“Riki,” he whispered, standing up and heading into the small, interior room that used to be Riki’s study.
The décor still consisted of wallpaper showing soft, blooming roses that Riki had chosen, and his light, maple desk. But the walls were now lined with the old photos Urho hadn’t been able to bear leaving out and about in the house.
Everything from a picture of them on the courthouse steps on the day they signed their contract, to their first trip to the seaside together—Riki’s blond hair tousled in the ocean breeze, a pipe clenched in his white teeth, and his green eyes glinting with joy. Next to him, a younger version of Urho gazed at the camera, too, with pure pleasure, not a glimmer of sorrow yet in his dark eyes or in the creases of his smile.
Those had been the days when he’d believed he and Riki would grow old together and raise a passel of young, brown babies who’d look like him in skin tone but be like their pater in temperament—gentle, good, thoughtful, and kind. All the things Urho now aspired to be, when, back then he’d simply allowed Riki to be all those things for him.
Above the mantel of the fireplace where no fire had burned since the day of Riki’s death, there was a large, painted portrait of Riki, standing proud and wearing a shy grin. His hand rested on the bulge where their baby grew.
Urho had insisted on the portrait, one of the few things he ever made Riki do against his will, because he’d wanted to always remember the way Riki’s cheeks had glowed and his own heart had stuttered at the sheer beauty of hisErosgapécarrying his child.
He stared up at it now, old roaring, conflicted emotions battering inside him. He knelt on the floor across from the desk where a lock of Riki’s hair sat beneath a glass dome. It was the only bit of him that resided here in the house now. His young body had been retired to the Chase lot in the Zimmermon graveyard on the edge of town. Six feet down he rested, along with their child.
Yes, Urho had buried them together. The small, tiny babe lay folded into Riki’s loving arms eternally. Just the way Riki would have wanted it, had he lived to hear their child’s pitiful first and only wail.
He gulped against the salty tears that started now. He hadn’t cried in this room in years, and yet for some reason, today he needed Riki more than he had in a long time.Neededhim, bone deep. Wanted his soothing fingers in his hair, and his soft voice telling him that everything was all right. He craved his calm acceptance of whatever life brought.
And he desperately wanted to hear him say, “I love you, just as you are, even if you want to fuck Xan Heelies, even if you want to love him, and even if you want him as your own. Because you’re perfect, Urho. Wolf-god’s gift to me, and there’s nothing you could want that I wouldn’t want you to have.”
He wiped the heel of his hand over his eyes and shook his head. “Really, Riki?” he asked the air. “Could you forgive me this strange lust? These wolf-damned desires?”
He stared up at the portrait of his omega, his beautiful, shyly smiling man, and lowered his head. Exhaustion swamped him, and he sat on his ass, burying his face in his forearms and riding out the waves of revulsion and self-loathing, the weird jittery want, and the anxiety he just couldn’t shake for Xan’s well-being. And Caleb’s, too, as an extension of Xan.
Eventually, he rose on shaky legs and lit several sticks of incense, chanting the prayer for lostErosgapéwith a trembling voice, and then turned back to his bedroom. He rang down to let Mako know that he wouldn’t be taking dinner, helped himself to a calming tablet, and fell into restless tossing and turning beneath his blue covers.
The sun rose and he hadn’t slept a wink.
CHAPTER FIVE
“So you’re surehe’ll keep our secret?” Caleb asked out of the blue, as though they’d been talking about Urho yet again, when, in fact, Xan had been trying to retire that subject once and for all since the mortifying examination two mornings prior.
“Like I’ve said, he’ll keep my secret. He still knows nothing about yours.” Xan gazed into the mirror over the ornate vanity in his bedroom, dabbing the stage makeup against his cheek. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”
Caleb made a noncommittal sound and opened the windows to the cold, foggy morning outside. The air smelled like wet pavement and the sounds of the morning commute drifted in. “Do you truly have to go?”
“You know I do.”
Xan would have preferred to stay home, but his father had summoned him to the office. “Flu or no flu,” Doxan Heelies had barked over the phone, and that, unfortunately, was that.
And it woulddefinitelybe unfortunate when he arrived obviously beaten and not at all sick. He hoped the bruises underneath the makeup would give him a pallor that might be mistaken for illness, and perhaps he could fake a convincing cough. Though just breathing hurt his bruised ribs.
In the mirror, Caleb watched him carefully, his eyes knowing in a way that Xan usually found calming. But this week, with so many humiliating incidents stacking on top of each other, that gaze crawled beneath his skin.
“What?” he demanded, patting more makeup over the lumpy bruise on his cheekbone. There was no way to hide the distortion even if he managed to cover up the livid colors.
“Dr. Chase has handled heats for widowed and uncontracted omegas, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. And he used to handle Vale’s before Jason.”
“Right, I recall you telling me about that.” Caleb pushed his soft, chin-length hair behind his ear. “But he handles others too, doesn’t he? Men he doesn’t know quite so well? I believe I’ve heard Vale and Jason talking to him about the intense heats of his gardener’s brother? The young man he helps regularly?”
Xan put the makeup down, his cheek half-covered, so that the still exposed purple-red glared even more brightly against the cover-up. He turned to face Caleb, watching him closely. Envy burned in him over the gardener’s brother who had the priviledge of having Urho service his needs.
Caleb lifted a brow. “Well?”
“He has, yes.”
Caleb’s voice leapt. “He’s discreet. He knows about you. Perhaps we could tell him that I have interminable heat and—”
