The Werewolf Affair [DeWitt's Pack 14] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic ManLove) (9 page)

“More than sex to keep our inner wolves from going insane?”

Phillip’s cheeks colored. “Basically, yes.”

Trevor laced his fingers together between his knees, mirroring Phillip, and then he sighed. “I’m going to be honest, I don’t remember a lot about my life before leaving my parents’ place. I know that I had parents, and that I had siblings, and that they were all younger than me. Things were rough sometimes, I know that. I guess the foggy memory is because I went partly wild, too, after I was transformed.”

Phillip smiled at him, no doubt thinking of his own hazy memories. It was another thing they had in common, Trevor realized.

“Despite that, I can remember certain little things. They’re not clear, but they’re there. Helping to make lunches in the morning, homework, and before that, yes, even diaper changes.” Trevor made sure to look pointedly at Phillip. “Kids don’t scare me. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I am sort of old enough to have them.”

Phillip nodded and blew out a long breath from his mouth.

“That wasn’t exactly the reaction I’d hoped to get,” Trevor admitted.

“Sorry, I guess I’m not done throwing things at you.”

Trevor frowned, trying to think about that one. “What could be bigger than kids that would scare me away from you? I love you.”

Trevor wished Phillip wouldn’t look so pained when he spoke those words. “I know you do, and I like you. A lot.”

“And I’m okay with that, for now,” Trevor was quick to say.

That pained look was still in Phillip’s eyes when he looked at him. “Trevor, Helen is haunting me. That’s what the medium wanted to let me know.”

Trevor’s insides froze. “Are you serious?”

“Does that sound like something I would joke about?”

“No, of course not. I’m sorry. It’s just that…Is she here right now?” Trevor said, looking around and wondering if he would see a ghostly figure somewhere or if maybe the lights would start flickering or something.

“Most likely. Ivan and Old Maggie think that I’m chaining her to me, that my inability to let her go is what’s keeping her from moving on.”

“Well, so far she hasn’t hurt anyone,” Trevor said.

Phillip rubbed his face. “By staying here, she’s slowly going to start losing her mind. So to speak. She’ll become a violent ghost. A lost spirit. She will start hurting people if I can’t let her go.”

Trevor’s heart sank. His hope for the coming future he might have with Phillip was looking more and more grim. “You can’t exactly turn the switch off of love either. Can you.”

Not a question. Even he knew that was true.

Phillip looked at him sharply. “That’s what I thought while coming here.”

“What will you do?” Trevor asked. He reached his hand across the couch cushions and Phillip’s leg and curled his fingers around Phillip’s hand, hoping to offer some comfort.

His hopes were dashed when Phillip pulled away from the touch.

“I don’t know what to do just yet, but, Trevor…I don’t think you and I should be intimate for a while.”

Trevor’s heart pumped hot and heavy into his ears. He could barely think past the noise. “Why?”

“That’s not what I meant to say. Not really. I’m not going to cut us both off entirely from each other, and I don’t want to be cruel here. We still need each other. I still need you, otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Your inner wolf, and you, will be just as hurt as I will if we avoid each other completely. What I’m suggesting is that we take it easy for a bit, and come together only when we absolutely need to. I don’t really want my wife watching me in bed with another man. Anyone, for that matter. I don’t want to make her worse, but it will make me go a little crazy if I can’t at least see you from time to time, even if we aren’t having sex.”

Trevor wanted to argue that she had already seen them together if she had been haunting him. He wanted to say that maybe she was the reason for Phillip’s inability to move on, and not the other way around.

But then he would be placing blame on a dead woman and fighting with Phillip about something that the man would never see Trevor’s side on.

“Okay,” he said, setting his mouth in a firm line and then biting down on his lips to keep himself from saying things that he shouldn’t.

“Okay?” Phillip asked.

“Yes, it’s okay,” Trevor snapped, and he clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug painfully into his palms.

“Trevor, I―”

“You should go,” Trevor said, glancing over his shoulder and then quickly looking away. “I’m tired. I’m probably going to bed.”

More likely he was going to sneak out and go running in wolf form just to get away from the stress. He didn’t want Phillip knowing that, and he didn’t want the man to follow him.

Or to look at his face and see how close Trevor was to crying. His eyes burned, and his throat was closing. It hurt to breathe as the tightness inside just got worse and worse with each second Phillip stared at his back.

He finally heard the ease of the springs and cushions of the couch as Phillip got to his feet.

Leave. Please leave.

Phillip must’ve finally turned on his heel, because then his footsteps sounded as he walked down the hall toward the door, collected his shoes, and then he was gone.

The first thing Trevor did was release a sigh as the door closed. He stood there for a minute longer, letting the tense muscles in his body relax. It was harder than it should have been, and his body was still twitchy afterward.

He walked to his room. He was more than certain that none of his roommates had heard his conversation with Phillip. He could hear nothing but silence from within each room he passed. Yeah, definitely asleep. They weren’t waiting up for anyone.

Trevor wished he hadn’t waited up at all. The man might not want to hide what they were anymore, but he wanted to avoid him now. It was like one step forward and two steps back.

He fought the urge to slam the door to his room like a child, but when he was alone in there, he did finally let go and allow his tears to fall.

Not like there was anyone watching. No reason to hide it.

Then he spotted the book lying on his bed.
Dracula
.

In a fit of blind rage, Trevor grabbed it and hurled it against his wall. He didn’t care anymore if he was acting like a child, and he didn’t care if he woke anyone up.

He threw the novel with such a force that it put a hole in the drywall before bouncing out and falling to the floor.

He immediately regretted what he’d done when several torn pages floated down slower than the book itself.

It made him want to cry even harder as he bent down to clean up his mess.

Phillip spent the next two days mostly in the company of Old Maggie and Ivan, and then reporting back to James.

He had to learn how to properly let go of his wife if she was going to even have an afterlife that was more than just wandering around as a ghost zombie, oblivious to everything around her, and only existing to frighten the living.

Ivan was hardly any help. The man suggested meditation and long walks. He told him that he should speak out loud to her, as though she was there, to give him the chance to say the things he didn’t have the chance to before she’d died.

He followed those suggestions, waiting for privacy before speaking to a woman he couldn’t see, but the only things he could do was say how sorry he was that she’d died, how he missed her, and apologize for how much he was fucking up being a parent.

He never felt any better or any lighter.

Old Maggie suggested that Phillip visit Helen’s grave. He hadn’t done that at all since coming to live on DeWitt’s land. James had to take care of the details like that while Phillip was busy losing his mind out in the wild, so her grave was a marked space that was even on the property.

He’d tried going. He’d bought flowers for the occasion and figured he could take Sammy along as well.

The boy was getting a little more used to him, though his preferences for Corey over Phillip were still obvious. Phillip figured his rank was somewhere along the lines of a favorite uncle at this point, but they were both taking baby steps here.

He’d dressed Sammy up in some clean clothes, the best he had, taken him and the flowers to the place where the grave was supposed to be, and then stopped at the sight of them.

Helen’s looked the same as all the others, most were from his former pack. Some were from this one. A nice stone with her name in it, her date of birth and death, and that was it. Of course there wouldn’t be a loving inscription, because he hadn’t been there to bury her.

He’d promptly put the flowers down, turned around, and left.

Helen wasn’t in that grave anyway. She was a ghost following him around. So what was the point?

All this thinking about her, thinking about what he was and wasn’t doing right, it wasn’t helping. He missed Trevor, and his inner wolf missed him, too.

Unlike Helen, Trevor was alive, real and warm. He could speak with Trevor and laugh with him.

It had only been two days, but he needed to see him again. Maybe that would be enough to satisfy the urges that were running rampant inside of him.

He dropped Sammy off with a kiss and a hug back with Corey. As usual, the man was glad to have Sammy back in the main house, like he thought that every time Phillip came to pick him up or spend time with him meant that would be the last time Sammy would be spending the night under his roof.

Phillip put that out of his mind for now. He wanted to see his mate.

He knocked on the door and wasn’t surprised that another person answered.

It was a female omega, with red hair, and probably around the same age as Trevor.

“Trevor in?” he asked.

It was easy for him to tell that she had been born a werewolf by the way she looked at him. Not exactly with disdain, but hardly with any respect either.

Phillip knew this would happen, but better those who held some disgust for Phillip marrying and starting a family with a woman who was not his mate, openly or otherwise, put those feelings solely on him, rather than on Helen or his son.

“Is Trevor in?” he asked again.

“No, he’s out on patrol.”

Phillip frowned. “Patrol?” He looked down at his watch. It was after four. “He only does morning patrols, and I thought it was his day off.”

“I don’t know,” the girl said, exasperated. “I don’t keep track of what he does or doesn’t do. Maybe he asked for more time.”

That was a possibility. James and Phillip ran their packs with similar rules, and a lot of pack leaders adopted this method as well.

Paying the members of their packs for performing certain duties that were considered more than chores. The alphas usually got a share, a small share, of money from the leading alpha’s main bank account for being on active duty. Maybe Trevor wanted the money. Maybe he wanted to get away from Phillip for a while.

The only way he could find out was to ask Trevor himself. Since he was out on his patrol time, Phillip was going to have to track him down.

Phillip thanked the girl and set out.

Following Trevor’s scent was easy. It had become familiar to him after all the times they’d been together and was easy to track. He smelled like the pine trees and the land that he liked running through, mixed in with the cinnamon-scented soap he used in the shower, clean sweat, and his natural scent.

Phillip had been purposely walking past the cabin where Trevor lived, hoping to catch a short whiff of that scent these last two days to keep his inner wolf centered. Now the scent only served to drive his need to see the man even more.

He was mildly disappointed to notice that James’s scent was also in the air, and close by. It seemed that Trevor had acted as his second, the wolf to watch his back on this particular patrol.

That couldn’t be good. If the alphas were patrolling in pairs, then it meant that hunters had been scented in the area.

Phillip found a bench to store his clothes in and got into his wolf form. He hadn’t been on patrol yet simply because James hadn’t given him the go-ahead. He was still a recovering wild werewolf, and he hadn’t yet convinced the man in charge that he was ready to take on any responsibilities to the pack.

That was going to change right now.

He found them about a mile away, stalking the high ground and looking down on a valley of smaller trees and shrubs, as well as some soggy ground that the streams trickled through.

Phillip didn’t call out to them. He knew better than to draw attention to himself like that. He just watched them quietly instead. He watched the way Trevor moved, the way he slunk along low to the ground, his ears perked, his nose flaring as he searched for any useable scent. They wouldn’t be able to scent Phillip. Not from his position to the wind.

For a new werewolf, he was already well trained. Phillip was proud of him.

The wind position also made searching for anything in the field difficult. There wasn’t enough cover in there to warrant going in and checking it out. Hunters could be waiting just on the outskirts with their guns drawn, waiting for something that didn’t appear entirely human to slink into their trap.