Locked in Permafrost

May

The sun streaming through the little cabin window at two am and a pressing need to pee woke Eric. Paul never seemed bothered by the light. He'd considered making some kind of curtain but it felt wrong to cover their one little connection with the outside.

Carefully crawling off the foot of the bed so he wouldn't have to climb over and wake up Paul, Eric made his way behind the curtain to the little bathroom and then came out and stoked the fire. It was never actually warm outside here so the fire was never allowed to go out. But they banked it for the night to let the cabin get cool enough for sleeping comfortably. He usually wouldn't stoke it back up until later in the morning, but he didn't think he could get back to sleep at this point.

There was only one comfortable chair in the cabin when Eric arrived, and when Paul needed it his lap sufficed for Eric. But in late April, Eric made a passing comment about how nice a rocking chair would be, and maybe they should add one to their shopping. On the first of May, Paul installed a swinging hammock type seat adjacent to his chair by the fire for Eric. He'd been inspired by the hanging cradle and used a similar mechanism to hang the chair from the rafters. He called it an early Mother's Day gift and Eric couldn't even look at it without getting a surge of sappy hormones.

Moving around to get up had woken the baby and it would be difficult to sleep again with the dance party going on inside him.

Between the sappy hormones and the motion of rocking in the swing, the baby always settled quickly, so Eric settled into the swing, rubbing his belly and unconsciously humming to himself and his baby. He was so completely content. If he could stop time and live in this moment for the rest of his life, he'd be good with that.

"Hey baby," he whispered. "You have the best daddy in the whole world. I love you both so so much."

From the bed, Paul strained his ears to catch this one-sided conversation. There was no way to sleep through his mate getting up, but he pretended to in order to give Eric some small sense of privacy in their very compact living space. He smiled to himself. Every secret part of his mate that he uncovered served to push his paranoia further away. There was one person in the world who wholly loved him. That was enough to give him strength to face all the others.

"That's right, settle down," Eric whispered. "I'll just stay here and rock you. It's nice and warm and cozy." He settled back and resumed humming.

"I didn't think I could love this much." Paul's voice coming from the bed startled Eric. "I feel like every day exceeds my expectations."

Resuming his settled rocking motion Eric replied, "me too."

They stayed like that for a while, Eric rocking and Paul watching until Paul gave up on going back to sleep and got up to check on the surveillance situation.

Despite all their conversations anticipating what could happen, they'd missed a possibility, and Paul watched in impotent horror as his stepbrother walked into the asshole's summer house mid-May, dropped his suitcase, and jumped on his mate the second the door latched closed. Yes, mate. The bite mark on the back of his neck was still a bright angry red and clearly visible in the security video.

This...this...what was happening‽ "They didn't bite you, right?" Paul asked. "Not even an outside of heat temporary bite?"

"No?" Eric wasn't sure where this was leading so his answer came out like a question.

"When they talked around you, they never said anything about biting any of the others?"

"Nope. But it's not like they told me everything about their past victims. What's going on?" Eric asked. Paul looked panicked.

"He bit my brother. It doesn't look temporary. The rest of the family has plane tickets for two weeks from now. What are they doing there? Why did he bite him!?" Paul's panic escalated until Eric stood up and walked over to wrap his arms around his mate's back.

"If they're mates, his instinct isn't going to let him share. It defeats its purpose entirely." Paul continued more calmly.

"Maybe...," Eric hesitated to say it. "Maybe they're actually a reciprocal pair. That's really...," he noticed the couple on the screen now stark naked and fucking doggy style in the entryway, flushed beet red and couldn't finish his thought.

Turning away and hiding Eric's face in his chest, Paul considered the ramifications. "You're right. That's the most likely reason for them to break the pattern. That means my family's money and status might have nothing to do with it. And it means his torture won't end at the end of summer because the prick will suffer too if they're separated." A mated alpha's body grief is a profound physiological agony they can't avoid when their partner dies, no matter how they felt about their partner. They could hate their mate but their body would still grieve. It would end eventually, but it's not something anyone would go through voluntarily.

"What if this breaks the cycle? What if they manage to mate and be happy and end all this?" Eric's optimistic innocence despite everything he'd been through made Paul's heart clench.

"Best case scenario, it breaks the cycle for those two. But what's his family going to do when they arrive? Do they already know? Maybe my step-brother wasn't their target. Maybe finding a mate was just a surprise. Best case scenario, they're sneaking around and sneak back out of there before his family arrives. Worst case scenario, they bring him in on it and make him part of their perverse family. If he's not the target, we need to start looking again. If he was, he could be in danger despite the protective instincts his alpha will have for him."

The next week and a half before their flight out would be fraught with anxiety for Paul. Further investigation revealed two other potential victims. They'd stopped looking too soon. Paul barely slept, always watching the surveillance with one eye while they finished preparing to leave. They would have very little time to act when they arrived in Fairbanks.

The night before the professor was expected, as Eric tried to get Paul to settle down enough to sleep, he asked, "I wonder whether we ought to add a wild card?"

"What's that?" Paul asked. He was holding Eric in his arms on the bed, but sleep was far away.

"Well, how do you imagine your stepmother might react if someone anonymously sent her that footage of her son arriving in Fairbanks? What if they included the address? How long would it take her to break down the door, and what would she find?" Eric mused.

"That's...that's definitely a wild card, but in the absence of any good winning cards, it might be our best bet. We have their history, the names of their guests who have all disappeared. And we have your story and the money trail to the chopper and pilot that disposed of you. He might turn on them to save his hide. We just need something to trigger an investigation. Something to get the police involved and make them suspect foul play. That could be it."

"But it means your mom will be up here, in Fairbanks. The odds of her finding you, of finding out you're having a baby, go up exponentially." Eric reminded him.

"What can she do to me now?" Paul asked. "I've grown up. I'm more of a threat to her. And I know exactly how to tip the scale in my favor so my death would be more trouble to her than my life is. The New York Stock Exchange opens in three hours." Paul leaned over and set an alarm. With that cryptic answer, he finally fell asleep, leaving Eric awake and worried for a change.

By the time Paul's alarm went off, Eric had breakfast ready and was dressed with his last-minute things packed. Paul logged into his stock app and placed the necessary orders while he ate. Then, he backed up his computer to the cloud so he could shift seamlessly to a new notebook computer when they got back to civilization. Everything was in order when, last of all, he sent an untraceable email to his stepmother. It made him feel sick to his stomach, but he did it anyway. It was their best shot.