Axel's Pup (49 page)

Axel’s gaze went to the corner where they’d played the night before. It had been different. It had pushed Bayden. It had shaken him a bit and demanded he do something he didn’t find easy, but he’d been okay about it.

The scene hadn’t been rough. Bayden wasn’t hurt. His jeans hadn’t survived, but…

Axel looked at the knife in the block. He knew of at least one scene where seeing a man pulling a knife hadn’t gone well for Bayden.

No. Axel took a deep breath. He’d have known if Bayden was that freaked out. The only thing that had been difficult for him had been giving in to his instincts as a wolf. And today, he’d gone home to wolves who’d always told him not to trust humans.

At least, he’d probably gone home to wolves. He hadn’t said he was going home until Axel reminded him that he needed permission to go anywhere apart from that.

“Axe?” Griz prompted.

Axel opened his eyes. He met Griz’s gaze. “We did a scene. It pushed him.”

“How did he sound on the phone?”

Hurt. Scared. Guilty. Axel took a deep breath.

“Do you know where he lives?” Hale asked.

Axel didn’t answer. He picked up his keys and headed out. Hale was hot on his heels. Axel went toward his bike but checked the instinct. Bayden hadn’t sounded in any condition to ride. Axel changed course and got in his car.

Hale jumped in the passenger seat without waiting for an invitation. “Griz and Drac are going to stick around here. They’ll call us if he turns up.”

Axel drove in silence as Hale spoke into his mobile. When he pushed his phone into his pocket a few minutes later, he turned to Axel. “No accidents that match his description, or his bike’s description. No arrests involving a wolf all day.”

“Nothing official,” Axel muttered.

“Granger’s on duty, but I checked in with a cop I know I can trust. Granger hasn’t been out of the station all day. He hasn’t had a chance to make trouble for anyone.”

Hale fidgeted with his phone some more. “It would be easier to try to track his family down if wolves had proper surnames.”

“They had pack names.”

“What?”

Axel’s grip on the steering wheel turned white knuckled. “Wolves had pack names, but it’s against the law for them to use those names. It’s against the law for them to have any surname other than Wolf. It was in that book you gave me. It’s one of the laws Kincade is trying to get overturned.”

Axel pulled up outside Bayden’s place and led the way inside.

They were barely two steps into the hallway when the door to the landlord’s room jerked open.

Axel went straight to Bayden’s room. He knocked on the door. He managed to keep the first knock polite, the second one not so much. “Bayden?” There was no sign of light under the door. Bayden wasn’t someone who’d hide inside if he knew his dom called his name, but Axel hadn’t thought Bayden would hang up on him either, or disappear without warning.

Axel’s heart hammered against his ribs. Kicking the door in wouldn’t help. He stepped back and turned to Hale. “You’ve got your notebook with you?”

Hale handed it over.

Axel scrawled a note and pushed it under the door before heading back downstairs.

The landlord was still in the hallway. He eyed them both suspiciously.

“When was the last time you saw Bayden?” Axel demanded.

“Why?”

Axel didn’t grab him by the neck and toss him against the wall, but it was a near run thing. “When?” he repeated.

The landlord took a step back. “When he was here with you.”

Axel looked the guy up and down, he looked intimidated enough to have given in to honesty. Axel wrote his phone number down on another piece of paper from Hale’s notebook and handed it to the landlord. “The moment you see him, you call me.”

“Why?” The guy repeated.

“There’s money in it for you if you do.”

The landlord’s eyes narrowed. “How much?”

“Two hundred,” Axel said, almost entirely at random. “If he comes here, you phone me straight away.”

The landlord’s expression turned considering.

“If you see Bayden, you call me. You don’t tell Bayden, you don’t see if he’ll offer you more money not to phone me. You call me straight away.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You’ll find out just how much more dangerous than a wolf a human can be.”

The landlord scrambled crabwise into his flat, slamming and locking the door in his wake. He’d phone.

Out in his car, Axel sat staring through the windscreen. He’d thought things were screwed up last time he’d sat there, but at least Bayden had been with him then, Bayden had been safe.

“Can you remember anything about where his family lives? He got caught in traffic on his way back from there, didn’t he?” Hale asked. “Before one of the club rides?”

Axel tried to think. “Not a good area. Better than Holborn, but not by much. West side of the city, probably.”

“We could get a list of all the wolves living in that area,” Hale suggested.

“From police records?” Axel shook his head. “He said he’d made sure Granger wouldn’t be able to find out where they lived. They’re under the radar. And he won’t still be there anyway. Three adult wolves under the same roof, he won’t risk it.”

Hale rubbed his hand over his shaved head. “Would he have gone to a nightclub, or to another pub?” Hale asked.

“That’s against the rules.”

“And?”

“No, he doesn’t break them, not usually,” Axel said. “Not until today. Unless…”

“What?”

“If he needed to make quick money. If he went to his mother’s and she needed money fast, he might…” He shook his head, as if that would make him less likely to throw up at the images that flashed through his mind.

“Do you want to start checking the clubs?” Hale asked.

Axel nodded. “I’ll drop you off next time I see a taxi rank.”

“No. I’m going with you.”

Axel shook his head.

“If he’s in trouble, I’ll be able to help.”

Axel considered the possibility that a cop might be useful.

“I can stop you getting done for murder,” Hale offered.

“I won’t kill him.” He was just going to handcuff Bayden to his wrist and never let him out of his sight again, that’s all.

“I’m not worried you’ll kill the damn puppy. But, if someone’s hurt him, I’m probably the only one who has a chance of stopping you from murdering the man.”

“And you think that’s going to make me more likely to keep you around?” Axel muttered.

Hale huffed.

“If someone’s hurt him, you won’t stop me from killing them,” Axel said. There wasn’t anything that would stop him from doing that.

* * * * *

Bayden closed his eyes very tightly. Legs pulled up in front of him, he folded his arms and balanced them on his knees. Bowing his head he hid his face against his forearms.

He tried to take a deep breath, but it stuck in his throat. He shook his head. What kind of a man couldn’t even breathe without giving way to emotion?

The room was dark but, when he lifted his head, he could make out the outline of the bed. Approaching it wasn’t an option. He stayed on the floor in the far corner of the room, as if that would make it all less real.

His jacket lay on the carpet at his side. His mobile was in the pocket. It would only take him seconds to phone Axel. Then everything would be fine. Somehow Axel would be able to make everything okay and—

Bayden shook his head. This wasn’t Axel’s problem. It was his problem. He was responsible for it all, and he would deal with it. Axel was…

Axel was going to be so mad at him for breaking the rules. Even if Axel could magically turn up, take control and make everything better, Bayden had given him no reason to want to do that.

The chances of Axel even being willing to take him back after this were tiny, and—

Bayden’s throat closed up. He shook his head. No matter how angry Axel was with him, Bayden still wanted Axel with a deep ache that filled his body, mingling and intertwining with other kinds of pain.

He glanced at the pocket his phone was in, but he didn’t reach out to it. He wanted Axel, but he’d learned a long time ago that what a wolf wanted and what he got were always two very different things.

* * * * *

Axel stared at his mobile. It was all he seemed to do anymore. Forty-eight hours. If anyone had told him that being away from any guy for forty-eight hours would turn his brain into mush, he’d have laughed.

Laughing wasn’t an option any more. He paced from one side of the living room to the other.

He’d lost count of the number of messages he’d left for Bayden, how many texts he’d sent him, and how many clubs and pubs each Dragon had gone to, calling in every favour they had in an effort to track down any trace of him.

If Bayden turned up in any place where men wore leather, someone would let them know. Probably. When a guy like Bayden offered himself up on a platter, with no limits and no survival instincts, Axel suspected phone numbers were all too conveniently forgotten.

Axel had also lost count of the number of scenarios that he’d considered.

If his mother or grandfather had needed money, Bayden would have done whatever it took to raise it—no hesitation. He could be somewhere trapped in a mockery of a scene, with the kind of man who wouldn’t let him safe word out of it.

Axel paced into the bedroom. He’d already been through the drawer where Bayden kept his stuff—carefully unfolding each item and going over every inch before carefully replacing it. There weren’t any clues.

There was no money in there, but he could have taken that with him in case his mother needed it. It didn’t mean he wasn’t coming back. He wouldn’t have left his clothes there if he’d gone with no intention of returning.

Axel went back to the drawer. There was so bloody little in there. He should have known better than to wreck his jeans in that last scene. Bayden was careful with his things. Damn it, he didn’t even let his clothes get creased, let alone cut up.

And what kind of idiot pulled a knife out in a scene without any warning? All the work he’d done teaching Bayden that he could trust him, and he’d thrown it away because he was too damn impatient to undo some laces.

But, if the scene they’d done together had scared Bayden, he could just be holed up somewhere, licking his emotional wounds. It was one of the less terrifying possibilities. Maybe nothing bad had happened to Bayden. Maybe he was perfectly fine and he just needed some space. He’d said he wanted a few days before he came back. That was fair enough, wasn’t it?

Bayden had always said that the sub left the room if he didn’t want to submit to a dom who was in his space. Maybe this was just a wolf’s way of making it clear they’d stumbled on a limit.

Closing Bayden’s drawer, Axel paced back into the living room. Without thinking about it, he found himself heading for another drawer.

No God worth believing in would be punishing him for being gay. But, a punishment for being an arrogant arsehole and forgetting how careful he needed to be with someone like Bayden? Devine retribution seemed to be pretty fitting in those circumstances.

Axel opened the drawer.

His mother hadn’t bought the rosaries in bulk. Each one was different. Some were obviously expensive, some less so. Different materials, different styles. He shook his head.

If Bayden was listening to the messages Axel had left for him rather than simply deleting them on sight, he’d have heard some of the angrier messages Axel had left for him on the first day. Maybe he was scared to come back.

The later messages that had promised forgiveness, change and damn near anything else Axel could think of, should have levelled things out. But, that wasn’t guaranteed, not if Bayden had stopped listening to them.

Axel dipped his hand into the drawer and picked up one of the rosaries at random. At this point, he’d take any help he could get.

“Axel!”

Axel spun around. Griz’s eyes were wide open. He pointed to the monitor behind the bar as if he’d seen—

Bayden.

For several seconds Axel couldn’t do anything but stare. It was raining hard, but neither Bayden nor his bike could be mistaken. If someone else hadn’t pointed out the image, Axel would have been inclined to think that he was imagining it.

As he watched the screen, the image of Bayden took off his helmet, got off his bike and walked toward the pub’s front door.

Axel turned around when Bayden left the security camera’s field of vision. He held his breath as the door opened. Bayden stepped into the room. He was dripping wet, his hair plastered down against his scalp, his jeans sodden. Axel had never seen a more beautiful sight.

Axel wasn’t even aware of moving. One moment he was behind the bar, the next he was across the room, and he had Bayden pinned against the wall next to the door. All thoughts of gentleness and feverish apologies temporarily forgotten, Axel couldn’t help but grip him tight.

Bayden was pale and shivering, but he was there. Axel gasped for breath as relief rushed through him. Bayden made no attempt to struggle, or to lift his gaze.

“Tell me,” Axel demanded, his voice hoarse.

“He…” Bayden closed his eyes.

Axel’s heart lurched. “Bayden!”

“He died.”

Axel’s blood turned cold. “Who died? What happened? Were you in a fight?”

Bayden shook his head. “My grandfather. He…He died.” He looked up. The pain in his gaze filled the world. If the only water on his checks came from rain, it was through sheer force of will. “He died.”

Axel slid his hand behind Bayden’s head and pulled him forward, into his arms. He let him tuck his face into his shoulder while he simply relished the fact that Bayden was there, close enough for him to hold on to.

“He died,” Bayden repeated.

Axel closed his eyes and held Bayden as tight as he could. For once, he didn’t worry about Bayden being small enough to crush. Axel held him so tight his own muscles ached under the strain.

“He died.”

Instinct took over. Axel’s anger was still there, harsh and biting, but Bayden’s pain somehow pushed it down to be dealt with later. Axel made a soothing noise in the back of his throat, the same kind mothers used when rocking a fretting infant.