Outliers

Thirty Six

"I will never be somebody else's. I will always be either entirely yours, or completely my own. There is nothing else that I will ever find beyond you and I."

S.L. Gray

"Shit!"

It was the first thing I heard as Thane and I had returned to the main house. Nero was the one to greet us at the door, eyebrows raising so high they all but disappeared into his curls.

He was on me before I'd stepped more than one foot inside, wide eyed with a hand reaching towards me; towards my bare neck where Thane's mark lay fresh on my tender skin. An inch before his fingers could touch me, Thane was capturing his slender wrist in a bruising grip.

Nero barely even glanced up at Thane, despite the older wolf's fierce glare and the tension coiling in Thane's body, admiring me with a cheek dimpling grin.

"I was wondering where you had vanished off to. Now I know," Nero said with a laugh. He took a step back, palms open in surrender, and Thane wordlessly and reluctantly released his grip on Nero. In a stage whisper, Nero said, "I expect to be told all about this, in horrendously graphic detail this evening."

"Yeah, that's not going to happen," I scoff, easily pushing past him so we could actually get inside the house. No matter how many times Sandra and he had pushed for 'gossip' I wasn't going to indulge their nosiness. Explaining my sexual exploits with Thane, Sandra's Alpha and ex-lover, was not something I was eager to do.

Nero followed after me without missing a beat, seeming unbothered by the burning narrow eyed stare Thane had locked onto him as he watched the two of us interact.

"Gods, you're always holding out on me. Wait... am I the first to know you're marked now? I feel so honoured," Nero said, with false emotion welling in his voice as he held a hand to his chest.

"Yes Nero," I sighed, "You're the first to know. Not because I wanted you to know first, but purely because you seemed to be waiting for me by the door like a lonely pup." Of course Nero would be who I told first anyway, he was easily my closest friend, but I wasn't going to tell him that. Not when the nature of our friendship was a lot of insults and feigned irritation with one another.

"Well Sandra's busy and my uncles being a dick. Who else am I meant to hang out with?"

"Sandra's busy?" Thane said, a frown furrowed across his brows. His pressed up behind me, an arm curling around my waist and anchored me to him. The contact between us, so soon after our marking, had my cheeks flushing with the memories of what had just occurred in the water.

Nero, noticing this, coughed pointedly, fixing me with a wicked, knowing grin.

I did my best to ignore his teasing, as I always did. Arching my neck to look at Thane instead, I noted his frown.

I wasn't sure why Thane seemed surprised. Sandra was always busy. If she wasn't teaching the trainees, she was teaching the enforcers or out hunting for the pack. And I knew she loved to focus on stealth and tracking when the sky grew darker and wolves had to rely less on their sight and more on their other sense to navigate the territory. It wouldn't be unheard of for her to be teaching a group right now despite how late it was getting.

"Javier is awake," Nero clarified, shooting me a glance. "She and Lorcan are with him right now. Adriels in your office waiting for you."

Ah, I had almost forgotten about that.

"I see." Thane's mouth flattened. He turned his attention to me. "Are you wanting to join me? Wanting speak to Javier?"

"No, I'm good," I said, wrinkling my nose at the prospect of seeing Javier again so soon. The idea of seeing him at all left my stomach in knots. I'd seen enough of the traitorous mail for a life time. And The memory of Riley, so scared and vulnerable in his arms, was now present in the forefront of my mind. If I saw Javier again, I wasn't sure how I would react.