Page 81 of Drift

Gray went to say something, but shouts from down the hall had him frowning at the scuffle of feet.

The nameless cat bolted through, claws scratching wood, and she went sliding into Gray before finding her feet again and bolting behind the long curtains, forcing Jude to dodge the fur-filled bowling ball.

“Christ.” Breathless and wearing just pyjama bottoms and a long scratch at his abs, Jan ran through in the next breath. He spotted Gray first and mouthed a quickSorryhis way, no doubt more over being out of the bedroom when he was supposed to be in lockdown. “She snuck in after you left.” Jan blew out hard and fast breaths a few times and rested hands to hips as he tried to control his breathing. He definitely wasn’t the runner in the family. “Damn music sent her up the walls.” He pointed behind him. “Jack tried to calm her, then got pissed off when George wouldn’t open the door and let her find relief outside. Then when he did because of the ball-wrecking she was doing in the bedroom, she lost it and bolted. And the rest?” He took another deep breath and nodded at the curtain, to the shaking coming from there. “Like trying to stop a goddamn freight train covered in lube.”

“Shit,” mumbled Jude, his look back on the shaking cat. “Sorry, miss. My fault.”

That image of a young lad with his dog hit home with Light. A love for pups… pets.

Caught out, Jan frowned Jude’s way, looked him up… down. “Who…?” The confusion playing about him called how disturbed he was over someone being in the manor he didn’t know, butthen something clicked into place so fast in his eyes. “You… you… you’re—”

“—such a fuckingasshole.” Behind Jan, Jack came in wearing just black silk pyjama bottoms, and rubbing at several long scratches down his left arm. He didn’t even look up. He seemed to have walked the halls for so long that he didn’t need to. “Asshole’s definitely going on your grave after I catch and chainsaw your furry ass. You took out two of my Land Rover magazines, y’big fucking wus,” he mumbled as he wiped at a scratch, lost maybe a little too deeply to the blood and no doubt the number of germs a cat scratch could carry in his world.

George followed him in, wiping the bottom of his shirt down a long cut at his throat and bumping into Jack in the process. They all looked like they’d gone dogpile on Lucifer’s hellhound and lost. But Jack? “Just a bit of goddamn music, lass,” he said, gently pushing George to arm’s length, then wincing as he looked his scratches over as well as his own. “C’mon, Pussy Gore-law. Back to—”

Fuck. Cats. That was another reason Light had mostly avoided the manor. He sneezed, never really sure what to do around them, and one led into two as Jack’s look rested his way. Such a hard look hit silver-grey eyes, and Light instantly backed off. Unnerving, there was the look of an aggression there with Jack that Martin’s calmness never had, the kind of mindless aggression that came with no control point beyond sedatives and restraintsandthat damn well couldn’t be reasoned with.

And on that look up, Jude sucked in a sharp breath between his teeth, like he’d been punched in the gut, seeing Jack.

Jack froze, went so deathly quiet. “You… you….” He looked as if every ounce of life glitched and shifted around him, shiftingsharply this way, that, the whole landscape stammering as—“You… you’re—”

Gray’s reaction was natural born, almost as if Jack’s glitched look over not knowing whether to run, to stay, fight, hide… it threw him back to Jack always taking the loneliest walk out of the front door. Light had heard about Vince’s rape when it came to Jack, about Henry and what he did to Jan, and Gray shifted over to Jack, almost head-to-head, gently backing him up towards the hall door, towards… out and Gray losing him again. “Timeout.” The call came so quietly off Gray, and he glanced back at Jude for a single moment. “Give us a second, please. Just a few more seconds.”

Jan’s reaction was just as… quiet and guarded with closing ranks. Where Gray backed Jack out of the hall, Jan moved up to Drift. Both of them gave that quiet defence over one of their triad falling, only Jan’s and Gray’s protection was as much there for Drift in that moment, easing down damage control before it had chance to walk out into the snow and either get hurt or hurt someone caught in the way.

And just how much balls did Jan have to do that after the hurt he’d taken?

Love, obsession, fear, fight… life lived as lovers in a complex chemical triad mix of psychopaths, sociopaths and normal blood… it was odd to Light, yet the reaction from Gray and Jan was done on unspoken words, without needing to look back at each other to know there was something that needed protecting, just that chemical shift that changed the colours around them. And that, that darkening of colours… if nothing else, Light felt and understoodthatchange when it came to living life as a lover.

Jan whispered something to Drift, but Light was too lost on Gray as he backed Jack out and up into the corner of the hallway,almost like a… Light eased back, maybe seeing it for the first time.

Like a Dom to his stressed sub….

“Easy, stunner. Easy.” Gray’s breath played gently against Jack’s cheek but the press of his body had Jack turning his head into the curve of Gray’s throat, needing the hard and fast grounding.

“He heard the call of his name and answered, nothing more,” mumbled Gray.

Jack nodded, and didn’t realise he was shaking until Gray’s subtle rub at his arms tried to chase away the bitter chill. For a moment, he looked up over Gray’s shoulder to the hall, and the distance from where they stood to the offer of wood flooring seemed to shift and widen, bringing in a time-lapsed tripping down a tunnel. Jack screwed his eyes shut, dipping his head into Gray’s shoulder.

An image in a photograph. That’s all the kid had been in his life: one picture, one long-gone moment of a kid playing in the backyard with his dog. Not his own kid, not his own dog, his own home, just… some kid in a picture he’d seen, wondering why he seemed so familiar and should have been known in his own world.

But now that kid was here: a living, breathing presence all of his own so far removed from an image of a near-stranger playing in a backyard.

And that was what tripped Jack up in that moment. Not seeing, notknowingthe boy behind the image, he could maybe handle life better with having to leave him out on the streets, away from all the illness that played in the manor, his own illness that he didn’t want the world to see let alone a kid, but now, seeing him walk these halls, no longer a ghost….

“Pissed off, Gray.” He gripped at Gray’s shirt. “So fucking pissed off with Martin for doing this to a kid. I never wanted kids for this bastard reason.”

Gray gave such a rough sigh. “I know.” A kiss came at his head. “I know, stunner.” Then he cupped Jack’s jaw and lifted his look up to meet his. “Walk away for a while if you need. We’ll handle Jude until you’ve got your headspace back. Just don’t…” Gray briefly looked away. “Just don’t go outside the manor gates, okay? You stay… here.”

Jack shifted his glance to the hall, how it still moved and shifted down a nightmare tunnel with no end, and he never felt more displaced. He shook his head before resting it against Gray’s, hating how the shivering still ate into his core, his head—how the echo of himself made him want to walk away before damage was done, because he did always do damage no matter how much he fought against it.

Jack screwed his eyes shut. “Not just my head, not just my body and heart behind it all, is it now, mukka?”

A rougher kiss cane at his head. “No. No it isn’t,” Gray said quietly. “But call the timeout, this stops. Jan… me… we’ll handle Jude.”

Jack brushed his nose along Gray’s jaw, needing to ease the struggling going on with the Dom too.

“I wasn’t here for you when you both faced meeting Light on your own,” he said quietly into him. “When you lost Ed. You pair didn’t get any easy timeout calls.” He kissed so briefly at the tightening at Gray’s jaw, how the muscle danced under his lips. “Neither has that kid by the look of it.” Jack pulled back and met his gaze. “Some trapeze moments before we catch the bar and stop the fall need to belong to us, right?”

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