“Wolves,” Matthew shouted. “Almost as big as the horses.”
Walter turned to look at him, and Aaron’s throat tried to close off his words. “They aren’t here to cause trouble. If they do, then it isn’t Valen and Rivvie.”
He only hoped that he was being as honest as his father had been.
Chapter Eight
So much for not being spotted. Valen looked at Rivvie. They’d both heard the whistles that were, almost certainly, an alarm system of sorts. And they’d both seen the looking-glass turned their way before either of them had had time to duck for cover.
Valen had been so busy tracking scents that he hadn’t thought belonged and because of that, he’d been careless. Now he had to decide what to do. Flee, or hang around for the looming confrontation. There’d always been a firm line drawn between humans and shifters.
He’d already crossed that line, completely wiped it out, and the world hadn’t imploded or exploded. The gods and goddesses hadn’t tried to smite him or anything like that.
Although, he could have set himself and Rivvie up to be killed with his carelessness.
Valen growled a warning and backed up. He turned and ran for the thick forest. It’d be easy to hide there. Rivvie was right beside him.
They didn’t get very deep into the forest before Valen stopped. He wasn’t certain that running away was what he really wanted to do.
Rivvie whined and nosed his cheek.
Not now, Rivvie!
But then Valen stopped ignoring his brother and instead listened to Rivvie’s wolf-talk, which wasn’t anywhere near as expansive as actual words. It consisted of whines and whimpers, the occasional bark, yip or growl. It was more about an idea than a way to have a whole conversation. Rivvie got his point across. He thought they shouldn’t go far—yet.
Valen agreed with Rivvie. It might not be a bad idea to hang around in the area and see what happened. If Valen also got another glimpse of Aaron, that would be great.
Leading Rivvie to a better hiding place, Valen couldn’t deny that he hoped to see Aaron again and speak to him. More, if it was possible. If he had a chance at doing any of that, he suspected that the risk of exposing himself might be worth it.
Less than half an hour after they’d been spotted, Valen heard a sound that made his head swim because all the blood in his body rushed to his groin.
“Valen? Um. Rivvie?” Aaron yelled, his voice sounding closer every time he repeated their names. “Vaaaalen! Rivvieeeee! It’s Aaron!”
As if Valen would have forgotten the man’s voice, or his scent, or the sounds he made as he climaxed. Valen pawed at the moist earth, debating whether or not he should come out and meet Aaron.
Through the leaves and branches, he saw that Aaron was alone, which was a foolish thing to allow. Valen’s opinion of whoever managed the village plummeted. They weren’t protecting their members worth shit. Then he saw the walking stick Aaron was using and guilt hit him like a boulder dropped on his head from the mountainside. He’d hurt Aaron and left him damaged.
“Valen, Rivvie,” Aaron continued to call out.
Valen itched to go to him, and finally decided that he would. He thought he caught a scent of smoke on the breeze, which was odd, then he dismissed it. His mind was playing tricks on him. There was no fire nearby.
It was time to stop stalling. Valen slinked past Rivvie, giving him a growled order to remain hidden. As he moved past the largest clump of brush, Valen saw something else in the distance—movement behind Aaron.
Aaron wasn’t alone. Valen watched as two other people tried to follow Aaron without being seen. They weren’t very good at it, but there also wasn’t much for the man and woman to use as coverage.
Had he set Valen up? There was only one way to find out.
Valen came out of the forest at a full run.
“Valen!” Aaron shouted excitedly, a broad smile lighting up his face.
That didn’t seem to be the expression of a man seeking to deceive him, Valen mused. Even so, he bared his teeth and Aaron looked stricken.
“What did I—? Oh. You didn’t want to see me again. I’ll… I’ll go.” Aaron started to turn away, his cane smacking the ground.
Valen lunged for his cane and caught part of the handle in his mouth. He didn’t bite, but he did hold on, backing up and encouraging Aaron to come with him.
Aaron’s expression went from hurt and disappointed to expressing the beginnings of happiness again. “You didn’t leave.”
“Aaron! Stop!”
Aaron peered over his shoulder. “Father? Mother? What are you—?”
Valen let go of Aaron’s cane and instead clamped his teeth over the wrinkled fold in the front of his pants.
Come on come on. Come. On!
“It’s just my parents, Valen. They won’t do anything to you,” Aaron said.
Barks and growls told Valen that Rivvie hadn’t obeyed and was coming out from the forest.
“Rivvie!” Aaron waved.
“Aaron, come back here!”
Valen recognized the man. Walter, he’d been called the other night. And Walter was Aaron’s father.
Rivvie darted past Aaron and Valen. Valen barked an order at Rivvie to not attack.
If, by any chance, Valen was going to meet Aaron’s parents, he needed to be able to talk to them.
“He’s not going to hurt them, is he? My parents, I mean.” Aaron asked, sinking one hand into the thick fur at Valen’s nape.
Valen licked Aaron’s leg then started to shift. He pressed his head against Aaron’s thigh and panted through his change before standing up.
“That’s amazing, you know,” Aaron murmured, his eyes huge.
Valen surprised them both then. Judging by Aaron’s gasp, he hadn’t been expecting a kiss. Valen cupped his chin then slanted his mouth over Aaron’s. He pushed his tongue past those plump, parted lips and wrapped his other arm around Aaron.
Aaron’s thin body felt so, so perfect against him. Valen decided in that moment, he wasn’t letting the man go. Not unless Aaron was completely averse to being with him. Only time would tell if they were to be a mated pair—wolf shifters mated for life. Once they committed to a partner or partners, that was it, they were all in. He thought Aaron might be it for him and wanted the chance to see if he was right.
“Aaron!”
Aaron jolted and appeared to be dazed as he turned his head aside. He gulped and licked his lips.
Valen wanted to fuck him there on the spot. He wouldn’t, what with Aaron’s parents hollering at him.
Rivvie was bouncing in front of them, barking. His ears were laid flat against his head and his tail wasn’t wagging.
“Valen? Is he going to bite them?” Aaron asked worriedly.
“He’d better not.” Valen took Aaron’s cane and kept his arm around Aaron to steady him. “Why are your parents here?”
“I don’t know. I guess because Matthew said there were shifters out here and I took off with the cane as soon as I could?” Aaron postulated. “Things are strange in the village. My father sat down and had a long talk with me right before we heard you were out here.”
“Weird how?” Valen thought of the scents he’d discovered. He sniffed, and again there was the barest hint of smoke. The wind was coming from the east. Varex’s pack lay in that direction. Valen frowned and glanced east. “Do you see smoke in the distance?”
Aaron put a hand to his brow. “No. Can you see better than I can?”
“Yes.” And Valen thought there was a cloud of smoke amongst the white and gray rainclouds. “Are your parents armed with weapons?”
“Knives, probably.” Aaron lowered his hand. “Mother, Father, please lay your weapons down.”
“Listen to him, Walter,” Anita said. “I don’t think our son is in danger.”
“Are we?” Walter asked.
Rivvie stopped barking and sat down. His ears remained flattened in warning.
“You aren’t in any danger unless you’ve come to harm us,” Valen said to them. “Or to take Aaron from me.”
Walter opened his mouth only to yelp when Anita elbowed him hard enough to make him stumble.
“Any decision Aaron makes is his own,” Anita replied. “We will honor that. Now, please, we would like to speak to you and… And please don’t take our son. Not without giving us a chance to talk.”
Valen nodded. He wasn’t afraid of Aaron’s parents.
“You want to keep me?” Aaron whispered, his expression unreadable. “Take me away from my family and village?”
Valen wasn’t certain that saying yes would make Aaron happy. “I want to see if you and I fit. If we…”
Aaron was bobbing his head so rapidly he was going to make himself dizzy. His blond hair flew out behind him like a million thin whips being cracked. “Will you come back to the village with us first? Where are we going to go? What are we going to do?”
“Er. I haven’t gotten that far yet. I just didn’t want to leave you,” Valen admitted. “And while I was sniffing around today, I found something I think your father needs to know about. He’s the leader of the village, the alpha, so to speak?”
Aaron giggled, his eyes lit up with joy. “Yes, that’s him.” Then he sobered. “What did you find?”
Valen looked east again. “Something I fear means bad news.”
Rivvie whined, his nose twitching.
“You smell it too, Riv?” Valen asked.
“Smell what?” Walter looked at him fearfully.
Valen hoped he was wrong. “Fire. Smoke.”
Death.
The wolf in him was afraid of fire. Most wild animals were.
Rivvie picked up the knives and trotted over with them. He dropped them at Valen’s feet, then shifted.
“My gods,” Walter muttered while Anita cursed.
“Mother!” Aaron looked scandalized. “You cursed.”
“It happens,” she said drolly. “Especially when a wolf turns into a rather stunning naked man.”
“Anita.” Walter almost sounded like a wolf, growling as he spoke.
Anita waved him off. “It’s merely the truth. I’m sure if he’d have turned into an attractive woman you’d have had to put your tongue back in your mouth. Besides, I didn’t get to see Valen shift. I was busy trying not to pass out. You’re a scary thing as a wolf,” she said to Rivvie.
“Thanks.” Rivvie frowned, his brow wrinkling. “Val, that really does look like it’s coming from home.”
“From your home?” Aaron twisted around to look east. “I can’t see anything except the usual mountains and forest.”
Valen was torn. He had Aaron in his arms, and a chance to see if they could have a relationship. The rules were clear when it came to the pack—he’d been kicked out in order to find his own place in the world. He wouldn’t be welcome back, possibly ever. Certainly not before he’d established a pack and committed to his mate.
“I can go,” Rivvie offered. “Please, let me. Father and I didn’t part on the best of terms. If… If something’s happened…”
Valen knew a storm could beget a wildfire. He hadn’t seen or smelled a hint of one. Whatever had happened, he didn’t think it was an act of nature. “Rivvie, not alone.”
“But—” Rivvie began.
Valen narrowed his eyes. “No. It’s both of us or neither.”
Rivvie looked from him to Aaron. “You just reunited. He could be your—”
“I am aware.” If Aaron agreed, and he and Valen formed an emotional attachment to one another, then yes, Valen would ask for his hand.
Rivvie bit his lip. He turned away and stared at the ground.
“You could go with him,” Aaron said quietly. “I’ll wait for you.”
“It isn’t as simple as that.” Valen wished it was. “I am not allowed back on my father’s property. As an alpha, it is too dangerous for him, and for me. Our wolves are very…competitive, and even though I have control of my wolf most of the time, there are boundaries I can’t cross with him. Putting me in shifted form with another alpha, even my father, sets both him and me into a purely animal state.”
“You’d fight,” Aaron surmised correctly.
“To the death, almost certainly.” Valen knew where his loyalties had to be, and he knew where his heart lay. “I want to meet your parents. Rivvie.”
Rivvie finally looked at him again. “Yeah?”
“We’ll go after I speak to them.” It went against what he’d been taught, which was to put his own pack first. Maybe he
was
doing that, though. Valen just didn’t know.
“I want to come with you. I can ride one of the horses.” Aaron jutted his chin out stubbornly. “I’m going if you do.”
Valen realized in that moment that he’d just increased the number of his pack by one. “Really? Even if I tell you to stay here and wait for me? After you just said you’d wait for me?”
Aaron twirled one hand in front of them. “That was before the whole fighting to the death thing.”
Walter and Anita approached cautiously. “Son, your mother and I couldn’t help but overhear and I think it’d be better for you to remain here. Your knee isn’t healed from the fall yesterday. The cut could open and get infected.”
Valen clasped his other hand over Aaron’s hip. “You hurt your knee again?”
“I fell getting out of bed yesterday,” Aaron explained. “I haven’t been sleeping well and I was groggy. When I went down, I cut my knee. It isn’t going to stop me from going with you.”
“This is what happens when you have a talk with him,” Anita accused. She reached for Aaron, touching his forearm. “Let’s sit down and talk.”
“I’m not sure that’s going to be possible,” Valen said, looking toward the village. “There’s a small army headed this way.”
“A small—” Walter turned around and groaned. “I told Matthew to stay in the village!”
“Apparently our sons are full of rebelliousness today,” Anita observed.
“This could get ugly fast,” Rivvie said with more of a grin than not.
The sound of hooves striking the ground grew louder. Valen counted almost twenty riders. “Did you plan this?” he asked Walter bluntly.
Walter’s face darkened. “No, I did
not
plan this. I was too busy following Aaron and making sure he wasn’t harmed.” He turned and made several hand gestures that Valen guessed were meaningful to the guards or whatever they were that had been coming their way.
“Halt,” the lead rider called out. “Walter, are you sure—?”
Walter took a step toward him. “Matthew, I told you to stay in the village. You have directly disobeyed me.”