A/N. Someone advised that I put trigger warnings in places that need them, so my readers are aware. Sorry I didn't do it for the previous chapters. I'll start now and retroactively add it to the others when I get the chance.
Trigger warning: Violence, MXM Intimate Scene
Jan moved closer to the metal door, listening for sounds from within. Nails clawed on the floor as Ethan's wolf shuffled, sniffing through the paper-thin gaps under the barrier. He went down on one knee, hoping the Lycan would pick up his scent.
Jan knew the moment Ethan recognized him because his shuffling increased. The wolf scrambled up the door, his sharp nails scratching fiercely at the metal.
Closing his eyes, Jan opened the floodgates of their connection and sent out a probe: a fine, hair-like string from his bluish orb much like the one Louie had once used to wake him up. It was the first time Jan had sent one to a non-vampire.
Ethan's fiery tendrils waved like arms of a blaze. They had grown larger, and the unchecked inferno radiated with the heat of the Lycan's anger, threatening to char out his brains. The force of Ethan's awareness was so overwhelming that Jan felt the urge to kneel and grovel before him.
He now understood what the wolves meant by an alpha's aura.
His icy probe wavered and nearly disappeared against the brightness of Ethan's blaze. Jan brushed it against a flaming tentacle and immediately released it, allowing it to dissolve.
The tendrils froze for a split second, and he felt the invisible eyes falling onto the gateway they shared. Then Ethan lashed out, hitting Jan's orb with all the rage of a volcano.
Jan flinched as the force physically slammed into his mind and chest. He doubled over, coughing up blood.
"Jan!" Louie exclaimed.
"No, stay back," he ordered, raising a hand. "This is between him and me."
Coughing up the rest of the red-tinged phlegm, Jan shrugged out of his jacket and rolled his sleeves up. His knees shook as he straightened up from the floor.
Pushing down the latch, he opened the reinforced metal door. The wolf behind it started growling, backing up.
Jan entered, keeping his eyes on Ethan and his arms in plain sight, nails retracted. The door shut behind him with a heavy bang. This room was nothing but a concrete twenty-by-twenty-foot square space with deep scratches on the walls. A single bulb mounted in a recessed bracket provided illumination.
"Ethan?"
Jan stopped after taking three steps into the room. The Lycan's scent filled the air, and Jan took in lungfuls of that appealing masculine smell while Ethan's growls grew feral. The wolf's snout pulled back, exposing sharp canines that could snap a man's head clean off.
Jan stared in his red irises, sensing the familiarity that had beguiled him on their first night at the distillery, and his own eyes changed colors to match.
That was a mistake. Even he would be wary of any vampire who approached with a bloody glint in his eye.
"Ethan, wai-"
The young wolf lunged at him, snapping at his throat, but Jan's reflexes were faster. He dodged, arching backward, then skipped sideways around Ethan.
Jan could have danced in circles around the wolf all night long on any typical day. But he was starving, and his head was splitting in two. The room swam in front of him. On the fringes of his mind, he could feel a blood rage building, that berserker state that was a vampire's last chance at survival.
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Blooded Mate
Fantasy[[MATURE CONTENT]] Pack, family, mate. Loyalty, respect, honor. These are the words that form the foundation of the wolf society. At six years old, Ethan had to choose between his Alpha title and his survival on the night of his father's death. As a...
