Perigee [bxb] | Bad Moon Book II

21; {Matt}: rats

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Quentin gnarled, shoving him up against the warehouse wall—beneath those green cat eyes.

Bailey pushed his arm away, but Quentin had him by a fistful of his shirt, slamming him to the steel of a sedimentary roll-up door. "You told me you wouldn't come back to this fucking place. And to make matters worse, you brought him?" he said through his teeth, pointing somewhere relatively close to Matthew. "What the hell made you think that was a good idea?"

"Bronx, woah," Matt said. He wedged himself between them and gave Quentin a good shove back. "Hold up, he was trying to help."

Quentin pushed Matt away like he was nothing, but he didn't lunge for Bailey again. He hung back, and in the distance, Matt caught the lanky form of Nicon shift uneasily in the shadows.

"Get in the car," Bronx told them both. But before Matt could flinch in the direction of his Lexus, a broad set of shoulders careened between them, like a vulture stooping down from the sky. The salt-and-pepper man from the hotel room. The one that had left Bailey bunched up on the ground, against that glass sliding door.

Quentin's eyes went wide with recognition.

"You're leaving so soon?" That man asked—his voice all smoke and cinders. He moved like a panther on its prey and for a good moment, Quentin didn't look like an alpha. He looked like a mouse. A tiny, wounded one, all tangled up in the panther's teeth.

"God, what's it been?" the vulture asked, the corner of his mouth curling too sharp in places. A hard line bent in wicked ways. "A decade? It has, hasn't it? Ten years. Look at you, all grown up." His feet scuffed the gravel. He moved forward, Bronx moved back. Bailey tensed at Matt's side.

"I heard you came back around last summer. Came back for Ricco's boy. Sad I wasn't there, we could've had a drink."

Quentin was still moving back, and something rotten turned in Matt's belly. He'd never seen Bronx like this. He didn't like it a bit.

"Come on, kid," that country-coffee man said. A cold prickled Matt's arms, and when he turned, the men by the fire were rising to their feet—looking curious and antagonized, ready to advance on the situation like wild dogs to a wounded thing. Nicon still only lurked in his shadows.

"Gannon," Bailey snarled, a low, ugly sound. He shoved Matt, but it was gentle. A safe push away from those men by the fire.

That must have been his name. Gannon. Because the man glanced back, just long enough to take Bailey in. Then he was back on Quentin, sliding forward another step. "Sit down," he said. "Let's have a beer."

Quentin must have been terribly out of his element, because he jumped when his back hit the door of his Lexus. Something hard moved down his throat when he'd found himself trapped between Gannon and the car.

"I don't have business with you," Quentin said. He sounded his confident self, but Matt could feel it in the air. A static that made the hair on his arms rise. Something wasn't right.

"So let's make business," Gannon said. He brought a hand to Quentin's shoulder and the alpha wrenched away.

"Don't touch me."

"Don't touch you?" Gannon guffawed. Then Matt heard the loud crack of his palm before he realized how quickly it had met Quentin's face, his head turned to the side and the red welt of fingerprints stamped into his cheekbone. "Don't touch you?" Gannon said again. Then he had Quentin under the chin, assertive fingers digging at his cheeks. Quentin jerked his head away, Gannon jerked him back. Close, too close. Close enough to whisper something sinister in Quentin's ear—something too low for Matt to hear. Something that Bailey must have heard, because he was moving.