“Have you even opened it?”
“I planned to tonight when we went to bed. Brandon, I—”
“Fuck it,” he said with a shake of his head, then his arms shot out. Strong fingers wrapped themselves around my bare biceps, his skin searing into mine. And then I was gone.
I was yanked from standing on an alien planet under the light of several moons, to another more familiar place. We stood on the banks of the great black lake that seemed to always be present when our pack melded. Brandon stood there, the one point of illumination in all the gloom, his expression a terrible one. “See it,” he said. “See it, and read it.”
The light inside him flared as soon as he touched me, taking me from this subterranean landscape to someone’s home.
“What have you got there?” a woman said. Janice, it was Brandon’s mum, I realised. She bent down and inspected the childish drawing the little boy with Brandon’s eyes was working on. “Is this Mummy?” She pointed to the stick figure sporting a triangular-shaped dress.
“No, dat Jools,” he replied, his mouth struggling to form the words.
“Ohh, is she your friend?”
“No, she my mate.”
“Mate? You mean like Mummy and your daddies?” He nodded his head earnestly. “That won’t happen for a long time, love. You know that.”
“I know.”
“Adam.” Janice turned to call over her shoulder to someone we couldn’t see. “Have you heard of anyone having a daughter named Jewels?”
The light burned brightly, washing away the scene, only to replace it with a slightly older Brandon, playing with several dolls and action figures. Ophelia stood with Janice as they watched the boy play.
“It’s this, over and over. I’ve checked, and there’s no little girls called Jewels. No nicknames, nothing. I even checked the boys’ names. He just spends the whole day making up these incredibly convoluted stories about him, Jewels, and their pack. There’re details in them that no kid should know. He keeps talking about Grace’s boy and Cheryl’s, Slade, but they’re not even friends. I’ve never had that much to do with either of their mums. I’m worried, alpha.”
Ophelia didn’t get to reply, the scene quickly dissolving before another appeared.
“You can’t waste your life waiting around for some fantasy woman,” Brandy, Brandon’s sister, said. By the unfinished, coltish look of her body, they were teenagers now. “Have you ever had sex?”
“You expect me to answer that? You’re my fucking sister.”
“So that’s a no. Go out with Sharon. She likes you, thinks you’re hot for some bloody reason. No one’s saying bond her, but just take her out on a date or something.”
“I can’t.”
“For fuck’s sake, Brandon.”
“I can’t, so butt the fuck out of my life, OK?”
Brandy’s stung expression faded away, only to be replaced by the darkened doorway of one of the Sanctuary sheds. A big burly guy just wearing a tight pair of faded jeans stood by it, his brows jerking down when he saw Brandon.
“What are you doing here, kid?”
“I…” I could feel it now, the pulse of heat fever in Brandon’s veins. He’d jerked his cock raw, but the need had not abated. Revel, Helen’s daughter, was in the midst of her mating run, and half the single men in town were off after her. He wasn’t. He was too young anyway, but he resisted the siren call of the other woman’s scent with everything he had. He couldn’t run after her, though some of the boys his age would, damn the rules. Never another woman. “I need to get off.”
The words were bald, unvarnished, and the man at the door smiled at them. “Kid, I understand completely, but this isn’t the place for you. It’s a fucking zoo in there, and impulse control is at an all-time low. Go and find a couple of your mates for a nice safe circle jerk.”
Brandon could hear the muffled groans, smell the scent of too many men crammed into one space. He wasn’t sure if that’s what he wanted, but he needed to find out. He shifted, the ache in his balls growing by the minute.
“No,” he said. “I need this.”
The guy sighed, pushing himself off the wall and broaching the gap between them as he came closer and closer, until Brandon’s nose was f
ull of his masculine musk.
“You need this?” His hand went to his zipper, slowly opening the front of his jeans. The man popped the button, and the fabric parted almost with a sigh, revealing a rigid cock. He palmed it, giving it a few long, swirling tugs. “How about you show me how much you need it.”