Page 38 of Wolf Reborn

Gavin turned and, when he spotted Miles, his eyes widened a fraction. That was when worry threatened to take over, and Miles needed a moment to understand something that had been bothering him all day.

Hell, maybe longer.

Miles was worried, yes. But he wasn’t that worried. It was that surround-sound feeling from before, but even wider. There were more feelings than just his own.

For instance, maybe he should, but he didn’t feel the least bit guilty about anything, standing there looking at Gavin. He felt happy, nervous, and still a little overwhelmed by the way his life had changed in the last forty-eight hours. He was worried he’d overstepped. But he didn’t feel guilty.

It was like before, when he’d been wandering around the den and suddenly felt a sharp hit of something ugly. Anger? Sadness? Both, in fact, and focused inward. Self-loathing.

Miles was familiar with self-loathing. Hell, Miles and self-loathing were old roommates.

He had not, however, been feeling it right then. He had no reason to hate himself when the whole werewolf thing was coming so easily. If anything, being a werewolf was getting better and better as he went.

No, the loathing was coming from somewhere else.

Miles closed his eyes so he couldn’t see the look on Gavin’s face and asked, “So, did Sawyer rip out any pages?”

The annoyance that flooded through him was quickly followed by the sound of Gavin wrenching the book back out of its place and flipping through it. The irritation calmed, and the book went back on the shelf. “No. Why?”

He opened his eyes to find Gavin watching him curiously, and took the two steps required to invade his personal space. “Because I needed to know if that was really happening. Sorry.”

Gavin frowned and bit his lip, brow drawing together. He didn’t ask what Miles meant, so Miles suspected he had a clue already. There was no renewed guilt from keeping things secret, so Miles suspected that whatever it was, it was new to Gavin too. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Gavin finally said, sounding like it was a horrible confession.

“You haven’t been a werewolf that much longer than me,” Miles pointed out. “And I like Ash as much as anybody, but it’s not like he’s the first guy I think of when I’m looking for a teacher.”

He kept his voice pitched low, so that unless they were trying to, the others wouldn’t overhear the conversation. Miles didn’t want Ash to feel bad, but he couldn’t imagine that the man had been the best choice to teach two brand-new traumatized alphas how to be werewolves. He suspected Ash hadn’t felt up to the task, and of course Ash always did his very best, so he didn’t want to rub it in.

Meanwhile, Sawyer was doing a pretty amazing job teaching Miles how to be a wolf. Maybe he’d missed his calling as a teacher.

Gavin’s lips twisted in amusement, but he didn’t say anything.

Miles opened his mouth to go on, but sighed. “Private conversations are hard when everyone in the house can hear you.”

Without another word, Gavin went over to a box on the wall, pressed a few buttons, and soft music filtered out of the walls. There were speakers all over the floor, he realized with fascination. The sound system was a part of the house.

“There,” Gavin told him as he came back over. He wrapped an arm around Miles’s waist and led him toward the bed. “If you start yelling at me everyone will hear, but unless they’re trying very hard, they won’t hear you now.”

“You just don’t want me to yell at you,” Miles chastised, but even as he did so, he leaned his head on Gavin’s shoulder. “Is this weird? That I can feel what you feel?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure Ash would attribute it to some kind of werewolf magic, and Sawyer would just roll his eyes and say I bit you, so of course it’s normal, but...”

Miles looked up at him and waited. It was obvious enough that Gavin didn’t want to go on, but Miles really needed him to. He needed to understand what was happening to them. Was it a normal werewolf thing?

“Dez and Sawyer have never mentioned anything like it, but they wouldn’t. It’s not in their nature.” Gavin ticked off on one finger as he sat down on the bed and started peeling his clothes off, starting with his socks, and tossing them into the laundry hamper in the corner of the room. “Ash and Graham mention ‘their bond’ sometimes, but they also seem to think they’re some kind of fairy-tale ‘fated mates’ or something like that.” He ticked off another finger, shaking his head in bemusement.

Part of Miles wanted to roll his eyes at the concept, and part of him, well... part of him wanted to have a fairy tale himself. “Fated, huh?”

Gavin shrugged. “It’s hard to imagine that if fate exists, this pack of misfits was what it intended.”

The way he pursed his lips and cut himself off, Miles was sure there was more to the story. Better to find a way around the roadblock than trying to smash his way through it, so he tried a different tact. “Maybe Ash is romanticizing it, which seems in character, but I mean, werewolves are real. The notion of them having some kind of emotional bond doesn’t seem as ridiculous as it would have a week ago.”

“There are pack bonds,” Gavin said, nodding. “I can feel emotions through them sometimes, but it’s not quite so... strong.”

“Do I get that too?”

Gavin nodded, bit his lip, and was silent for a long moment before speaking again. “I have a bad habit of telling people they’re in the pack instead of letting them choose it for themselves. I don’t want to do that to you, but it doesn’t mean I don’t want you with us.”

That was adorable and sweet and frankly, unexpected.

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