’s enough for his mate to burst into tears and throw himself into Gideon’s arms.

Gideon lifts him and finds yet another bench to sit on, outside in the fucking cold. He puts him sideways across his lap so he can get his icy fingers under the ankle of Luca’s sweatpants to feel his hot skin, and puts his nose in Luca’s neck.

It goes a long way to settling his wolf, who, until now, has been suspiciously quiet. Gideon realizes he hasn’t heard from his wolf in days. It’s shocking, when he’d been sure it was the wolf pushing so hard to end Carnell.

“I’m sorry.”

Luca pulls out a used tissue from the pocket of his coat and blows his nose.

“Don’t say it unless you mean it. I—I miss you, and if you aren’t planning to fix this shit…

then, well…fuck. What am I saying? I’ll take your apologies even if they’re fake because I’m stupid, and it’s probably my fault, whatever it is that has you in bars or out with dogs. ”

Gideon chuckles; Luca has a good nose but terrible self-esteem. “You aren’t stupid, and it’s not your fault. You deserve better.” Better than me.

It’s not an explanation or even half of what Gideon has to say, so he sits with it for a minute. He’s already lied more than he ever thought he would to the people he loves most in the world—but he’s never done it while looking his soulmate in the eyes .

Their relationship has always been built on absolute trust. It has to be. But Gideon has not been holding up his end of the bargain. No matter if it’s important, he’s dragged Luca down without meaning to.

No—that’s not being completely honest, either. He’s been so focused on protecting his mates that he’s let them all down.

“Hey.” Leo is standing without his coat by the doors to the ER. “Sorry. But if you guys want in on this, Nix is waiting.”

Luca slides off his lap, smoothing down the hem of his jacket, and pulls Gideon to his feet.

“You gotta mean it. Please?”

He looks up into Gideon’s face, eyes scanning his features like Gideon has changed since he saw him last.

He seems satisfied with what he sees there, although what that could be escapes Gideon for the moment.

Luca picks up Leo’s hand and they walk away, with Leo raising an eyebrow behind Luca’s back.

Gideon is left standing by the bench, wondering what happens next.

He’s got some decisions to make and maybe some promises to keep.