Page 37 of Trust No Alpha

“I love the forest.” Kris’s voice came soft. “Father sent us to summer camps when we were boys, but as we got older that stopped.”

So that was one reason why Throne didn’t see them outside much in better weather and on summer days.

A secluded life. Thorne loved it. But Kris was still young, bursting to break free. For some reason, though Alpha and a Vandergale, he obviously thought he never would be free. Thorne yearned to know why his father had attacked him, and why he begged to be hidden.

Thorne’s empathy had not awakened this much in so long he had forgotten what it felt like to experience so open and vulnerable a feeling. He was in good shape but found himself winded as they walked through the thick snow not because he was tired, but because thoughts of Kris sucked the breaths from his throat.

They didn’t even know each other. And here Thorne was, mildly obsessing. It was only lust. That could be taken care of discreetly. Privately. And Kris need never know about his attraction.

“Sometimes I come out here and just stare at the trees for hours,” Thorne said.

“It’s pure here. Unsullied by—by everything.” Kris turned all the way around, gazing at the land.

“Yes.”

He liked to hear Kris speak as if melding to his own thoughts. Finally relaxed. Taking a break from his problems.

But after a while, Kris grew seemingly impatient. “It’s cold,” he said. “Let’s go back?”

Thorne turned and followed his deep tracks back to the house.

Kris spent the afternoon going back and forth from the family room to his guest room, his laptop in hand. Impatient. Trapped. Airily beautiful.

Thorne finally decided to ask him outright what was on his mind.

“I can’t find any updates on Father. I’d just like to know. But I can’t contact my brothers. My tablet is—limited.”

“Let me see that.” Thorne held out his hand.

Immediately, Thorne saw the parent-lock on the device. There would be a password. Probably extraordinarily complicated.

He’d worked for years in computer science with various firms. He recognized the trap.

He raised the tablet face out so Kris could see. “I’m familiar with this. Give me an hour. You’re still using your father’s wifi which he can track, so I’ll switch you to mine. I can also set you up on this with an anonymous IP. I’ll give you a way to spy on your family’s online correspondence.”

“The private stuff?”

“Yes.”

“It’s illegal.”

“Yes.”

“No one will catch us?”

“No one will catch us.”

Kris drew his lower lip into his mouth. His chest expanded. He let out a hard breath. “Do it.”

Thorne nodded. Body tingling again. It was his pleasure to help Kris. Too much his pleasure.

He swiveled in his desk chair. For a moment his face passed through a late afternoon glare coming through the window. The sun lit up the dust motes on the air. They swirled about him, lazy dust devils mostly unseen but navigating the world in their own patient way. Like Thorne and his mind slowly waking, slowly swirling, encompassing new things into his life.

Chapter Fourteen

Kris

A brush of fingertips. That’s all it was when Thorne handed me back my tablet. But it stirred something inside me. Heat. Warmth. Contact. And a weird deep hollowness that undulated like some insidious disease.