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Patrick was vaguely jealous. If he’d come into that much wealth at a young age, he probably would’ve bought a tropical island somewhere and never told anyone the location.
mood
“Come on. We’ll have to stop by my flat first. I need clothes if I’m staying with you.” The traitorous part of Patrick’s brain wanted to answer with you really don’t.
He broke off, unwilling to voice the one desire he’d been wishing for since waking up in hospital in London on the operating table, veins on fire, screaming as his body twisted itself into something new. He wanted a family. A home. Pack.
“Did you fuck him?” he heard Emma yell in the background, easily picking out her voice with his preternaturally enhanced hearing. “I got his scent, if that’s what you’re asking.” Marek let out a surprised squawk before there was a scuffle and Emma’s voice came more clearly through the mobile. “Really, Jono? Really?”
He looked pissed, like the scraggly wet kitten Jono had found one time huddled in a stairwell in the block he’d grown up in. Jono didn’t think soothing Patrick was an option the way he had with the kitten and a saucer of milk, but he still tried. “You want a pint?” Jono asked, gesturing at the array of beers on tap.
Patrick pointed a finger at Jono. “Ears to yourself.” As he passed by, Jono leaned down and snapped his teeth at the tip of Patrick’s fingers. “Sure thing, Pat.”
You could take a soldier out of war, but you couldn’t take the war out of the soldier.
Lucien was familiar in a way an infected wound was—weeping, rotten, and in danger of becoming gangrenous.
Most people didn’t know the mother of all vampires was dead because legends weren’t supposed to die. Funny how you could keep a story alive even after the subject was gone.
Patrick tried taking a step forward, but Jono’s arms tightened, refusing to let him go. Patrick shot him an exasperated look. “You’re not helping, Jono.”
“Immortals don’t die.” “We can be broken. We can be forgotten.” “We can be used,” Hermes said in a low, vicious voice, eyes snapping with a fury that burned.
“I’m not pack,” he reminded her. Emma glanced over at Jono. “I have a feeling that might be changing. Give me your phone number.”
He didn’t get what Jono wanted to give him often, if ever—not like this. Not easy and warm and sweet in a way Patrick didn’t think he deserved. But Jono thought he did, and Patrick was willing to let Jono believe he was worth that kindness, just for one night.
When Jono pulled away, there were questions in his eyes, but he didn’t ask them, the same way he hadn’t asked them last night. He merely stroked his hand and wrist over the side of Patrick’s throat in the same spot Emma had done to him on the street outside Ginnungagap.
“Absolutely mental,” Jono decided before he started back down the fire escape. “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Patrick called after him.
“Still pissed I touched what you think is yours?” “Keep your hands to yourself, or next time I’ll rip them off.” Jono smiled, fangs digging into his lips. “With my teeth.”
Nadine studied Jono with tired eyes. “The only things the gods have ever given Patrick are weapons. Somehow, I don’t think you’re any different.”
“Is it too late to eat my gun?” Patrick asked no one in particular. Nadine kicked him in the ankle. “Have you been talking to your therapist?” “Have you?” “Bloody hell,” Jono muttered under his breath.
“I’m not letting you do this alone,” Jono told him, enunciating every word. Then Jono kissed him, his words a vow that could’ve been binding if Patrick had any magic left to make it so.
I’m not dying here, Jono thought fiercely. If there was one lesson Jono had learned on the streets of London as a child that had followed him through the years, it was this: you didn’t get to keep the things you wouldn’t fight for.
Lucien didn’t stop reloading his M32 MGL grenade launcher as they approached, black eyes looking right at them. “You’re late.” “I was in hell,” Patrick retorted.
“Are you going to monologue at me?” Patrick asked incredulously. “I don’t got time for that bullshit.”
They should have grown up together. They should have been family. Instead, they were two pawns on opposite sides of a war driven by beliefs that weren’t theirs.
Jono’s mouth quirked into a soft smile. “Bit mercurial, are we?” Patrick lifted his free hand to Jono’s mouth, pressing his fingers over dry, chapped lips. “You like me that way.” “Yeah, Pat. I do.”
“I’ll be your weapon if you’ll be my pack,” Jono whispered against his lips, echoing Patrick’s thoughts.
“I’ve spent the past thirteen years without a pack. No one is taking you away from me,” Jono growled. “I don’t know anything about how to be pack.” “Neither do I. We’ll figure it out.”
Trying to go through the motions of acting normal after trauma would only make a person crazy over time.
“They were meant for you.” “I don’t like gifts from gods.” “You seem to like the wolf just fine,” Zeus said.
“Immortality isn’t living. It’s merely surviving.”
Pack, Jono thought as Patrick reached for him, drawing him down into a lingering kiss. Home.
