Being(s) In Love 03 - A Beginner’s Guide to Wooing Your Mate (20 page)

He had a feeling whatever his heart or his scent or general demeanor were giving off wasn’t good. Theo was beginning to look less resigned to Zeki’s anger and abandonment and more alarmed. If Zeki had felt like squandering all of his strength, he would have turned him into a toad. As it was he turned and stormed out of the room.

He didn’t really have anywhere to go, but it wasn’t a surprise he ended up in the most powerful room in the house. Once in the kitchen, he rounded on Theo, unsurprised when Theo followed this time. Of course he did. Poor Theo kind of had to.

“You approached me,” Theo argued before Zeki could get out a word. “I wasn’t going to force anything. You said no the first time, and I respected that.”

Hearing him say it hurt now that Zeki knew the truth.

“But I didn’t know what I was saying no to!” Tearing at his hair accomplished nothing, but it made Zeki feel better. “Spirit of Simon, grant me strength.”

Theo barely paused. “We were still too young, Zeki.” He stayed stiff, quiet. He was expecting the worst, and for some reason Zeki found that infuriating. Theo was either oblivious or didn’t recognize what Zeki’s temper looked like. “But I’m glad. I’m glad you came back. I never expected any of this. Now I know more about you.”

Now I know this about you.
Theo had actually said those words, fully expecting Zeki to leave him. He had learned Zeki’s scent and his taste while assuming Zeki would eventually go.

Zeki felt a dangerous crackle along his skin. “Is that it?” he demanded. Somewhere under the anger was a chill, sick panic. He took a breath and tamped it all down. “You’re burying your feelings again, Theo. Whatever else happens, I refuse to allow you to do that and rush into fires alone again. This situation is shitty, Theo. It’s shitty to you, to both of us.” Zeki tried to think so he could speak without stress in his voice. “What happened before shouldn’t have happened.” No wonder Theo had found magic as the most unlikely of outlets. Everything about this was unlikely. Yet it had happened.

He fought to center himself and wound up looking into Theo’s incredible eyes. No one should have looked into Theo’s eyes and thought he was fine. Everything about Theo was beautiful, but he was not fine.

Zeki strode forward, hating that he’d had Theo’s attention and hadn’t known it. “I like you, Theo.” He needed that to be clear. “I’ve always liked you. But this is something else. You should be upset about this too.” None of this was fair. Zeki couldn’t be expected to be responsible for someone else’s happiness. They barely knew each other.

“It’s supposed to be something people want. Not this.” Theo released another slow breath. “I’m sorry.”

“None of this is your fault. Stop being sorry.” “Sorry” didn’t give Zeki any new information.

But Theo jerked his head up and growled, like the wolf in him was under his skin as much as magic was under Zeki’s. “
Stop
?” he shouted in return, freezing Zeki to the spot. “Stop being sorry that I’ve gotten nothing but pitying looks or carefully concealed pitying looks from everyone I know for five years? Stop being sorry that I couldn’t even consider dating anyone else because my instincts would insist it was wrong? And when they weren’t making me crazy, I still had the suspicion that you’d been right to reject a were who couldn’t even introduce himself to his mate properly?”

“Theo.” Zeki was fairly certain Theo had never yelled in his life. He blinked up at him, but Theo wasn’t done.

“Do you know weres don’t heal as fast without their mates? Can’t rest as well? Rejected means I don’t ever feel truly safe and—” Theo’s voice cracked. “You didn’t mean to, but it hurt just the same. I didn’t realize how much until you came here. I got rid of those feelings, I worked hard and I figured out how to make them go away, but being around you makes everything harder to keep down. Those brownies, you think those were on purpose? It happened because you were near me. Because you were in town, and I smelled you, and you were still mine, even if you weren’t. There’s nothing else I can do. That’s it.”

Like it had never been, Theo’s anger left him. He shook for a moment in its wake, then leaned against the wall of his kitchen. “I never even got the chance to know you. Only who you were, your name, and then nothing else for five years.”

He was right; they’d never gotten to know each other. Zeki had wanted to get to know him, but it was different with this between them. This was the opposite of casual, and the longer he stayed the more he—the more attached Theo would get.

Leaving remained an option, he knew that much, but little else. Zeki had chosen not to study weres, and now he had no knowledge to fall back on. People in town had tried to tell him. The sheriff, even, he was pretty sure, his father. There were feelings on both sides of a mated pair, even if one half was human, even if one was rejected. The one who left would feel the loss too, and Zeki had, hadn’t he? The sole reason he hadn’t realized why he’d been more content to study than date, why he’d come back to Wolf’s Paw when he’d claimed to hate it, was because he was human.

Or, he’d noticed something, the magic as natural and subtle as breathing, and thought it homesickness or something else. He’d dived into his studies and broken up with people, had one-night stands, claimed he had no time for serious relationships. He should have known that about himself. He’d made it his business to know everything, but he hadn’t noticed a bond reminding him of what he wanted and telling him no one was right for him.

The bond the sheriff had talked about had already started to form, and Zeki hadn’t noticed. Zeki had probably been feeding it with all his adolescent longing, and he hadn’t noticed. That shouldn’t have been possible. He studied. He made it his business to know everything. Magic was the one thing he was good at, and yet he hadn’t seen something this monumental.

Zeki used his casting voice without thinking. “I have to go.” There was magic present even now, like a humming line between the two of them, and the second he noticed it, he felt his entire body go hot. His extremities went numb. Fierce power lay between them, and Zeki was only now seeing it. It was too much, like ocean tides surging into a river, a trickle that could become a mudslide, the shuddering crack of snow breaking up on top of the mountains. He felt young again, plump and nervous, his voice cracking, his skin constantly flushed. “I have to go, Theo.”

Theo nodded, as if he’d expected that all along, and Zeki couldn’t handle it. He was petrified at the force binding him to Theo, and he was grown, an adult. Theo had been sixteen, and alone. Theo was alone again, had expected nothing else. Zeki reached through empty air and touched him, startling them both. “I will want to talk to you again. You have to be here for me to talk to you again.” This time he spoke the abracadabra on purpose, the fear fluttering deep in his chest demanding that he do it. He’d spoken it; it had to come to pass. “No running into fires alone, Theo. Not because of this.”

Warm skin he had touched, tasted. Soon it wasn’t only his hand on Theo but his face. He nuzzled Theo’s shoulder and nosed at his skin. Theo was shaking too. He shouldn’t be scared. Zeki would protect him. His Theo. No, no, just Theo. Theo who baked his feelings into cookies. Gentle Theo. Theo who might love him already. Sheriff Neri had said it was only a matter of time.

“You are beautiful.” Zeki nuzzled him without thought, spoke without thought, and flinched at the realization.

Theo trusted his instincts, and they had drawn him to Zeki. Zeki kept trembling no matter how slowly, carefully Theo petted him. He couldn’t stop touching Theo, or talking to him. His heart was racing.

“Theo, I spent all of high school wanting to run from this town. Or toward you.” Zeki had to be honest. Whatever else, he wasn’t going to lie to someone who wouldn’t lie to him. “I need to think. I need… I need to think.”

“Is that easier than doing what you feel?’ Theo asked, and bent his head. He breathed over the top of Zeki’s head, taking his time, as if he was memorizing Zeki’s scent. Which was probably exactly what he was doing. He was so sure that this was right, because he had his senses, his instinct. Zeki had a teenage crush that had been nothing but torment to him.

It had also led him here, to this moment, where he could barely restrain himself from touching Theo while magic surged around them and pushed them together.

“I don’t know what I feel,” Zeki answered at last, and then tore himself away from Theo and went to the door. He forgot about everything else and turned back. “This isn’t a no.” He wanted Theo so much he couldn’t think. That wasn’t normal. That couldn’t be normal. “It’s that I’m—”

“Scared,” Theo finished for him.

Zeki gasped. “Yes.”

Theo didn’t even seem angry. He should have been furious; Zeki was a coward, the same nerdy, human coward he’d been in high school. Zeki wiped at his eyes, and Theo drew his eyebrows together. There was a lost confusion in his voice. “I saw all of you then, Zeki. Of course I wanted you. I saw everything about you, and I still want you. But you”—he seemed to realize something—“you don’t trust that, do you?”

Zeki couldn’t look at Theo without kissing him again, and he couldn’t be still, so he took the only way out. He wiped his face and pushed down every loose, wild streak of longing, and spoke in a thick, strained voice. He said, “I’m just a human, Theo,” and left.

Chapter 8

T
HE
FULL
moon was two days away. The day before was an especially tense day in Wolf’s Paw, with everyone buzzing with energy and anticipation. Theo would be no exception, but with Zeki in town he already felt like a kid again, unable to sit still or think clearly, and they still had a few days to go. He’d breathe in and think of Zeki arched over him, or open a window and unexpectedly smell coffee and think of Zeki hard at work at the coffee shop. After that it was a conscious effort not to let himself drift after Zeki’s scent until he found it.

Zeki hadn’t left. Zeki had asked for time to think. Theo was giving it to him, even if he hadn’t fully understood why waiting was a good idea until it was too late. Rejection hurt. Waiting was supposed to make it hurt less. Theo had realized it and then kissed Zeki anyway.

Mates meant good things; it meant a future and someone to share that future. Theo hadn’t let himself contemplate anything like that until Zeki had shown up in Wolf’s Paw once again, but then Zeki had stood in his kitchen. Theo had been able to feel the difference in the room with Zeki there without trying. The walls had nearly been singing. He thought even the scrubby roots and neglected trees of his backyard would grow and prosper for Zeki’s presence. The living room was big enough for a desk or a table for Zeki’s tools, although if Zeki made his own supplies he’d need a larger workspace—a problem for a future Theo had never meant to dream of.

Zeki’s scent remained on every single thing he’d touched.

Theo had borne it for a single night and then reported in at the firehouse although it wasn’t his turn to be on call. It had seemed a reasonable choice in desperate times until he remembered the firehouse stood directly across from Zeki’s workplace. After that he hadn’t known what to do. Zeki, as he’d always done, defied everything Theo had been taught, and everything he’d suspected about matings. This was awareness of his mate’s presence across the street, and the knowledge that his mate was probably equally as aware of him, with Zeki all the while going about his days as though he knew none of it.

While Zeki thought about what he felt. That was what he’d said, as if feelings followed thoughts and not the other way around. If Zeki didn’t want more, he should say so, not leave Theo with everything trapped half inside him and half out. Theo still did not have Zeki, but everything had changed. The world was twilight, and Theo was aching for the moon.

The others at the firehouse were growing sick of his restless, wandering nights. He’d gone into the kitchen, but it couldn’t hold his attention. He stared at his pans and nothing called out to him. Instead he heard Zeki telling him not to bury his feelings. He dragged his fingers over the surface of the flour but there was no prickling electricity. That spark was inside him, and he couldn’t stuff it down or send it out. Everything was tempered chocolate hot with nowhere to go.

He left ovens off or burned the simple breads he’d tried for lack of any other inspiration. The chief set him to work on cleaning and laundry instead, but the sight of suspenders and belts and T-shirts, embroidered by the hand of his mate, had sent Theo bolting from the firehouse. He didn’t know where he would have ended up, but guessed the coffee shop or Dov Janowitz’s apartment, possibly the depths of the state park.

The others had tackled him, forced him into the shower to cool his head, and then sent him out to do the shopping—personally escorting him far past the coffee shop before leaving him on his own. They weren’t sure what else to do with him. Theo couldn’t blame them.

He missed his parents with increasing strength, although they wouldn’t have known what to do either. Perhaps no one did, and all the thinking in the world wouldn’t matter in the end.