Chapter One
“Whoa! Watch it, Kyle!”
“Sorry!” Kyle called, but he didn’t stop running through the house, even though he’d nearly knocked into a couple of the servants and sent the food they were carrying flying all over the place.
Kyle Snow couldn’t stop. He rushed to Aelius’s bedroom, the guest room where he’d been placed to recover. When he heard the alpha had come back, Kyle couldn’t hold still.
Aelius had finally been rescued from the vampire house after so long in captivity, after Kyle spent weeks awake during the night wondering whether he would ever see the man again.
That was over. Aelius was alive, and he was here. He wasn’t part of Kyle’s pack, but his alpha and Aelius’s alpha were good friends, which was why he was here to begin with.
Kyle was an omega under Mason Cayne. Conner Luis was Mason’s friend. When Aelius had been rescued, so had another alpha and omega who were with Conner’s pack, and because Mason’s property was close and the man had been helping Conner to liberate them, Aelius had been brought here.
For that Kyle couldn’t have been happier. It was hard enough catching a glimpse of the man during normal visits, so knowing that he was here, that he was safe and would be resting in bed where Kyle could see him, just made him giddy with joy.
Kyle skidded to a halt in front of Aelius’s door, panting for breath as he tried to collect himself. He couldn’t just burst inside and demand to see the other man. For one thing, he might be sleeping, recovering from the brutal abuse he’d gone through in that vampire nest.
For another, Aelius didn’t much like Kyle.
That was the only reason why Kyle lowered his hand when he was about to knock. All the lust he felt, the extreme rush of energy and his wilder side’s need to mate, to be claimed by the man he loved, wilted like a dying flower.
Right. Kyle was probably the last person that Aelius wanted to deal with while he was getting better.
Kyle inhaled a deep breath, and then he slowly let it out. He was so damned stupid. What did he think was going to happen? That Aelius would take one look at him, realize that he wanted something with Kyle all along, and then invite him to bed? To mate with him? To share his life with him?
Aelius was never cruel about it, but on more than one occasion, he’d had to tell Kyle that he was not gay and that he had no interest in having sex with him or being in any sort of relationship other than friendship, and considering how often Kyle followed the man around before he’d been taken, Kyle had been pushing those boundaries to their limits.
This wasn’t about him, though. It was about Aelius, and his health. It didn’t matter about the other things. As much as they hurt, none of it mattered. Kyle put his hand on the mahogany door, palm down, and he closed his eyes and just imagined Aelius on the other side. In bed, alive, and no longer in harm’s way.
Kyle’s heart literally fluttered in his chest. Yeah, so long as Aelius was alive, then he could be happy. Even if Kyle had to walk away, he could do it knowing that somewhere in the world, Aelius was safe and sound.
Then the door was yanked open. Kyle snapped his eyes open and took a step back. At first his brain wasn’t properly functioning. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so flabbergasted that it was Aelius who was standing right there.
Despite everything that he’d been through, the horrors he must have dealt with and seen, he was somehow so much more handsome now than he was the last time Kyle had stared longingly at him from across the room.
His blond hair was shaggy around his shoulders, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. Aelius had a bit of stubble growing on his cheeks, chin, and jaw as well, a look that Kyle always fell for when he was with anyone. His chest was bare with the exception of the bandages that were wrapped around him. His feet were also bare, and the only bit of clothing on him were the plain pajama bottoms that hung so low on his slim, muscled hips that when Kyle looked from the man’s navel, following his happy trail downward, he could’ve sworn that he saw the light dusting of pubic hairs that were just barely above the man’s clothed cock.
Kyle’s mouth filled up with moisture, and his dick swelled between his legs, throbbing for attention at just the most casual thought of what was beneath those cotton pants.
Miraculously, Kyle managed to put his eyes back up onto Aelius’s face before the man had to reprimand him for staring so lewdly. Or maybe Aelius did notice and was just deciding not to mention it today. The steely look in his hard blue eyes was sure hint enough that something was annoying him.
“I–I thought you would still be in bed,” Kyle said, and then realized what that might sound like. “I mean, I didn’t think you would be recovered enough to be walking around.”