Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,53

get around enough to know better.

“My house is that way,” Saul said with a tap on his right shoulder when they stopped at the next light.

Jasper had been unconsciously heading toward Jack Henry’s, to the place he’d last smelled Lon, but what was he going to do there? Pull up in Lon’s driveway and challenge him? Lon hadn’t done anything Jasper had a right to kill him over. He could’ve killed him the night of the race. Alphas were encouraged to find non-violent ways to decide who got which omega, but deaths happened, and no one got arrested over them. Now, though, he would need something more than ‘Lon looked at my omega with lust in his heart’ to justify taking the guy out.

And the human part of his brain, the less violent part his mother had nurtured in him, suggested that Lon was the kind of alpha who would only react harder for getting poked. Jasper liked to think he was too smart to be the kind of alpha who poked just get to a reaction, but sometimes he was exactly that kind of alpha. It was good he had Saul’s arms around him to remind him his job was to keep his pack safe, not to stir up trouble where trouble didn’t need to be stirred.

He followed Saul’s directions to a small house that had probably been pretty once but now needed several coats of paint. Under the front windows, he could make out the remains of flower boxes, now a dull, weathered wood missing half their slats, and the front door was graced by a wreath that’d died a lot of Christmases ago, its branches dried to a brown crisp devoid of flowers or ribbons.

Saul dismounted and stood next to the bike with his helmet in his hands. He surveyed the house as if he’d never seen it before. “My dad’s a builder. He just didn’t care about our house, I guess.” Beneath Saul’s words, Jasper heard what he was really saying—that his father didn’t care about him.

“I suppose it was hard on him, losing his wife and being left with a kid he didn’t know how to take care of. Doesn’t mean he didn’t want to do better.” Jasper was channeling his mother, saying what she would say without necessarily believing it. Saul’s mother had left ten years ago. At some point, Saul’s father ought to have recovered enough to throw out a dead wreath and give his son a hug.

Jasper gave him a hug now to make up for it. Saul leaned down to snuffle into his neck, breathing him in audibly. This guy. Jasper loved him so fully, so easily, so quickly. Nothing even to do with being packmates. Just Saul.

“What the fuck are you two freaks doing?” a harsh voice asked.

Jasper lifted his head. A big man—as big as Saul but with a mean expression to match his mean words—stood in the open doorway, the pathetic wreath at his back.

“I’m hugging my mate. Do you have a problem with that?” He moved in front of Saul to shield him from the threat who he could guess was Saul’s father, Otis. Father and son resembled each other in unmistakable ways beyond their size—a squareness through their jaws, the sharp flare of their noses. Otis was a good-looking man, like his son, but after knowing him for thirty seconds, Jasper had already learned he wasn’t nearly as good-natured.

“Heard about you,” Otis sneered. “Some kind of fancy-pants alpha trying to turn my son into an omega.”

“I’m not turning Saul into an omega. I’m starting a new pack, and he’s one of the two alphas I’ve chosen to help me. It’s an honor.”

“If he’s so honorable, why’s he hiding behind you?”

Saul was lurking, for sure. Not exactly cowering, but close. Which was partly Jasper’s fault for stepping in front of him. His protective instincts went beyond Jack Henry to encompass any member of his pack who seemed to need him, but Saul was an alpha, and this was his father.

“You can say hi to your dad.”

“Hi, Dad,” Saul said without stepping out from behind him. “Just want to get some things from my room.”

“Threw out all your things when I heard what you’d done. No son of mine is gonna—”

“Start a new pack?” Jasper interrupted. “I’m not understanding the objection.”

“Get his ass fucked,” Otis clarified with a sneer. “’One omega, three alphas. I can do the math.”

“You have an odd interest in your son’s sex life. Seems