In the morning I was indeed dragged down to breakfast, and by dragged I mean without the benefit of having a change of clothes or being able to collect my shoes, my jacket from Lowell's room, or a cold shower alleviate some of the symptoms that reoccurred during the night, and stumbling and shaky as I was it was almost painful to walk as he took me by my upper arm downstairs.
In the night I'd secretly reapplied to the scent disguiser. Whatever scent it was removing helped a little, helped reduce some of the heat I was experiencing, but it didn't do enough. I felt sensitive and awkward, as though I was on drugs for the first time in my life. Moving about had me fearing an erection would either appear or be made known, and while my cock wasn't exactly hard, it wasn't ever properly flaccid either.
I was breathing slightly heavily by the time I was shoved down into a seat at the massive expensive piece of marble we'd been introduced to the day prior.
People were moving about to serve the food and finished arranging plates etcetera. There was no reason for us to be down that early other than Bazile's eagerness to watch his brother suffer the embarrassment of going through a heat in front of his father, without being able to touch me.
That discomfort, I felt sure, must only belong to me, because the moment Lowell came down he looked self-assured, comfortable with himself, his shoulders seemed a little stiff but there was nothing in his expression to express heat or anything.
Dark secure eyes avoiding mine. Unshakeable. That was the word that came to mind. Tall and broad-shouldered. I saw everything I saw the first night I met him, irresistibly magnetic. How did you walk away from someone like that?
Which was why looking at him across the table increased my need a thousand fold and just taking in his image burned right through me.
Half crumbling I bowed my head to focus my eyes only on my plate, breathing a little heavily, my face was red and burning, my forehead, ears and neck too, and the rest of me I suppose, but I felt these areas must have been noticeably red.
Lowell's father ignored me for the most part though, as he stepped into the room commanding the attention of everything with a few heavy footfalls.
Instead he turned to his son, not Bazile, that is, Lowell. I'd have pitied Bazile for not even getting a greeting if I didn't find the bad-intentioned brother so annoying.
"Did you sleep well?" He asked him.
Lowell narrowed his eyes. "No." He answered decisively.
He grunted and sat down, as though he didn't really care in the first place.
Food was served, and in a quantity that made you wander where exactly the food would be going once it was pecked at.
There were more guests than just us, instead of the usual five or six people having breakfast you might find in a large household, it was more like fifteen or sixteen. Most of them were silent, more preoccupied with the task of eating than anything else, but I felt the weight of the attention shifted first to Lowell, then also to me.
Eating felt uncomfortable, but I was hungry and the food was good, even if every five seconds my eyes slid back up to watch Lowell, who seemed to be getting on fine.
I ate to mask my discomfort.
"You can at least greet her." His father snapped.
Neither of us seemed to immediately realise the lady to his left was the one intimated at the beginning.
Lowell raised a brow at the admonition and glanced at her.
She was quite a bit shorter than him. Sitting around all of these people who I assumed were werewolves as well, I realised the height thing was not squarely a werewolf thing, for the most part they were somewhat taller than I felt was average for the demographic of men I was used to, but there were varying heights, some taller, some shorter, not all of them were tall, Lowell and his brother, father, and the so called enforcers, were unusually tall.
She was a very pretty woman, definitely the sort I felt would be attractive to straight men. Large eyes, large lips, a curviness to her that wasn't too gym centric and felt more natural, long hair that tumbled over her small, rounded shoulders and even manged to hide under the table, and good fashion sense with a baby pink shirt, tight around the middle and top, with some sort of crimping at the sleeves.
I went a little overboard examining her by accident, I'm not sure why, but I was drawn back out of my head when I felt a certain alert floating in the air, that others must have felt too, becoming uneasy beside me, and one glance back toward Lowell saw him staring at me, a warning glare in his eyes.
A heat unfurled in me, quickly enough that I immediately looked away when somehow I knew that wasn't the right thing to do.
If anything the gaze looked rather jealous, and in a normal situation I would have told him off for it, and reassured him that I was absolutely homosexual, and at this point, so put off of touch from anyone else, that I was unable to think of touching anyone else even if I had wanted to.
But I understood now why he was avoiding looking at me, and unfortunately the lack of any kind of reply to warning look landed me with a sharp, heavy gaze watching me, making me squirm in my seat. I really wished he would look away, but couldn't stand him looking away either. What a terrible way for nature to force two people together.
Bazile was laughing under his breath and I bristled at his bad sense of humour.
"Brother that's not much of a greeting is it? Aleena been waiting for you for a while now and dad's done you both a favour."
Lowell scoffed. "I doubt she wanted to meet me under these circumstances either."
And to his credit, Aleena did look uncomfortable, something told me this situation was the fault of the man to his right more than the woman to his left. Although she didn't seem unhappy, and did seem to be leaning closer to him, trying to make some sort of contact with her wrist on the table.
Irritation flicked into the air like a whip and, startled, my eyes landed back on Lowell. I hadn't realised my mind wandered again and settled on her. And despite the ridiculousness of the situation I frowned and looked away from her, even if the uneven buzzing in the atmosphere never fully settled.
"Don't worry, you'll get to know each other." Griffith spoke.
"I have no interest in getting to know her." Lowell bit out, then glanced at her. "No offense."
She nodded quickly, submissively. "It's alright." She replied in a quiet voice, although she didn't look any bit less enthused, and her wrist was still awfully close to his, inching closer, trying to find a natural way to meet.
Griffith smiled. "Son, I don't think you understand."
"No, maybe that's because you didn't try to explain any of this shit."
The corner of his mouth twitched, not something smiling, something irritable.
"I feel," He said, announcing it somewhat across the table, though that may have been a side effect of having that kind of booming voice, he placed a hand lightly on his chest. "I have done you an injustice."
Lowell scrunched up his brows and looked at him slowly, like he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Now, I have decided to rectify it, by taking care of you."
"Kidnapping me."
"Well, would a rabid wolf ever willingly follow you home?" He replied carelessly.
"It would if you lured it with an open wound." Lowell bit back.
Griffith smiled in a way that showed all of his very sharp fangs, the large extended teeth making me feel a little nauseous. They were whiter than I was used to seeing actual animal teeth, and that succeeded in making them look even sharper.
"I even let you keep your friend." He cocked his head, looking at me.
The shift in attention made me very uncomfortable, and I set down my fork.
Lowell's eyes burned right through me again, even though he's transplanted on his face a look of disinterest. "Let me keep him? You let him get grabbed by my brother."
He shrugged his shoulders. "For the best." He tapped the table, looking at me with a heavy gaze. "You ought to spend a little time with Aleena after all..."
"Then let him go..." Lowell hissed.
His father smiled. "Eat your food."
Lowell rolled his stiff shoulders, narrowed his eyes and glared with enough acid to split the plate in two, before shoving the rest of the food into his mouth.
It was very uncomfortable, understatement of the year but there was much of a better way of describing it.
Ever so often others would talk, but it flew right over my head because it was almost always something pack related that wasn't intended for me. Lowell's brother seemed uninterested in the local gossip on our side of the table as well, and more concerned with messing with his brother.
"So you don't have a job then? Or a flat? Were you really homeless?"
Lowell bristled.
Although this struck my curiosity as well, I very much disliked that Bazile was the one asking it.
"I couldn't get a job, not with most of them being in pack land."
"Well, not all of them though."
"I was right to think the moment I tried someone would notice and get me chased out." Lowell hissed. "They did that without the benefit of me showing up for an interview." He looked up toward his father. "Then again I'm beginning to realise that might have been your fault as well."
His father shrugged and continued eating.
"Did you have them destroy my flat?"
He scoffed. "How was that me? The Watersouth pack is the one that controls that entire area, you know that as well as I do, you were boarding there illegally."
Lowell was still for a moment. "And how do you know where I was staying."
He didn't reply.
"Dad checked up on you Lowell," Bazile said with mock sympathy. "He cares about you."
"About forcing me to sleep in the rough, apparently."
He scoffed derisively. "You're a wolf, you can cope."
I stood up suddenly. Fed up with the apparent familial abuse I was watching, every line raised my proverbial hackles a little more. It was getting to the point of actual nauseous anger.
Unfortunately that only drew all of the attention to me, especially when Bazile stood up with me.
"What do you think you're doing?" Bazile asked me, cocking his head. Squaring up as though getting ready to block my way.
"Toilet." I answered sharply.
He pulled me down roughly by the shoulder. "You can wait, you're a grown man an all."
Was I being obnoxious for feeling irritated having someone younger than me treat me like that. Magically my age seemed to fall away in this setting, everyone forgot I was about ten years their senior, well aside from his father of course.
"I think part of being a grown man is deciding when you'd like to go to the toilet." I hissed.
Bazile looked cold. There was a sort of silence infecting the table, and the full weight of their father now rested on me. His eyes narrowed.
Then he slowly laughed. Griffith shaking his head. "Do you know, I'm accidentally expecting you to act like an other half." He eyed me down with a still narrowed gaze.
Lowell shifted in his seat. "He's my friend." He emphasised, the words alone making me uncomfortable.
"Right." He nodded, turning to look at him. "Because if he was anything more then that would be a problem."
Lowell stared at him.
He smiled.
Aleena's hand brushed his wrist, he didn't move away, I could see I was not the only one that noted that. He didn't seem to notice the contact at all.
Bazile raised an eyebrow.
A certain irritation suffocated me.
"Let go." I shrugged Bazile's hand off of my sleeve which he immediately gripped when I tried to get up again, and he let it go unthinkingly.
I left the room.
More than anything I wanted to text Lowell, get a message through to him somehow, receive something reassuring.
Even watching their hands touch by accident twisted me up inside. That couldn't be healthy.
Breakfast concluded shortly afterwards, everyone getting on with their day. I didn't see where Lowell went and wasn't privy to that information but was guided back to Bazile's room, where he sat and watched me ignore him, taking care of a book he had clearly been gifted and hadn't bothered to open, one that had a title that read 'The Moral Dichotomy of the Pack'.
I wasn't generally into that sort of thing but the idea that there was an entire shelf of books dedicated to talking generally about werewolves as though they were real managed to surprise me more than there being werewolves at all.
I barely got through a quarter of it though, I kept breathing out in waves of heat, I could feel the need to hide my scent reoccurring, I felt the way my scent grabbed his attention in the air. The way Bazile's eyes glanced down at me a little too long. That lingering look crawling on my skin. He squinted at me for a while, then ignored me, then returned to it, cocking his head.
I rushed to the toilet and used the scent disguiser, but tried to use it lightly. I thought if I used too much at once it would become obvious what I was doing.
I wasn't invited down for lunch. Perhaps no one aside from Lowell and Aleena was.
As funny as that might have sounded the idea made me feel sick and my stomach turned when presented with food in Bazile's room. Perhaps in part also because the food looked off putting, a less carefully arranged meal with everything sort of dumped on a plate, mixing into each other, under it all a buried piece of toast.
Bazile's food did not look like that. But he seemed annoyed when I ignored the plate and returned to the book.
"Fucking little shit thinks he's an alpha." He shook his head as though he done with me, but still kept a dutiful eye on me as much as I was beginning to resent it.
But all too soon we were united again at dinner..
An even larger gathering of people present, perhaps twenty bustling about in the room, each of them showing some form of subservience to Griffith and Bazile. But I felt a slight excitement at seeing Lowell that was dampened by the other two. Perhaps there was a subtle understanding not to talk freely to him until explicitly allowed to.
Bazile returned to mocking Lowell. "Apparently you ripped the chains out of the bed of the truck." He laughed. "They're still trying to fix that."
Lowell looked at him. "Bazile, don't you ever get tired of gloating?"
"Not really." He forked his food with a smile. "You know if that was me I'd have snapped the chains in two."
"Quiet." Came the quietest, loudest command from their father. Griffith's eyes glowed with warning.
Bazile fell silent, narrowing a brow.
After a moment he began again, though. "Been in the courtyard yet?"
"Shut up." Lowell hissed.'
Bazile growled.
Lowell didn't even respond, just ignored him. "You know..." He looked at him after a moment of silence. "I really hoped you'd grow up." He spoke coldly, his eyes just barely looking at my hand but avoiding looking any further. "I thought there was no way you'd be the same, two years means a lot of growth for some people, it did for me." He looked him squarely in the eyes, his voice cutting through the air like a knife. "But here you are..."
"Here I am." Bazile replied forcefully, as if both a little lost and angry.
"The same. Preserved as though you never learnt a single thing since we were fucking thirteen."
"Shut the fuck up or I'll make you eat those words." Bazile hissed.
I bristled, wanting to stand up and add my own two cents, but this was Lowell's chance to vent.
"And you think you're fit to lead a pack?" He asked. "This petty, shit-talking, smarmy fucking boy?"
He turned to his father, who was observing with a kind of careless enjoyment that very much irked me. "The fact that you think I'll ever submit to him is a fucking joke."
Bazile growled.
Lowell growled back.
They filled the room with a thick, cloying energy that made the air feel hard to breathe in, gravity feel a little heavier as it pressed on your head, I realised the other pack members had their heads bowed, some of them, perhaps as a way of showing submission to ease them.
But the poignant power struggle that in that moment seemed somehow evenly matched, lasted a while longer than was comfortable. Feeling the energy coming off of Lowell was not merely uncomfortable, it made my skin burn, my cock hard, made it hard to breathe at all.
"Don't submit to me now then." Bazile said after some time, a knife edge in his voice. "Who says I need anything from you that I've already gotten?" He raised his hand slightly, angling something in Lowell's direction.
I saw the edge of the bite mark, nearly completely healed but still red and sore.
Lowell's eyes grew hard, the burning gaze turning on me slowly.
[A/N] Dancing to impress my patrons... ₍₍ (ง ˵ › . ‹) ว ⁾⁾
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