Page 12 of The Devil on my Chest

Rocky wanted to shift back into his human form in the worst way. He was pushing and pushing against his wolf form, but something that the darn doctor had given him was preventing his human side from coming through.

In Rocky’s head, it was simple. He’d claimed Mal – after all his years of trying to give the impression of being a super-stud alpha that other people respected, he didn’t have to do that anymore because he had a mate of his own. His sweet Mal. The only one who stood by him no matter what idiocy he got up to.

Now he needed to be on two legs, because how could he hold Mal if he only had paws instead of hands? How could he tell Mal just how important the little wolf was to him, if all he could do was bark?

Sure, they had a mind link, but Rocky wanted to use his words. He wasn’t blind. He’d seen how much his wretched curse had cost his dearest love – the worry, the lack of sleep, and endless rounds of tears – all over Rocky.

It was time for Rocky to stand up and be the man Mal needed in his life, but instead he was stuck on four paws.

Amy, the young nurse who seemed to like smiling at Mal at every opportunity, wasn’t much help. “I’m sorry, there’s not a lot else we can do right now. Doctor Nelson was up all night last night working on your case, and that poor man has to sleep sometimes. I know he will be keen to see you when he comes in tomorrow, so just enjoy some quiet time until then.”

Mal was nodding, but Rocky was snarling inside. For goodness’ sake, it was the doctor who convinced Mal to bite him in the first place. That was done and the doctor wasn’t even around. Rocky needed to be back into his two-legged form – needed to feelnormal again - so he and Mal could enjoy some of the benefits of being mated, even if that was just holding the man in his arms.

“It’s not such a bad thing,” Mal said, when Amy left the room after taking Mal’s dinner order. “At least we have a mind link now. We can talk to each other and that’s got to be better than days and days of silence watching you lying on a bed fully sedated or worse, having you awake and watching you screaming for cake. This is a huge improvement in my mind.”

Now Rocky felt bad because it was Mal that had gone through all that. Rocky hadn’t known how bad he was. He just knew things weren’t right in his head. When he was in the throes of his addiction, cake was all he could focus on, so he had no idea just how bad things were.

Even when they were in the hospital, it was Mal who had to travel with him, Mal who kept him sedated, Mal who had sat by his bedside for days, trying to find the answers to make Rocky well.

Mal patted the bed. “Hop up here, my lovely. Come on, let me rest my head on your shoulder for a bit. I’ll use you as a pillow. It means a lot to me that we can just be close to one another again. Then perhaps you can tell me how we ended up here, how you ended up leaving your pack in the first place. I’m hoping you’ll find it easier to talk about it through our link than out loud with words. You must’ve been very young.”

Rocky did what Mal asked, settling down, making sure Mal was comfortable, before he sent through their mind link.I don’t know what it is you want me to say. You know I hate talking about bad things.

“I know,” Mal said simply - he was saying his words out loud. And that was fine. Rocky understood. Their mind link wouldtake a bit of getting used to and Rocky liked listening to Mal’s voice.

“The thing is, you never talked about what happened to you when we first met, right from the start. You’ve always kept it from me. Was it because of the curse or was it because you just didn’t want to think about it?”

I think it was a bit of both.Rocky thought for a moment. His human side’s brain was a lot clearer than it had been in a long time and Mal was starting to smell really good to him – which was distracting.

It was my mom that shoved me from the pack. I think it was about eight or nine at the time. I’m not sure. We didn’t celebrate birthdays in our pack. But I wasn’t a teenager yet. I hadn’t gone through my first shift at that point and didn’t know what sort of wolf I would become. I just know that dad…my dad had died a few months before, and it wasn’t pretty.I was their only child.

Rocky still didn’t want to think about that time. He’d left his pack in a state of confusion and utter terror, and there were nights he still didn’t sleep well because of it. But he rushed on because he knew Mal deserved to hear the story.

My mom was insistent, packed me a little bag. She gave me all the food in the house, a few coins, and she told me to run. She said to sneak out and run as fast as I could, and that I could never look back and never come back.

I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t come with me, but I remember her saying that if she did, the alpha would look for us, that the alpha would see it as an act of betrayal if she left, especially so soon after her husband had died. In hindsight, he was clearly saving face even then.

“You must have really loved your parents,” Mal said quietly, stroking down Rocky’s fur.

I suppose so. I didn’t really know what love was. They were just there, and I know now that they cared for me. But in those very early years I was just like any other pup. I think…I think my mom assumed that if I wasn’t on the pack grounds then I wouldn’t be affected by the curse. But that’s not how things happened, or we wouldn’t be here now.

“So the curse was in effect when we met,” Mal said. “You were what, eighteen or nineteen then?”

Rocky did his best approximation of a shrug without dislodging his mate.I’m really not sure.As I say, we never kept a count of birthdays. And by that stage, when you and I met, I had been looking after myself for about ten years. At the time I was just grateful to find another wolf who didn’t shun me, try and bite me, or push me away.

That wasn’t enough and Rocky knew it. He tried to put his feelings – how seeing Mal for the first time had made him feel.

I saw you and something in my heart changed. I didn’t know why, but I knew I had to protect you. I knew I wanted to be with you. I knew that you were going to be important to me. And you are, and you have been all that time.

But I just… it was like there was a wall there, too. An invisible wall between us. It used to frustrate the fuck out of me. It was like I was on the brink of some great revelation, and I just didn’t have a clue what it was. You’re going to think this is really silly, but I didn’t even know about fated mates until we met up with Ra and the others. I’d never been taught that stuff in the pack, but then looking back, I was still a kid so...

“Oh, Rocky, I’m so sorry.” And Rocky’s wolf knew Mal meant it. It was as if he could see how Mal was thinking – about the hardship of being a kid alone in a big bad world and how scary that would be. About how Rocky put up such a front so damnoften through his life. Forever making out he knew stuff when in fact he was just waiting for an opportunity to go and find out what his friends were talking about.

How often Rocky would be terrified his friends would realize how much there was in the world he didn’t understand, because he’d never had the time to learn those things or had someone to teach him. Concepts like mating, pack behavior, being a good friend, even hookup behavior – Rocky learned about all of those concepts by being with Mal and watching his friends interact.

Mal wasn’t wrong in any of the things he was thinking, not that Rocky would ever say so. He’d never wanted anyone ever to feel sorry for him. He focused on the moment. His mate was stroking him, and Rocky’s wolf appreciated the attention, but his human side really wished that Mal could be touching him in his human form, and that he had hands so he could touch Mal back.

“All those times you went out, I would hide in my room, crying, drinking, and making an utter fool of myself...”

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